Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (3 page)

By the time I was eight, there were fewer walks in the woods with my dad. I was helping around the house a lot. I was pulling weeds from the big garden we had out back, or picking out rocks, or stacking wood, or helping in the kitchen, or making sure my sister, Angela, who was five, had a snack, or that my brother, Greg, who was three, wasn’t getting into mischief. By the time I was ten, I could cook a pot roast in the oven by myself. Whenever I complained that I didn’t want to pick rocks or stack wood, I just wanted to go play, my dad would growl, “Sometimes you just do things!” After a while, I stopped complaining.

He tempered his discipline with compassion and a sense of fun. He would challenge me to see how much wood I could haul into our “wood room” in 10 minutes or how many rocks I could pick out of the garden in the same time. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but he was teaching me that competition could turn the most mundane task into a thrill, and that successfully completing a job—no matter how onerous—made me feel unaccountably happy.

When I was ten my dad bought me a .22-caliber rifle with a polished walnut handle and a barrel made from burnished steel. He told me to kill any animal I wounded, to skin and gut it, to always eat whatever I brought home. I already knew how to catch a walleye and gut it and clean it.

I was a great blueberry picker, too. It was a rite of passage in my family that when you turned six, you got to go blueberry and cherry picking with Grandma Jurek. My older cousins had told me stories about the great adventure and I couldn’t wait. My cousins had forgotten to mention the clouds of mosquitoes, or stinky bogs, or the beating sun, or the ladder, which I fell off. I cried and said I wanted to go home, but that didn’t happen. Grandma Jurek had raised my dad. When you went cherry picking with her, you were picking for hours. And when you went fishing with Grandpa Jurek, if you got bored, too bad, you were gonna stay and fish. I learned patience while doing the tedious tasks, but more important, I learned to find joy in repetitive and physically demanding work.

I didn’t always feel happy or patient, of course. I was a kid. But those were the times I kept going. Why?

Sometimes you just do things!

My dad was working two jobs then—during the day as a pipefitter and during the night in maintenance at the local hospital. I knew that the coupons Mom was using when I went with her to the grocery store were really food stamps, that we were getting government cheese, and that Dad was having trouble making ends meet. When our television broke, we didn’t replace it for a year. We had two cars, but one was usually not working at all, and sometimes both. I knew that Mom was tired more and more and our garden next to the house was getting smaller while the list of chores my dad put on the fridge for us—a piece of paper with grids and the names and duties for me, my brother, and my sister—was getting bigger and bigger. I knew that none of my friends had to weed the garden and cut grass when it was 90 degrees and humid or haul and stack wood for 2 hours before they could play. My mom stopped pitching to me behind the house. I learned not to ask her.

The worse my mom got, the more I had to help. The more I helped, the more I wondered why things were the way they were. Why was my mom sick? When would she get better? Why couldn’t my dad be less grumpy? Why did the school nurse always single me out for a second look at our regular head lice inspections? Was it because we lived in the country? Or because she thought we were poor?

Things got much worse the summer after third grade. It was a hot, clear Minnesota day. My dad had gotten off his shift, and he and my mom were coming to see me play baseball. I was in left field, and I had just caught a fly ball. I flung the ball toward the infield, and that’s when I saw the Oldsmobile station wagon pull up and my father get out. The passenger door opened and my mother got out too, but something was wrong. The door was opening in slow motion. Then I saw her stumble and my father rush around the car to help her. He had to help her walk the 30 yards to the bleachers, and I watched each slow step. I missed two batters, and when the inning was over, I was still in left field, watching.

The chore list got bigger. We knew Mom was sick, and she took more and more naps. One day when I was in sixth grade my dad told us Mom was seeing some specialists. Maybe he said “multiple sclerosis,” but if he did, they were just words. It didn’t change who my mom was or what was happening to her. If I thought about it at all, it was along the lines of “Multiple what?” She would stay in Minneapolis for treatment from time to time. Dad said there was always hope.

One day, a physical therapist came to help Mom. It was an acknowledgment that her condition wasn’t going to go away or be cured. She didn’t see specialists after that.

I was cooking meatloaf and potatoes by then and chopping wood before I stacked it. I made lunches for my brother and sister and helped Mom get around the house. Sometimes I helped her with the exercises the physical therapist showed me.

I wish I could say something different, that I was grateful to be of service, that I appreciated the opportunity to help the woman who loved me, but the truth is, I hated the chores. I hated what was happening to my mom. None of us could say anything, though, because of my father, who had served in the Navy and believed in military discipline, and I know now that he was more stressed out than ever.
Don’t ask why.
Sometimes you just do things.
So my brother and sister, and especially I, basically lived in fear. Once, after I spent an hour stacking the wood, he said it was sloppy and knocked it down. Then I had to start over.

I began spending more and more time in the woods. I built trails and passageways to hidden tree forts with scrap wood left over from my father’s projects. I took my rifle out every chance I could get, my fishing pole every other chance. Much of the time I went empty-handed, just me, and I walked under the cool green canopy until I knew every foot of those woods by heart.

I don’t think they knew it at the time—and I certainly didn’t—but my parents were training me to be an endurance athlete. By the time I started running, I knew how to suffer.

IN THE BEGINNING

Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique. But the wonderful paradox of running is that getting started requires no technique. None at all. If you want to become a runner, get onto a trail, into the woods, or on a sidewalk or street and run. Go 50 yards if that’s all you can handle. Tomorrow, you can go farther. The activity itself will reconnect you with the joy and instinctual pleasure of moving. It will feel like child’s play, which it should be.

Don’t worry about speed at first or even distance. In fact, go slow. That means 50 to 70 percent of your maximum effort. The best way to find that zone is to run with a friend and talk while you’re doing so. If you can’t talk, you’re running too fast and too hard. Do a combo of running and walking if needed. Don’t be afraid to walk the uphills. Over time, add distance. Your long, slow runs will strengthen your heart and lungs, improve your circulation, and increase the metabolic efficiency of your muscles.

Minnesota Mashed Potatoes

As a child, I had a glass of milk with every meal and could pile mashed potatoes higher than anyone in my family. I still love the dish, but now I use homemade rice milk, which is just as creamy and rich as the stuff from cows, much less expensive, and doesn’t produce any plastic container waste. There’s no better comfort food.

Wash the potatoes; peel or leave the skins on as you prefer. Place in a pot and add enough water to completely cover, 1 inch above the potatoes. Bring to a boil, covered, over high heat. Lower the heat and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Check the potatoes with a fork. If the fork goes into the potatoes easily, they are ready.

Remove from the heat and drain. Mash the potatoes with a potato masher or hand mixer. Add the remaining ingredients and continue to mash until a smooth, fluffy consistency is reached. Season with a dash or two more salt and pepper and paprika if desired.

MAKES 4-6 SERVINGS

Rice Milk

Combine the rice, water, and salt in a blender. If you want a creamier milk, add the oil. Blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until smooth. Pour into a container, cover, and refrigerate. Rice milk will keep for 4 to 5 days.

MAKES
5
CUPS

3. For My Own Good

CARIBOU LAKE INVITATIONAL, 1986

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.

—ANONYMOUS

I was just a fourth-grader, and I was trapped.

There were fourteen runners ahead of me and only twenty-five in the field. I was panting, cramped. Runners on either side of me swung their elbows, boxing me in. Others were on my heels, shoving. It was autumn, chilly. Leaves, deep red and orange, were carpeting the banks of Caribou Lake. Yellow flags marked the ¾-mile course, two laps around the baseball and soccer fields of Caribou Lake elementary school. I could see the puffs of warm air from the other runners clouding in the chilly north woods evening. I was wearing my maroon and gold St. Rose T-shirt and my long blue cotton pants, with shiny gold stripes down the side and elastic hems that my mother had sewed.

I couldn’t play Little League anymore because that would have required a ride into town, and my dad was working too many hours to drive me. I couldn’t play football because we couldn’t afford the equipment. So I ran. I was tall and lean, and I didn’t complain, so my school said I would be their representative in the school district meet. But I had never run as far as a mile before, and I wasn’t fast. That’s why, by the halfway mark of the race, I had fallen back to twentieth, out of twenty-five.

I kept running, though. I didn’t ask why. I knew it was a useless question.
Sometimes you just do things!
And a couple of the elbow swingers next to me slid out of my peripheral vision. I kept running, and I didn’t feel anyone shoving me from behind. My cramps got worse and my panting turned to gasps, but I kept running and then smacked into a clot of kids in front of me, and a couple of them yelled, “Hey!” and then I broke from the pack. Then there were only five kids ahead of me. A quarter of a mile to go, and now there were four kids, then one.

I didn’t win. The guy in front was way too fast. I couldn’t envision ever being that fast. It would be a long time before I even thought about winning a race. But on that chilly afternoon I realized something. I realized that while most kids my age slowed down during a race and fell back, I made up ground. I seemed to gain strength.

By the time I entered middle school, sixth grade, I knew how to hold an egg between my forefinger and thumb so I could crack it with one hand. I could separate a load of white clothes from colored clothes, wash them, dry them, and fold them without a wrinkle in 60 minutes. I could do a hundred sit-ups in a row and run up and down the road three times without stopping (my brother and sister helped by sitting on my feet for the former and counting for the latter). I could cook spaghetti and pork chops and tuna noodle casserole and make wreaths from ground pine. (My brother and sister and I sold them for holiday money. We’d get five bucks for each one.) I could burp a baby and change a diaper, and I knew the principles of a basketball zone defense and the different motions needed to throw a perfect curveball. The first two I’d practiced on my brother and sister. The second two I knew from reading books in the library. I couldn’t really play a lot on those teams—no transportation—but just in case, I wanted to know
how
to play.

At the beginning of seventh grade I wanted to be perfect. Part of that was because I saw my mom getting weaker and weaker and working harder and harder—on her exercises, on making sure all of us got nutritious meals, on creating little fun things for us to do around holidays: We had Mexican wedding cakes and Christmas spritz cookies that came out of a cookie shooter that we would form in different shapes, dye with food coloring, and decorate with sprinkles. When it was my turn to dry the dishes, I wanted to be the fastest dryer in the family. When I rolled fresh walleye in breadcrumbs and fried it in butter, I wanted it to be the most delicious walleye anyone had ever tasted. I got good grades and worked hard for them, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted the
best
grades, and even that wasn’t enough. We had multiple-choice reading proficiency tests every month, and I wanted to be the first one finished. So did one of my best friends, Dan Hamski. He beat me every single time and it drove me crazy. It took me a while, but finally I figured out what was going on. He’d rip through the tests, and when he got to a question he couldn’t answer, he just skipped it and moved on. If the same thing happened to me, I’d bear down and work on that question until I had figured it out, even if it took the rest of the allotted time. I never got anything wrong . . . but I never beat Dan. I had to get everything right, no matter what it cost.