An interview with Eleanor Robinson (formerly Adams) by Katie Holmes of RunYoung50
By 1987, British runner Eleanor Adams had been racing ultra-distances for five years, establishing herself as one of the world’s greatest ultrarunners, setting multiple world bests at events including 24-hour and 6-day events in Europe, Australia and the USA.
This is the story of how she came to compete in the first Badwater ultra race, covering 146 miles from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in the US, 282 feet below sea level, to the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, 14,494 feet above sea level.
The race began at 6am on Friday 31st July 1987. When Adams reached the trig point at the top of Mount Whitney at 11.10am on Sunday 2nd August, she had set a record of 52 hours 45 minutes and zero seconds, beating the record set in 1982 by New Zealander Max Telford by over three hours.
The race was the brainchild of the late Kenneth Crutchlow, a British entrepreneur and adventurer, and co-founder of the Ocean Rowing Society. Crutchlow had completed the route in 1973, running it in a relay with Paxton Beale. He was living in Santa Rosa, California.
Crutchlow set the race up as US versus UK pairs challenge. The US pair were local ultrarunners Tom Crawford and Jean Ennis. They had both run the Western States 100 the month before the Badwater race.
How did you hear about the race?
The Badwater race wasn’t an open race. It was a challenge set up by a businessman (Kenneth Crutchlow) who was a bit of an adventurer. He wasn’t really a sportsperson at all, but he was into doing things like rowing across the Atlantic, and all these sorts of madcap things, which nowadays are fairly normal, but at the time were very unusual.
He’d challenged a top American couple to a race across Death Valley. Goodness only knows why. And I think in his ignorance he thought, “Oh, I’ll get a British woman to run with me, I’ll find somebody”. He advertised in Athletics Weekly: “Wanted: female distance runners to run Death Valley”.
I saw the article and thought, “I’d love to have a go at that. That is something really different.”
Ken Crutchlow was expecting a lot of people to take up his challenge. He’d even organized an office in London to interview potential candidates. And of course, the only person who responded to his advert was me.
He had absolutely no idea who he’d got. The American pair who were ultra-distance runners said, “You do realise you’ve got the world’s best ultra-distance runner, don’t you?”.
What made you want to do it?
I’d never been to Death Valley. I’m attracted to these sorts of quirky and difficult challenges. Things that are difficult, that you’ve got to work towards. The attraction for me was running [an end-to-end event race] from the lowest point to the highest point.
Another attraction of the event was that we had to do it under the worst possible conditions. For example, we set off at 6 o’clock in the morning so we were running the 40 miles through Death Valley in the heat of the day. And it had to be run in July and August, the hottest months. You could literally fry an egg. My son did it on the bonnet of the car, just to see whether it was that hot.
How did you train?
In the eighties and the nineties, I would be running 100 mile a week as a norm. When I was building up to a multi-day event, a six-day race or longer, I’d increase to 140 miles a week.
I had no specific training for Badwater. I made it harder for myself because I had no idea of the effects of the heat. I couldn’t prepare for it. Nowadays they’ve got heat chambers and altitude training. There’s all these things in place to prepare people for events. It was really tough because it was so hot. I’d no experience of running in those conditions and we were extremely exposed.
What do you particularly remember about the race?
When I got out there the American couple were intending on running together and I flatly refused (to run with Ken Crutchlow). I said, “There’s no way that I’m going to run with this guy”. He was definitely not a runner. He was active, but he wasn’t in really good shape. They agreed that we’d do a cumulative time, which was fine because it meant I just went and did my own thing.
At the end of Death Valley, I made what could have been a fatal error, a really bad mistake. We’d booked a motel room and Ken Crutchlow was intending stopping there and sleeping, but I was just going to go in and have a shower and a half hour rest, which I did. I went into this airconditioned motel room and had my half hour rest.
But of course, I came out from the air conditioning into 45°C and I just about keeled over. And the American couple who had been a fair way behind me, in that 40-mile stretch, actually almost caught me because I really struggled. I was faced with a quite hard climb out of Death Valley knowing that the American pair were not too far behind and I was feeling at death’s door. It was the nighttime by then and I just had to walk that particular stretch.
Did you feel anxious at that point?
No, I was only anxious that they were as close as they were. It was just part of it, I’d made a mistake through ignorance. It was a set-back. There was no question of not continuing. I was there to finish and that was it, I just carried on and did the best I could. The beauty of ultra-distance running is that you do recover, you can recover. You might think you’re at death’s door, but actually the body has huge reserves and as long as you’re sensible you can get over these. And it’s part of multi-day running that you have these bad spells. It’s as much mental as physical. You get some really low points and as long as you’ve got the ability to continue and get through them, you do, and you then find that actually you can still compete. You can still run. You can still do it.
Did you recover and keep the lead?
Yes, I knew that I needed to keep going and I did recover and got back to running well. [Over the Saturday] I got further and further in front of the Americans. When I got to Whitney Portal, the trailhead to Mount Whitney, I met my guide. There was no way you could climb the mountain on your own and I certainly couldn’t find the way.
How did you cope with the altitude?
I was deadbeat anyway, so it didn’t make much difference. I just kept going. The target was the top of the mountain and that was it. The race finished at the trig point at the summit. The guide verified the time and there were hillwalkers and mountaineers who signed the statements to say that we had arrived at the particular time. We had a bit of a break and then we made our way back down.
How would you rate this race compared to your other performances?
I would rate the Death Valley run as probably the second hardest thing that I’ve done.
Richard Benyo’s book, The Death Valley 300, includes a detailed account of the race. Benyo recalls a conversation with Eleanor Adams after the race:
“Considering her involvement in more than a score of outrageous ultrarunning events. I asked her for her assessment of this course. ‘It’s the most physically arduous course I’ve ever done,’ she said. Would she ever consider doing it again? ‘No’, she said. ‘Well, not unless someone breaks my record.'”
The contemporary Badwater 135 ultra takes place at the same time of year but has a slightly shorter 135-mile route as it stops at Whitney Portal. The race begins in the evening rather than the morning.
Read more about the race at http://runyoung50.co.uk/the-first-badwater-ultra-race/
Katie Holmes