Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (16 page)

12. Battling Bug Boy

WESTERN STATES 100, 2000 AND 2001

If you could walk a mile in my shoes you’d be crazy too.

—
TUPAC SHAKUR

Winning felt great. Kicking ass—especially the asses of so many who had said I was doomed —was a sensation that all but the most spiritually evolved or brain-fried would enjoy. I had set a goal and achieved it. I had pushed myself to what I thought were the outer limits of my capabilities and then pushed farther—on a vegan diet. Being crowned a champion was good for both my mind and my soul. But it wasn’t enough.

I wanted to know more about that space between exhaustion and breaking. I wanted to know more about my body and my will. And I craved the joy and the peace that had filled me when I ran the game trails with Dusty, the quiet, sublime warmth that had enveloped me as the snow settled on the lonely snowmobile trails of the Great North. Besting competitors in a footrace was a thrill, and it was the goal toward which I had been bending the arc of my life. Winning had done wonders for my ego. But I wanted to lose myself, to connect with something larger. I had read enough Buddhist writings by then to realize that chasing a concrete goal was good, but it wasn’t the point. And the nuns taught us that blind ambition provided a clear path to dubious behavior, so I knew the answer to Jesus’ question, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?” The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life. I know all that now. I sensed it then.

But I was twenty-five years old, and I had just won
the oldest and most prestigious trail ultramarathon in the world!
I would continue to push myself, to study the limits of endurance, to seek transcendence. But for at least a little while, I would enjoy my status as champion.

It was a short little while. It lasted until I showed up for work at the Seattle Running Company. The store was the epicenter of the local (and later the entire Northwest and national) ultra scene. It was like the corner bar where all the punk rockers or skateboarders or cops hung out, except the people hanging out at the shop wore running shoes and swapped stories about electrolyte consumption.

“Congratulations,” a regular named Jeff Dean greeted me when I showed up after my victory. “You’re now officially a one-hit wonder.”

Jeff was 5'8'', stocky, with a beer belly. He wore thick glasses and talked with a little bit of a lisp. He must have been in his late forties or early fifties, but no one knew. He shuffled when he walked and he shuffled when he ran. He had such weird posture, he looked almost like a hunchback. He ran—or shuffled—7 miles downtown, and on the way he always looked for loose change. “It was a twenty-cent day,” he’d say. Or “It was a buck-thirty day.”

Jeff had run a 2:38 marathon years earlier, and that, plus his incredible knowledge about the history and legends of the sport, made him kind of a whacked-out sage in the running community. He was also the unofficial historian of ultras. He gave me two books by James Shapiro,
Ultramarathon
and
Meditations from the Breakdown Lane,
classics on not only the physical and mental dimensions of ultrarunning but the spiritual dimensions as well. Shapiro says, “If your mind is dirty you can run 10,000 miles, but where have you gotten? If you go for a 1-mile run and you’re passionately engaged with the world, who cares about the other 9,999?”

When Jeff said I was a “one-hit wonder,” I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.

I decided I was going to be far more than that. I wanted to win the Western States again, and not only for myself. Mike Morton, the navy diver who had inspired me, didn’t get to defend his title in ’98 because of an injury. He had broken the Californians’ stranglehold on the race and set a record. I wanted to show everyone that my victory hadn’t been a fluke, and I wanted to run as a tribute to the diver. Also, I wanted to break Morton’s record.

While I was preparing for another victory, I planned to make myself a more complete, mindful human being, more aware of the world around me, of myself, and even of the world I couldn’t see. That might sound weird, coming from a kid who grew up hunting and fishing and hating vegetables, but it was true.

First, I refined my training. Even though I didn’t exactly enjoy my earlier speed workouts, I added interval training to my program. Once a week I ran to the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium. I ran a mile—four laps—at 5K race pace on the state-of-the-art, rubberized track. Then I jogged easy for 3 minutes. Then I ran another hard mile. Then I rested again. I did 5 miles total.

Sometimes I ran in the early morning, between ROTC drills and cheerleader workouts. Sometimes I ran when the football team was practicing; other times in the early evening, when some track team members and other athletes were out. The stadium, which seated 70,000 people, was kind of surreal. I was running as fast as I could, and I was one of the slower people. A lot of them were college track stars. Others were local marathon hotshots.

The interval training not only built my confidence that I could, if necessary, pull away from my competitors, but it helped me focus on what was important. As the nineteen-year-old speed demons and the marathoning champs raced by me, I resisted chasing them. I knew that I wanted to defeat other runners, but in order to do so, I needed to measure my progress only against myself, not others.

When I started, I was clocking 5:25 to 5:30 miles. After two months, I was running them at 5:10. The last mile was always the most difficult. I would always run it the fastest.

I also refined my uphill running. Months of gutting it out on Mount Si and the Twelve Peaks route had helped, but Twietmeyer and Tough Tommy Nielson lived near mountains, too, and I suspected they would all be logging some mega distances for next year’s Western States.

So I focused on technique, and I refined the practice that Lance Armstrong and other cyclists had mastered. The trick to uphill racing wasn’t so much sheer force as it was turnover. In cycling, the smart (and fast) racer shifts into an easier gear when he hits inclines but maintains his pedal revolutions per minute. Mocked in mountain biking as a “granny gear,” that faster gear turned out to be the key to championships. So I looked for my own running “granny gear.” I found that by shortening my stride I could “spin,” maintaining the ideal turnover of 180 foot strikes a minute. Downhill, I lengthened my stride but stayed light on my feet, and I kept the same 180-footfalls-a-minute pace.

I loved the trails most of all—running away from civilization toward the natural world—but during the early season I started spending more time on the roads with Ian, who eventually moved to Seattle. He and I would go out twice a week for 20 to 30 miles, and we’d focus on hitting miles at a 6:20- to 6:45-minute-mile pace. There was something metric and reassuring about it. Although Ian couldn’t stand the fact that my heart rate was always five beats or more lower than his, we helped each other through those tough road miles. It felt so good to be running free and fast, pushing each other to hit that next mile on target. And when we finally made it back to my place, we reveled in the accomplishment of an honest morning’s work. I’d celebrate by making us a stack of my eight-grain blueberry pancakes with freshly ground grains or a gigantic skillet of tofu veggie scramble and Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted-grain toast—the perfect recovery food. Life was good and it was simple: hard-earned miles and delicious nourishment.

Running smarter and with more quality, I didn’t run as far. A lot of marathoners log 120 to 140 miles. I was doing 90 to 110.

I was used to attacking race courses, regarding steep ascents as obstacles to vanquish, endless trails as journeys to endure. In Seattle, I began taking a more holistic approach. I was reading more about posture and stabilization and core strength and about movement integration from the book
Running with the Whole Body,
one of the few books I could find on running technique. I hit the gym, working on my upper body, because I was beginning to realize how much a strong torso and arms could propel tired legs. I experimented with Pilates. I took up yoga for flexibility, body awareness, and centered focus.

I even tinkered with my breathing. I knew from reading
Spontaneous Healing
that mindful, deep breathing could help the body repair itself. And in yoga (which I struggled with until I understood that it was a practice, not a competition), I learned the concept of Pranayama (literally, “extension of the life force” breathing), which would help, not just my body, but my mind and emotions as well. I picked up a book called
Body, Mind, and Sport,
by John Douillard, and learned that breathing through the nose rather than the mouth lowers one’s heart rate and helps brain activity. A yogi announced in class that “the nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating.”

I experimented. I took easy, loping hour runs along Lake Washington. It was flat and damp, and the wind was blowing me sideways. I didn’t worry about speed or form. I focused only on breathing in and out through my nose. It was like when I was a kid, teaching myself to relax. I tried doing the same thing on runs that required more effort, and found it very difficult, especially climbing. But from my experimenting, I trained myself to breathe from my diaphragm, to “belly breathe,” rather than to breathe from my chest.

Finally, I tweaked my diet. Of all my stabs at self-improvement, this was the easiest, the most joyous.

I’d been vegan for a year, and Seattle was a perfect place to explore and expand the food I was eating. I made smoothies, searched the farmer’s markets and my local co-op for more fruits and vegetables. Even though I bought grains, beans, and seeds in bulk and attended member appreciation night once a month at Madison Market Co-op so I could save an additional 10 percent, I was spending more than I ever had on food. And I was fairly deep in credit card debt. While many people freaked out about the year 2000, I was secretly hoping for a Y2K crash to wipe out my debt. There are a lot of ways to live frugally. I know that better than anyone. But the fuel and medicine—the food—I put in my body was not the place to scrimp. My never-better vigor and well-being made the extra investment a no-brainer.

When I raced, I stuck with the usual healthy fare—bananas, potatoes, energy gels—and I added more rice burritos and occasional hummus wraps. I avoided the melons and the oranges often present at aid stations, because I realized that the acidity wasn’t so great for my stomach. And I hardly even looked at the junk food that was ubiquitous at those same stations—the M&M’s and jelly beans, the potato chips and cookies.

The better I ate, the better I felt. The better I felt, the more I ate. Since going vegan, I had lost a layer of fat—the layer that came with eating the cookies and cakes and Twinkies and cheese pizza that so many omnivores and even vegetarians gulp down. I learned that I could eat more, enjoy it more, and still get leaner than I had ever been in my life. When I went vegan, I started eating more whole grains and legumes, fruits and vegetables. My cheekbones seemed more pronounced, my face more chiseled. Muscles I didn’t even know I had popped out. I was eating more, losing weight, and gaining muscle—all on a vegan diet. My recovery times between workouts and races got even shorter. I wasn’t even sore the day after 50-mile races. I woke up with more energy every day. Fruit tasted sweeter, vegetables crunchier and more flavorful. I was doing short runs in the morning, working 8- to 10-hour days, then running 10 to 20 miles in the evening. I felt as if my concentration was improving every day.

To refine my approach to running—and eating and living—I read about and attempted to feel what was healthy and natural. I had the enormous advantage of Seattle’s vibe of organic and natural everything. I also had access to great experts and technology. In addition to working at the Seattle Running Company, I was working for Dr. Emily Cooper at Seattle Performance Medicine. Athletes would come to us, and we would analyze things like VO
₂
max levels and lactate thresholds, as well as discuss their dietary and nutritional habits.

The subject I was most interested in was myself.

In Dr. Cooper’s lab, I wore a mask and ran on a treadmill to measure my VO
₂
max levels and to estimate my lactate threshold. Sometimes I would take a mask and a portable machine to measure the same factors on trail runs and during intervals. Going hard up a climb, I’d hit 165, 170. On my interval workouts, going all out on the track, it would get up to 180, or about 95 percent, almost as hard as my body could work.

Dr. Cooper had me log foods, too, writing down everything I ate during the day and during a race. She entered all the food into her computer and did all kinds of calculations, and she was blown away.

“Wow,” she said after she checked and rechecked the numbers. “You’ve been doing things right the last few years.” She recognized immediately just how in tune with my body I was, how I had learned to listen to what it needed to run on “the edge.”

My targeted training made me a more efficient runner. My expanded diet made food taste better and my body work better. Together, they helped change my approach to life. Running with abandon and animal freedom was essential if I wanted to lose myself, to break into another dimension. But science was a way to get in touch with that animal freedom. My dog, Tonto, didn’t need to study to find his true nature. I did.

Dusty derided “the fast roadies” or road runners as “people who got up in the morning and counted all their teeth to make sure they were all there.” They were anal, he said, so compulsively worried about splits and pace and turnover that they forgot the exuberance of movement. But what I learned in Seattle was that technology and knowledge could help me get even closer to that exuberance, could help me get in touch with my intuition. I was trying to sense what was best for my body and mind—what I craved. But I didn’t have to rely on only my feeling. I could cross-check my progress against some hard metrics.