Best Foot Forward.
Boot / Transition Day 22

Walking on the Sun

Wed, July 22, 2026
The Mugatu 'so hot right now' meme from Zoolander, captioned 'THAT DEATH VALLEY... ...SO HOT RIGHT NOW.'
Pain
2 /10
Weight-bearing
NWB
Mobility
Still NWB and couch-bound; the only miles today are the ones I'm watching from afar
Mood
Parked in that tiny space between obsession and melancholy
Swelling
mild

I’ve been putting this off for days. But it’s time to name the elephant in the room, the one thing in my running life I’ve never been able to quit.

Badwater.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone; I’ve name-dropped it here more than once. Every year, right around the third week of July, I slip into a strange little place. If I’m out there: obsession and anxiety. If I’m not: obsession and melancholy. This year, I’m not.

Here’s the roll call of where this race has found me:

  • 2015 — Packing for Vegas and my very first Badwater.
  • 2016 — Back in Vegas afterward, celebrating my finish (as one does, for a solid couple of days).
  • 2017 — Recovering from my first surgery on this very foot, watching my friends out there after pulling out three weeks before the race.
  • 2018 — On the course crewing my BFF, Leslie, who DNF’d at mile 50.
  • 2019 — Back in Vegas again, celebrating my fastest time yet.
  • 2020 — Cancelled, but in Vegas anyway; I’d already arrived to race before it was called off for COVID.
  • 2021 — At the finish line, watching Leslie finally get it done.
  • 2022 — Watching my friends out there while I recovered from this same procedure on my left foot.
  • 2023 — Watching my friends out there, telling myself I didn’t miss it. (I did.)
  • 2024 — Back on the course crewing Leslie, who finished for the second time.
  • 2025 — Watching my friends out there, telling myself I didn’t miss it. (Still lying.)
  • 2026 — Getting ready to obsessively refresh the tracker, wishing with everything I’ve got that I was out there.

In 2016, one of my crew, Bob, put it better than I ever could: “It doesn’t matter if you’re running it or crewing it. This race changes you.”

It does. I can’t explain what the finish line feels like, whether you got there yourself or someone you love did. Every single time, I’ve dissolved into tears. That’s the kind of race it is.

It starts in five days, at 8pm, and the course stays open for 45 hours. But it’s that first night I keep coming back to: the gun goes off, and then it’s just you and the open desert. If you’re even a little curious what that’s like, watch Running on the Sun, a documentary trailing a handful of runners through the 1999 race. Worth every minute.

So here I am again, parked in that tiny space between obsession and melancholy, vowing as always to get back out there. One day.

Words can’t carry the rest of it. So I’ll let the desert do the talking.

A woman in a pink bucket hat and white tank top, head thrown back mid-laugh against a tree trunk. Two runners in white dresses and tall compression socks walking away down an empty desert highway toward the jagged Sierra Nevada. Five people posed at the 'Badwater — World's Toughest' backdrop; the runner in the center holds a finisher shirt and belt buckle, a volunteer in a hi-vis vest at the end. The vast white salt flats of Badwater Basin under a deep blue sky, tiny figures strung along the boardwalk with brown mountains behind. Four people at the 'Badwater One Thirty Five' backdrop; a woman in a maroon shirt holds up race bib number 27. A plated restaurant dessert with 'Badwater Finisher' written in chocolate script, a toasted-meringue tart and a quenelle of ice cream alongside. A runner in a red cap and tie-dye dress holding up a black 'Badwater Official Finisher' shirt and her buckle at the backdrop. Close-up of a runner in sunglasses and a white cap with a neck sun-flap, hydration pack on, packed in among other runners in white sun gear under hard light. Three at the 'Badwater — World's Toughest' backdrop; the finisher in the center holds up her shirt and buckle, a pacer wearing bib 72 beside her. Three people crossing the Badwater finish mat at Whitney Portal, hands raised and clasped together in celebration among the pines and race flags. Four people at the backdrop, two in hi-vis green 'Badwater' volunteer shirts, holding up a finisher shirt together. A grinning runner in a white dress with bib 27, arms flung wide on a desert road below the Alabama Hills, a second runner in teal just behind. Night long-exposure of Mushroom Rock in Death Valley, red and white car light-trails streaking along the road behind it under a star-scattered sky. Mesquite Flat sand dunes at first light, soft golden crests layered against hazy blue-gray mountain ridges. A dark desert road at night: a car's headlights flare at left while squiggles of red and green runner safety-lights trail off into the distance below a moonlit ridge. Sand dunes at dawn with desert scrub in the foreground and layered mountains fading into soft sunrise haze.

Last four photographs by Ian Parker.

Tags boot-transitionbadwaterultrarunningdeath-valleyreflectionrunning