Editorial

As we age, we tend to become more nostalgic. You seldom hear kids indulging in nostalgia, while old folks seem to wallow in the stuff, particularly in the burnished memories of “how it used to be.” Of course, “how it used to be” is typically melded toward painting a word picture of how things were once better, simpler, more heartfelt and genuine.

I’ve not yet advanced to the oldfolk stage, but I’ve been noticing that lately there have been a few minutes stolen from each day, afew hours from each week, a few days from each year; each day and year ends sooner than it used to end. This, I’m told, is a sure sign of old-fogeyism. And I did undergo areal nostalgia binge this week, going so far as to use the dead-giveaway phrase “good old days.”

This particular binge was initiated by the arrival of a review copy of Running on the Sun, a 90-minute documentary on what used to be the Hi-Tec Badwater 135 race from Death Valley to the shoulder of Mt. Whitney in far southeastern California.

I say “used to be” to denote that from 1988 until 1999 Hi-Tec was the prime sponsor of the race from the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere (Badwater, Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level) to 8,200 feet up the side of Mt. Whitney. As of

2000, Chris Kostman and his AdventureCorps company, whose primary race used to be a 508-mile bicycle race through Death Valley, took over the Death Valley footrace, renamed it the Sun Precautions Badwater Ultramarathon, and changed the format (by adding wave starts) to accommodate more runners.

Mel Stuart’s Running on the Sun covers the last Hi-Tec race, primarily by picking out more than a half-dozen of the competitors and following them through their ordeal. The film is currently making the rounds of the film festivals. I don’t know when and if it will be shown in theaters or made available for purchase. I will say right up front that it’s a damned good film. Very well shot, well edited, and pretty darn good characters. It will be fun, over a few beers during the next viewing, to assign Hollywood actors and actresses to play the roles of these characters. I’m already leaning toward Harry Dean Stanton to play New York bagel delivery guy, Nick Palazzo.

Our old friend Doc Ben Jones of Lone Pine (a three-time finisher of the event) is narrator. At high noon on July 4, 1992, at the little pool of super-salt-saturated water at Badwater we made Ben the Mayor of Badwater and all the lands it abuts. Mayor Ben lives up to the rigors of the office in this production and is probably by now

also the president of the Chamber of Commerce.

If there’s one thing the film could use more of, it is heat. It might help to enclose with each copy an instruction book on how to set the TV/VCR up next to the oven, turn it to broil, open the door, and slide your chair next to it while you watch the film. It’s difficult to appreciate the heat without being there. Nancy Crawford, wife of Tom Crawford, my running partner when we became the first nuts to run from Badwater to the peak of Whitney and back to Badwater in 1989, used to say that to experience Death Valley at home, wait until Thanksgiving, roast the bird, then open the oven and pretend it’s stuck open. One of the Brit participants back in the Hi-Tec race in 1992 described it as holding a hair dryer in front of your face for 24 hours a day; one of the participants in Running on the Sun uses the same analogy.

If there’s one thing the film could use less of, it’s runners being sick along the side of the road and close-ups of people working on blisters. Movie theaters make most of their profit selling folks popcorn, candy, and soft drinks. This film may never make it to the theaters because the theater owners won’t want their food and drink sales torpedoed by scenes of projectile vomit and blister piercing.

Another little problem is the number of folks claiming that this isn’t really a race—‘‘we aren’t competing against each other; it’s ourselves against the course”—only to be contradicted by the genial and warm then course-record-holder Gabriel Flores attempting to catch new courserecord-holder Eric Clifton (and Eric’s concern that Flores was going to do just that). We also see Angelika Casteneda sharing her psych-out-theopposition strategy she planned to use on Lisa Smithas she caught and passed her on the way up to Whitney Portal. Beyond those minor quibbles, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and recommend it to all runners, whether you’re interested in ultrarunning or not. Ido not recommend showing the film to prospective crew members of ultrarunners hoping to do this race. My bout of nostalgia arrived as I watched the excellent filming of the overwhelming beginning of the race, where 40 runners and their crews rushed out of Badwater and onto the lonely two-lane road to Furnace Creek. It was overwhelming to see so many people and so many support vehicles clogging the little road. I’ve never run in one of the Hi-Tec races. Partly because the initial race once and for all closed off the full course to the top of the mountain to competitors when the then race director defied the rangers and ran her folks to the top of the mountain. And partly because back in those days we saw ourselves as purists because we started the race first thing in the morning instead of first thing in the evening as Hi-Tec did. (They eventually corrected that little problem.) I’ve run the out-and-back in Death Valley three times (1989, 1991, and 1992), and the