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Running a Marathon in Death Valley at the Hottest Time of Year

Michelle Khare · ▶ 18:05 · 9 min read
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Overview

Death Valley, in the northern Mojave Desert, holds the highest recorded air temperature on Earth: 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat is dangerous enough that warning signs discourage visitors from being outside after 10 a.m. In this video, Michelle Khare sets out to run 26.2 miles there in the hottest month of the year, with four weeks to prepare. She calls it her most physically daunting and dangerous challenge so far, and it is also, by her own account, a way of dealing with her fear of turning 30.

9 min read
1:25

A four-week deadline and the reason behind it

Before going to the desert, Khare travels to Wyoming to meet Chantelle Robitaille, an exercise physiologist who coaches athletes for extreme conditions. When Khare says she wants to run the Death Valley marathon in four weeks, Robitaille pushes back. She says she would normally recommend at least 20 weeks to get someone ready, and asks why the timeline is so short.

Khare explains that she turns 30 in four weeks and is frightened by it, because her whole career depends on what her body can do. Robitaille rejects the idea that 30 marks a decline. She points to women who did remarkable things in the marathon after 30, such as Des Linden and Sara Hall, noting that they did so after becoming mothers and well past their 30th birthdays. She also mentions her own age as she approaches 50, and argues that people can do far more than society suggests. When Khare says she likes proving people wrong, Robitaille replies that maybe she needs to prove herself wrong.

2:36

What the heat does to a runner

Robitaille describes the specific dangers of the course. She says ground temperatures in Death Valley can approach a couple hundred degrees, hot enough to nearly boil a runner's shoes, and the pavement then radiates that heat back into the air. Sweat evaporates almost instantly, so a runner may not even notice they are sweating, which makes fluid loss harder to track.

Hearing this, Khare decides she needs a partner who can help her cope with the environment. She contacts Brooks, whose representative says the company has had several athletes run in similar conditions and offers equipment, support, and encouragement. Brooks becomes the sponsor and supplies the pacers who appear later.

3:40

The training block

The training combines endurance, terrain, and heat adaptation. Robitaille adds hiking because no part of the course is completely flat, and she wants Khare to get used to the biomechanics of moving between walking, power hiking, and running. Since Robitaille is traveling for two of the four weeks, much of the plan is coached remotely.

Khare runs 4 to 10 miles a day, five days a week. The sessions mix high-intensity interval training, long endurance runs, and heat training. For the heat work, Robitaille schedules a run and then has Khare go straight into a sauna afterward.

4:29

What turning 30 actually means to her

During training, Khare talks more openly about the fear driving the project. She says she isn't afraid of the number itself but of getting old: wrinkles and other "vanity things" she doesn't like admitting to. Underneath that is a bigger worry. She is scared that the body that can currently do these things won't always be able to, and she says she doesn't think she knows who she is if she isn't the person who can do them. She also mentions that Bo Burnham's song about turning 30 came on while she was listening to music, which made the subject hard to avoid.

6:01

Race morning

Khare says she barely slept for the two nights before the race because of anxiety. Her stated goal is simply to finish. They start early, but at 7:30 a.m. she notices that the temperature has risen about three degrees in the 15 minutes they have been there. A member of the medical team warns her that she will feel weak and tired, tells her to keep drinking, and asks her to report anything that feels wrong.

The route is a 26.2-mile section of the Badwater 135, a 135-mile foot race through Death Valley known as "the race from hell."

7:22

Pacers and a support crew

In long races, a pacer runs with the athlete to keep them safe and hold a steady speed. Khare's pacers are elite runners. One says they set the 50K world record and the indoor marathon world record, and led the Boston Marathon for about 20 miles. Khare is surprised to learn she is running with someone who holds a world record at a longer distance than hers. That pacer says many people build mental limits around distances like this because they sound inhuman.

Because of the conditions, a support crew drives beside Khare the whole way in an RV, which she compares to Breaking Bad. She describes the crew as an F1 pit team. Someone always runs behind her to watch her pace and breathing and to make sure she drinks regularly and eats something small every 30 minutes. The crew also brings a spray bottle for cooling, and the stops are kept short so she stays moving, hydrated, and fueled.

8:56

Running with Scott Jurek

Scott Jurek, one of the world's most accomplished ultramarathoners, also runs with her. According to the video, Jurek won the Western States 100 seven years in a row and has won the Badwater 135 twice. Jurek says he used to hate running and once thought people who did races like this were crazy, and never expected to run 135 miles on pavement through Death Valley.

Asked what Badwater felt like, Jurek describes the sun from above and the pavement radiating heat from below as being like a torch blowing on you constantly. Khare mentions photos of him sitting in an ice chest during the race and asks how he decided to keep going. He says he started with "maybe I could just walk a little bit," then tried a little jogging, and climbed out of the low point step by step. Baby steps, he says, are the most important thing.

Early on, the sun suddenly feels much hotter, and Khare compares it to someone turning up an oven. Around mile 10 she says she feels good but remembers Jurek's warning that a good phase is followed by a bad one, so she is trying to make the good stretch last. To distract her from the heat, the group lists cold things: Antarctica, slushies, snowflakes, ice cubes, New Hampshire in winter, popsicles, skiing, hockey.

11:07

Knee pain and slowing down

The crew watches for both minor and serious problems. When Khare says her knee is bothering her, they suggest monitoring it and, if it gets worse, changing her cadence or stopping briefly to stretch. A crew member explains their concern: a knee that gives out, or a change in gait that then causes hip pain, could end her day, and their job is to prevent that. They give her form cues, such as tucking her pelvis slightly and relaxing her ribs. Khare tells herself it's not a big deal and keeps going.

Pace becomes the harder problem. Khare says she feels slow and keeps having to stop and walk. She compares it to the LA Marathon she ran six years earlier at 24, when she averaged eight-minute miles. Now, holding that pace for a single mile feels suffocating, and she says she doesn't feel 24 anymore. She describes the idea of doing something extreme to close out her twenties, and then, partway through, wondering what she was thinking.

The crew keeps trying to cool her, including putting a frozen, wet long-sleeve shirt on her that has been in the freezer long enough to go stiff.

13:19

Hitting the wall

Khare explains "the wall," which marathoners typically hit around mile 20 when the body is depleted. She describes it as a sudden shift where the brain panics, the legs feel like concrete posts, and the mind sends loud signals that you are going to die. It isn't true, she says, but it feels that way, and negative thoughts pile up to persuade you to stop. Hers are: maybe she's not cut out for this anymore, maybe she's not the athlete she used to be, maybe she should just stop.

14:48

Past the finish line: "30 by 30"

She keeps going and reaches the marathon finish, where she is told she did it and can stop. Instead she says she wants to do 30. She explains that she had been running away from 30 until then, but crossing the line made her realize that if she has to turn 30, she wants to do it on her own terms and run toward it. She adds that the pandemic took a lot of her twenties and she wants to take some of that back.

A member of her team calls that a great way to see it and tells her to come back to that idea whenever she doubts herself. The team then has her shout "I'm a badass" louder and louder, tells her not to worry about time and just finish, and repeats "30 by 30." She says "I believe in myself" and "I can do anything" as they push her through the final stretch.

17:04

A slower, longer run

Afterward, Khare compares this run to her marathon at 24. She did it much more slowly, she says, but ran much farther. Her takeaway is that as she gets older it's acceptable to go slower, because going slower lets her do more. She ends with the line "growing older is a privilege denied to many" and says she is finally beginning to embrace and appreciate each passing year.

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