participants at the prerace expo held at the Hacienda Hotel and Casino in Boulder City, a mere three miles from the start. Richard was amazed at how attractive all the women were, both runners and volunteers. He thought he had mistakenly signed up for a reality television show featuring physically fit babes.

Being in Vegas territory, we facetiously wagered on who would finish and who would not. Numerous times during the run, I put myself in the “not” category, but Vegas’s lady luck was definitely on my side Saturday rather than at the slots the next day.

When Badwater 135 veterans say that the Devil is tough, you’ve got to believe it. I’ve run 85 marathons; more than 50 ultras (including seven 100-milers); and I’ve raced at night, on muddy trails, over roots and rocks, in pelting hailstorms, in blinding snowstorms, through stinging sandstorms, during freezing rain and tule fog; but this one humbles them all.

At 6:00 a.m., the temperature was 87 degrees as we left the start line at the Boulder Beach parking lot. “Brisk” and “doable” were words that were bandied about—but only an hour later, not so much.

THE DEVIL-MAY-CARE SPIRIT SOON WITHERED

A few runners really got into the spirit of the race. They were dressed as devils, complete with horns, red capes, and pitchforks, but much of the regalia was pitched as the temperatures soared. The heat wasn’t going to cotton to levity.

A It’s already 105 degrees by the time author Laura Kulsik Yasso approaches mile 15.

Vogel Photography

Akos Konya, the eventual winner of the 50-miler, wore a flaming red and orange singlet. And yes, he was on fire, yet nobody looked cooler—and smoother—than he did. I liked my friend Richard’s idea for a costume: a shirt with the word “Prada” on it. (Get it? The Devil Wears Prada? Hey. It was hot. Our brains weren’t working all that well.)

Even though I wasn’t dripping sweat because of the very low (3 percent) humidity, the temperature felt beyond boiling, and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet! As part of my brief mental preparation (all eight days of it), I tried to wrap my mind around what running 50-milers in triple digits for hours on end would feel like. Reality, however, served up something I could never have imagined. Running in eastern Pennsylvania in 85 degrees and 91 percent humidity, even while wearing sweats, is not even close. Question: what could possibly be more miserable than a sticky, sweaty, wet run in high humidity? Answer: Vegas in triple digits! Even with virtually no humidity, this Devil run was quickly becoming hands-down brutal. Yet there was beauty in something so ugly. While the racecourse and conditions were beyond challenging, the scenery in every direction was beyond spectacular, a sight to behold. We were surrounded by Nature, with a capital “N.” There were beautiful rock formations, washes, cactus, sage, lizards, and the aqua-colored water of the lake. Unfortunately, none of the water was close enough for a quick respite.

The out-and-back 50-miler was staged on two hilly, paved roads bordering Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States. Joyce marked the course with red tape every mile up through mile 15 and then every five miles after that, along with marking the marathon.

Believe it or not, even after all my running peregrinations, this was my first ultra on a paved road. I don’t have an aversion or allergic reaction to pavement. It’s just that most ultras in the United States are on dirt trails. I love roads and I love running a long, long way. Combine the two, and what’s not to like?

The climbs were not long enough to deserve names like the climbs at Western States. There was no Devil’s Thumb or Michigan Bluff in the bunch, but these hills were devilish grinders nonetheless. As a wise and experienced runner, I knew to walk up plenty of them, but unfortunately, after blisters kicked in, too many of those same hills had me hobbling down them. The hills, one after another, were relentless, and so were the afternoon winds. We were joking that there had been no mention of these winds on the race application or in the course description. How could things we really could not see get in the way of our running?

SO MANY BOATS AND SUCH FAST SPORTS CARS

As long as we weren’t being blown onto the road, we knew we had no right to complain. The racecourse served as the gateway to many of the lake’s boat-launch

areas, meaning that dozens and dozens of vehicles pulling their humongous boats on trailers passed us. A few Porsches and Ferraris went whizzing by, too, at 100-plus miles an hour. Think about it: a high-performance Italian sports car and a long, lonely stretch of straight desert road. Do the math. The situation calls for letting the horses loose.

Thank goodness for the Nevada Department of Transportation, which provided a nice, wide shoulder for us to run on. Every now and then, a lizard would try to run next to me on those wide shoulders, but because lizards aren’t very good at pacing themselves, I would drop them in 10 yards or less. Perhaps they weren’t pacing me at all but instead were doing a reptilian intervention, trying to tell me, “Hey girl, give it up. It’s way too hot out here for what you’re doing.” Did you know that when you spend too much time out in the heat, you can begin to hallucinate?

What did it feel like, running through the desert in the heat of the day? Go to your kitchen, preheat your oven to broil, return 15 minutes later, and open the oven door. That’s what it felt like . . . for hours and hours and hours.

Race rules stated that no crewing was allowed. No crew meant no air-conditioned vehicles to hop into for some temporary relief, but there were aid stations every 3.1 to 3.9 miles and four opportunities to get to our drop bags. There was also supposed to be an ice-cold dunk tank set up at two of the aid stations, which meant, since it was an out-and-back course, that we could get dunked four times. At 87 degrees, I was already looking forward to that. Three hours and 20 degrees later, and I was more than ready to park it for good once I got to that ice bath.

The aid stations were my little oases in the middle of the desert. Each was stocked with the usual runner food and drink, plus white washcloths dipped in ice water—my favorite thing in the world on June 30. I did some major bonding with the aid-station volunteers, who repeatedly saved my life over the course of the day. And even though there weren’t many of us runners out there, major bonding was going on. | started the race slower than most, so I got to run and chat with about half of the field by the time I reached mile 15—and 105 degrees. I found out that I was one of four runners from Pennsylvania, and two of them lived just 35 miles away from me. It’s a small ultra world out there.

I remember the bee girls at the mile 20/30 station. They were inundated by swarms of bees. Literally thousands of the little stingers took over the designated area, so the food table and shade tent had to be moved down the road a bit. Sadly, the ice-cold dunk tank had to be abandoned because the bees had taken ownership of it, so no sitting in an ice-cold bath two times during the run—a fantasy that was not going to come true.

I wasn’t the only one who was powered by fantasies. The bee girls, who had both been stung numerous times (along with me and another runner), sat on the ice boxes and shared our fantasies, which, as it turned out, were all about food and drink: an ice-cold Coke, an In-N-Out burger, In-N-Out fries, lemonade! Until

then, I made sure to be thorough at each aid station by taking in major quantities of fluids and calories and leaving with a full tank.

A REUNION AT THE HALFWAY POINT

At the 25-mile turnaround, it felt like the entire 50-mile race field was within 15 minutes of one another. Part of the reason was that many runners decided to drop there—or 1.2 miles up at the marathon mark so they could say, “Hey, at least I got a marathon in.”

Just five hours earlier, we were all excited about being “pioneers,” as Joyce called us, yet it wasn’t even noon, and we had experienced a group catharsis. Some folks had themselves checked out by the paramedics in the ambulances that were on the course. The first time I heard an ambulance siren, I thought perhaps there was a fender bender, but after a few sirens, I finally realized that the ambulances were for us. It was scary until I received reports that the runners, including many ultra veterans, were OK. Did that make me feel weaker or stronger? I don’t know, but I at least felt relieved that everyone was OK, and I felt as good as you can when the thermometer hits 111 and there’s no relief in sight.

arrived at the halfway point at exactly 10:58 a.M., two minutes faster than my projection of five hours flat. The eventual winner, Akos, arrived just 10 seconds behind me. But keep in mind that he started two hours later than I did, which means that this heat-seeking, humble Hungarian had done 25 miles two hours faster than I had. I usually run negative splits in my races, but I knew that there was no chance of that on a triple-digit day like this. I figured that based on my time to 25 miles, I could afford to slow roughly two minutes per mile on the return trip and still get a sub-11:00 qualifier for the Western States lottery.

All [had to do was continue with the forward motion and keep hydrating all I could along the way. Keep on drinkin’ and keep on truckin’.

Ah, yes. The return was one strange trip, indeed. Keenan Follis from Southern California and I were running no more than five minutes apart between aid stations. I was hitting the aid stations about every 40 to 45 minutes on the outbound trip, but on the return trip, it was well over an hour between stations. This was not because my running had slowed down all that much, but rather because my downtime at each aid station was becoming longer and longer. I never had this problem in my other ultras because I was aware of the admonition: beware of the chair. But perhaps this lingering wasn’t really a problem after all, but rather a wise decision on my part, a smart way to handle the heat: downtime, off my feet and off the frying-pan road surface.

I was crewless but not clueless! Keenan and I had a contest to see who could get to each aid station first so that we could sit down in the one and only chair. Sometimes there was no chair and no shade tent, so I would lie on the pavement under the food table to get out of the sun. I would ask the volunteers to help

cover me with the ice-cold washcloths. They were more than happy to oblige “The Shroud of Laura.” I didn’t care what anybody thought. Who knows what all those folks in cars thought of us runners traveling down the road in various stages of forward motion? Iam sure we provided miles and miles of entertainment. I certainly kept Keenan entertained. At each aid station, after I had my shroud downtime, I would smother my face and hair with sunscreen and pack gobs of ice in my Jogbra before heading back out into the oven.

THE GREAT EFFORT TO KEEP IT ALL TOGETHER

The race conditions weren’t the only things that were horrid. My body’s condition was deteriorating rapidly in the final 15 miles. I was barely hanging on to an 11-hour pace. I dealt with pretty much everything but dehydration in those final miles. I was drinking mightily and mightily trying to keep it all down without spewing so that at least dehydration was being held at bay . . . barely.

Blisters, heat, wind, and self-doubt were my main obstacles. The shade of an aid-station tent or resting under an aid-station table brought me temporary relief, but popping blisters brought me no relief at all. Once popped, the watery and bloody sacks of fluid between my toes turned raw, loose skin that stung and rubbed me the wrong way. But as terrible as it all felt, never whined or complained. Do the aid-station personnel really need to listen to that? In fact, there was even a smile on my face. The volunteers told me this. “How can you be so happy when it’s so friggin’ miserable out here?”

© Joyce Forier

A At mile 42, the race course served entrants an 8 percent grade.

I’m certainly not a misery miser, and I reminded myself, “Self, this is only temporary!” I apologized to my body for what I was putting it through and continued onward—ever onward. Knowing that I never, ever had to be in the sun again was fueling me; knowing that I could do anything I wanted to once this was done was enough to keep me going.

People often ask me what I think about while I’m out there. [have never been bored and often solve world problems and sometimes even solve my own personal problems. At least some of the time, I think about absolutely nothing at all—and that’s a good thing. My body is in overdrive, so it’s a nice thought that maybe my mind shuts down for a bit and relaxes to save mental energy.

I knew that no matter how my day played out, a finish or not, I was giving it my all. I didn’t want to fly back to Pennsylvania with regrets. A finish, even if it was out there beyond 11 hours, was going to be OK if I continued to give it everything I had. I wasn’t giving up just yet. With 10 miles to go, I was well over an 11-hour pace, but I was still doing the math and figuring what I needed to run to go under 11 hours. And what I needed to go under 11 hours at that point was no more stopping at aid stations.

THE DROPOUTS BECAME THE BACKUP AID WORKERS

Some runners who dropped out of the 50-miler, including both experienced ultra veterans and newbies, showed what they were made of by staying out in Hell’s Kitchen and helping at the aid stations. This included the youngest entrant, 17-year-old Michael Hayden, already a veteran of more than a dozen ultras. And those who couldn’t help out? Those of us left out there totally understood. This was not a normal day or a normal race. You didn’t need to be running to be feeling the ill effects of the heat.

My last mile was about as close as I ever was to a DNF. I am no drama queen, but I honestly thought I was going to collapse in grand fashion. I’ve certainly been through bouts of lightheadedness before, and I’ve spewed my stomach contents at five of my hundred milers, but this was a wee bit different. I was having a difficult time moving forward, not due to imbalance, but simply because of a volatile combination of wear and tear combined with the elements. Mix up all the bad stuff—shredded feet full of blisters, chafing where the sun don’t shine, low caloric intake, and incredible winds—and a finish line might not be part of my immediate future.

No systems were wanting to go forward except for my brain. Unfortunately, I had 120 pounds of fried flesh to haul with it. Maybe I should just stop and take a nap on the side of the road. Maybe regroup and get it back together. I still had about an hour until the ultimate cutoff. Certainly, I could do a mile in less than an hour. Yet I thought that if I lay down, I might scare folks who happened to be driving by.

They had already seen an ambulance or two go by scooping up “dead” runners, and the occupants of at least one vehicle were concerned and asked me to keep an eye on a runner, one of the marathoners, who was behind me and who looked like he was weaving. (He was ultimately picked up by an ambulance, and happily so.)

But the other good news was that these same people didn’t ask me how I was doing, so I must have looked pretty good! I wasn’t weaving, I wasn’t incoherent, and even though I was in a deteriorating state, I was still champing at the bit, trying to get to the finish line. I didn’t figure I needed an ambulance—just a finish line I could fall across.

I did everything in my power to keep it together during those last 1,500 yards. I took in some calories—my last two energy gels. Yuck. I was desperately trying to keep the calories down; my feet were ripped to shreds, and I was passing up some glorious downhill running because of them; the wind was trying to blow me down; and besides all of that, it was really, really friggin’ hor!

WAS IT A MIRAGE, OR WAS IT THE FINISH?

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light—or maybe it was just Keenan. I thought I could see cars turning into the Boulder Beach parking lot where the race finished, or maybe the supposed cars were just mirages because Keenan was ahead of me and not turning at all. My mantra for five whole minutes was: “Keenan, turn left. Keenan, turn left.” He finally did, and that’s all I needed to see. Now all I had to do was somehow stay upright, make forward motion for another 10 minutes or so, and smile for the crowd, and then I could stop and fulfill my new fantasy: be a vampire to a cold soda!

The turn, the finish, and fantasy fulfilled: I lay down for five minutes under another shroud of Laura and drank an ice-cold Coke. I was the happiest girl in the desert ever.

The stats: only 13 of the 30 50-mile starters finished, nobody died, and nobody was hospitalized. At the finish, a few of the runners who had made ambulance visits still wore their EKG pads on their chests as a precautionary measure suggested by the paramedics. I found out that I was the only one of the four Pennsylvanians to complete the 50-miler.

Iran 11:22 and missed getting my Western States qualifier by 22 minutes. And amazingly, I couldn’t have been happier. I placed second woman and finished in the top 10 as well as in the bottom four! The marathoners and halfers didn’t have as high an attrition rate as the 50-milers—about 30 percent—and most were proud of their new personal worsts.

To give you another perspective on the challenge that day, Richard, who was in 1:35 half-marathon shape, ran the half in 2:58. It was the craziest race either of us had ever done. And because of that, the rewards were most appreciated: