Triumph in Death Valley for Orkney athlete

Orkney ultra endurance athlete William Sichel produced one of his life-time best performances last week when he completed the "World's Hottest Endurance Foot Race"  - the 135 mile Badwater Ultramarathon in a new British record time of 31 hours 36 minutes 12 secs to finish seventh overall (first over 50) from 85 starters.

What's more William defeated two previous outright race winners Dean Karnazes and Pam Reed both Californian 'locals'.  William also becomes the first Scot, ever, to complete this event.

With temperatures during the first day touching 128°F/53°C as runners ran through Death Valley, the race truly lived up to it's fearsome reputation.  Humidity levels were unusually high this year being at around 20% compared to a norm of about 2%.  This made the heat worse and resulted in a high drop out rate of 21% of the invited field.

The hills also were as difficult as feared including the final 13 mile uphill climb to the finish at 8360 feet.

"I’ve never run hills like that before with such continuous long climbs.  I’m good at fast running down hill but am not used to steep decents of 15 miles which I had to do twice in this event.  I suffered some large toe damage from the downhill running but it didn’t really effect me during the race."

William puts much of his success down to the meticulous preparation for both himself and his crew of three.  Planning and training has been going on since William received his invitation to compete in February.

"I’m really indebted to Alan Young, Tim Rainey and Mark Williams who formed an amazing back-up crew.  We were all Badwater novices but combined well together to produce the ultimate performance."

Crew chief Alan Young from Dundee, a former ultra runner himself, gave his perspective:

"From the 1st Check Point at 42 miles it became clear the Crew were to be part of an outstanding performance. All the hard work in the planning and preparation were falling into place. From then on we were on a "high" living off the adrenaline provided from William's running and believing in our "Plan".  Boy did he deliver, with what has to be one of his top performances of all time."

William's extreme form of personal sauna training had brought many smiles but paid off handsomely as he was well trained to run through the extreme heat.

William will now pay attention to his recovery before focussing on a 24 hour track race in London in October where he hopes to continue his good form and qualify for next year’s World 24 hour road running Championships in Canada.

William is grateful to sponsors: dion_networks, Loganair, Sheila Fleet Jewellery and The Orcadian.

End.

31/7/06