The Death Valley Marathon

This last weekend a few of us went down to Death Valley to run the Death Valley Trail marathon. Nine of us rented a large van and drove from Sacramento, others drove themselves or flew down to Las Vegas, and my friends John and Gabrielle came over from Houston for our annual marathon weekend. It was a great time with some great friends (about 16 of us in total). A lot of driving however - 1180 miles to be exact but it was well worth it and a great time was had by all.


We were very lucky with the weather. California has been a little wet of late and there were concerns that the race would not run on its intended course, which was through Titus Canyon - a spectacular canyon running from near Rhyolite in the east to the floor of Death Valley in the west. The canyon was closed for most of the week, but on Friday, the powers that be in the Park Service decided that the conditions were right and the race could go ahead as planned.


It just happens that Titus Canyon was purpose built for a marathon. It is almost exactly 26.2 miles from it's entrance on the main road near Rhyolite to it's exit in the valley floor and it is truly spectacular. I carried a camera and there were lots of photo opportunities - here's a link to my album. Alas the real grandeur of the canyon does not come across in my photos.

This was the first (and probably last) marathon that I have ever run with negative splits (to those non-runners that is running the last half faster than the first - this is what you are supposed to do but I have never done it before). However, the negative splits were not at all due to my fitness level, they owed everything to the course - a climb of 2,300 ft in the first 12 miles and a drop of 5,000 ft in the next 14 miles. As you can imagine, it is a lot easier to run down hill than uphill -hence the negative splits.

We bumoed into a group of runners who were shooting video out on the course (albeit a very low resolution and very low quality) but they posted it on YouTube here we are (Dianne, Lisa, Ed and myself) in our (or at least my) very first YouTube video.