One thing I did know for sure was that I’d run a hell of a long way that night of my 30th birthday. Not only had I locked strides with Pheidippides, I’d outpaced him, not stopping at the marathon distance but continuing onward to the 30-mile mark. Never had I heard of anyone running beyond a marathon, and I theorized that perhaps this was the farthest anyone had ever gone.
Until I met two men who were planning on going farther.
6
BEYOND
The Latin prefix ultra means “beyond.” For instance, the term ultraviolet means light rays beyond violet. Ultrasonic means sound frequencies beyond sonic. It follows, then, that the term ultramarathon means a distance beyond a marathon.
This term hadn’t existed in my lexicon prior to a chance encounter with two extraordinary individuals I ran into, quite literally, on a run. I should clarify—two individuals who passed me on a run. I wasn’t used to being passed, but thankfully the duo stopped ahead of me (to do a round of pushups, no less).
They weren’t a talkative pair, but eventually I was able to get some information out of them. Basic information. They were training for a race. A running race. A long-distance running race. A 50-mile long-distance running race.
Wait, 50 miles? Did I hear that right? I must have heard something wrong.
“How many days does the race last?” I asked.
No response.
“Is it, like, camping, where you hike during the day and sleep at night?”
Still no response.
“Are there hotels along the way, and supermarkets?”
Finally, a response: “Look, man, you just run.”
“Yeah, but I mean how far each day? How many miles do you cover each day?”
He looked at me as though I were joking.
“What, does it take more than a few days?” I questioned.
“Buddy, the gun goes off and you start running. You stop running when you cross the finish line.”
With that they both jumped to their feet and bolted off down the pathway, leaving me in a cloud of dust.
My cerebral circuitry was instantaneously overloaded. Breakers tripped, sparks flew, live wires dangled precariously. My mind had been blown. There existed a race longer than a marathon, apparently. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of running 50 continuous miles—nearly two marathons back-to-back—but that is precisely what they said they’d be doing. I didn’t like driving 50 miles; how was it possible for a human to cover such a distance on foot? I stood there transfixed, rubbing my temples and trying to make some sense of it all.
But another side of me was intrigued and, dare I say, enthralled. I wanted to try.
And so I did. And I lived. The aftermath wasn’t pretty, but I managed to accomplish something I’d previously thought impossible.
It got more interesting from there. Training and life became inseparable, one and the same, intimately intertwined. My running shoes traveled with me wherever I went. Sometimes I would run a marathon before breakfast, and then run 10 or 12 miles that afternoon. On the weekends I could run for 8 or 10 hours a day. Training became life, and life became training.
After the 50-mile race I learned of a 100-mile run, nearly four marathons in a row! And the course wasn’t held along some level stretch of pathway but on a grueling single-track trail cutting a swath across the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range.1 The idea of covering 100 miles on foot was so expansive to me that it absolutely obliterated all preconceived notions of what was, and wasn’t, possible. The limits of human capability were completely redefined, and nothing seemed out of reach any longer, in running or in life.
And so I went for it. After completing the 100-mile footrace I tackled a 135-mile race across Death Valley, in the middle of summer.2 Upon finishing that beast it was on to something bigger, longer. But what? I couldn’t find a footrace beyond 135 miles. So I signed up for a 199-mile, 12-person relay race, solo.3 The race director must have found it odd that all 12 people on my team were named Dean Karnazes.
Running these long distances was liberating. Others might have found it daunting and intimidating, and it was on some level, but it was also a means by which to set the body free and unbind the spirit. Vanished are the pittances and mundane trivialities of everyday living when one is engaged in an all-engrossing test of physical and mental fortitude. Nothing else matters much when you are in the grips of great pain, struggling to somehow persist and continue forging onward against staggering odds. These endeavors would temporarily ruin my body but cleanse my soul. My spirit would be awakened, and I would be left in a state of higher being, the dismantled fragments of my essence eventually reconstituting into a better version of myself.
I began tackling ultramarathons across the country. The hills of Vermont, the Rockies of Colorado, the deserts of Sonora—soon there was a race in my calendar nearly every month of the year.
Yet I wasn’t naïve. The lights still needed to go on, and food still needed to get on the table. Such were the realities of 20th-century living. I had a family now, and being a responsible provider was important to me, most important to me.
People speak of finding balance. To me, that’s a misplaced ambition. If you have balance, you do everything okay. But to excel at your craft, you need obsessive, unbridled fanaticism. Not only does excellence require such commitment, it demands it. A life worth living is frenetic, disjointed, breakneck, and quite fantastic. Balance doesn’t lead to happiness—impassioned dedication to one’s life purpose does.
Some might say that this is the price one must pay for high achievement. But with all the high achievers I’ve ever met, none of them speak of such a toll. Instead, they talk of boundless energy and infinite vigor that crosses into every element of their lives. The only time I hear people speak of dreary, exhaustive drudgery is when their daily work is misaligned with their life’s calling.
I know this because that’s precisely where my life was stuck. I loved running, but I still had a corporate job. Perhaps serendipitously, that was right when some representatives from the outdoor clothing manufacturer The North Face approached me. The setting seemed odd, though strangely appropriate. It was one o’clock in the morning, and I’d just finished running a 100-mile footrace through the mountains.
“We’d like to design a line of footwear for trail running,” they said, “and we’re wondering if you’d be interested in getting involved.”
It was an intriguing proposition, but it meant I’d need to moonlight from my existing career, the one that paid the bills. I thanked them for their offer and told them I needed to think about it for a while. I took five steps toward the showers, then turned back.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”
Despite being exhausted from running an ultramarathon, I didn’t sleep much that night. Although it was just a small opportunity and wouldn’t pay much, it represented something much bigger. The notion that change takes time is fanciful. Change happens in a flash. The underlying magma may have been heating for a while, but when a well-timed counterforce disrupts the system, change erupts instantaneously, like a volcano, and suddenly nothing is ever the same.
Here was an opportunity for me to potentially transition out of my corporate job into something I loved. Sure, it would take a lot of work and creativity to make ends meet. But if not now, when? It was time to act, and it was time to act decisively.
The North Face wasn’t known as a running shoe company. Nike, Adidas, and Asics made running shoes. But when I thought about it further, it made sense. What an ultramarathoner does is nothing like running around in circles on a flat, oval 400-meter track. We ran over mountains and through valleys, forging rivers and rocks on rugged, back-country terrain. It was perfectly logical for a company like The North Face to design footwear for such a setting. After all, making the very best performance gear for the great outdoors was the heritage upon which the company was built. I was hooked. Somehow I believed this opportunity with The North Face could provide a stepping-
stone to a more fulfilling life. It was just the beginning, and I’d have to figure out other ways to supplement earnings, but I knew that if I didn’t pursue this opportunity, I’d spend the rest of my life regretting my decision. This was my lucky break, my shot at forever.
I’ll never forget walking into our kitchen one morning and announcing to my wife that I was resigning from my job, which was a terrifying proposition. I’d be walking away from a dependable paycheck, a 401 (k) matching program, stock options, health-care coverage for our family, and a company car. How would she take such information?
She looked at me and said, “I wondered what took you so long.”
I never looked back. We can either follow rules or follow dreams, and I went with the latter. Hundred-mile footraces became commonplace. Extreme races in extreme places, like the Sahara, Namibia, Antarctica, Patagonia, and the Atacama Desert, were tackled. No challenge seemed impossible, and I spent the better part of a decade pursuing every imaginable physical conquest on earth with never-say-die intensity.
Yet few of these races, despite their allure, adventure, and prestige, offered any cash purse. Even those champions I admired most in the sport had a hard time sustaining a career as an ultramarathoner. Ultramarathoning was something few people knew even existed, as previously I hadn’t myself.
My intention in making this life-altering choice to join the ranks of ultramarathoners was not to shirk my responsibilities as a provider for my family, so I knew there would have to be more than just running if I were to make a legitimate go of it. Just because I could run great distances didn’t mean the landlord was going to pardon the rent. My mission was to never yield, to be polytlas (long-enduring), somehow figuring out a way to make a stable ongoing living while pursuing this lifestyle along the fringes. To do that, I would need to be polymetis (resourceful) and look for every available option to support this unconventional vocation. Pheidippides may have been able to rely solely on his legs, but that was 2,500 years ago. Besides, I thought, he only ran a measly marathon, a mere pittance of the mileage I was accruing these days.
Boy, did I get that one wrong.
* * *
1 The Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run
2 The Badwater Ultramarathon
3 The Golden Gate Relay, Northern California
7
SPARE THE HORSES
Many runners are familiar with the story surrounding the origins of the modern marathon. As the well-worn legend goes, after the badly outnumbered Greeks somehow managed to drive back the Persians who had invaded the coastal plains of Marathon, an Athenian messenger named Pheidippides was dispatched from the battlefield to Athens to deliver news of Greek victory. After running 26.2 miles to the Acropolis, he burst into the chambers and gallantly hailed his countrymen with, “Nike! Nike! Nenikekamen!” (Victory! Victory! Rejoice, we conquer!). It was a glorious moment of celebration for all of humanity, and then he promptly collapsed from exhaustion and died.
It is an endearing story of perseverance and human triumph that serves to make every runner proud. Turns out, however, the story is bigger than that. Much bigger.
When I began to uncover the reality of what actually transpired, the truth didn’t so much set me free as drive me nuts. Had we runners had the proverbial loincloth pulled over our eyes for all these years? We’d been brainwashed into believing that the marathon stood for the ultimate test of endurance, but there seemed more to it than that. So I resolved to learn what really took place with Pheidippides out there in the hillsides of ancient Greece.
To help sort matters out, I turned to one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Cambridge University Professor of Greek Culture Dr. Paul Cartledge. Never had I met a man who possessed such encyclopedic knowledge. Author of innumerable books and research papers on the topic, Professor Cartledge was a wealth of information and knowledge beyond anything contained in the history books because he gave the story a richness of context and setting that no sterile historical record could possibly provide.
Being British, a witty sense of humor accompanied his intellectual vastness. For starters, Dr. Cartledge preferred to reference Pheidippides by the aristocratic Athenian name of Philippides, the literal interpretation being “spare the horses” (seemingly because a trained hemerodromos could outrun a horse and thus preserve the poor creature’s legs for less arduous tasks). However, frequently his tongue-in-check references cunningly revealed deeper insight, in this particular instance helping to explain why the Greeks dispatched messengers on foot rather than on horseback. Turns out that in the mountainous terrain of Greece, a trained hemerodromos could quite literally outrun a horse.
As we paced through the annals of history, the account of Marathon that began to emerge was something far more complex and mysterious than a simple 26.2-mile amble from the battlefield to Athens. And to tell the whole story we must step back in time, a long way back, to ancient Greek mythology.
Starting with the Dialogi Deorum (Dialogues of the Gods), ancient Hellenic storyteller Lucian tells of the heavenly messenger Hermes protesting to his mother, Maia, that in his role as hemerodromos he must carry his father Zeus’s messages high and low, and when he returns, he hasn’t even time to wash the dust off and tidy up before going out again. Having just gotten back from seeing Cadmus’s daughter at Sidon, he hardly catches his breath before dashing off to Argos to check on Danae, and from there he must run directly to Boeotia to see Antiope, though he is tired out already. So many women, so many miles, so little pleasure!
While this type of droll banter between the Gods is commonplace in Greek mythology, what is telling in this particular instance is that there is the mythical reference to the job of a hemerodromos in an era predating time. Hermes’s gripe conveys the fact that hemerodromoi undertook demanding work that required inexhaustible endurance and great sacrifice. Hermes was something of a charmer, yet in his capacity as a hemerodromos he had sparse time to pretty himself between runs, nor was he afforded the luxury of being able to enjoy the women he visited during his tour of duty. Such tireless and unrewarded work this being a hemerodromos was!
While this reference to the hemerodromoi—day-long runners—existed in ancient Greek mythology, it is somewhat paradoxical that the modern Olympic Marathon, the one sports enthusiasts identify with ancient Greece, is one that had no place in the ancient Greek Games at all. Indeed, the modern marathon race, which attracts millions of runners worldwide every year, wouldn’t even come into existence for another several thousand years. It is part of Greek lore, but not part of the original Olympic Games. In Greece, things aren’t always as they seem, and perception isn’t always reality.
To understand why such a paradox exists, we must visit ancient Olympia and examine the way Greek society was evolving. Throughout much of recorded history, the Greeks placed great value on physical fitness and sport, and in 776 BCE the inaugural Olympic Games were organized. Initially referred to as the Crown Games—owing to the fact that the prize for participation was a simple crown of laurel or olive leaves—athletes competed in them for the pure glory and love of sport. All male citizens were encouraged to take part; what mattered most was that one got in the game. O TOΛMΩN NIKA, the Greeks say (Who dares wins).
Although universal participation was the goal, overall performance still mattered. All contestants were essentially amateur athletes and competed on equal footing. But being one’s best was important. The Greeks had a word for this, aristeia (“bestness” or personal excellence). So the citizen-athletes always gave their maximum effort.
As is the case with much lore, the romanticized view of the athletes of ancient Greece voluntarily competing naked to preserve the purity of sport is charming, though the genesis of this practice is a bit less altruistic. The reality stems from the 720 BCE Games in Olympia in which the sprinter Orhippos lost his loincloth during the championship footrace and didn’t want to slow down to pull it back up. So he proceeded short-less and won the race. After this remar
kable victory, others adopted the practice, thinking that running in the buff offered a strategic advantage because the legs were left unencumbered and thus able to fully stride without meeting resistance.
Eventually the Greek leaders began to notice that when men competed naked, all were equal, regardless of social status or background. They deemed this a good thing, and the practice of competing unclothed was widely promoted. Soon, athletes in every discipline were competing in the nude. Sports were the great neutralizer that rose above petty differences and trite disparities, thus elevating athletes to a higher plane, one that was beyond blithe trivialities and class differentiation. The symbolic act of removing one’s clothing denuded a man of his pretentions and ego and stripped away prejudices and stereotypes, effectively eliminating social stratification. Athletes entered the arena as equals. Sports played a central role in the democratization of society, as there is no socioeconomic leveler like public nakedness. Imagine that: The pillars of democracy were founded by a guy who lost his shorts during a run.
Because of this willingness to appear naked before others, a trend of cultivating and exhibiting the perfect physique emerged. Physical excellence was highly prized, and the constructs of the idealized athlete started to materialize. The Greeks believed that physical strength was the soul manifested through the body. Thus, having a strong body foretold of a pure soul. Men spent long hours engaged in strenuous exercise, sculpting their bodies and perfecting their craft even though they weren’t professional athletes, maintaining outside trades and professions all the while. Ironically, the only truly professional athletes were that class of citizens known as the day-long runners, hemerodromoi. But there was not an Olympic competition for this group of athletes, as no ultramarathons existed in ancient sport. What the hemerodromoi did was considered beyond competition, more akin to something sacred or an act of religion. Much is written about the training and preparation of Olympic athletes, and quite detailed accounts of the early Greek Games exist. Comparatively little is recorded of the mysterious hemerodromoi other than that they covered incredible distances on foot, over rocky and mountainous terrain, forgoing sleep if need be in carrying out their heroic duties as messengers of the people.
The Road to Sparta Page 4
