Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (9 page)

Another part of the secret was revealed to me when I did my second internship the next spring in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was shopping at a grocery store—possibly even getting a steak—waiting in the checkout line when I picked up a magazine to pass the time. There was an article about a doctor named Andrew Weil and one of his books,
Spontaneous Healing.
He said the human body possessed an enormous capacity to take care of itself as long as we took care of it by feeding it well and not putting toxins in it. Shortly after, I sought out that book and devoured it, cover to cover.

Neither my reading nor the old man’s lunch marked a come-to-Jesus moment for me. But they did open my eyes to the benefits—and importance—of a plant-based diet. I didn’t realize it then, but that spring marked the beginning of my lifelong commitment to learning about food, to eating better, and to living more consciously.

Cutting out processed foods and refined carbohydrates was not difficult. I had grown up eating bread my grandmother baked and fish my dad had caught. Meat and dairy were other matters. I didn’t want to consume either—because of stress to my kidneys, possible loss of calcium, increased chances of prostate cancer, stroke, and heart disease, not to mention the chemicals and hormones injected into the country’s food supply and the environmental degradation caused by cattle farms—but I was racing now, not just running with Dusty for kicks, so I was even more conscious that I still needed fuel to burn.

I knew I had to figure out a way to get enough protein, to marry my healthy eating with my long-distance running.

Combining vegetarian protein sources like legumes and grains every meal—until recently an article of faith among vegetarians— seemed too labor intensive. And it might have been. But I learned that our bodies pool the amino acids from the foods we eat over the course of the day. I didn’t have to sit down and do the math every time I ate. As long as I ate a varied whole-foods diet with adequate caloric intake, I would get enough complete protein. Even the conservative American Dietetic Association, the largest organization of dietary professionals in the world, has stated in no uncertain terms: “Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.”

Those last two words were music to an almost-vegetarian ultrarunner’s ears.

The next summer, I won the Voyageur on my third try, eating more plants and less meat. I didn’t run harder. I had been right: I couldn’t run harder. But I had learned something important. I could run smarter. I could eat smarter. I could live smarter. I knew I could keep going when others stopped. I knew I had good legs and good lungs. I wasn’t just a runner now, I was a racer. And I was a mindful eater. How many races could I win with my newfound secret? I aimed to find out.

Landing Zone

In an ideal world, all runners would land on their forefoot or midfoot when they run. In an ideal world, though, all runners would be lean, healthy, and have spent most of their lives clocking 5-minute miles.

There’s no question that forefoot striking is more efficient than heel striking. It uses the elasticity of the Achilles tendon and the arch of the foot to translate the body’s downward force into forward motion. Less energy is lost to the ground. It’s also a given that landing on the forefoot, as barefoot runners do, prevents the heel striking that cushioned shoes enable, which can lead to so many joint and tendon injuries.

But it’s also true that it’s not a perfect world. Beginners run. Out-of-shape people run. And for them forefoot striking might increase the risk of tendonitis or other soft tissue injury. That’s especially true for anyone who hasn’t grown up running barefoot through rural Kenya.

Most researchers would say that a midfoot landing is the most efficient and shock-absorbing technique. But there are people who fall on both ends of the spectrum—heel strikers and those who run on the balls of their feet—and they do fine.

What’s important isn’t what part of the foot you strike but where it strikes. It should land slightly in front of your center of mass or right underneath it. When you have a high stride rate and land with the body centered over the foot, you won’t be slamming down hard, even if you connect with the heel.

“Buttery” Omega Popcorn

Who says vegans can’t have fun or that ultrarunners don’t like to kick back? Certainly not me. I ate a lot of junk food in college, and an evening with a bowl of this popcorn takes me back to those enjoyable evenings—without the junk or guilt. All popcorn is fun and flavorful. With this version, you’re getting essential fatty acids and B vitamins as well. The Udo’s Oil makes it taste buttery.

Using an air popper, pop the popcorn into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the popcorn with the oil, salt, and nutritional yeast to taste, mixing thoroughly.

MAKES
4
SERVINGS

8. Attack of the Big Birds

ANGELES CREST 100, 1998

Strength does not come from physical capacity.
It comes from an indomitable will.

—
MAHATMA GANDHI

Dusty was screaming at me in Spanish. It felt as if I had stepped into a familiar nightmare. I was tired and sore, trying to will myself up a mountain trail at 7,000 feet. Dusty was already there, on the ridge, and he was hurling insults my way, just as he had hurled them at me for so many years in Minnesota. But it wasn’t a nightmare. And why Spanish?

My dad and I had started talking again. No big hugging, I’m-so-sorry-now-I-see-what’s-important moment. We weren’t those kind of people. Leah and I had gotten married at her folks’ house on August 17, 1996, just west of Duluth, and my dad brought my mom from the nursing home. Dusty was there, too, wearing a black suit and a tie printed with a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He called it his going-to-court outfit. Dusty and my dad were both pissed that I was getting married and there was no alcohol, so they went back to my dad’s place and drank Milwaukee’s Best.

Soon after that my folks divorced (I found out later it was my mom’s idea to move to the home and her idea to divorce—she didn’t want to be a burden). I was starting my second and final year of physical therapy training, still skiing, but just for fun and to keep in shape for running, and still eating meat four or five times a week. I was making clam chowder and grilling chicken and pork chops. I was dipping into a few of the less crazy–sounding recipes from
The Moosewood Cookbook,
but I was still an animal protein athlete.

And then another epiphany hit me. This time it came in a giant bowl of chili. It was December, a cold Wednesday night, and fifteen of us had just finished a 10-mile ski through Duluth’s Lester Park. It was a regular gathering of some of the local ski crowd, usually followed by burgers and beers at a nearby pub. That night we went to a microbrewery, where the cook had a reputation for being adventurous—in Duluth it meant he might serve burgers on something other than white bread. One of the guys suggested I try the vegetarian chili, and even though I had never liked regular chili, I agreed.

I couldn’t believe the taste. The chilies, the tomatoes, and the beans combined into a spicy winter ambrosia. I suppose it’s possible that I was overtired or in such a good mood after a long ski that anything would have tasted good, but that vegetarian chili was about the best thing I had ever eaten. And because of the bulgur wheat, it had the texture of beef chili (see
[>]
for the recipe).

Meanwhile, I ran farther. I ran faster. The periods of soreness and fatigue that resulted were shorter and less severe. I was convinced it was the result of the plants I was eating and the meat I was not eating. The chili showed me I could recover faster without abusing my taste buds.

In the spring of 1997, I left for my final physical therapy internship, at an orthopedic clinic in Seattle. Leah stayed in Minnesota, and to save money, I stayed at a hostel on Vashon Island. Every morning I would wake at six, drive to the ferry, then, after the 20-minute ride through Puget Sound to Seattle, ride my bike the 8 miles to the clinic.

Seattle is where I became almost completely converted into a vegetarian. Part of it was the city itself. It seemed like every grocery store I visited was filled with information about local produce or a new vegetarian restaurant around the corner. The grocery stores all sold grains and spices I had never heard of. In Duluth, ethnic cuisine meant Chinese or Mexican restaurants, usually run by Midwesterners. In Seattle, though, there was Japanese, Ethiopian, Indian, and just about everything else. Back in Minnesota I had hidden my brown rice before ski race meets to avoid ridicule, but in the Northwest, it was the carnivores who weren’t cool.

I absorbed the culture there—the notion of leaving a small footprint, of living low on the land. My grandparents had actually lived that way, with their gardens and the way they killed the vast majority of the meat they ate. I wanted to live that way, too.

I hung out with South Africans and New Zealanders at the hostel, and they told me about couscous curry and peanut stew. On the ferry I met a guy doing his physician assistant internship, and he introduced me to polenta. I read more of Doctor Weil. On the ferry, I would plug in my earphones and listen to audiobooks that talked about the connection between heart disease and a diet high in animal fat and low in vitamins and minerals.

By the time I drove back to Duluth that fall, I was almost completely a vegetarian. But not quite. I stopped three times at McDonald’s for chicken sandwiches and a few sausage-egg biscuits. What can I say? I was hungry.

I stopped long enough in Duluth to pack my bags and write my thesis, and then, in April 1998, Leah and I moved to Deadwood, South Dakota, where I took my first full-time job as a physical therapist. It turned out that Deadwood was where my meat eating reached its dead end.

That I could change in Deadwood isn’t so strange, but that I could move from meat and toward plants is something that people still don’t believe. To get even a simple cheese pizza in Deadwood, you had to drive 20 minutes. To shop for something organic or whole grains like barley? Not in Deadwood. So I shopped for the week in Rapid City and planted a garden. My neighbor was a former Navy SEAL who told me I wouldn’t be able to grow even a weed in the rocky hills, but I proved him wrong. We had squash, beans, tomatoes, and peppers.

I ran nearly every day, anywhere from 10 to 35 miles, through the ponderosa pine forests of the Black Hills and across occasional open plains of grass. One day I found myself surrounded by wild echinacea and picked some. We had echinacea tea that night. My craving for meat had left me, but not my worries about the limits of a meatless diet. My body became a laboratory. I tried combining vegetables and grains, fruits and nuts. One of my more ill-advised experiments involved carrying a small flask of olive oil on a 35-mile run, reasoning that my body needed energy and that oil and fat are the most concentrated forms of calories. A few big swigs, a few episodes of diarrhea, a lot of gas and bloating, and general nausea forced me back to the drawing board.

At every opportunity, I ran out my back door into the surrounding hills or drove to the Bighorn Mountains, where I’d spend hours running through the wild mountains of Wyoming. I loved those runs, but I didn’t love my life. Many of the people I was trying to help were smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, ignoring their exercises, and eating junk. It was frustrating, but it was hard to blame them. They didn’t know any better. Deadwood was lonely for a pair of newlyweds, especially when one of them worked at a job that seemed like pushing a rock up a hill. I brought my worries home with me. I didn’t know what to do with them, and neither did Leah. I began to spend more and more time running in the hills with my training partner, Tonto, an Alaskan husky who loved to run free as much as I did. I felt a calling from those hills, a primal urge to run, something that kept beckoning me.

I had been reading more about Buddhism and self-actualization. I wanted the peace that these mystics talked about. I wanted the serenity I found in movement, the calm that spread through me the longer I ran and the more fatigued I got. Winning had thrilled me, but what thrilled me more was forgetting my worries, losing myself.

Every day I ran 10 to 15 miles; every weekend, 20 to 30. After a long talk with Leah, I flew to races in Virginia and Oregon, going deep into credit card debt in order to pay my travel expenses. I wanted to push my boundaries, to explore my potential. I was passionate, but I was also practical. It was still debt. For a kid who grew up eating government cheese, it was terrifying. But I won the McKenzie River 50K and the Zane Grey 50-Miler. Then I set a new record in the Minnesota Voyageur 50-Miler. Was it compulsiveness or just the determination of a Minnesota redneck or, as Dusty described my heritage, “Norwegian stubborn, French arrogant, and Polish stupid”? Or was it something more pure inside me, something good? I wasn’t sure. To find out, I needed a test. I needed to run a 100-mile race. I decided on the Angeles Crest 100, held on a Saturday in late September. It was one of the hardest 100-mile races in the country, climbing 22,000 feet and descending 27,000 feet through the San Gabriel Mountains of California. I logged more distances and refined my diet even more. And I made a call to the man I wanted to be my pacer.