Badwater 135 - Ben’s Journey
I first met Ben through my friend Nick Robinson back in 2024 when we all ran the TPC100. Since then we have stayed in contact and all of us competed in Italy last year for the Nove Colli Ultra. Ben has kindly agreed to let me document his journey to and through the Badwater 135 Ultra, often regarded as the toughest foot race on earth. To put it in perspective, the race takes part in Death Valley during July, where temperatures regularly reach 50-55°C, over a distance of 135miles and an elevation gain of 4450m. In a word, ‘nuts’.
To kick things off, I thought it would be interesting to join Ben at one of his performance testing sessions, run and managed by Anthony Fletcher, (coach, co-founder and sports scientist OneTrack).
The test runs over 30-40 minutes with a series of intervals (3 mins) that increase in speed and intensity, while testing for VO2 max to establish aerobic / anaerobic thresholds, pace and heart rate zones for stronger endurance, while also taking blood samples for lactate profiling to identify accurate thresholds and training zones. By the end it’s an all out effort.
