Sitting with heat exhaustion in an ice cooler about 160 kilometres between Death Valley and Mount Whitney should freeze anyone's desire to keep running. But for the Badwater Ultramarathon's youngest ever female competitor, it was all part of the experience.Jen Segger-Gigg, 27, not only completed the 217-kilometre (135-mile) haul on pavement in temperatures hitting about 45 C, she also recorded a top-10 overall finish amidst a field of 79 competitors. Segger-Gigg was the fifth female, ninth overall to complete the ultramarathon with a time of 32 hours, 31 minutes and 57 seconds on Tuesday (July 15)."It was an amazing experience. It was the hardest race mentally I have every done," said Segger-Gigg back in 麻豆社国产recuperating."But I think it's a one-time thing and I'm going back to my trails. My heart is in the mountains and on the trail."Segger-Gigg isn't as accustomed to the barren desert terrain of the road course. Sometimes she felt she could see 50 km ahead of her, she said."It's demoralizing. You just feel like you're a snail and this is a complete waste of time."But with the help of her five-person support team taking turns pacing and providing food and a flood of liquids - not to mention the ice cooler - Segger-Gigg powered through the physical thrashing and mental stress.Support team member and best friend Jo Hyland of Whistler had never participated in anything like Badwater, which was in its 31st season. She felt it was important to support Segger-Gigg's passion for pushing the limits of human achievement, and ride the inevitable emotional rollercoaster with her."Seeing how she dealt with the heat and the pain and the exhaustion - sometimes it was a lot of positiveness coming from her and other times it was a lot of positiveness needed from the support crew to help her," said Hyland, who helped keep Segger-Gigg alert through part of the night by telling stories."It was pretty amazing just to be out in those conditions for a mile or two at a time with her and realize that she's there for every step of the way. I'm impressed by how she really held it together."Segger-Gigg and crew went into the race with a specific strategy fitted to her intense training regime. Perhaps a little too eager to get moving, she strayed from the plan at the very beginning when her pace was too fast. She ran about 10 km/h for the first 40 km. For Badwater, that is too fast and her coach Ray Zahab kept telling her to slow down. But that was the only time she lost track of the plan.In fact, the plan was carried out perfectly when she was able to tap into her downhill technique training. During the night stage there was a 15-kilometre stage of pure downhill running. While other runners treaded the descent lightly, Segger-Gigg made her charge. She passed about 18 competitors including fellow Canadian and Badwater veteran Monica Scholz, who finished 11th overall. "That is where we made our move [] it was just unreal," she said. "That was strategy because most people really take their time going downhill because you just destroy your legs - your quads just blow up."Segger-Gigg is recovering well from what she calls the "race of science" because of the need to calculate and predict the body's reactions to the course. She was finally able to strap her running shoes on her blistered and swollen feet on Sunday (July 20) and go for a 6-kilometre hike. After four days off after the race, Segger-Gigg was feeling very restless."I was going insane. I know my body physically wasn't ready [] but then you want to use your feet and start doing something again."I train almost every day so to finally have a day off is horrible."Segger-Gigg is cuurently preparing for the seven-day Bull of Africa adventure race in South Africa starting Aug. 9.
