Anyone ever heard of a greater feat off less training?
Good times at Badwater
Katy man braves Death Valley heat during brutal race
By ROBERTA MACINNIS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
If Nathan Ochsner admits it has been baking outside, the rest of us are
in trouble. The 36-year-old Katy runner recently completed his second
Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race through Death Valley each July.
"It's extremely hot right now; we definitely have good training
weather," Ochsner said. "Coming from Houston, it's a perfect match."
Not that it's 130 degrees here or that area runners - even those now
preparing for cooler fall marathons up north - go for two-day runs,
which is about how long it took Ochsner to complete the 2005 race. His
44-hour, 35-minute finish bested his 2001 time of 46:02. (Scott Jurek
of Seattle won this year's race with a course record of 24:36, more
than a half hour faster than the previous best time.)
Low-mileage training
Ochsner's training for Badwater consisted of a two-hour run at noon on
the weekends - and not much else. He estimates he typically ran 20 to
30 miles - 40 tops - a week.
Ochsner's unusually low mileage is more of necessity than by design. A
stay-at-home father of three, ages 1-5, who works part time from the
house, Ochsner just doesn't have time.
"Based on my training schedule, I should never have completed this
race," he said. "But I did because I run when I can, I try to run hard,
and I try to run during the hottest part of the day."
Ochsner decided he wanted to enter Badwater after seeing a documentary
on TV.
"They made it sound like it wasn't humanly possible, even though there
were obviously humans doing it," he said.
A marathon runner, he started entering longer events so he would be
eligible for Badwater, which requires entrants to have experience
running at least 50 miles.
"I totally fell in love," Ochsner said, "with Death Valley itself, the
environment, the course. You cross three mountain ranges; it's just
nice out there."
In his 2001 book, To the Edge: A Man, Death Valley and the Mystery of
Endurance , New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson wrote about how he saw
tea sets, sailor's nets and fake walls in the desert while he was
running Badwater - hallucinations brought on by a lack of sleep, the
heat or both.
"Yeah, I had more hallucinations than ever before," said Ochsner, who
spotted lawn chairs, birdbaths and the little concrete animals that
homeowners sometimes place in their yards.
Finishing the race
Ochsner said the high point - figuratively - of this year's race
was when he passed 40 miles, the point where he had to drop out in
2003. His low point was at the end.
"About a half-mile from the finish," he said, "I woke up while I was
walking, which of course meant I had been sleeping on my feet."
It took Ochsner an hour to do the last half-mile.
"I was struggling to wake myself up out of the bad dream I thought I
was having, and I just couldn't do it because, of course, I wasn't
dreaming," he said.
Ochsner said it takes a good support team to help a runner keep his
cool, both physically and mentally.
"They (support crew) walked and ran with me," he said. "And literally
carried me the last half mile."