50/50 (32 page)

“I think it’s actually a hundred and nine pounds,” he said. “I’m hoping to drop one more during this marathon.”

Pre-Marathon Don’ts

Here are five things you should try to avoid doing on the morning of a marathon or other long running event:

1. Don’t spend too much time on your feet. Standing around will make your legs feel stiff and heavy in the first few miles.

2. Don’t overhydrate. There’s little to be gained from guzzling excessive volumes of fluid during the last hour before a marathon. Doing so will only cause you to make time-consuming pit stops during your run.

3. Don’t sleep in. It takes at least two hours for the body to achieve an internal state that is conducive to optimal running performance after waking up.

4. Don’t skip breakfast. It’s important that you top off your body’s carbohydrate fuel stores following the overnight fast. Even if pre-race nerves make food unappealing, at least have something small and easy to consume, like a banana or a bottle of Ensure.

5. Don’t forget to warm up, especially if it’s cold. Your body’s systems work better when they’re warm. Do a little light jogging and stretching to get the blood flowing and help bring your core body temperature up. It was my fastest yet.

“Well, to be honest, I’ve only run forty-nine marathons, and I’m hoping for one more during this marathon myself,” I shot back.

We toasted our respective goals with our coffees and stood there shivering in the morning cool, waiting to be herded up to the starting area.

At last the race officials called our army-size gathering to the start area. In the corral reserved for those expected to run 2:45 or faster, I spotted Lance Armstrong, running his first marathon after winning his seventh Tour de France and retiring from professional cycling the previous year. A throng of celebrity pacers, including three-time New York City Marathon winner Alberto Salazar, surrounded him.
That’s the first and last I’ll see of Lance today
, I thought.

The gun sounded, the crowd pulsed forward, and marathon fifty was under way. I settled into a groove at roughly seven minutes per mile as the parade of runners marched through the streets of Brooklyn. The New York City Marathon is remarkable not just due of the sheer number of people involved—along with the thirty-eight thousand runners, there are two million spectators—but also because of the rich and diverse culture you experience along the way. One minute we were running through a Puerto Rican neighborhood with rowdy residents standing five-deep on the sidewalks, shouting in Spanish and English, waving flags and banners and blasting music. The next we were running through a Hasidic Jewish enclave, where bearded men in old-fashioned black suits and top hats stared at us in perfect silence.

Wearing the number 50 made me a bit of a target, and a few of the runners in my vicinity recognized me and struck up conversations. I greatly appreciated their interest in the Endurance 50 and their words of encouragement, though engaging in conversation while running seven-minute miles was challenging. By the time I reached the halfway point, just shy of the border between Brooklyn and Queens, I was more drained from yapping than from running.

“I’m going to try to catch my breath,” I said to the runner who was next to me at the time. I quit talking and took a series of deep breaths, staying focused in the moment, just putting one foot in front of the other. I wouldn’t allow the gravitational pull of the finish line to affect me just yet, even after forty-nine (and a half) consecutive marathons. There were still thirteen miles left to cover; anything could happen in that distance.

I was approaching the twenty-mile mark in the Bronx when I caught and passed my friend Dane, a gifted runner who looked strong despite the mounting heat.

Going the Distance

Before I started the Endurance 50, I wondered what would happen to my body over the course of fifty days of marathoning. Would I progressively break down and end up hobbling (or crawling) as the days wore on? Was I hurting my body?

The opposite turned out to be true. My body seemed to be growing stronger over the weeks. I was able to run faster, with less exertion, as the days progressed. The human body is a remarkably adaptive machine, and this final of fifty consecutive marathons was a telling indication of how the body responds to a physical load placed upon it over time. It was my fasest yet.

“Dude, Lance is only a few minutes ahead of you,” he said, “and he’s hurting. Go get him!”

My first thought was,
Lance who?
Then I remembered: Lance Armstrong! The thought of catching Lance didn’t entice me all that much, though. All I really cared about was staying the course and not doing anything that might jeopardize the completion of the Endurance 50. Besides, making up several minutes with so little distance remaining wasn’t likely.

On the other hand, I felt that I did have a nice little store of energy held in reserve after maintaining a calculated pace for the past twenty miles. So, against my better wisdom, I got a little careless and ran miles twenty through twenty-four at roughly 6:20 per mile, passing many more runners along the way, and answering some questions, too, including one in Italian via a running interpreter.

With two miles left to run, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t eaten anything or consumed any liquid for the past thirteen miles. I’d been preoccupied in talking with people and hadn’t remembered to refuel. To make such a rookie mistake now, after all that I’d been through, was comical. There was nothing I could do but laugh at myself and try to enjoy those last couple of miles, hungry and thirsty, yet smiling ear-to-ear.

Negative Splitting

My split time for the first half of the New York City Marathon was 1:30:31; for the second half it was 1:29:59—a so-called negative split. The term
negative splitting
refers to running the second half of a race faster than the first. Generally, you will run the best possible time in a marathon if you hold enough back in the first half so that you can run the second half faster—if only by a few seconds. It takes a little practice and a measure of discipline. It’s tempting to go out fast in the first part of a race, when you’re feeling strong, but if instead you concentrate on holding back and conserving energy, often you can turn in your best performances ever.

When I crossed the finish line, a race official came running over to me.

“That was remarkable!” he said. “You were less than a minute behind Lance!”

Finishing near Lance still didn’t mean much to me. I was just glad to have finished in one piece, and perhaps beaten Oprah’s marathon time.

Lance was standing off to the side catching his breath. He’d been a hero of mine for years and I really wanted to say hello, but he was surrounded by Nike people and VIPs and who-knows-who, so I didn’t think it was appropriate.

Koop emerged from the crowd wearing a big smile and congratulated me on completing my dream. We shook hands victoriously. Over the past seven weeks the Endurance 50 had really become
our
dream.

“C’mon, Karno,” he said, “let’s go find your family.”

We exited onto the crowded streets of Manhattan, which were packed tight with throngs of people as far as the eye could see in every direction. How were we possibly going to locate them in this mayhem? Koop pulled out his cell phone and dialed Julie. At precisely the same time, I heard another phone start to ring no more than ten yards away from where we stood. Looking in the direction of the sound, I saw Julie herself flipping open her phone to answer the call. I started screaming and ran over to her. My entire family was there, and we hugged each other in celebration, cherishing a moment that none of us will forget for the rest of our lives. The Endurance 50 had officially ended when I crossed that finish line in Central Park, but now it was eternally complete.

Well, sort of. There was still the final Finish Festival, press interviews, a signing and photo session, and a charity auction to complete.

Chris Carmichael made an appearance at the Finish Festival.

“I wonder how Lance is holding up to all this stuff,” I mused.

“Are you kidding?” Chris said. “I just got off the phone with him. He’s sitting in his hotel room’s Jacuzzi tub drinking champagne.”

Man, Lance is faster than me
and
he’s smarter than me,
I chuckled to myself.

That evening, The North Face threw a large and lavish party celebrating our successful completion of the Endurance 50. I was pretty tired at that point, but it’s amazing what a room filled with your favorite people can do to restore your energy.

Also, I had to get to Garrett to hear the outcome of the boys’ mission. He explained that there had been some dicey and desperate moments along the way—one number being obtained at the counter of a fast-food joint, and another in front of a corner liquor store on a drive-by—but they had remained steadfast and determined, and had successfully completed their mission: fifty states, fifty days, fifty phone numbers! Just like my running quest, it hadn’t always been pretty, but they got the job done.

We toasted their success and danced and shared other stories about the amazing journey we’d all just been through. Laughter and merriment were shared by all. The Endurance 50 experience had been beyond my most faraway expectations. In a world that sometimes seemed so divided and war-torn, here was an event that brought people together in a beautiful and harmonious way. There was something enchanting, almost magical, about it, an incredible power that touched everyone involved. I felt like the luckiest man alive to have been along for the ride.

Yet as the evening wore on, my mind drifted farther and farther from my immediate environment. A tangled knot of confusion was growing inside me. I’d felt tinges of this emotion for some time, but now it was a raging torrent.

Yes, it was over. But for me, as for so many runners, there really are no finish lines. Runs end; running doesn’t.

As I stood there surrounded by family and friends, all celebrating the completion of an extraordinary undertaking, a single thought kept repeating in my head:
What no
w
?

EPILOGUE

Run Away

Many people asked me what I was going to do after running fifty marathons. I laughingly told them the next Endurance 50 would consist of “Fifty couches, fifty pizzas, fifty beers.”  But that was just a joke to buy some time. In my mind I was asking myself the very same question.

The first day of my post–Endurance 50 life began with another five o’clock wake-up followed by interview after interview, for ESPN, the
Today
show,
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
, and ABC News, among others. When I was finally deposited back at my hotel that evening, I felt like crap.  Not physically. Emotionally. I was all alone for the first time in a long time. My family had flown back home to the West Coast. After all, it was a Monday, and school, work, heck, life went on. The Endurance 50 team—who had become my extended family—had returned to their respective homes as well.

I sat in my empty hotel room pondering life. Something was wrong. Something was missing. So I decided to do what I always do when I feel this way: go for a run. I ran from my hotel to Central Park and traced the original New York City Marathon course, running 28.5 miles in total. There were lots of runners and bikers out, and the weather was very warm and dry for this time of year.

Also, for the first time in more than seven weeks, I ran solo. After nearly two months of running exactly the same distance, at exactly the same time of day, on predetermined routes in the company of other runners, I set my own course once again. It felt good, rejuvenating. It brought me back to the roots of what I love, running for the pure joy of running.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned in a cold sweat until dawn slowly crept over a clouded Manhattan sky. Over the past fifty days, I had experienced some of the most glorious moments of my life; now I was experiencing one of the darkest.
What now
? I kept asking myself.
What now
?

Rain was falling as I checked out of my hotel. It was Tuesday, two days after the New York City Marathon.  The bellman waved good-bye with a quizzical look at the baby carriage I was pushing. This carriage—which held a few spare clothes, snacks, and some other bare necessities—was my new support crew, my new tour bus, and my new SAG wagon. I started running. For the people who had asked what I was going to do after running fifty marathons, I now had an answer: I was going running.

Three days later, I was making my way into Philadelphia. I’d been sleeping in parks, eating from street vendors as I ran, asking directions from people standing on random corners along the way. There had been one minor oversight in all the planning: No one had booked me a return flight from New York to San Francisco. So I decided to run instead. Yeah, sounds crazy I know, but on a whim I was running across the country, and it felt pretty good; liberating, actually. After fifty days of knowing precisely where I needed to be at every second, now I had no idea where I needed to be at all. All I knew was that I needed to head west, plain and simple. Just head toward the setting sun and enjoy the run. New York City was on one side of the country, San Francisco on the other; eventually I’d hit it.

I ran all day, and sometimes all night. One day I covered more than sixty miles. Another day—during a severe snowstorm—I covered fewer than thirty. Mostly, I averaged about forty-five or fifty. For a month straight I ran, over mountains, through cornfields, across plains, between cities both large and small. I began running as soon as I awoke in the morning, and stopped when I got tired at night.

Sometimes other runners would come out and find me along the roadside and we would run together; other times I would run alone. Many kind folks out in the countryside stopped to offer a ride, and some even returned with a home-cooked meal. It was all good, except that I missed my family dearly. Not a day, and eventually not a minute, passed without my thinking about them.