Lone Pine, Calif. — When Calgary marathon runner Lorie Alexander showed up at the starting line of the world’s toughest foot race last Monday she had something to prove.

She had run the Badwater 135 Ultramarathon three times before.

And, for anybody who has ever run 135 miles, or 217 kilometres, across Death Valley at the hottest time of the year, crossing three mountain ranges in triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures — finishing is everything.

You get a belt buckle if you finish under 48 hours.

In 2010, when she first tackled Badwater, Alexander finished with a time of 44 hours, nine minutes and 23 seconds — belt buckle with less than four hours to spare. A year later, she came in with a time of 37:43:21.

When she returned in 2013 to beat the desert again, the desert beat her instead, forcing her out of the race.

“Last year, I had whiplash the week before the race and I wasn’t supposed to run it, but I did,” she said defiantly.

This year, she was out to prove she is one of the world’s toughest race survivors.

So, on July 21, at 6 a.m., when she placed her toes on the starting line at the base of Mount Whitney, highest mountain in the contiguous United States, Lorie Alexander, 55, was the only woman competing for a bigger prize — the Badwater Ultra Cup challenge.

By finishing the Badwater 135, she would become the only woman to have completed the cup challenge, meaning she would have logged three ultra-marathons in 2014 including the 82-kilometre Badwater Cape Fear race in March and the 130-kilometre Badwater Salton Sea race in May.

“This year, I’m going for the triple,” she said, referring to the cup challenge.

MONDAY

When the starting gun sounded, Alexander took her first steps up the mountain to the very top of Mount Whitney and to an elevation of 2,966 metres.

She ran that mountain climb — up 1,860 metres and across 35 kilometres — in five hours and eight minutes.

She was well on her way to meeting her super-survival running goal.

Coming down from the mountaintop, Alexander made her way through a rocky terrain many Canadians might recognize from movies filmed there such as Gunga Din (1939) and Iron Man (2008).

She returned to Lone Pine and the starting line shortly after 3:15 p.m.

By 3:19 p.m., facing a flat open road through Owen’s Valley, she had logged 72 kilometres in nine hours and 19 minutes. She was still on track.

At 7:20 p.m., however, as the sun was setting and as she crossed the 97-kilometre mark to begin her second mountain climb into the Inyo Mountains, to a ghost town called Cerro Gordo, her troubles began.

Blisters erupted on her heels and an imbalance of electrolytes in her system plagued her with severe stomach pains.

Alexander faced a climb of 13 kilometres to the top and 13 kilometres back, in the cold desert night, in pitch-black darkness.

Because the winding gravel road to the Cerro Gordo was so narrow and dangerous, poised over a 2,440-metre drop, none of crews assigned to helping runners were allowed to drive alongside them.

Like the other 100 toughest runners competing at Badwater from 24 countries, she climbed the mountain alone in the dark.