Death Valley Marathon

I’ve never wanted to run a marathon. There’s a few reasons for this; 1) I don’t like running. 2) Running for 3+ hours seems particularly onerus to me. The Death Valley Marathon/30k has some good points that counteract my dislike of running. 1) The run takes place in Titus Canyon, a beautifully narrow, remote section of DV. 2) With the exception of one section, which was probably about 2 or 3 miles long it’s all downhill, 15+ miles of downhill. 3) It takes place in beautiful Death Valley. So, after weighing the pros and cons being and some cajoling from Gant and Jared I signed up and decided to go for it.

The three of us were to meet up in DV somewhere on Friday night, check in and run early on Saturday morning and then spend the rest of Sat/Sun/Mon exploring. Jared and Gant both got there much earlier than me and being the high performance (read as: high maintenance) racing machines that they are, both brought race support crews to handle such tasks as pampering and pandering their fatigued little feet. So, with a full night of restful relaxation under our belts, Saturday morning dawned on Death Valley.

Seemingly on cue, when there’s a solution in need of a problem Gant came up with some unnecessarily complicated, not to mention blatantly illegal plan to get trucks and people here and there. He thought that we all caravan out to the end of Titus Canyon and park two trucks, then all seven of us pile into the last truck, with only six seat belts, hence the illegal part of the plan and drive to the beginning of the race. Somehow this was going to save us some time, somewhere along the trip. I’m not sure if it did save any time anywhere, but it did almost cost Jared and I a bus ride saving us 8 miles of running (which may have been his goal?). 99% of the competitors just took the bus ride to the start and at the end of the race took the bus ride back. Us three being that other 1% as far as I can tell. Gant’s plan pulled through though and we all made it to where we needed to be by the slimmest of margins.

Gant ran the full marathon while Jared, I and the rest of the 30k’ers were bussed up to White pass about 8 miles ahead of Gant and the Marathoners. With this head start we began the race. That extra 8 miles the marathon runners had to cover didn’t look all that interesting or fun to me. To start with it’s uphill, it’s not in Titus canyon, it’s on the approach to the canyon and it just looked drab to me, so I was personally glad I didn’t have to run it. Starting on White pass we started off downhill for about a mile or so and then began the only climb up to Red pass.

That climb was a bitch. There was snow on the ground, as we were topping out above 5,000 feet and it was cold as balls out there for the first hour or so. On the climb up to Red pass Jared left me in the dirt and I ran alone until the end of the race, 15 miles later. Once downhill on the backside of Red the entire race is a downhill or downslope. The snack tables were well placed and well stocked. The canyon was breathtaking. The requirement not to wear headphones while at first seemingly an arbitrary assholish move by management turned out to be quite nice. The canyon is so narrow at points you can hear the echo of your breath and your footsteps on the canyon walls.

This was the farthest either I or Jared had ever run. Our longest training run was 14 miles and it was rough. 18 miles went much smoother than I thought it would. When the canyon abruptly ended and we were on the final 3 miles I got my second wind. Jared was no more than 100 yards in front of me and I was flying to catch him. We ran together again for a few minutes and then I took off for the finish line. I came across the line so fast that Liz didn’t even get a picture of me doing it.

2 hours and 41 minutes after starting I was done. I felt great. Jared finished 1 minute behind me. I was 37th overall and 3rd in my age group. I am happy as hell about those results. When Gant finished at a brisk 4 hour and 10 minutes we sat around and waited for the racers to clear out the way so we could go get to the trucks that we had parked earlier, at this point I’m sure that Gant’s plan was as well thought out as my decision to enlist in the Corps.

Cut to acouple of hours later and we finally got our trucks and got out of Dodge. We went to spend the night at the Mesquite springs campground.

Here are the results.

Ubehebe crater, Teakettle Junction and the Racetrack

Sunday morning came too early, a bit too cold and with some light rain. This makes three years in a row that it’s precipitated on us in some form when visiting DV, from a snow storm on Telescope peak to snow at the Racetrack. Either way, it smelled like wet sagebrush and a new day. After another lengthy and laborious decision making process we decided to go to Scotty’s castle for the tour and then decide where to go from there after the tour.

The tour at Scotty’s castle was interesting. The castle itself was amazing and the guide did a nice job of passing along his knowledge to us. The only warning I would give is that the little deli there only takes cash, which is odd since the gift shop that shares the same building takes any kind of card.

At the Castle while Jared was trying to impress some random Rangers with his marathon exploits, without bothering them with the relatively inconsequential details like the fact that he ran the 30k, not the marathon. During this whole conversation he somehow worked some strange Palmdale desert magic and got some great information on an unpublicized canyon with the greatest collection of petroglyphs in the park.

I’m not going into details here, but we did scout the approach later that day and took a picture from afar. It’s an obscure little canyon, hardly looks like much but from what it was described as I wanted to make the hike despite the pain coming from my legs. I was outvoted and we went to Ubehebe crater and the Racetrack.

So, Ubehebe was cool. Scouted out little Hebe crater for the first time. Then after everyone got a good look at the crater and saw the location of Gant’s death defyingly dramatic descent and accompanying asinine ascent, some of us were caught napping. When everyone awoke we continued on the horrible, horrible road to the Racetrack .

Some of us climbed the grandstand , while others looked for moving rocks, and of course there was that 1% that stood around showing off medals to anyone and everyone that was looking, which I believe led us all to eventually split up. I took pictures.

Jared, Liz and I left after all that and journeyed back to a snowy Gorman. Gant and his crew stayed late into the night with raging bonfires, alcohol and hot dogs. I’m slightly jealous of them.

We are already planning a trip back to XXXXXX Canyon, in the next month or two. All in all, I loved the run and will be returning next year for it and would reccomend it to absolutely anyone, even if you don’t like running.

Album of pictures from trip

PS. I would be remiss if I did not mention the abundance of awesome that Gant produced in his Burrito Bar.