Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (18 page)

I ticked off my checklist silently and kept running. Eight miles later, I passed Scott St. John and moved into second place. I made sure there wasn’t even the faintest limp in my stride. You don’t want your competitors to know there’s a wounded animal around. The wounded animal gets taken down by wolves.

I arrived at the Michigan Bluff aid station, at mile 55, after the leader, Tom Johnson, had already left. Johnson was a two-time winner of the event and held the American record for running 100 kilometers on road.

I had to turn the switch on. I had to tell myself, “You can do it, you can do it.” I still felt bad, so I took stock. I took a breath. I took off. At mile 58 I passed Johnson, and at mile 62, the Forest Hill aid station, I picked up the guy who would have made me run—and win—even if my foot had fallen off.

Dusty knew what had happened—I had told him when I saw him at mile 55—and he didn’t talk about it as we ran. He insulted me, as usual. He told me about all the beer we’d be drinking later that night. He might have mentioned that Tom Johnson was a pussy and made more jokes about Bug Boy. And when I asked who was behind me, he said, “Chicks, Jurker, tough chicks are chasing you!” One thing he didn’t do was baby me.

I won my third consecutive Western States in 16:38, my fastest time yet. I beat Tim Twietmeyer by 40 minutes (Johnson dropped out not too long after I passed him). I stayed at the finish line—with my foot elevated—to greet Twietmeyer, St. John, Tough Tommy, and every other finisher.

Ultrarunners train so hard and long and compete so ferociously that the friendships that develop are unusually sticky and tenacious. Otherwise, I’m convinced, no one could tolerate the loneliness. Those friendships have nurtured me, none more so than the one that developed in the late summer of 2001.

That’s when, at a trailhead in Sun City, California, near the base of Baldy Peak, I met Rick Miller when he emerged from his camper carrying two footlocker-sized coolers of beer. It was the night after the Baldy Peaks 50K. Rick and his wife, Barb, had driven there from their home in Ridgecrest. I had finished third, and Barb took sixth among the women. Now, Rick wanted us all to celebrate.

They asked what kind of running I did. I told them about the Western States and the Angeles Crest, and Rick said that anyone who ran 100 miles on a regular basis was insane. I asked if he ran, and if not, what did he do besides tote beer to his wife’s races. He smiled and said he had just finished a 135-mile road race near his home—it ran straight through Death Valley. I told him he didn’t have a lot of room to be calling anyone crazy. (I also made a mental note of the event, which I later came to regret.)

The next morning Rick and I ran together, 6 miles of sunny Southern California trail up toward the Pacific Crest Trail. You can spend your life chitchatting with someone—even a good friend—but spend even an hour moving over a rocky path, breathing in pine-scented air, and I guarantee you the chitchat will turn to something else.

Rick and many others helped teach me the great paradox of distance running. It’s a solitary activity, and to be a champion one must block out nearly everything except the next step and the next, and the one after that. Notwithstanding the thick ties that bind runner and pacer, teamwork doesn’t enter the strategic or tactical considerations of top ultrarunners.

And yet.

And yet ultrarunners—even the fiercest competitors—grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise in self-sacrifice and pursuit of transcendence. Because that’s what we’re all chasing—that “zone” where we are performing at the peak of our abilities. That instant when we think we can’t go on but do go on. We all know the way that moment feels, how rarely it occurs, and the pain we have to endure to grab it back again. The longer an ultrarunner competes, I believe, the more he grows to love not only the sport, not only his fellow ultrarunners, but people in general. We all struggle to find meaning in a sometimes painful world. Ultrarunners do it in a very distilled version. I had learned that by the time I met Rick.

Rick told me about his military service, how he had disarmed bombs for the Navy, that he had lost friends in Beirut and Panama. I told him about my mom, and he told me his mom was sick, too, that she had cancer. I told him about my dad, and he said his dad was a real roughneck, too, and that the two of them had gone through some tough times.

We talked about everything. At the time, I had been reading Noam Chomsky and listening to Amy Goodman on the radio program
Democracy Now.
Rick and Barb were fifty-two and I was twenty-six. Politically, we were two very different breeds. But he told me that we’re all human, that there’s so much messed-up stuff going on, we need to hold on to what we love. We ran for 2 hours. Every step of the way, I knew exactly where I was. I was running the Path.

Word had gotten out that I had run the second half of the Western States with a blown ankle, and Jeff Dean told me that the victory there elevated me from “cult figure” to “legend.” He said he didn’t know if he’d be able to come up with another name if I won a fourth time.

I aimed to find out.

BREATHING

Breathing is critical no matter what you’re doing, whether it be meditation, calculus, or boxing (beginning fighters first learn how to breathe so they don’t exhaust themselves by panting). One of the most important things you can do as an ultrarunner is to breathe abdominally, and a good way to learn that skill is to practice nasal breathing.

Lying on your back, place a book on your stomach. Breathe in and out through your nose, and try to make your stomach rise and fall with each breath. When you succeed in doing so, you’re breathing from your diaphragm rather than your chest (which allows you to breathe more deeply and efficiently). Once you’ve mastered that, try nasal breathing (in and out through the nose) while you’re running easy routes. For more difficult runs, like hills and tempo workouts, breathe in through the nose, then exhale forcefully through the mouth (akin to what yoga practitioners call “breath of fire”).

Eventually, you should be able to breathe through your nose for entire easy runs and to inhale nasally during the less strenuous sections of even 100-mile runs. I experimented with nasal breathing when I was training for the Western States 100, and it helped me become more of an abdominal runner. Nasal breathing humidifies and cleans the air. As a bonus, it allows you to eat quickly and breathe at the same time, whether running easy or hard.

Indonesian Cabbage Salad with Red Curry Almond Sauce

I became intrigued by peanut sauce as I ate more and more Thai food. When I learned that almonds are higher in calcium than peanuts and contain monounsaturated fat, as opposed to polyunsaturated fat or processed oils, I decided to substitute almond butter for peanut butter. The ginger and curry paste give the sauce a Thai feel, and the agave (or maple syrup) sweetens the dish. If you, like me, thought you hated cabbage, do what I did: Don’t cook it. In this case, the raw food tastes much better.

Toss all the ingredients to combine and let sit for 10 to 20 minutes or more before serving.

MAKES
6–8
SIDE-DISH PORTIONS

Red Curry Almond Sauce

Combine all the ingredients in a small mixing bowl or blender. Mix well until smooth. Keeps refrigerated for 2 weeks or frozen for several months.

MAKES
1½
CUPS

13. Of Bears and Gazelles

WESTERN STATES 100, 2002 AND 2003

Don’t work towards freedom, but allow the work itself to be freedom.

—
DOGEN ROSHI

I knew my fourth try was going to be brutal. It was 105 degrees, I had a touch of the flu, and I was sure people were talking about me the way I had talked about Twietmeyer. The world was filled with guys like Ricklefs. I had been a guy like that. Maybe the past year someone had been holed up in a basement apartment on the outskirts of Seattle, emerging at night only to run Mount Si, back to back to back to
back.
Maybe that guy was faster than me, stronger. Maybe he was a better athlete.

If I thought biology was destiny, I would have given up a long time ago. I’ve got scoliosis, my left foot toes out, I had high blood pressure in elementary school, and my marathon time of 2:38 is nothing special. My height is a mixed blessing—good for stride length, bad for heat and technical trails—which makes my brain that much more important.

In a sprint, if you don’t have perfect form, you’re doomed. The ultra distance forgives injury, fatigue, bad form, and illness. A bear with determination will defeat a dreamy gazelle every time. I can’t count the number of times people have said, “I can’t believe he beat me.” Distance strips you bare.

So what if other bodies might be stronger? I would use my mind. Bushido.

“I want to make everyone work hard,” I told a reporter before the race. “I want to make them hurt.”

I loved ultrarunning and I loved ultrarunners, but even a superpolite vegan could be a dick during competition, sometimes even to a friend.

Dave Terry, the world-class projectile vomiter, was running on my shoulder by mile 15 of the Western States. Three years had passed since I’d first rolled to the finish line, and Dave and I had become pals. I had grown to admire his work ethic and the way he went out of the way to show kindness to everyone he met. Dave was a solid runner, often in the top three, but seldom a winner. He never let his frustration boil into anything like rudeness. What was most striking was the way he seemed to understand someone’s sadness before it was even mentioned. Dave always had a few wise words of encouragement to share—especially, it seemed, to those who needed them most.

“Hey, Scott,” Dave said as he pulled alongside. Such a sweet guy. I smiled.

“Hey, Dave!” I said in the same tone of voice I might have used if we had been sharing a beer at his kitchen table or discussing plans for a Saturday night movie.

And then, before he could answer, I said, “What are
you
doing up here? You must really want to hurt today.”

Then I took off.

No one called me flatlander anymore. No one opined (at least in my presence) that I was going out too fast or that Twietmeyer—or anyone else—was going to reel me in. When I wasn’t leading, I reeled others in.

It wasn’t just competitors who were treating me differently. People came into the store just to ask me questions—about what I ate, how I trained, and what shoes I liked. I had sponsorship deals from various footwear, clothing, and energy bar manufacturers, but that only covered travel expenses (not necessarily lodging or food).

It was all because I could run far, fast. And I could do that, I was convinced, because of what I was eating. I stopped the raw diet right after my 2001 Western States victory—the extra time involved in chewing was too much. I’m serious. That, combined with my concern about getting enough calories, drew me back to cooking. But I kept a lot of what I had learned: the smoothies, a large salad for lunch, paying attention to ingredients and preparation. Eating raw was like getting a Ph.D. in a plant-based diet—hard work, but worth it.

At the same time, due to losing a food sponsor, I started making my own gels. I mixed brown rice syrup with blueberries or cocoa powder and made it in bulk. I also experimented with kalamata olives and hummus on whole wheat tortillas for long runs.

My blood pressure and triglyceride levels dropped to all-time lows; my HDL, “good” cholesterol, shot up to an all-time high. I had virtually no joint inflammation, even after miles of pounding trails and roads, and on the rare occasions I sprained an ankle or fell and whacked my elbow or knee, the soreness left faster than it ever had before.

Was it the fiber that sped food through my digestive tract, minimizing the impact of toxins? Was it the food I was adding—the vitamins and minerals, the lycopene, lutein, and beta carotene? Almost every day a new micronutrient is discovered in plant foods that offers protective effects against disease. Or was it what I
wasn’t
eating, the concentrated carcinogens, excess protein, refined carbohydrates, trans fats? Factory-farmed animals are treated with growth hormones and steroids to encourage their rapid transit from birth to slaughterhouse. If we wouldn’t take steroids ourselves—or eat a bowl of transgenic, pesticide-soaked soybeans—why would we eat the flesh of an animal that has?