{"id":21,"date":"2007-07-19T20:19:45","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T03:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/?p=21"},"modified":"2007-08-17T09:30:29","modified_gmt":"2007-08-17T16:30:29","slug":"reinforcements-for-my-crew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/?p=21","title":{"rendered":"Reinforcements for my crew!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a><\/a>The news of the day, just before I leave is that I’ve been fortunate to add a forth crew person specifically to help me with the Whitney Climb.\u00a0\u00a0 My regular Badwater crew, Vince, Tom and William, are awesome, but they\u00a0were\u00a0somewhat\u00a0concerned that we don’t have 4 people, like we did last year.\u00a0 Could I be so\u00a0unreasonably demanding during the event that\u00a0it takes\u00a0FOUR people to keep up with me for two days?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think not.\u00a0 Three will suffice I told them.\u00a0 So we have 3 for the Badwater 135 mile race.<\/p>\n

BUT there is also the Whitney Climb to follow.\u00a0\u00a0In honor of those nuts that did this in the beginning, who actually went lowest to highest, I’m going to\u00a0do the same.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Due to permits and logistics, the formal race stops at the end of the road, 8,400 feet at the\u00a0Whitney Portals.\u00a0 But we are going to continue to the highest point in the 48 states, the last 6,000 feet elevation gain and 11 miles up,\u00a0on trails, to 14,505 feet(then you get have to get back down), higher than I’ve EVER been by quite a large margin, on trails I’ve never seen.\u00a0 Nor has any of my other three crew done this climb or anything similar.\u00a0 That makes things very iffy, to be 135 miles and two days into an event and to be attempting a less than one day climb\u00a0that most backpackers take 2-3 days to do, none of us ever having been in that situation.\u00a0\u00a0 Uhhhh, can you say FAILURE WAITING TO HAPPEN?\u00a0 Maybe not, but a lot would be riding on me to push us hard\u00a0when I know I will be VERY tired.\u00a0 Not easy to get to the finish line, and rather than stop and celebrate, know you are going to continue into the mountains for an additional 12-20 hour effort.<\/p>\n

\u00a0My buddy from Los Angeles, Steve James comes to the rescue, he\u00a0got a 2 day pass from his wonderful wife Rose(THANKS ROSE!\u00a0 SUSHI ON ME IN OCTOBER!) to come out on Tuesday and be my guide to the top.\u00a0 He’s done this climb many times, and knows it well.\u00a0 He’s also done the Badwater course, and knows what kind of shape I may be in at the finish.\u00a0 I couldn’t ask for a better situation, to have a fresh mind and body to join me and my crew, take over and shepherd us to the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Badwater is a cruel environment, and as confident as a person thinks they are, that place has shut down the\u00a0absolute best in the business on many occasions.\u00a0\u00a0None of us is bulletproof there. \u00a0 I know if I have problems, it certainly will not be because of my crew.\u00a0 Two of them have been with me through BOTH of my\u00a0previous Badwaters, they know me VERY well.\u00a0\u00a0Another also was on my crew last year, and is a 100 mile runner and Physician who’s worked many events on Medical teams.\u00a0 He’s seen me\u00a0through tough times\u00a0before and I’ve\u00a0paced him in his first 100\u00a0miler.\u00a0 And now I’m adding an experienced Badwater veteran and Whitney expert, \u00a0coming into the game just as we finish Badwater with the sole purpose to get me to the top of Whitney.\u00a0 No excuses for me with this crew.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here is a photo of Whitney, click to see larger, then click\u00a0that photo a second time to see it FULL size.\u00a0 (that’s not really me on top,\u00a0I commisioned an\u00a0artist to help me envision success)<\/p>\n

\"Mount<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u00a0absolutely cannot wait to get out there and get this event started, we’ve deemed it the\u00a0“NO WIMPS\u00a0TOUR OF BADWATER”\u00a0\u00a0 We are going to ROCK out there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Race starts at 8:00am (for me) on Monday, July 23.<\/p>\n

There are 3 waves of runners, with about 30 runners each, starting at 6:00am, 8:00am, 10:0am.<\/p>\n

To keep up with how the race is unfolding,<\/p>\n

The official badwater webcast site is http:\/\/www.badwater.com\/2007web\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Tamara and\/or the Crew will be updating this website(which you can subscribe to above so you get an email if it’s updated), or the photo album is http:\/\/daveharperphotos.irun100s.com\/GalleryThumbnails.aspx?gallery=26668<\/a><\/p>\n

You can also send Tamara an email at (spyhunter ‘atsymbol’ harperfinancialservices.com) and tell her you want to know what’s going on and she’ll include you on the list.<\/p>\n

Thanks for the well wishes and I’ll talk to you all soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news of the day, just before I leave is that I’ve been fortunate to add a forth crew person specifically to help me with the Whitney Climb.\u00a0\u00a0 My regular Badwater crew, Vince, Tom and William, are awesome, but they\u00a0were\u00a0somewhat\u00a0concerned that we don’t have 4 people, like we did last year.\u00a0 Could I be so\u00a0unreasonably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}