Ultramarathon Man (23 page)

As we ran, the Mother Ship pulled up alongside and my wife stuck her head out. “Can I take your order?”

“Why, yes. I'll have a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a side of trail mix.” I looked over at the kids. “Can I treat you guys to lunch?”

“Water would be good, Daddy. It's hot,” Nicholas panted. The sun was now directly overhead.

“Coming right up,” Julie replied.

We continued jogging along as our meal was prepared and delivered out the window. Casual as I probably looked, running along with my peanut butter sandwich and kids alongside me, I was hurting. Ninety-five miles of running comes at a price, even if you're in great shape. I did my best to put up a spirited front, but underneath it was an extreme concentration and focus. My mind was continuously scanning the systems, looking for potential points of vulnerability, searching for subtle signs of physiological weakness that could grow into major issues farther down the road. I was holding my heart rate within a consistent range to avert the development of lactic acid—I'd trained using a heart-rate monitor for so long that I could now pinpoint my heart rate intuitively. Meanwhile, my stride was forever being adjusted to distribute the load evenly to all muscle groups. And I was keeping close tabs on my electrolytes by frequently replacing lost sodium and potassium. One hundred and ninety-nine miles was the farthest I'd ever attempted to push my system. Attention to detail was critical. My body needed to operate perfectly to make it, so I monitored the controls tightly.

The kids jumped back in the Mother Ship as I began an ascent out of Sausalito. It was just a 225-foot climb, nothing major. That incline, however, combined with the heat, zapped me. My energy waned, and I found it difficult to keep the feet churning forward. I was hitting the wall.

Time is wildly distorted in these dark moments, and my entire world shrank to the space three feet in front of me. Nothing beyond that mattered. All thoughts were directed toward the seemingly impossible task of covering the next several steps. I've learned not to check my watch at such moments. Seconds turn to hours. You just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep pushing yourself onward. Either things will get better . . . or you'll black out on the pavement.

And this time, fortunately, things eventually did improve. The funk dissipated, the mood lifted. I'd broken through the wall.

Pulling out of the downward spiral, I found myself approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a delightfully cool breeze blowing across the expanse and the view was striking, the San Francisco skyline off to one side and the shimmering aquamarine Pacific on the other. My pace sharpened, and my arms began pumping more steadily. The pain was gone. At least for now.

—Winston Churchill

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge
marked the halfway point in the race. It had taken me nineteen hours and forty-four minutes to run here from Calistoga. Another 100 miles lay ahead, but I'd just take it one step at a time.

A small brigade of friends and co-workers were waiting to greet me at the other end of the bridge. They carried flowers and handmade signs that said things like RUN, FORREST, RUN!

That they'd taken time out of their day to greet some maniac on the road to self-annihilation really touched me. There were embraces and pecks on the cheek, even though I must have smelled like a moose after having run all night without a shower.

In the crowd were two co-workers, Valerie and Neil, who'd volunteered to run this next leg of the race with me.

“You guys good to go?” I asked as I trotted by.

“Yep, let's get after it,” Neil replied. The three of us started off, to cheers, hoots, and clapping from the small crowd.

“This is amazing,” Valerie commented as she ran beside me. “You look so fresh.”

“Well, I'm only halfway there. I'm sure things will deteriorate from this point on.”

“Have you talked with Libby's parents?” Neil asked.

“I'm going to run by the hospital tonight and visit them when I get to Stanford.”

A local TV station was taping a special segment on the story of me running for Libby, and a reporter had visited our office earlier in the week. Neil had watched the interview. Stanford Children's Hospital was along The Relay route, and the plan was for me to visit Libby while running by, presuming she was well enough to accept visitors.

We ambled along together steadily. My fund-raising tactics were straightforward. Besides soliciting straight-up contributions, I'd invited volunteers to run any portion of the 199 miles with me, at a buck per mile. Cable has pay-per-view; Karno devised pay-per-torture. Valerie and Neil would only run 8 miles with me, but they contributed a lot more than eight dollars (they made me promise that if they contributed more, they wouldn't
have
to run the additional miles).

My pal Scotty, who'd called from the bar the night before, chipped in a few extra dollars as well. He linked up with the three of us as we reached the San Francisco waterfront at Ocean Beach.

“I wasn't sure if you were going to make it,” I told him.

“You kidding? I wouldn't miss this for the world,” he replied.

“How's the hangover treating ya?”

“Hangover? That won't kick in for a few hours. I barely finished my last cocktail.”

I made the introductions, and the four of us ran south along the esplanade, telling stories and laughing along the way. It made the running almost effortless. At such moments I felt as though I could run forever. I'd just covered 105 miles, and the grand experiment to see how much farther I could make it had begun. Just as a race-car driver pushes his vehicle to the limit, or a pilot tests the “edge” in an experimental plane, I wanted to see how far I could go. What I now realize is that the way other people seek physical comfort and blissful well-being, I seek extremes. Why run 10 miles when you can run 100? Moderation bores me.

The obvious question I'm frequently asked: “Doesn't it hurt?”

“Yes,” I say. “But it's a good hurt.”

At points it's excruciating, but ultimately it's restorative. Not unlike electroshock therapy.

Still, most people can't imagine the levels of pain one endures running long distances. Most of us have run at some point in our lives and know how much it can hurt. And I'm here to tell you that it doesn't get any less painful the farther you go. Quite the contrary.

If running 10 miles hurts X bad, it might be tempting to think that running 50 miles might somehow hurt less than 5X bad. How else could someone put up with the pain? Truth is, running those 50 miles hurts more like 10X bad. Or worse. The pain at mile 40 is much worse than back at mile 30, which hurt a lot more than mile 20. Every step hurts worse than the last.

How can the human body withstand it? I like to tell people that my “biomechanics” are “genetically favorable” for running long distances. They scratch their heads and nod, even when they don't know what the heck I'm talking about. In truth, I don't, either. I have no idea if it's true. But people seem to need some explanation, because it doesn't seem fathomable to run for forty-eight hours straight.

There's really no mystery to what I do, however. It hurts me just as bad as anyone else. I've just learned an essential insight: your legs can only carry you so far. Running great distances is mostly done with your head . . . and, as Benner taught me twenty-five years ago, your heart. The human body is capable of amazing physical deeds. If we could just free ourselves from our perceived limitations and tap into our internal fire, the possibilities are endless.

My three companions kept up with me as far as Exchange 19, a relay point for team runners on the far side of Ocean Beach. Scotty invited Valerie and Neil back to the bar for celebratory Bloody Marys. I would have loved to join them, but I still had some unfinished business to attend to. We bid farewell, and once again I found myself alone on the open highway, the Mother Ship trailing not far behind.

The road turned inland, and the temperature began to soar. Making matters worse, the highway was heavily trafficked along this stretch, and a thick layer of exhaust clung to the road. Breathing in the noxious fumes was unbearable. Sweat oozed from every pore in my body; even my feet sloshed in my shoes. The mid-afternoon sun was becoming unforgiving.

Then, as if sensing my despair, the heavens parted, and an angel's hand reached out to me with a miraculous offering.

“Here, take it!” my wife hollered from the passenger window of the Mother Ship.

It was a bottle of Pedialyte. I downed the whole thing in seconds, and she handed out another.

Pedialyte is the secret sauce of electrolyte-replacement beverages. Designed for dehydrated children suffering with diarrhea and vomiting, it is the most effective isotonic sports drink known to humankind, the next level after Gatorade.

“Hey, Julie,” I yelled, “when do we get off this road?”

“It's a couple miles up,” she called out. “We'll meet you there.”

With much more Pedialyte, I hoped.

After 2 more miles, the course veered off the main highway and onto less-traveled suburban streets in the hills above the San Francisco airport. In the Mother Ship, my kids squealed with delight at the jets taking off and landing below. They could see it all through the big windows.

The Mother Ship was the ultimate crew vehicle, and my family was the ultimate crew. Mom handed me another peanut butter and honey sandwich out the door. Dad yelled out the window that I was looking strong.

“Don't slow on our behalf,” he coached. “You're on a record pace.”

Record pace?
What was the man talking about? I was just trying to get through this ordeal without self-destructing.

They pulled over and the kids jumped out.

“Daddy,” Alexandria called to me, “play with us.”

“Yeah,” Nicholas agreed. “Let's play baseball.”

“Okay,” I panted, “let's play catch.” And we ran down the road tossing a ball back and forth. A brief rest would have been nice, but playing with the kids was a better pick-me-up. I was always preaching to them, “Adventure happens the moment you step out your front door. Get outside and get going,” just as my mom had urged us kids when we were young.

Well, here we were, practicing what I preached. We didn't have to go to Nepal or Africa to find adventure. We could simply lace up our running shoes and embark on a mysterious and intriguing journey right from our house in the middle of San Francisco. We did it all the time, and the kids loved it. What Daddy was now doing seemed reasonable to them (hopefully). He was just stretching the boundaries a bit beyond Golden Gate Park.

After ten minutes, the oppressive heat got to them and they boarded the Mother Ship for solace. In kinder weather, they would have lasted much longer. My kids are in good shape, thankfully—though I'd never pushed them to become fanatical about their diet and exercise, fearing a backlash. I simply tried to set a good example. Luckily, it worked. They are both healthy eaters and physically active. Watching them bound into the Mother Ship, huffing and puffing after running and playing catch with me, my heart swelled with pride.

That upbeat mood carried me along nicely for about the next ten miles, but it ran out of gas by mile 130, and a bout of despair set in. Suddenly, nothing seemed to be going right, when hardly two hours ago the world was filled with promise. The sun was now sinking below the distant horizon, and I was running into a gathering gloom. I was alone, my family having stopped somewhere for dinner; where? I didn't know. The pain wasn't just confined to my legs any longer but had spread throughout my entire body. I plodded along in grief, barely able to lift my head. Twenty-eight hours of running can do that to you.

As the pain intensified and my mood sank deeper, once again I began asking myself
why
I was doing this. The explicit answer was to honor my commitment to Libby and her family, to help a little girl in need. My struggle to run 199 miles was nowhere close to what they were enduring. It was the least I could do to help.

Of course, there was more than altruism at work. My perverse curiosity to discover how far the human body could be pushed also drove me onward. How far could I go before crumbling? This 199-mile run was the ultimate test. The proving field.

Or was it the killing field? “The natural situation for man may well be at war,” Emerson wrote. Did I run because I needed to be at war with something? Or with myself? The highest form of competition is self-competition, and I was proving to be the cruelest of opponents, ruthlessly demanding more of myself, relentlessly doing battle with the road, with my own body, with my mind.

Pain was my weapon of choice.

Yet even in the midst of the tremendous punishment being dealt to my body, I absolutely thrived on the raw intensity of this moment. Beneath the feelings of hopelessness and despair, never have I felt so alive, despite—or perhaps because of—the pain.

The headlights of the Mother Ship approaching from behind shook me from this reverie. It was now almost completely dark out.

Julie spoke softly as they pulled alongside. “How's it going?”

“There have been high points, and there have been low points,” I puffed. “This is not a high point.”

She jumped out and started running alongside me. At my current pace, she really only needed to walk briskly to keep up. I could see the kids in their pajamas staring out the back window.