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  Badwater Ultramarathon

  Wednesday morning, 16th July 2008, 3:24 a.m. local time. The finish tape of the 31st Badwater Ultramarathon brushes my chest. With my wife and daughter in my arms, we cross the magic line together. The tape flaps about in the wind. Silence. No trumpets, no fanfares, no cheering crowds. Peace, quiet. We are moved by the light rushing of the wind in the pines and the cool of the night. We are happy. After 45 hours and 24 minutes – almost double the time taken by the winner, Jorge Pacheco, who ran a best time of 23 hours 30 minutes, and 18 hours behind Jamie Donaldson, who became the fastest woman in the history of Badwater at 26 hours 51 minutes. But happiness makes no distinction. Even the best and hardest ultramarathon runners, runners of the world, are silent and happy. We have all survived the extreme limit, and have run up to our Paradise, to the world elite of extreme endurance sport. We are proud.
  Seen from outside, this may all seem somewhat mad. 500 years ago, the Dutch scholar, Erasmus of Rotter-dam, said that the highest form of happiness was a life with a certain degree of madness. So there’s no cause for worry. Let us simply have the freedom and courage to do things that we know inside that we can do.