At Proper we’re a big fan of good stories. I suppose that’s why we have a magazine – as a means of communicating stories we reckon are entertaining to other people. In our eyes, storytelling is the cornerstone of good journalism. Sometimes as a writer it’s your job to turn a mundane story into an exciting one, it’s a bit of a chore and sometimes takes a bit of creative license. At other times though you get to write about a story so good, that you don’t have to alter anything. Each minute detail is perfectly exciting, that to leave any out would be a crime. It’s not all that often you come across these kinds of fantastical stories, but when you do, by proxy you then share the burden of making sure that they never get forgotten about. That’s what lands us here retelling you a story about a man who ran 134 miles across the hottest place on the planet wearing a pair of Clarks’ Desert Boots for a bet.
That man was Kenneth Crutchlow, a British adventurer, writer and by all accounts, a probable lunatic. In 1970 Crutchlow found himself hanging out with John Fairfax, another probable lunatic – he killed a shark with a knife whilst rowing across the Atlantic alone. As you can imagine when two lunatics are chatting with each other some pretty preposterous things come up in conversation.
According to a 1985 article with Sports Illustrated, Ken outlined that John often used to say: “Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the biggest son of a bitch in the valley.” Taking issue with this statement Ken one time responded: ‘What’s the point of walking through Death Valley? You might as well run.’ To this, John retorted that he’d like to see Crutchlow run across Death Valley. Well it turns out that Ken was all too happy to take John up on his offer. He replied,
‘No problem I bet you a pint of beer I can do it’
This pint of beer was then raised to $1000 by Fairfax who was adamant he wouldn’t do it. Crutchlow said in his interview with Sports Illustrated that at that time he didn’t even know where Death Valley was.
Well as it turns out, he was in for a shock. Death Valley, as the name suggests is not the most hospitable of places. In fact, it might actually be the most inhospitable place on the planet, it’s thought to be the hottest place on Earth during summer. You’d therefore assume that to cut himself some slack Crutchlow would organise for the event to be held in the winter. He didn’t.
The first and most important rule of the race was that it was held in August. Naturally, any running was also only to be permitted between the hottest hours of the day – 6am to 8pm. The reasoning for these rules according to Crutchlow was that “You want the satisfaction of being able to say that you crossed the hottest place on earth, and you don’t want someone to be able to diminish your achievement by saying “Oh, yeah, but you ran it at night.”
Some of the other rules from the event were:
- Runners to stop at 8pm and camp for the night.
- Runners would stay within 25 feet of the road at all times – no shortcutting across the desert.
- None of the vehicles connected with the runners or their support crews could have air conditioning.
Obviously, to make the race a race, there had to be a participant other than himself. Crutchlow began his search for this candidate by issuing an open challenge in several of San Francisco’s newspapers. As you can imagine most people that saw this advert probably smiled, laughed, turned the page and then went back to drinking coffee.
But one man did not – Bruce Maxwell, a former University of Wisconsin tennis player who had run the Boston Marathon in 1969. During Maxwell’s preparation for the event one of his support crew asked him if he could bring his dog along with him to the valley, as Maxwell was unsure he rang the park rangers in Death Valley who said:
‘Do not bring the dog – the dog will be dead within an hour’
The severity of what the pair had got themselves into was setting in and by now the whole event was beginning to pick up quite a lot of traction by both British and American media. This led to footwear company Clarks catching wind and deciding that they wanted to kit out Crutchlow in a pair of their Desert Boots for the monumental task. This is a pretty big call, probably not a good look if someone dies during a race whilst wearing your shoes, is it? It’s worth mentioning that Maxwell was sponsored by Levi Strauss. The race was very much becoming Britain vs America.
However, disaster struck before the event even began. Park rangers of Death Valley heard about the event and in usual authority figure fashion they stated that the event could not go ahead due to a law that forbids sporting events in national parks and monuments. Crutchlow and Maxwell’s teams desperately scrambled to try and get the event back on the rails and they did, by negotiating a compromise with the rangers. This was that the runners would start their race 48 hours apart, reducing media presence.
Following a coin toss that decided the Englishman would go first, on August 4th the race began. Crutchlow started the race as he did with all his athletic endeavours, by wearing a pin-striped suit, bowler hat and of course the Desert Boots. The race started okay for both runners, but it wasn’t long until something went wrong. By the afternoon of the second day Maxwell’s soles of his shoes were toast, and so was he. He passed out and then was made to sit in a large fridge – it took him 17 hours to recover.
As fate would have it a German man happened to drive through Death Valley on his way to Las Vegas, the man spotted Maxwell lying on the floor after being released from the fridge and offered to help. As it turns out the man was a masseur – Maxwell sweet-talked him into an hour-long leg massage. The massage must’ve made all the difference as he went on to complete the course in 51 hours and 30 minutes, six hours faster than Crutchlow. Who knows what Ken was up to in that time, but one can safely assume that it wasn’t much fun.
Maxwell said at the end of the race that he had no sense of joy about winning and was just glad that the whole affair was over. This feeling was short-lived however, as in 1976 a bitter Ken asked for a rematch, to which Maxwell agreed. But this story isn’t about that race, as you all probably know, sequels are never better.
The only thing as good as the story itself is the photographs taken from the event, with Clarks having produced their own Desert Boot merchandise for Crutchlow to wear. Following the race, sales for Clark Desert boots skyrocketed and you can see why – it’s got to be a contender for one of the best marketing campaigns ever, if you can even call it that.
The one most frustrating thing about the whole affair is that there seems to be no information out there on whether Crutchlow did get his pint from John Fairfax, we hope for his troubles that he did. Sadly Kenneth Crutchlow died on the 17th of January 2016, but left a lifetime of good stories behind. If you’re looking for some adventurism reading material, just type his name into Google.
If you don’t want a pair of Desert Boots for yourself after reading about this whole debacle, you need your head looking at. To buy a pair you can do so from here.
