Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (30 page)

That’s when the Frenchman Jean-Gilles Boussiquet ran 272.624 kilometers, or 169.3 miles.

In 1984, Yiannis Kouros of Greece ran 177 miles at a 24-hour event in Queens, New York, in spite of taking nearly 28 minutes to stroll through his last mile. He was just getting started. The next year at the same race, despite Hurricane Gloria’s 60-mph winds and driving rain, Kouros made it 178 miles. This time he didn’t walk the last mile.

In 1996, Kouros ran a little over 182 miles (around a track), and in 1997 he ran 188 miles, 1,308 yards. His mark was 17 miles farther than anyone else had ever run in 24 hours. It was the equivalent of seven marathons plus 5 more miles. His average pace for those marathons? Some 3 hours and 19 minutes. Upon finishing, he confidently stated, “This record will stand for centuries.” I wasn’t aiming to break his record. I thought he was right. But I was trying to get as close as I could.

I chose the Ultracentric Experience, held in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. I thought it would be a good test and that I could set a national record. But I also thought the course would be flat, as the race director had promised. It wasn’t. I was tired, and I was impressed at the monumental
sameness
of the event, but that’s not why I dropped out after 8 hours and 50 miles. I stopped because I knew I had no chance for a record and because running a flat course for 24 hours is difficult enough. A 24-hour race on a 1-mile loop with not one hill but two wasn’t just a challenge, it was insane.

I flew to Minnesota to see my mom. From my sister’s house, I called a friend in Southern California. Her name was Jenny, and I had known her for eight years, during the time she worked at Montrail, a company that had sponsored me. Jenny and I ran in the same circle of friends and attended the same runner parties. She had long black hair and a big, almost blinding smile. Not afraid to speak her mind, she told me I needed to log some miles in the dating scene, so she set me up with some of her girlfriends. But she and I stayed good friends.

I wasn’t ready to settle back into Seattle. I wanted another trip. Jenny had recently moved to Ventura for a design job at Patagonia. She invited me down to visit, and the idea of sunshine and beaches sounded better than November rain in Seattle. I had told my friend Luis Escobar that I would volunteer at his 50K race in Santa Barbara. Now I was thinking of moving there, so I wanted to check it out. I told Jenny I would come to California straight from Minnesota. When she asked if I wasn’t burnt out from traveling, whether I wouldn’t prefer to stop at home in Seattle first, I told her, “The road feels more like home to me right now.”

I stayed at Jenny’s. We went for runs along the beach and talked about relationships and life. We picked oranges and pomegranates and cooked together, and I spent a lot of time by myself at the beach while she went to work. I felt peaceful. I felt happy. I flew back to Seattle feeling content.

If I had known the turn things were about to take, maybe I would have tried to hold on to those feelings.

At the beginning of 2009, I developed plantar fasciitis, a painful swelling of the connective tissue that runs across the bottom of the foot. I worked on rehabbing like crazy and adjusted my training, running barefoot on the sand and grass, icing and strengthening. Some days I felt great, other days the irritation in the foot caused me to cut training runs short.

Then Leah called and told me she hired a lawyer. She wanted my coaching business, physical therapy practice, and my professional running career appraised, and she wanted her share of my businesses.

I imagined a life of training, working, and racing, and then writing checks with all the money I had earned and having only enough to pay my room and board—if that. Back to square one in debt. I had just gotten out of debt a few years earlier. I was angry—and frightened of bankruptcy. I contemplated “going guerrilla.” I would retire from competitive running, go off the grid, and work on an organic farm for room and board. My plan would give me more time to visit my mother, too.

Before I went underground, I made another trip to Ashland to visit Ian and Hal. We ran and hung out together, and after a 15-mile loop at a place called Applegate Reservoir, just outside Medford, we sat together over beers at a burrito shop.

It hit me that night—as I was contemplating a life alone on a country farm—how important friendship was to me. It also struck me how ironic it was that my most important friendships had come from a sport singular in its isolation and demands on self-reliance. Ultramarathons aren’t won by teams, yet the bonds I have forged through this sport of obsessive individualism are stronger than any others in my life.

Ian and Hal were as seasoned and wise as any in the sport. Like me, they were part of the twenty-something ultrarunners from the mid-nineties. We, known as the new “Old Guard” by our younger rivals, knew the purity of the sport, but we knew something that the newbies didn’t: how easy it is to lose sight of what really matters. How simple and easy and wrong it is to get caught up in all the hype of winning and reputations. I’m sure we had veterans say the same about us.

Like veterans of any sport, of any age, we drank beer that evening and pondered what the kids coming up didn’t know. We talked about the days before the Internet, and Twitter, and cell phones—when to get a reputation or something as precious as a sponsorship you actually had to
do
something, like win a Western States—or more like several (Hal had won it twice). We talked about how anyone could post a blog now saying that so-and-so was washed up (there had been many written about me) or that such-and-such was the guy to watch (even though he hadn’t done much more than run a small town ultramarathon or fairly fast marathon). We drank more beer and toasted a time when earning a sponsorship meant a free pair of running shoes and maybe some shorts, and—if you were really amazing and amazingly lucky—help with travel expenses. We talked about how the surfers chasing waves and the dirtbag climbers in Yosemite had it right, that even though big money was coming to those sports, the real athletes did it for the love of the sport itself and the love of each other—encouraging one another to explore their limits.

I mentioned something about how it was easy to criticize someone anonymously on the Internet, and Ian—who had heard criticisms personally when he paced me at the Western States in 1999—said, “You should go back there and win it again, just to shut them up.”

Yeah, I said, not a bad idea, but not for me. I told the guys my plan for retiring and going off the grid so I wouldn’t have to buy back businesses and my name and racing career.

Ian snorted.

“Hey, dude, just go out there and run hard and pay it off. Settle it.”

Shortly after that night my sponsor, Brooks Sports, asked me to run the Western States 100. Whether it was to shut people up or to please Brooks, I’m not sure, but I agreed.

I don’t know if it was my flaring plantar fasciitis or lack of training or the virus and fever I fought a few weeks before the race. I don’t know if I was physically fine but emotionally and mentally still a wreck. I was in the top five at 40 miles, when I ran down Deadwood Canyon to where the famed swinging bridge crosses a branch of the American River. The trail squirreled 2 miles and 1,500 feet up from there, to the Devil’s Thumb aid station. Three aid stations farther on was the town of Foresthill and Dusty. If I made it that far, I could finish. I
would
finish. I was still in the top ten. At Foresthill, Dusty would scream and curse, whisper and cajole.
One piece at a time! Who do you want to be?

Instead of grunting up the climb, I jumped into the cool water of the American River and went for a swim. Not in a million years could I have imagined myself stopping in the middle of the Western States 100 (or any race, for that matter) to go for a swim. The waters were rejuvenating, and all my worries melted away. I floated on my back, staring at the brilliant blue sky. Dusty wouldn’t get to work his dark magic this day. My race was over.

Later, after wandering around the course, urging on runners, thanking volunteers I never had the chance to talk to, trying to enjoy the race as a spectator for once, I returned to the river at the Rucky Chucky river crossing. Dave Terry, who had come to volunteer, was there, too. We sat on the bank, two veterans, and shot the shit. I told him I had quit the race. He said it was no big deal, I had nothing to prove, that sometimes finishing and winning weren’t the answer. He said we all went through difficult times, that during the tough times we learned the most, and those lessons made us stronger. He said I’d be okay. Dave was always a top runner, but never
the
top. Maybe that explained his kindness.

Things did work out. Or at least they seemed to. Jenny and I fell in love and managed a long-distance relationship. We’d stay at my apartment in Seattle or hers in Ventura, California. We fastpacked into remote hot springs, went climbing in Joshua Tree, caught live music in L.A. We’d hit the Pacific Crest Trail in early spring, and even though we would spend 4 hours there, a lot of it was taking pictures, smelling flowers (literally), lying in the grass, and looking at the sky, reveling in its beauty. Jenny was turning from vegetarian (since high school) to vegan, and I was cooking Thai pumpkin curry, tofu avocado rolls, and eight-grain strawberry pancakes. Jenny was impressed because she’d never seen anyone mill their own flour before. When we were in Ventura, we’d hang out at the farmer’s market, forage the neighborhood for figs, guava, and avocados. We’d run on the beach and squeeze fresh orange juice from her neighbor’s tree. It all helped take my mind off the fact that I hadn’t won a major race that year.

I decided I would redeem myself in the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB), in France.

The course circumnavigates Mont Blanc, covering 105 miles in three countries, with more than 30,000 feet of both ascent and descent. It draws more than two thousand participants each year. The equivalent of the Tour de France in the world of trail 100-mile racing, it had defeated me twice already. Or I had defeated myself. In 2007, I dropped out halfway into the race, painfully aware that the ankle I had injured before the Hardrock less than six weeks earlier hadn’t healed. The next year, because I had seen only 50 miles of the course, I arrived a few weeks before the race and ran the entire course with Italian friends over three days. Then I figured I should learn it from the French, too. So within 12 hours of finishing the three-day tour, I set off to run it in four days with Team Lafuma, including Julien Chorier, Karine Herry, and Antoine Guillon. It was the most mileage and vertical change (200 miles, 60,000 feet of vertical change) I had ever run in seven days. It was too much. On the last day, I developed patellofemoral pain (aka “runner’s knee”), which sidelined me for the next ten days. I did everything to rehab it, but on race day, after spending a lot of time in second and third place, the knee hurt so much that I couldn’t run downhill. I dropped out at mile 75.

In 2009, I was in good shape and in a good frame of mind. Jenny was running, too, and Dusty was crewing for me (the race doesn’t allow pacers). What I hadn’t counted on was the rain and, worse, the fog. I ran well early and was in the top ten until I got lost. I found my way back and moved into the top three. And that’s when nausea and cramps hit. The last 20 miles I could hardly keep anything down. This time, though, I was determined to finish. And I did, in a little over 26 hours. Eighteenth place.

When the announcer handed me the microphone after I crossed the finish line, the first thing I said was: “I am proud to be in the UTMB finisher family.” Dusty said, “I’m proud of you, Jurker!” The next day Dusty crewed, and we both cheered for Jenny as she finished in her first try.

I finished the race I had vowed to finish. Jenny and I were having fun together. Things were working out. Then, on September 25, Scott McCoubrey called to tell me Dave Terry had killed himself. He had recently gone through foot surgery and was not able to get back to running. None of us knew it, but he battled depression much of his life. He was fifty years old.

After attending Dave’s funeral and burial earlier in the afternoon, a group of his friends—mostly runners—gathered at Scott’s cabin at Crystal Mountain, near the White River 50-miler race course in Washington. Dave had run in the race more than ten times. We cried and asked one another if Dave had ever let on how sad he was. We laughed, too, and talked about how kind he was, how he brought a richness to all of our lives.

Dusty was there. He gave me shit, as usual (even at a memorial service), but this time it had an edge to it. He kept saying things like “You want to try a real race, try beating my marathon time” and “Don’t forget who has the faster 100K time.” It was during this period that he made sure I knew how many homes he owned (two) and mocked me for how much money I lost in my divorce. And after the gathering he stopped calling me. When he texted, he would write, “You fucking loser.”

I knew that another friend of Dusty’s killed himself just a few months earlier. I figured that it was grief talking, so I tried to joke it away.

A month later, I decided to get back on the path in Cleveland. A 24-hour race was being held there. It took place on a concrete loop 1 mile around. I called Dusty to ask him to come with Jenny and me, but he didn’t answer, so I left messages. He didn’t return my calls, so Jenny called him.

He declined the invitation. “I’m tired of being Jurker’s bitch,” he said.

Though Dusty had always been the better, and much better known, athlete in high school, he didn’t make a life as a professional athlete. When Jenny told me what he said, I began to rewind the last year or so.
Born to Run
had been published and become a phenomenon—and phenomenally successful. I had been featured in more magazine articles. Meanwhile, Dusty and I hadn’t talked as much as usual. Had he been pulling away, chafing at my increased notoriety, me, “the Jurker,” the less innately talented of boyhood friends? One of the things I appreciated about running was how it strengthened and deepened friendships. Could it have cost me my most important, closest friend?