The G Running Diary

Weird Meets World: 8/1/03

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So all week I've felt this separation of my Badwater world and the real world, and have had trouble reconciling it. Then I saw Pam Reed on David Letterman. Not that Pam Reed is weird. She seems very normal. The weird part was to hear Dave announcing, "Coming up, Pam Reed, your Badwater Ultramarathon champion." They showed two really short clips of her running during the race, and Dave asked her some questions, like "How do you run so far?" and shook his head over her mention of the 30 other 100 milers she has run. He broached the topic that if you get to walk during these things, then it's not really a run, is it? Maybe that was a slight put-down for ultrarunners, but the awe of running 135 miles across a desert certainly makes up for any of that.

I wished they had said a little more about the race, and that they had a clip showing more people. When I thought of people watching the show who knew nothing about Badwater, how would they know that there were 73 competitors? Or that everyone who finished under 48 hours got a belt buckle? And Pam forgot to mention that her special prize for winning was a rock. It is hard to convey the magnitude of Badwater in such a brief moment. It feels vast, like the desert, and contradictory because the desert is empty but I found so much meaning. The experience of Badwater breaks you down to almost nothing, and then you manage to come through that and complete this amazing journey. But it is not a lesson in self-reliance either, because you must rely on your crew. I think the whole thing is full of contradictions.

Prince Feisal said to Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia: "No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing."