Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (8 page)

I know a novelist who says he was never happier than when he was working on his first book, which turned out to be so bad that he never showed the manuscript to anyone. He said his joy came from the way time stopped and from all he learned about himself and his craft during those sessions. Running with Dusty that spring—not racing,
running
—I understood what the writer had been talking about.

I also thought I might do all right in a race. I entered Duluth’s Grandma’s Marathon in June, and all the training with Dusty paid off. I finished in 2:54. Not bad. I thought that, with focus and training, I could get faster.

Instead, with Dusty’s recommendation, I decided to go farther. I would enter my first ultra.

The day of the 1994 Voyageur we were both ready, and when Dusty—the defending champion—shot off the starting line, I shot off, too. Dusty didn’t call me Jurker or give me shit about my studies. We ran, and not just free. We ran hard. Minnesota in late July can be a muggy 90 degrees and muddy, and this day it was both of those, but we kept cranking. Then, at about mile 25, in a particularly gooey mud puddle, Dusty’s left shoe came off. He stopped to fetch it, and for a second I hesitated. How was I supposed to run without Dusty in front of me? He was the legend. I was the sidekick. He was the runner. I was just a stubborn Polack. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I did what I had been doing. I kept running. I ran for a few seconds, then a few minutes, and I looked back over my shoulder and didn’t see Dusty. I kept running.

Maybe my ski career was over. Maybe my dad would never be happy. Maybe my mom wasn’t going to get better, and maybe I’d always lead a dual life, split between diligence and the wild ways that Dusty represented. But at the moment I crossed the finish line, it didn’t matter. I had completed one of the hardest things I had ever attempted, and I told myself “never again.” I lay face down in the grass, panting, happy but feeling sick, totally drained. I didn’t have anything left. Was this what being a runner meant? Putting everything into a single race until you had nothing left to give? I had sensed a long time earlier that I had a talent for gaining speed when others gave ground, and I had wondered how that talent might ever serve me. In the rocky hills outside Duluth, bouncing on my cruel, nut-crunching green Bianchi, I had realized that no matter how much something hurt, I could gut it out. I wondered what that skill would ever be good for. I finished second in my first Voyageur, beating Dusty (who finished third) for the first time.

Hippie Dan had told me that we all had our own path, that the trick was to find it.

I think I had found mine.

Easier, not Harder

Coming from the flatlands, I had to learn to run uphill. Sharpening that skill, I improved all my running. You can, too, with or without hills. Next time you’re running, count the times your right foot strikes the ground in 20 seconds. Multiply by three and you’ll have your stride rate per minute. (One stride equals two steps, so your steps per minute will be twice your stride rate.)

Now comes the good part: Speed up until you’re running at 85 to 90 strides per minute. The most common mistake runners make is overstriding: taking slow, big steps, reaching far forward with the lead foot and landing on the heel. This means more time on the ground, which means the vulnerable heel hits the ground with more force on landing, creating more impact on the joints. Training at a stride rate of 85 to 90 is the quickest way to correct this problem. Short, light, quick steps will minimize impact force and keep you running longer, safer. It also will make you a more efficient runner. Studies have shown that nearly all elite runners competing at distances between 3,000 meters and marathon distances are running at 85 to 90-plus stride rates.)

I used to train runners with a metronome. Nowadays there are plenty of websites that list music by BPM (beats per minute)—try http://cycle.jog.fm/. Either 90 or 180 BPM songs will do the trick.

Green Power Pre-Workout Drink

Hippie Dan first taught me the importance of greens like spirulina and wheatgrass. Spirulina is a green algae said to have been carried into battle by Aztec warriors. Used for centuries as a weight-loss aid and immune-booster, it has lately been studied and shown promising results as a performance enhancer for long-distance runners. Because spirulina is marketed as a dietary supplement rather than a food, the FDA does not regulate its production; buy it only from a health food store and a brand you trust.

Packed with protein (spirulina is a complete protein) and rich in vitamins and minerals, this smoothie is an excellent source of nutrition. For a little extra carbohydrate boost, replace 1 cup water with 1 cup apple or grape juice.

Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend for 1 to 2 minutes, until the mixture is completely smooth. Drink 20 to 30 ounces (2½ to 3¾ cups) 15 to 45 minutes before a run.

MAKES TWO
20-
OUNCE SERVINGS

7. “Let the Pain Go Out Your Ears”

MINNESOTA VOYAGEUR 50, 1995 AND 1996

Always do what you are afraid to do.

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

I met the woman who helped turn me into a vegan in line at McDonald’s. She was waiting for a refill of a Diet Coke. I was picking up my lunch. Leah was blonde and smiled a lot. Because she had what seemed like a million pairs of Birkenstocks, some of the guys at the mall called her Birkenstock Girl. She worked at a clothing store, was a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and rode her bike everywhere. And she was mostly vegetarian (which made her eating at McDonald’s sort of odd, I suppose). She and I hit it off, and between Leah and Hippie Dan and some of the books he was giving me (like Wendell Berry’s
The Unsettling of America,
about how the loss of agriculture is the loss of culture, how we’ve gone from knowing where our food comes from to not even thinking that the packages of chicken we buy in the grocery store come from anywhere), I was changing.

I began to put Havarti cheese and spinach on my sandwiches instead of summer sausage. I cut down on breakfast sausage egg biscuits, but not much. I would make granola once in a while. I cooked brown rice and broccoli in my grandmother’s Litton microwave (my mom gave it to me when I moved into my own apartment). I made the rice just as she had taught me.

Still, I was an athlete and a young man who felt invincible. So when I was a junior, beginning to embrace the earth-conscious sensibilities of people like Hippie Dan, I was also shoving down two McChicken sandwiches and a large order of fries (as well as the occasional Big Mac) at least four times a week. I figured I needed the protein and that a little junk food never hurt anyone. I loved to grill and was always cooking up sausage, steaks, bratwurst, pork chops, and whatever other animal flesh I could find, all on a giant grill I had bought at a garage sale and lugged to the apartment I shared with my pal Damon Holmes. I was the grill master. Besides, I worried that a plant-based diet would ensure round-the-clock bland food.

It’s not that I was totally ignorant. The brown rice had helped me carb up before a race. I had tasted the wonders of granola. The salads and other vegetables at the Team Birkie ski camp helped my endurance. And Hippie Dan had been trying to sell me on the nutritional and ecological benefits of drinking wheatgrass juice and eating more fruits and veggies. Serious student that I was (and frugal), I even planted a little wheatgrass.

I promised myself to keep reading up on the whole plant-based diet thing, but in the meantime, Damon and I spent many a night on our back porch, feet on the banister, barbecued steak (or burgers, or brats) in our mitts, downing a tin of Planters Cheese Balls and a box of Malted Milk Balls in a single sitting.

I was occasionally hunting and fishing and I was still committed to protein and what I thought was the fastest way to get it—through eating dead animals. I didn’t want to risk running my second Voyageur without it.

I needn’t have worried about getting enough protein. The average 19- to 30-year-old American consumes 91 grams a day, nearly twice the recommended daily amount (56 grams for an adult male, 46 for an adult female). I wasn’t aware that too much protein stresses the kidneys (an organ long-distance runners worry about in the best of times, due to our careful attention to water consumption, retention, and elimination) and can leach calcium from the bones. I didn’t quite believe that you could get an adequate supply of protein—even if you’re an ultrarunner—from plants. I certainly didn’t think it would be easy.

So I had the occasional sausage egg biscuit, the random burger. Like it or not, I was still a Minnesota redneck, a hunter and fisherman. I was still my father’s son. When Leah would show up with organic apples or milk and I would see the price tag, I went berserk. I’d yell, “You paid how much for that? What’s in it, gold dust?”

Leah and I saw a lot of each other that year. I had landed a second job at a running store called Austin Jarrow, named for Jarrow (who had legally gotten rid of his last name, like Madonna) and Bill Austin, both local standout runners. With my two jobs and Leah and studies and at least 2 hours of running every day, I didn’t have time for much else.

I stopped visiting my mom and brother and sister very often. Even if I had wanted to, I wasn’t willing to go there when my dad was home. I often talked to Mom on the phone. She told me that Dusty called there sometimes, too, and that she was always glad to hear from him, but that Dusty had a hard time understanding her. Her vocal cords were getting weak from the MS.

In the spring of 1995, my mom told me she was moving to a nursing home. She had decided it would be better that way.

As angry as I had been at my father, it was nothing compared to how I felt when she delivered that news. How could he let this happen?
A nursing home!
She was only forty-four. What if I had never left? Could I have prevented this? Again, I had questions for which there were no answers.

She told me it was for the best, that I shouldn’t worry, that I should study hard, that everything would be okay.

So I studied hard and ran harder. Dusty noticed. I was tearing up ground. I was assaulting hills and attacking animal trails, the more weed-choked the better.

I ran the game trails Dusty had shown me and across rivers. I ran through rain and snow and blistering heat. Now I was the one in front, and Dusty was right behind me. He kept saying the same thing, over and over: “Let the pain go out your ears, Jurker, let the pain out your ears.”

I didn’t, though. I held on to the pain. In my second Minnesota Voyageur, I made the pain mine. I used it. All through the 50 miles of the race, I listened to it.
You could have done more. You can do more. Sometimes you just do things!
I ran away from the pain, but it seemed as if I were running toward it. I thought of my mom, crippled. I thought of my life, my ridiculous, petty worries. I thought of the distances I had gone, all the work I had done. I didn’t even have to ask myself the question. It was a part of me now.
Why?

I shot off the starting line—just me this time, no Dusty. And I swallowed that course. I had never run harder. I finished in second place again.

Somehow, I would have to run faster. But I couldn’t run harder. What was the secret?

A sick old man told me part of it. He had just shuffled back from his physical therapy session and was slowly climbing back into his hospital bed. With each painful step he took, I could see his frustration, feel his anger. It was my senior year at St. Scholastica, which doubled as my first year in physical therapy school. As part of my training I was an intern at a hospital in Ashland, Wisconsin. I was supposed to be helping the old man, and we both knew I was failing.

He climbed into bed and looked at the lunch tray waiting for him: Salisbury steak drenched in something brown and congealed, instant potatoes, iridescent-looking canned peas. His expression said it might as well have been a tray of rocks. He didn’t say anything, but it was as though he was shouting. That’s when I heard part of the secret.

What we eat is a matter of life and death. Food is who we are.

I had listened to Hippie Dan. I had remembered my grandmother showing me how good carrots pulled fresh out of the garden tasted. I knew that cutting down on meat and sugar was better for me. But watching a frail, sick man look at his lunch with a cross between nausea and indifference made me think of something else.

The food they served at the nursing home where my mother was bedridden was processed, filled with starches and sugars. The meals my clients ate at hospitals were heavy on meat, low on vegetables. As an athlete, I was ostensibly dedicated to health. As a physical therapist, I was supposed to be helping people with their bodies, but I didn’t spend a second focusing on their diet. The healthier I had eaten, the faster and stronger I had become. Was it a coincidence that sick people were being served starchy, crappy food? If a balanced diet could make someone faster, could a bad diet make someone sick?

The answer, I discovered, was yes. I learned that diabetes now affects nearly 10 percent of Americans, and that type 2 diabetes, once nearly unheard of in children, is on the rise, bringing with it a host of complications such as kidney failure, blindness, and amputations, not to mention increased chances of stroke and heart disease in adults. The three most common causes of death in our country—heart disease, cancer, and stroke—have all been linked to the standard Western diet, rich in animal products, refined carbohydrates, and processed food.