Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (20 page)

It was the heat. My training runs had helped, but nothing could have helped me enough for this. Imagine a sun so pitiless that it seemed to want to personally torture you. Imagine that every time you inhaled, the air was so hot that it seared your already parched throat and stung your lungs. Now imagine that a tall, cool, iced bottle of water was waiting for you, along with an aquamarine swimming pool and giant puddles of shade under oversized umbrellas and that fans were wafting cool breezes your way as you lay down on crisp, chilly sheets. Now imagine that all that relief was only another 110 miles away, and you had to run there, through heat every bit as awful as what you had just endured—maybe worse.

I ran (mostly uphill) to the aid station at Stovepipe Wells, 20 miles away, where my crew had prepared the giant coffin cooler. Dusty was jumping up and down in the parking lot, barefoot, wearing a black down expedition jacket, shouting “Hot potato, hot potato!” He was doing it to amuse me, I’m sure, to take my mind off the difficulties ahead. If I hadn’t felt like my internal organs were liquefying, I might have chuckled.

I took off my sun pants and long-sleeved sun shirt—both specially designed by Brooks—and wriggled in. I thought I heard my crew discussing Sweeney’s lead, and I remember thinking that I should get out, that if
sometimes you just do things,
then that moment would be certainly be an auspicious time to start. My body thought otherwise. I don’t think I ever felt so good. Dusty suggested it was time to go, but I demurred.

When—finally—I climbed out, I wanted to immediately climb back in. After 2 miles, I told my crew I needed it again. Two more miles, one of them said, but they drove 3 miles. When I arrived, I told them I was ready, but again they said 2 more miles. And again they drove 3 miles. Rick Miller told me to stop thinking about the giant cooler, and he sprayed me down with the contraption I had bought at Home Depot.

There’s something profoundly lonely about any ultra, but the Badwater is the loneliest of all. Ancient sand dunes roll over the valley floor like waves. Huge boulders lounge in the middle of emptiness. The salt flat shimmers and beckons with its treacherous beauty.

The wonderful thing about ultramarathons is that, no matter how awful things get, how searing the pain you’re in, there’s always a chance to redeem yourself. If you’re willing to work, salvation awaits. Sweeney was still a good 5 miles ahead, and I had 10 miles to go before I got to the top of Town’s Pass, mile 59 of the race. Those 10 miles—with their choking heat and blowing dust and the murderous incline and altitude—were popular among automakers. They used the stretch to test their latest models for performance under rigorous conditions. It had gotten too hot even for the desert rat Rick Miller, so Dusty joined me and ran me up the next 10 miles. “You da man. Yeah brotha’, that’s how you do it, Jurker, hell yeah!” the Dust Ball hollered. We crested the pass just as the sun set. Dusty peeled into the twilight to get some rest for the night shift, and my friend Justin Angle took over.

I learned how to run downhill on Mount Si, and I put those lessons to use on the descent to Panamint Valley. I felt as if I was floating. I flew by Ferg and yelled, “Free speed!” I found out later that I was clocking 5:00-minute miles. I blazed into the valley at dark. Night had not just fallen, it had thudded and crashed and the air had cooled—to 105 degrees. But that was all right because out of the blackness jogged the jester of the dark, the rogue prince of the cake eaters. We blazed into the night. We might as well have been back on the game trails of Duluth. What could go wrong?

I found out at mile 70. One minute I was flying, the next I was dying. I started looking for a sidewinder in the desert. If one bit me, I could quit without shame.

Ferg passed me a few miles out of Panamint Springs. I sat by the side of the road. Then I puked. And puked some more. My crew joined me. They told me to put my feet in the air, and my crew moved me to the desert side of the van so Ferg’s crew, who were always sneaking up on me or back to me to see where I was and how much Ferg needed to worry, couldn’t learn anything. Leah and Barb and Rick huddled over me, telling me I had beat longer odds, that I’d run tougher races. I was dry heaving. I heard a voice say, “I don’t think this is gonna happen,” and I realized it was my voice.

I had studied enough nutrition and physical therapy to know that what was happening should not have been happening.

In some ways, an ultra isn’t even as hard as a marathon. My heart rate was lower and my lungs were less taxed than they would have been during a shorter, faster race. Sure, most marathons don’t go through the heart of Death Valley, but I had done my homework on that front, so my body should have been primed. All those runs through the heat at Rick and Barb’s had made my sweating and circulation more efficient. The time spent training at altitude had sparked adaptations such as an increased network of capillaries, bigger energy-producing mitochondria, and elevated levels of the enzyme 2,3-diphosphoglycerate to help oxygen reach my tissues. The body’s ability to adapt is truly astounding. That’s why I say that, with the right training and support, anyone can do an ultra.

Yet there’s a reason why top marathoners aren’t flocking to the sport, and it’s not just the lack of cash and prizes. Although the pace of an ultra is slower, maintaining that effort for hours and hours can leave the best of us huddled at the side of the road, dry heaving. For one thing, there’s the cumulative loading on the muscles and bones. Every time the foot hits the ground, the quadriceps and calf muscles have to lengthen to absorb the shock of the impact, and that adds up when you go a hundred miles, whether you’re barefoot or in Brooks, running or walking, slapping your heel or landing on your toes. Downhills are the worst of all. When you see runners shuffling across the Badwater finish line, it’s not because they’re too tired to push off, it’s because they’re too sore to land.

Even if you’re able to keep food down under these conditions, you’ll eventually hit the famous “wall” where the glycogen energy stores in your liver and muscles are depleted. In a marathon, the wall comes at the tail end of the race, but in an ultra, it’s not even at the midpoint and it happens many times. You’ll have to spend hours in the catabolic state where your body is forced to burn fat, protein, and even its own muscles to ensure adequate energy reaches the brain.

A cascade of stress-related hormones floods the body in response to the sustained exertion. Blood tests after ultras have shown elevated cardiac enzymes, renal injury, and very high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, the proinflammatory compound interleukin-6, and creatine kinase, a toxic byproduct of muscle breakdown. That’s a lot for the immune system to handle. Approximately one in four runners at the Western States gets a cold after the race, and this is in the height of summer!

Most of all, the ultra distance leaves you alone with your thoughts to an excruciating extent. Whatever song you have in your head had better be a good one. Whatever story you are telling yourself had better be a story about going on. There is no room for negativity. The reason most people quit has nothing to do with their body.

Was my mind failing me? Could I have done something differently?

“You’re not gonna win this fucking race lying down in the dirt. C’mon, Jurker, get the fuck up.”

I got up, tried to run, and almost fell.

“C’mon, Jurker,” Dusty said. “We’re just gonna walk. We’re just gonna take a little walk in the desert.”

We walked, and after a little while, Dusty said, “Let’s run 20 feet. It’ll be just like Nordic ski training. It’ll be like ski walking.” He said “valking,” imitating our old Russian coach, and I couldn’t stop chuckling. But I managed a sip of water.

Sweeney was miles ahead. I couldn’t even catch the crazy Canadian. What was I doing? I might have said this to Dusty.

“We’ll just take this piece by piece,” he said. “Piece by piece.”

I forgot about catching anyone. I forgot about finishing. I forgot about everything except making it up the next switchback. Dusty saw the expression on my face. He told me this wasn’t life and death, I didn’t need to kill myself.

Piece by piece. Switchback by switchback. We crested a lonely hummock freckled with Joshua trees. My stomach felt better. I started to run. Dusty started to run. I picked up speed. So did the Dust Ball. “Rhythm and form, Jurker. Rhythm and form. C’mon, stretch it out! C’mon, you want to fucking be somebody? Let’s do this!”

We ran. I had traveled 85 miles. We ran over a rolling plateau on the border of Death Valley National Park. A crew member told us Ferg had passed Sweeney and that the cliff diver was cracking. Dusty and I flew. We ticked off an 8-minute mile, then a 7:30 mile, then another 7:30. I felt as if I could run forever.

If you’re an athlete and you’re fortunate, you’ve felt it. Being “in the zone,” tasting
satori
—the sudden, Zen-like clarity that comes when you least expect it, often when your body is pushed to the limit. Running backs speak of the game slowing down until all the other players are moving with almost cartoonish sluggishness as the running back in the zone darts among and between them. Basketball players testify that the hoop at which they’re shooting not only seems larger but
is
larger. Runners speak of feeling absorbed into the universe, of seeing the story of life in a single weed on the side of the road.

When I’ve been lucky enough to feel it, the sensation is one of effortlessness. It occurs when the intensity of the race, the pressure to win, the pain, build to a level that’s nearly unbearable. Then something opens up inside me. I find the part of me that is bigger than the pain.

Satori
can be sought, but it cannot be held. A few strides after an epic feeling of bliss, I’ll get an ache in my knees or the urge to pee or I’ll start worrying about how the person I’m chasing down is feeling. I can’t beat back those feelings or desires, but I know they’re not what really matters. What matters is the place of effortlessness, of selflessness. There might be many paths to that magical region—prayer and meditation come to mind. My way leads up to and past the point of absolute, maximal effort. It’s only when I get to a place where all my physical and psychological warning lights are flashing red, and then run beyond it, that I hit the sweet spot. I know people who get there on a 5-mile jog or by mindfully chopping a carrot. I’ve traveled to the zone myself by those activities. In an ultramarathon, though, a trip to the zone isn’t a luxury, it’s almost a given. At half past midnight, I had stopped floating. Where was Mike? At 1
A.M.
, surrounded by the stunted Joshua trees under a moonless, starry sky, Dusty and I heard him. He was gasping and moaning. The vest had not only melted but had dragged at Mike with its 20 pounds of dead weight. The ice helmets had been too cold to wear. Mike’s pace had been suicidal. He was suffering from hyponatremia, drinking too much water combined with his kidneys’ failure to expel enough from his body. He was stumbling, and his face looked swollen. His sodium levels were plummeting.

As we passed, I saw the expression on Mike’s face. There’s no way he should have been standing, much less moving forward. I gained a lot of respect for Mike that night. I gained a lot of respect for Badwater.

Dusty and I passed Ferg at 90 miles, and he passed us a half-mile later. “Sorry, Scott,” he said. “I have to do this for the folks back in Canada.”

I hadn’t actually
raced
this late in an ultra since dueling Ben Hian and Tommy Nielson at Angeles Crest. For more than five years, when an ultra was 80 miles old, I had already won. Not this time. I added Ferg Hawke to the list of ultrarunners who had earned my respect.

A few minutes later I passed him again, this time for good.

I ran through the dried bed of Owens Lake at sunrise with my best friend, and as the darkness clicked to red and brown, Dusty slowed down and shuffled off to a shadowy pickup truck to do what only the patron saint of wild men knew. I ran to Lone Pine, where the deerflies came out, and toward Mount Whitney, and I ran past the 100-mile mark, farther than I had ever run before. A legend known as Badwater Ben sat in a car and watched me run. Fourteen years earlier he had been running the Badwater when he came upon a body. He had interrupted his race to perform an autopsy. I learned later that when Badwater Ben saw me running and gauged my speed and the distance I had come, he had remarked to his companion in the car that he was worried.

I crossed the finish line, 135 miles from where I had started, after 24 hours and 36 minutes. No one had ever run it faster, nor had anybody won the Western States 100 and the Badwater 135 a mere two weeks apart.

When it was done, I sat in the pine needles, and I thought about my mother, who would never walk, and my father, who had never seen me run. I thought of the coaches who had helped me, the runners and writers who had inspired me. I thought of my wife and my best friend, who even though they seldom spoke to each other anymore had both supported me.

“Hey, Jurker!”

It was Dusty, as usual dragging me from my reveries.

“When’re we going to Vegas? When’re we going to see the strippers? You fucking promised.”

FINDING THE TIME

If you’re going to run regularly, you’re going to need to carve out part of your day, even if it’s 30 to 60 minutes. If that seems impossible, ask yourself: How much time do I spend watching television? Or surfing the Internet? Or shopping? Take some of that time and devote it to doing something good for yourself. If you’re still in a bind, double up on activities. Run to work and back. Many companies have become increasingly helpful to employees who want to exercise, providing showers, changing rooms, and sometimes even incentives; they realize that a fit worker will incur fewer health costs. Run to work and get a ride home. Run to the grocery store and have someone pick you up. Combine errands, running from place to place, and you’ll get a workout in while you’re taking care of business. And if you’re already working out regularly, you’ll be that much more fit.