Marshall Ulrich & the Badwater "Quad"

There is a 146-mile running race from the minus-282-foot bottom of Death Valley to the 14,496-foot top of Mount Whitney, which is bad enough. But Marshall Ulrich needed to make it more of a challenge.

He decided to run a quad Badwater 146. Nearly 600 miles of running from the lowest point to the highest point in the contiguous United States, and back. Twice.

Up and down, up and down.

The mere thought should make your joints and muscles ache. But this is the type of extreme Ulrich has pushed himself to since 1986, earning the title "Endurance King" on Outside magazine's "A Team" of the top 25 athletes in their fields in 2001.

"I wanted to see what my limitations were mentally and physically," says the 53-year-old Colorado businessman, who will speak at the Wellsville Ridgewalk & Run's pre-race dinner Saturday at Alfred University. "It amazed me how much the human body can do, how much hardship it can withstand."

Ulrich is coming off a year in which he has climbed Mount Everest, completed a record 12th Badwater 146, and finished his 11th Leadville Trail 100. If there had been an Eco-Challenge this year he would have done that, too, because he is one of only three humans who have been in all nine of those adventure races.

Marshall Ulrich is The Ultramarathon Man. But it would cheapen what he does to think of him only as an ultra runner or an adventure racer or a mountaineer.

"When I was in my late 40s I realized there was more to life than setting these goals and attaining them," says the man who acquired his work ethic growing up on a dairy farm.

Ulrich decided to turn his Badwaters into good. In the past four years, he says he has raised $150,000 for the Religious Teachers Filippini, a New Jersey-based mission that helps war-widowed women and orphaned children in some of the world's poorest countries.

"His fundraising goals indicate to me that this is a man that has gone beyond his ego and the personal demons that drive so many extreme athletes who search painfully for physical goals," says Rich Shear, the Wellsville shoe store manager who is in his 12th year organizing the Ridgewalk.

Shear and Ulrich first crossed paths in the mid-1990s at the Leadville Trail 100 in Colorado. "By 'crossed' I mean that he would be inbound after the 50-mile turnaround while I was still on the outbound 50," Shear says. "Marshall is a talented runner." Ulrich started running as a way to control his elevated blood pressure and cope with his first wife's breast cancer. When she died he became the single father of a 3-year-old girl. He kept running. He did a 10K, then a marathon, then an ultramarathon - a 50-mile race in Wyoming in the mid-1980s.

"I did pretty well in that," he recalls. "Then I saw an article on the Western States 100 in a magazine. I thought that might be something I could do, too. The longer the distance the more it seemed to intrigue me.

"In order to prepare myself for the Western States, I ran in a 24-hour race. I broke the course record and won. I ran over 120 miles. I found out I had a knack for this sort of thing."

He set previously unattained goals:

* Complete all six 100-mile trail runs in the same year. He did so, finishing in the top 10 in five of the six.

* Run the Leadville Trail 100 and the Pikes Peak Marathon on the same weekend.

* Bike 100 miles, run 100 miles and kayak 100 miles over consecutive weekends in Leadville, Colo. (elevation 10,152 feet).

Ulrich didn't just do amazing (some might say twisted or bizarre) things. He excelled at them.

He was a two-time silver medalist in the 24-Hour National Championships (running 133 miles in 1988 and 140 in 1990), a silver medalist in the ESPN X Games' adventure race in 1995 and a four-time Badwater 146 winner.

Which brings us back to the quad Badwater he decided to do in 2001.

A little more than halfway through the run he developed tendinitis in his shins.

"I had trouble picking my foot up," Ulrich says. "The last 300 miles I ran with ice bags on my legs."

Each step of the way he was asking himself: "What am I doing? Why am I doing this?"

"I realized what I was doing was more than the event or me," Ulrich says. "It was about helping people.

"All of a sudden my legs became a little less significant. I thought, 'You've got to follow through on this because this is what you said you would do.' It wouldn't have been letting myself down. It would have been letting others down."

He experienced the same sentiment on Everest in May. "A couple times I wanted to walk off the mountain and say, 'Forget it. It's not worth it.'"

But he had fundraising dollars attached to his success on the world's tallest mountain. He has made his pursuit of the Seven Summits - the highest point on each continent - a chance to help the Religious Teachers Filippini help those in desperate need. That makes the hardship of a mountain climb seem very small.

Ulrich has climbed to the top of North America (Alaska's 20,320-foot Denali), South America (Argentina's 22,841-foot Aconcagua), Africa (Tanzania's 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro), Asia (29,035-foot Everest) and Europe (Russia's 18,510-foot Elbrus). He plans to climb Antarctica's 16,066-foot Vinson Massif and Australia's 7,310-foot Kosciuszko in 2005.

"When I turned 50 I started looking at a vision I had when I was 5," he explains. "I remember watching climbers on a black-and-white TV. I can't tell you which mountain they were climbing, but it made an impression on me."

Since 2001, he has turned his eyes to the mountains. He is mindful of the challenge. The quad Badwater taught him a lesson he will not likely forget about humility.

"The last 13 miles, there was a 30 mph wind in my face and it was 127 degrees," Ulrich remembers. "I couldn't pick up my left arm. I tucked it in my pants against the small of my back. My chest was hurting. I figured I was having a heart attack. It felt awful. But I knew I just had to get down the road the last 13 miles. I realized what my limit was. I said to someone after, 'I think I bit off more than I could chew.' They said, 'Well, you did it, so you must not have.' I said, 'That was not reasonable.'"

When Ulrich watched his first wife die, he became determined to live his life to the fullest. His motto was "as far as I can, as fast as I can." He was running. In the years since, he has learned that there is a purpose to the race.

"After the death of my wife I decided I wasn't going to be dependent on anybody," says Ulrich, who has remarried twice and has three children. "I've since realized it's OK to depend on someone else and care about someone else. We're all in this together."

The self-centeredness of the solitary runner going to great lengths has been replaced by the man willing to go to any length to give something back.

"Go out there and, of course, set goals high and be all that you can be. But there is more to it than that," Ulrich will tell his audience in a program he calls, "Soul Searching When Reaching the Top Isn't Enough."

"Step outside yourself. Smell the roses and help other people."