How a 76-year-old prepared to run the world's toughest foot race

Take a road trip, join a book club, check out a senior center. Run the world's toughest ultramarathon?

One of those things isn't like the others, and Bob Becker certainly isn't like many other 76-year-olds.

Last Monday, Becker set out to break the record for the oldest finisher of what is affectionately known as "the world's toughest foot race," the Badwater 135.

"The Badwater 135 is an excellent idea in the worst possible conditions," ultramarathon expert Bryon Powell told AccuWeather with a chuckle.

In the world of ultramarathons, doing the extraordinary becomes ordinary. However, even among the most outlandish of athletic endeavors, the Badwater 135 stands alone.

(Bob Becker)

The race starts at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America and home to the hottest surface temperatures this planet has ever recorded. It ends 135 miles away at Whitney Portal, which is part of the way up Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States.

"So it makes sense, except it doesn't make any sense to run it in the middle of July on a paved road!" Powell said. "It is a race that is more or less unrivaled in North America in terms of heat and tortuous weather conditions."

Powell is editor-in-chief of iRunFar.com, the premier news outlet for information regarding trail running and ultrarunning around the world. In an interview with iRunFar, Becker said his goal was to become the oldest finisher in race history, a race in which he had competed three times prior to his 2021 attempt.

"I love coming out here every year, and this year I decided to try to get in and run to become the oldest finisher," Becker told AccuWeather in an exclusive interview before the attempt. "So that's really why I'm here again this year."

Becker resides in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he has lived for almost 20 years. A lifelong athlete, he told AccuWeather that although he had maintained solid fitness since high school, he never tried long-distance running until 2002, when he was in his late 50s.

After joining a marathon training group, he qualified for the Boston Marathon and then discovered the vast world of ultramarathons when a friend mentioned the Marathon des Sables, a 155-mile (about the length of six marathons) race that spans six days in the Sahara Desert in Morocco.

Coincidentally, like the Badwater 135, the Marathon des Sables is also often referred to as the toughest race in the world by many in the ultrarunning community.

Becker at the summit of Mount Whitney in 2015. (Bob Becker)

Coming up on his 60th birthday, Becker agreed to do the race and challenged his friend to make it a birthday occasion for the both of them.

"I said to this guy, 'Don't you have a birthday ending in zero coming up next April?' He was turning 40 and I was turning 60 that same month, and that's when the race was," Becker said. "We trained for it, ran this incredible race in the Sahara Desert in Morocco and I absolutely fell in love with the sport. Everything about it."

Unlike sports that rely on explosive athleticism, ultrarunning is a sport that generally draws a wide variety of ages among competitors.

However, the extreme conditions of a race as brutal as Badwater don't get friendlier with age.

To prepare for the heat that is dangerous when going about mundane activities much less running an ultramarathon, Becker told AccuWeather that he would time his runs to coincide with the peak temperatures South Florida could provide.

Becker calls his training "age-appropriate," saying that he focuses on avoiding injury and cross-training to strengthen his core. He also trains his diet by eating and drinking the things that he'll need to consume during the race.

But the difference in climates - Florida being humid, Death Valley being dry - has also forced him to get creative.

"I do what most people up north do if they're able to find one and that is spending time in a sauna because that's where your dry heat is and that really does help you acclimate," he said, adding that he would consume more water than normal while in the sauna to train his body to prepare for the race.

For others, who may not be able to get to a place as hot as Florida to train, another solution is to run in multiple layers of clothing "and whatever kind of tricks they can think of to simulate heat."

Bob Becker at the 2019 race A Run For the Ages, where he won and broke the record of 230 miles. (Bob Becker)

Prior to his first running of the race in 2007, Becker said he had never been to Death Valley National Park. However, since falling in love with the event, he hasn't missed a single year; running it four times and crewing his fellow runners on more than a dozen occasions.

The need for a support crew is one of the more unique elements that separates ultramarathons from other running events. At some distances, like at a 50-kilometer or 50-mile race, the crew is helpful for shaving off minutes and organizing supplies.

But at a race as long and as climatologically daunting as Badwater, a support crew is the most important tool a runner can possess.

At Badwater, the role a support crew plays in protecting a runner from the elements is truly make-or-break.

"One of the very cool flip sides of that is it has created a culture of it not just being about the runner, but the team around the runner," Powell said. "You do everything you can to keep your runner cold."

What that looks like can depend on the strategy of the team.

FILE - In this July 23, 2007, file photo, Valmir Nunes, of Brazil, runs in Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, Calif. The race start line was at Badwater, Death Valley, which marks the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere at 280 feet below sea level. The race finished after 135 miles at the Mount Whitney Portals at 8,360 feet. Death Valley National Park is putting the brakes on ultramarathons and other extreme sports events that involve running and cycling until rangers can determine how safe it is to hold those competitions in a place that records the hottest temperatures on Earth. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

Powell said one common cooling strategy teams have used is to have a supporter run in front of the racer with a spray bottle and a fan, creating evaporative cooling.

"It is not only a physical challenge and a mental challenge for the runner, but it's a logistics challenge unlike even other ultramarathons," he said.

Such gameplans might seem foreign to most runners, who may compete in local 5K races or city marathons where volunteers hand out water at aid stations.

"There's none of that at this race, so your crew is your lifeline. If they're not there, you're not finishing," Powell said.

Crews can also provide the runner with refreshed ice packs and clothes that have been kept in coolers.

While most long-distance racing strategies require runners to wear as little possible as possible to reduce weight, Powell said that's not the case in Death Valley.

"Normally, you would think in hot weather that someone would run in a tank top or sports bra and shorts, in order to be the least clothed you can. But it's the exact opposite at Badwater," he said. "You'll see people with all-white clothing, some people go with tight spandex and others go with flowing white clothing, but whatever you can do to keep the sun off your body."

FILE - In this July 23, 2007 file photo, Tim Kjenstad, of Henderson, Nev., runs in Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, Calif. The race start line was at Badwater, Death Valley, which marks the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere at 280 feet below sea level. The race finished after 135 miles at the Mount Whitney Portals at 8,360 feet. Death Valley National Park is putting the brakes on ultramarathons and other extreme sports events that involve running and cycling until rangers can determine how safe it is to hold those competitions in a place that records the hottest temperatures on Earth. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

On pavement temperatures that are hot enough to cook an egg, Powell said the sun isn't the only weather enemy athletes try to avoid.

Even stepping on certain parts of the road could prove disastrous.

"It's so hot and people are looking for any advantage, they will run on the white line along the edge of the road in hopes that their shoes won't come unglued, quite literally," Powell said. "With all that convection heat coming off the pavement, you're getting cooked from above, around and all below."

Becker's attempt at rewriting history at the 2021 running of Badwater came up short, as uniquely awful weather conditions cropped up from the start.

Speaking with AccuWeather in the days after his race, Becker said he was forced to drop out at mile 44 after severe calf cramps made it impossible for him to reach the mile 50 checkpoint in time to continue.

"At the very start of the race at Badwater Basin, we were facing an extremely strong and very hot headwind," he said. "It was also kicking up a lot of sand dust and that was right in our face for probably the first 15 to 20 miles, and that was very unexpected."

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According to AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell, those winds were gusting up to 32 mph in the area of the national park around the time of race start.

They continued wreaking havoc until around 3 a.m., Ferrell said, likely the result of outflow from a nearby thunderstorm.

For Becker, the gusting heat spelled doom for his hydration efforts.

"What happens is it dehydrates you and gets in your eyes and it just wears you down," he said. "So I think people who have done this race before had significantly slower times than they normally would and I think it was, in part, because of the difficult start."

Becker added that a poor strategy for replacing lost electrolytes also did him in. Relying on his previous race experiences in Death Valley also proved unhelpful, as he underestimated how dehydrating the heat was.

"I was on track to pass the first and most important of the timing checkpoints at mile 50 and at about mile 44 I wound up developing extreme calf cramping, which is a very painful, scream-out-loud kind of pain," he said. I wound up being brought to the medical facility where I spent almost two hours calming those down, drinking a lot of salty fluid mix, I was actually shaking and shivering like crazy just trying to get my body to calm down."

By the time he was back on his feet, the eight remaining miles to go to get to the cutoff point proved too far, ending his race prematurely.

Those aforementioned thunderstorms weren't providing any favors, either. According to Becker, humidity levels reached 25 to 30 percent, which is certainly unusual for Death Valley.

For all the hardships Mother Nature threw at the 76-year-old, however, Becker couldn't be kept down.

Even after being forced to drop out, he took just a couple of days to recover before joining a group of friends in hiking to the top of Mount Whitney, where he had been previously hoping to finish the race.

While he couldn't say for sure whether or not he was leaning toward giving the record another shot in 2022, he said his body still feels great after he "only made it 44 miles," an astounding statement for the 76-year-old, who added that he has a 50-mile race that he's planning to run in October.

"It's all relative, isn't it? It's what you train for and what your body is able to handle," he said. "For some people, it's getting off the couch for a 5K which monstrously big. More people that can get out of the chair and start moving, that's great."

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