In fall of 2023, Jason and I participated in the Dusk to Dawn Relay + Ultra for the fourth time. One of the reasons we love this race is that it isn’t just a race, it’s a blast. On this occasion, the event took a literal interpretation of that cliched expression.

Before I talk about our 2023 Dusk to Dawn experience, allow me to go back a tad further and give a brief background on the Bonneville Salt Flats starting from the beginning of time. The Bonneville Salt Flats are the desiccated remains of Lake Bonneville, an inland sea that once covered most of Utah along with parts of Idaho and Nevada in water up to 1,000 feet deep. It formed about 30,000 years ago and dried up at the end of the last ice age.

The Bonneville Salt Flats aren’t the largest salt flat in the world, that brackish honor belongs to Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. However, Bonneville’s 30,000+ acres offer plenty for the imagination and the camera lens. They flood nearly every spring transforming the area into a shallow lake. When this fluid dries up around July, it leaves behind a perfectly level and shockingly bright swath of sodium chloride up to 60 inches deep, a running surface unlike any other. Now, the table salt is set for our Dusk to Dawn discussion.

At 2022’s Dusk to Dawn, the weather started out scorching before the sun went down. In 2023, temperatures began cool, only in the 80s. That sounds like a drastic improvement until you factor in the wind. High winds are common on the salt flats as there is nothing for miles to break gusts. However, that evening a brewing storm was causing even more than the typical unbroken havoc.

What do I mean by more than typical? I’m talking 40 MPH. Beyond being a nuisance, the air currents were a formidable obstacle to movement. Running against them required much more effort than running uphill. It wasn’t just being blasted by 40 MPH gusts that wore us down though, it was being blasted by 40 MPH gusts packed with salt. It was like trying to push against a tornado inside a saltshaker. We earned our Wheaties that night. Also, it drizzled off and on. The worst of that rain, a downpour, happened while Jason and I were taking our scheduled nap in the middle of the night, so at least the two of us missed that.

Our six-person team encountered other obstacles. One teammate, a teenager, had a cold and was even less inclined to be motivated than adolescents normally are. Another teammate twisted his ankle on the bumpy (recently wet) surface during his second lap, the first lap of the two-hour block assigned to him and his partner. It took 37 minutes for him to complete that loop, and he was out of commission the remainder of the night. The rest of us had to compensate.

Jason and I ended up doing six loops each, 12 miles apiece, like all members of our team except the snotty teenager, who did 10, and the hobbler. My times per loop ranged between about 20 and 22 minutes. That’s not great, but given the aforementioned saltshaker, it was acceptable. As usual, Jason was quick with lap times between 15 and a half and 16 and a half minutes.

Like the previous year, our group was divided into two teams. The other team halted their circling in the middle of the night for about four hours giving them a chance to take naps and complete 15 loops (30 miles) in total. This also gave them the chance to come in last out of the 10 six-person teams. Their times per lap ranged widely from 17 minutes to nearly 37 minutes.

Times weren’t the only highly variable component of this race. Near 3:30, hints of the almost full moon started to peek out from behind the curtains of sodium chloride we’d been tangled in all night. By 4:00, that orb was fully exposed turning the briny ground into a shimmering sea of reflected moonshine.

How did our team do? There were a lot more participants in the race this time, 24 ultra runners and 22 teams, making the event more competitive. We finished fifth out of the 10 teams in the six-person category with 62 miles completed, which was our placement the prior year. Was our lack of position improvement a byproduct of the increased participation? I wish I could say yes, but, despite the boost in entrants, the number of six-person teams did not change from 2022. So, why?

Before seeing the results, we had anticipated that we’d done better, probably because we had worked harder. It turns out, working harder does not directly correlate to moving faster when a resolute headwind is part of the equation. While we didn’t exceed our team best for Dusk to Dawn, 64 miles, or our previous year’s mileage, I can safely say we did exceed our record for perseverance in uncomplimentary conditions.

I was once told that life’s notable moments are either good memories, when things go according to plan, or good stories when they don’t. My impressions of 2023’s Dusk to Dawn will remain a flavorful mix of both.