Ultramarathon Man (5 page)

I ran 105. It took almost six hours to get through it, but I simply wouldn't stop until I'd completed the equivalent of a marathon. It was dark and deserted when I finished, except for a few die-hard friends who were blown away by my persistence.

You should have seen the look on people's faces when I told them they owed $105. Shock, mainly. A fair share of congratulatory gestures. And a few brow-raising disbelievers, who quickly paid up when I removed my shoe and showed them the blisters.

There had been a girl on the track during the run earlier in the day who had intrigued me. She was stunning, and even more so because she was covered in sweat. Most of the “beauty queens” at our school would have nothing to do with running or sweating in public. But she was a beauty who didn't seem to mind. I dug the way she looked, all flushed and exhausted, trying to complete another lap around the track.

I found out she was a freshman and that her name was Julie. Eventually I got up the courage to ask her to a movie.
Grease
?
Saturday Night Fever
? I can't remember. All I remember is her—that she was next to me, that she was on a date with me. I mean, the seniors and star jocks wanted to go out with her. Sure, I was an athlete, but an offbeat one. I didn't play baseball or football; I went running and surfed. I thought she belonged with the varsity quarterback, and there she was with me.

It was my first date ever, and I fell in love—not just some fleeting high school infatuation, but genuine, head-over-heels in love. Reflecting back, that is how I did things. Either a 100 percent commitment, total unwavering devotion, or nothing at all. Falling in love was no exception.

The two of us became inseparable. In keeping with Greek tradition, Julie became part of our family and didn't seem at all uncomfortable with the custom, even though she was a reserved WASP in a house full of boisterous Greeks. She seemed at ease during holiday gatherings filled with bantering relatives, flowing ouzo, broken plates, and living-room dancing.

Like my sister, Pary, Julie was the only girl in her family, and their friendship grew exceptionally strong. The two of them seemed to share a particular poise and composure, even in a room filled with domineering Greek men. Julie could hold her own against any ouzo-influenced chauvinistic uncle, in a spirited and fun way. Her quick wit won us all over, as she learned a couple of choice Greek words and would humorously spring them on unsuspecting assailants at the most opportune times.

Now that the cross-country season was over, there was only one organized option to keep me running—join the track team. Track season began after cross-country season ended. It was almost like defecting to the enemy, but I let my love of running get the better of me.

Bilderback, the track coach, put me on the team without a formal tryout, which was nice enough. But my first encounter with him as a coach was disastrous. I showed up for practice on the first day and, as usual, wasn't wearing a watch. He had me run a series of time-trials. As I completed each lap, he looked at his stopwatch and yelled out the times, banging on a clipboard with his pen as he screamed.

This was irritating. I'd done well in cross-country without someone barking orders every time I ran. So after Bilderback had clocked me, measured me, evaluated my stride, and dissected my split times, I mentioned that there was really no need to scream out my times as I ran.

“But if you don't know what your split times are,” he said, “how do you pace yourself ?”

“I run with my heart,” I replied.

That was about the funniest damn thing Bilderback had ever heard. “He runs with his heart!” he whooped between gales of laughter. “He runs with his heart!”

I wanted to punch the bastard. Instead, I walked off the track and hung up my shoes.

I didn't run again for fifteen years.

—Socrates

My running career ended,
but life carried on without much remorse. With three high school kids in the house, there was no shortage of revelry. After running, things got unruly. I discovered alcohol and began throwing underage parties when the folks were away. Kraig and I started battling. He hocked my motorcycle to buy a new surfboard, and we got into a brawl in the living room over it, breaking china and putting a big hole in the wall. It was typically me or my brother who caused most of the ruckus, and I was clearly the worst offender, like the time I commandeered the family car and drove to Mexico without a license. Pary was always the stable one.

Growing up the only girl in a Greek family was not easy. Our father was overprotective and rarely allowed her to stray far from home. It was especially hard for him because Pary was quite beautiful—long golden hair, deep brown eyes, olive skin, and a Julia Roberts smile. My poor father constantly worried about her safety, and about boys. Pary was unruffled by it, though, and never rebelled. She was comfortable with herself, and lots of people, like me, were drawn to her inner strength.

Pary and I remained the best of friends throughout high school. She was my closest confidante and never judged me, no matter how far I deviated from her values or how badly I screwed up. And boy, did I ever screw up badly, being expelled twice for showing up to school functions intoxicated. My parents were livid, ready to ship me off to boarding school, but Pary stuck by my side, as if she knew this unsettled phase of mine would pass. I admired her whimsical way of always moving forward, never taking life too seriously. “They still love you,” she said, speaking about my parents—“just give it some time.” We were family, and even in the worst of circumstances, we had each other. That's what mattered.

High school graduation came and passed, and I headed off to college at Cal Poly, where the debauchery continued, only without adult supervision to get in the way. I was miles from home and carefree, not to mention careless. With a newly acquired fake ID, booze was easy to come by, and every night seemed cause for celebration. I surfed and windsurfed all day, occasionally attending class when time permitted, and then partied into the wee hours. My energy needed an outlet, and all-night binges filled that need.

Julie and I remained together, but I could sense she was tiring of my ways. She had decided to attend Baylor University in Texas, and we vowed to keep our relationship alive, though I had doubts she would remain loyal, given the way I was behaving. And who could blame her?

Then, early one morning, after a particularly wild evening, someone knocked on my apartment door. It was a priest. The night before, Pary had lost control of the convertible she was driving; she was thrown from the vehicle as it rolled, and killed. It was the eve of her eighteenth birthday.

The blow to my family went beyond shock and sadness. One day she was a healthy and vibrant young lady, and the next she was gone. Her sudden disappearance opened a chasm of despair among us. The void it left in my own life was unbearable.

The rift her death created in our family seemed bottomless. A part of us was missing, irreplaceable, gone forever. We had suffered through low points as a family in the past, but we had always maintained a certain optimism that the situation would change, things would get better. At the very least, we always had one another. Until now.

My kid sister, Pary

She was gone, and our family was destroyed. Gatherings were no longer a time of celebration, but of mourning. As the years passed, I tried to restore some sense of joy to our household. I cleaned up my act and started spending weekends back home. Kraig and I settled our sibling differences and became close friends. We adopted a new pet for our parents, a playful Golden Lab puppy. But nothing could console them.

After years of trying, I finally gave up.

 

 

 

A few years
after my sister's death, my dad started doing something curious. He started running. More precisely, he started training for the Los Angeles Marathon. He would run during his lunch break, after getting home from work, and early in the morning. He stuck to his routine with extraordinary conviction and gradually prepared himself for the challenge.

When the gun went off, he was ready. The race hurt him bad, but he kept going. Wouldn't stop until crossing the finish line, despite the pain. Though it was unspoken, I think it was his way of paying tribute to my sister. As they carried him into the medical tent, swollen and cramping, he was smiling defiantly.

From that day forward, no matter that he ran less after completing the event, I always thought of my dad, foremost, as a marathoner. Which, to me, was the greatest distinction there could be.

Eventually I graduated from college, more by dint of grit and sweat than of scholarship. After losing my sister, I couldn't bring myself to saddle my parents with the financial obligation of putting me through school. It just didn't seem right. So I paid for most of my education by hustling for scholarships and grants and working at the campus health-care center. I wasn't the smartest kid in school, but few had more drive or worked harder. Partying was now the last thing on my mind.

Even though I hadn't run in years, outdoor sports remained important to me. I did some mountain climbing and scuba diving, but I channeled most of my focus into windsurfing, winning some competitions and ending up on the cover of several magazines. I even managed to land a few sponsorship endorsements, which helped pay the tuition bills.

When graduation rolled around, I was somewhat amazed to learn that I was the class valedictorian. When the dean first informed me, I thought it was a commencement prank. Clearly the honor belonged to one of my brainy classmates. My marks had been good, sure, but entirely on account of the extra effort I put into my studies. Academics didn't come easy to me; I had to work doubly hard just to keep up. But it was true, I had finished at the top of my class.

After my undergraduate degree came graduate school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And after graduate school came business school at USF's McLaren School of Business and Management. I now took school more seriously, which surprised even me. I was more interested in climbing corporate ladders than mountains.

Julie and I remained together through college. After Pary's death, our commitment to each other strengthened, and there was no breaking the bond. She moved back to California upon completing her degree, and we got married shortly thereafter. We settled happily in the city we loved, San Francisco, and life was cozy. I began rising up the ranks in the marketing department of a major health-care company, making decent money and living the idyllic yuppie lifestyle.

The past slowly melted away. I tried not to think about anything beyond the immediate. For the moment, I was content—at least as far as I could tell.

As the years rolled by, however, the job pressures began to mount, and the car payments and hefty mortgage didn't help. Suddenly, work was stressing me out. The long hours and the travel were becoming mundane. At first it was glamorous, but somewhere among all the meetings, dinners, and cocktail receptions, I became aware of an inner hollowness. Something was missing in my life.

Work wasn't providing the satisfaction that I had always thought it would. So what if I had an MBA and was pulling in six figures a year? There was an emptiness that my career didn't fulfill. I began to secretly long to fill this void, even though I wasn't sure what it was or how it could be filled.

One day, as my thirtieth birthday approached, a call at my desk shook me from one of my increasingly frequent daydreams.

“Dean, Dr. Naish here.” Naish was the CEO of a large potential client that I'd been pitching for months. “The board has had the opportunity to deliberate, and I am happy to inform you that you've been awarded the contract.”

I silently pumped my fist in the air.

“We're looking forward to doing business with you folks,” Naish continued. “I'll have my admin set up a meeting for later this week.”

“
Right on!”
I shouted when we'd hung up. This was a contract my company wanted badly. The news would be celebrated. I called my boss to give him the good word.

“Yes!”
he yelled into the receiver. I could hear him punching numbers into his calculator. “You know how big your commission check is going to be?!”

With a sudden sense of deflation, I realized that I didn't care. My check might be big, but it seemed that the toll the job was taking on me was even bigger. Every day I'd field dozens of urgent voicemail messages and dozens more e-mails. Managing all of that incoming noise was nearly impossible. At some point the clamor had begun to manage me. Now I just reacted to the events of the day, not setting my own course in any substantive way, not feeling any real sense of accomplishment. At first the money mattered, because I had never had any. But now that I'd managed to accumulate a modest stockpile, I realized there had to be more to life than continually trying to bolster those reserves.