“I want to win. But, really, my goal is just to finish,” she said a week before the race.
I was talking to Jamie Donaldson, who was one of eight Colorado runners in this year’s Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135 mile foot race from Death Valley to Mount Whitney, California.
Jamie said that she trained for the race by running outdoors in the heat of the summer while wearing winter clothing and jogging in place in a sauna at her gym. She took a vacation to Death Valley so that she could train on the race course. She planned every outfit, every meal and found a crew willing to travel to the race to help her reach her goal. Yet despite her preparations, she knew that anything could happen when she tried to push her body to its absolute limit on the grueling, sun-scorched course.
As runners, we get up early to exercise in the morning before going to work and often give up fun with friends and family to exercise in the evening. We set our sights on a goal, whether to run a fall marathon or improve our time in a 5K, and work endlessly to achieve it.
“Why are you waking me up so early?” my wife often complains when the alarm rings at 5 a.m. I sometimes wonder. Because I’ll never run a faster mile than I did in college and I might not ever run a faster marathon than I did in my 20s. Yet, I’m still just as dedicated to running. I just come up with different races to train for or different distances to set my sights on improving.
Happy trails! Derek
(To find out how Jaime finished, turn to page 54.)