We Tried It: Wings For Life World Run
— -- On May 8, 130,000 runners started at 34 locations around the world at the exact same time. When we started, none of us knew how far we would end. Last person still running won.
Welcome to the Wings for Life World Run, a race sponsored by Red Bull that raises money for spinal cord research. The event is in its third year, but the way it works is still a little hard to explain.
Obviously, when Red Bull's press people asked if I wanted to come to the Los Angeles location to run through empty streets in the dark at 4 a.m. without knowing how far I'd be going, I said, "Sounds ridiculous! Count me in!"
The details
Why didn't I know how far I'd end up going? Because 30 minutes after we crossed the start line, a pace car began driving the course behind us. When it catches you, you're done. As the slogan goes, the finish line comes to you.
It seemed like a pretty important question: How fast is the car driving? But this information was weirdly hard to come by. No one seemed too concerned about it. The important fact was that last year's worldwide winner ran around 50 miles. Making it a little more difficult was the fact that, because it's a Red Bull event and Red Bull is a European company, all information about distance or pace was in kilometers.
My rough math, finally done the night before in my hotel room, suggested that at a 7:30/mile pace, you'd be caught around 20 miles, at about 2 hours and 30 minutes. When the car started driving, after 30 minutes, it'd drive at 15 kilometers per hour for one hour, then 16 kmph for another hour, and increasing its speed from there. (At 5½ hours in, the car's speed jumps drastically to 35 kmph -- or 21.75 mph -- just to wrap this thing up in case anyone is still running at that point.)
The extra weird perk of running in the L.A. race was that we started at 4 a.m. Because there are 34 locations, from Austria to South Africa, some of those spots get less-than-ideal start times. Santa Clarita, California, was one of those less-than-ideal spots.
The race
When you have to wake up at 3 a.m., it's sort of hard to convince your body any of this is really happening. And when that 3 a.m. wake-up call also involves flashing lights, loud music and energetic warm-up routines, it's even harder to be sure it's not some kind of weird dream.
That feeling intensified once we started running.
The race organizers need to plan for up to 50 miles of race course, and it's hard to shut down 50 miles of road in Los Angeles. Instead, we ran through the outskirts of the city, in Santa Clarita, around strip malls, subdivisions and the parking lots of Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. In the dark. In empty streets.
Because it was so early, there were no spectators. There were occasionally spotlights and tired-looking police, but other than that, all I could see were the bobbing glow sticks attached to runners somewhere up ahead. It was a boring horror movie -- where did all the people go? Why am I running alone in the middle of the street?
Maybe because I couldn't see my watch and there were no mile markers anyway, I accidentally started out running fairly fast. This meant all the hubbub and loud cheering of the few thousand people at the start quickly disappeared. It was just quiet and dark. As the woman who would eventually go on to win the L.A. race by running 30 miles pulled away from me in the shadows, I thought, "I really should slow down. This could end badly."
After the sun came up, the road appeared littered with people who had similar thoughts. Wait, how far am I going to end up running? When will the finish line catch me? Maybe I should slow down. Way, way down.
Eventually, it turned to a jog, as the three men around me and I waited to be finished, looking over our shoulders every few minutes. We asked the aid station volunteers if they could see the car coming yet. Please, tell me the car is coming! When it finally did, it felt anti-climatic. There was no music or cheering. "Can I stop now?" I asked the driver. The other three men and I then got on a bus and were shuttled back to the start.
I ran 18.6 miles, walked back to the hotel, ate a snack, showered, fell asleep watching TV, woke up, and it was only 9:30 a.m.
The review
If you're looking for a different kind of race, then this is definitely different. Plus, it's relatively cheap at $50.
The difficult part, though, is knowing how hard to run when you don't know how long you'll be running. And some of the logistics made the oddity of the race even more odd: The aid stations primarily had just water, Gatorade and Red Bull; and the arrival back at the start, as you stumbled off the bus, felt disorienting.
But, then again, the whole thing was disorienting. That's part of the appeal.
