You’ve always wanted to run all night, right? How about running all night on a shell of salt up to five feet thick? I bet you’ve always wanted to do that too. Jason and I signed up for the Dusk to Dawn Relay, a race that literally goes from dusk to dawn on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and convinced six friends to get salty with us. I’m so glad we did.
The Bonneville Salt Flats are 30,000 acres west of the Great Salt Lake covered in densely packed salt. The race was held on the Bonneville Speedway, a section of the Bonneville Salt Flats so level and hard that it has been used to set land speed records since 1935. We totally broke a few that night. (Obviously, I am kidding.)
The race commenced at 8:11 PM and ended at 7:01 AM. Over almost 11 hours, our eight-person team did 35 laps on a 1.71-mile loop and finished in third place. Not too bad for a group in it to… just run around a bunch and have a good time.
In addition to chatting with teammates and running loops, scheduled activities provided steady entertainment. One of my favorites was viewing Saturn and Jupiter through telescopes provided by the UVU Astronomy Club while eating Milky Way candy bars. Pretty cosmic!
We divided our running slots in the middle of the night so everyone could take a nap. At least, that was the theory. Jason and I accepted the time period no one wanted between 2:00 and 3:30 AM. We had one hour and 40 minutes to snooze before our turn, but we were unsuccessful in falling asleep.
Although we had the worst slot for resting, it was the best in other ways. From 2:00-4:00, the race organizers turned out all their lights. So, Jason and I got to dash under a sky swirling with sparkling specks unveiled by the new moon and our remote location. It was one of the best celestial spectacles I have ever seen.
The stars were a shimmering net cast over us, but the sunrise might have been even more beautiful. The heavens seemed to curve around us as bottomless blue turned into brilliant orange. I felt like I was inside a snow globe filled with hovering clouds that would be shaken back into the stratosphere by some unseen hand at any moment.
And the running? The course was flat (yup… Salt Flats), but the crunchy grooves and sticky brine represented a different kind of challenge. Plus, the sparkling firmaments kept us looking up instead of at where we were treading. I did five loops and Jason did seven. In total, I completed just over 8.5 miles and Jason 12. Why so many for Jason? He was definitely a victim of his own hustle. Jason was nominated to start the race and do the last loop when there were only 15 minutes left on the clock.
And the weather? The temperatures were nice, though a little chilly between about 5:00 and 7:00 AM. The wind was manageable even when it picked up for a few hours in the middle of the night. Salt would have gotten everywhere without that, but it certainly helped spread the saline. Yes, salt even got there.
Jason and I thought we would be okay to drive home after the race without taking a nap. We were wrong. About an hour or so from home, we both suddenly realized we had only minutes until sleeping wouldn’t be optional. We had to pull into a rest stop for a quick 20-minute snooze.
The Dusk to Dawn Relay was a memorable, fun, and unexpectedly stunning event. We felt like jerky cured in salt the next day. But man, what an experience! If you get the opportunity to run Dusk to Dawn, I’d go for it.