RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, The amazing John Radich story

But John Radich moves all that up a notch. Or ten. Or a hundred. His ideal is to run 135 miles through one of the most hostile environments on the planet. Temperatures approach 130 degrees. The run goes over three mountain ranges and covers a total cumulative ascent of 13,000 feet—beginning at –280 feet and ending at just over 8,000 feet.

Such a race is known as an “ultramarathon,” a type of race that generally consists of 50–100 miles. This particular one is called the Badwater Ultramarathon, so named because it begins at Badwater, California, right at the bottom of Death Valley and the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. John has run the race seven times, and looks forward to it every year.

What motivated him to take up this extreme sport? Well, John began like most runners. He ran at school and very much enjoyed it. The first time he heard about a marathon—the San Francisco Marathon, which was one of the earliest in the US—he got intrigued and entered. And finished. Then he got involved with other marathons and 10K runs and entered and finished those also.

But it wasn’t quite enough for John, especially after he read a book by an Australian runner named Bill Emerton, who had run across Death Valley. After finishing the book, John tracked Emerton down—it turned out he was living close by in Santa Monica, California—and asked him for advice on running such distances. Emerton helped John in his first ultramarathon, which ran 50 miles around (and around, and around) the famous Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. John came in second place.

“I’ve been running ultramarathons since then,” John says. “Just the distance and the challenge I find are really different from a regular marathon. A marathon is very challenging; they’re a lot of fun and I still do them. But the ultramarathons are just different. You’re out there much longer and you can really experience the environment. Those are probably some of the big attractions for a lot of us that run ultramarathons.”

How the Race Is Run

One might wonder, does a runner take on such a race by running for several days with no breaks? No, as it turns out—but almost. “In that type of run, you do take breaks,” John explains. “Not long breaks, because you’ll find if you take long breaks your body really shuts down. The longer you can stay out there and take short breaks, the more mileage you’re actually going to cover. Some runners need more rest than others—it just depends on how your body reacts. But on a run I just did in Arizona it got very, very cold at night; so if you were to take a break and go into your tent where it’s warm, you’d go back outside and start running again and it would be really hard on your joints and muscles. You’d have to get used to the cold again. So I try to keep my breaks short, and a lot of us trying to put in high mileage do the same. A 100-mile run also has aid stations along the route.”

For the Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley, maintenance requires more than just breaks and aid stations. “You maintain yourself with a lot of hydration, obviously,” John says. “You’re drinking a lot of liquids—a couple pints of water per hour, at least. You take your salt, your potassium, your electrolytes. You also have to eat, even though in the heat section you lose your appetite. There’s definitely a lot of maintenance involved in keeping your body from falling apart on you out there. You have to be very smart to get through the heat section.”

But smart he has been. “I’ve been very fortunate,” he says. “I’ve had some rough moments through the years, but I’ve always been able to finish it. I’ve run it seven times.”

Death Valley—and Then Some

Experiencing the environment is an attraction to John for ultramarathon running, and is obviously an extreme case when it comes to Death Valley. It has been fascinating John since he began running the Badwater Ultramarathon. This last year such fascination led him to take on a bit more than the usual race.

John ran the normal route from Badwater to the finish at a place called Whitney Portal—so named because it is the entrance to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. He had beaten his personal best time by 30 minutes and was happy with his performance.

But he didn’t stop. From Whitney Portal he continued running all the way to the top of Mt. Whitney—14,492 feet—and back down again. He then ran back to the town of Lone Pine, 12½ miles from Whitney Portal, from where he embarked on a journey that few would try.

“A goal of mine was to go across Death Valley unassisted,” he says. “I wouldn’t have a car or anybody following me as would normally be the case. I would just be carrying my own supplies in a baby jogger.” In the regular race, each runner is assisted by a crew following along in a truck or a van and carrying ice, water and other necessary supplies. John, however, wanted to pack supplies into a baby jogger—a three-wheeled baby carriage that one can push while jogging—and go out all by himself.

“So I pushed the jogger from the town of Lone Pine all the way back to Badwater—just reversed the race,” he says. “I didn’t have a crew following me; I was just self-contained.”

Since he was out by himself and not part of an organized run, he had a lot of interesting encounters with tourists and other people. “People would stop; they were very cheery,” he relates. “I had some interesting experiences with tourists. A lot of photo taking. People would offer me water or even beer—they felt sorry for me, you know. I had most of the supplies, but now and then there was a point where I did run low on food and I did accept a sandwich from somebody.”

It definitely wasn’t all fun. At one point out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, John encountered a sandstorm with high wind blowing sand in gusts from 30 to upward of 50 miles an hour. At first, he just persisted. “I wasn’t quite running; it was more like pulling a train,” he says. “I was pushing the jogger and had sand blasting in my face. I had eye protection—goggles—but the wind was so strong I eventually stopped the carriage, got off the road and just sat behind the carriage as a windbreak.”

But it wasn’t long before John felt his runner’s physique winding down and knew he had to move. “It got to the point where I just couldn’t sit down; it was too much on my body,” he says. “My legs were tightening up. I said, ‘No, no, I got to get up.’ So I just continued pushing the jogger, and finally the wind started to slow down as I made a turn in the road. Then the wind shifted and all of a sudden a full moon was out and now I could actually push the jogger and jog and run.”

There were other barriers as well. “Going up the hill in Panamint Valley it was very difficult to push the jogger,” he says. “Water was the heaviest thing—I was probably weighed down with 130 pounds of water. Every bottle of water I took down I could feel the jogger getting lighter.”

Coming down the hill on the other side presented a whole other set of problems. “I had an 18-mile downhill into Stovepipe Wells and the little handbrake on the jogger wore out,” he says. “I had to tie a rope around the handlebars to my waist just as a safety. I didn’t want to lose it as it went off the highway into traffic.”

But his memory of the whole experience can be summed up in his relation of the time following an encounter with a Highway Patrolman. “After he left, there were no cars on the road for the next six hours,” he says. “There was just nobody there. There was only total silence, a full moon, then the sunrise, which in Death Valley is spectacular. And it was quite an incredible experience. I’ll never forget it.”
At the end of his unique reverse run, John had completed an astonishing 292 miles, including the actual race, his run to the top of Mt. Whitney, and his solo venture back across Death Valley.

Running for a Cause

In addition to the challenge, John also runs for a cause he’s passionate about: a non-profit group called The Way to Happiness Foundation. This foundation is based on a non-religious common-sense book on morals called The Way to Happiness, which contains 21 basic principles for living a happier life. John is part of a running team for the foundation, which has as its motto “Helping youth make the right choices.”
On many of John’s marathons, contributing individuals and organizations sponsor him, pledging a certain amount of donation to The Way to Happiness Foundation for every mile he runs.

“You can apply the common-sense tips that the book offers to any creed, culture or belief,” John says. “That’s what I like about The Way to Happiness. And the response that I’ve gotten over the years from policemen, government agencies, past professional athletes and people of all professions that have read the book has been, ‘This is really cool, this really makes sense, and it really will help people.’”

Conditioning and Diet

Even for someone like John, who has completed over 300 ultramarathons, it is still very hard work. John runs several miles on an average weekday either early in the morning before work or in the evening after, and on many weekends he is out taking 25- to 50-mile training runs. He also bicycles and swims, which he says gives him a good workout while affording his knees a break.

Like other dedicated athletes, John also maintains a very healthy diet. “It’s real basic,” he says. “I don’t eat a lot of meat. I eat carbos, vegetables, grains, mixed nuts, and fruits—just basic healthy things a lot of runners go with. It’s also low fat; I watch the fatty foods.”
John cautions against others simply following his diet, however. “What works for me doesn’t mean it’s going to work for another runner,” he says. “I don’t eat a lot of meat because protein tends to make me tired. But I know runners who like a lot of meat. Other runners are vegetarians and it works for them and it’s awesome.”

John has also found vitamin and mineral supplements that work best for him. One item he swears by is Peter Gillham’s Natural Calm Plus Calcium. “Calcium, magnesium and zinc are very important,” he says. “Your cells, your muscle tissues, really need that. After a long run Natural Calm Plus Calcium helps regenerate the cells and it speeds up recovery. It’s also getting more and more positive feedback out there in the field of nutrition and sports.”

John also counts on Peter Gillham’s Organic Life Vitamins and, when he’s running, Natural Life Minerals. “They perform brilliantly for me because I’m burning up a lot of minerals,” he says. “What I’ll do is put some mineral drops in my water bottle and I always know I’m not just getting pure water in my system—I’m getting the minerals. They assimilate fast and I can notice them working really well.”

Conditioning versus Reality

But even with rigorous training and a great diet, running an ultramarathon race is extremely difficult. “Your body goes through many stages,” John says. “You start off feeling good. You’re going to get a blister. You’re going to get a stomachache. You’re going to get chafing problems. The heat’s going to bother you. You’ll suffer from lack of sleep. You experience all that in these multi-day 100-mile runs or longer.”

As it turns out, it is not these aggravations that slow down or stop a runner. “You handle each issue, you take care of it, you deal with it, and you get back out there,” John says. “A lot of it is your frame of mind—having a good positive outlook that you’re going to get through it. In ultrarunning it’s 70 percent mental after a point, and then it becomes about 30 percent the body issues, the physical end of it.”

John says he’s seen runners that were in virtually perfect rock-solid shape who he thought would have no problem at all finishing a race. But he would then hear about them breaking down halfway through. “Mentally, little things can upset some runners easily, or more easily than others,” John says.

“So you have to really learn—the word that I use—you have to learn to cope,” John concludes. “You have to ride the pain barriers out. If you know how to ride them out, you can get through them. I mean, you use common sense; if you know you’re seriously hurt, then that’s when you step out. But the other stuff—you know, the stomach problems, the feeling bad, the emotional roller coaster that you go through—you have to learn how to ride that and understand it.

“I’ve got a pretty good grasp of it. Once in a while one will bite me and it really wants to pull me down and tells me, ‘Okay, that’s it, you can’t.’ But I hang in there and end up running one of my best races just because I didn’t quit.”

One might learn a life lesson from that.