Life was not very complicated in the mind of a kid growing up in Burnsville, West Virginia, deep in the heart of Appalachia. We went to school, took care of our chores and for fun we rode through town on our bikes, feeling as proud as the grand marshal of a parade. We also passed the time by playing pickup basketball on the dirt courts, taking a dip in the swimming hole with my friends or hiking the hills around our home. As an only child, I was very fortunate to live in a community that had a lot of kids my same age to play with.
Most of those kids I grew up with also lived in similar situations as I did. Our fathers or stepfathers traveled away for the week to work. Jobs just weren’t that plentiful around home. A common job was laboring as a journeyman lineman, traveling to other counties or surrounding states to work on power lines. These union jobs often lasted several weeks to a few months at each location. In fact, some of my summer vacations were spent at these sites.
Back at home, our weekends were commonly spent helping our dads do labor around the house, such as chopping wood. I still have unpleasant memories of gripping the smooth wooden handle and struggling to lift the heavy head of the ax up over my slender shoulders, barely having enough strength and momentum to get the sharp edge of the ax to split the logs apart. It was not unusual for my stepdad, Roy, and I to cut wood all morning on Saturday and then spend most of the rest of the day in a local tavern. Our small town actually had so many taverns that you could step out of one and trip into another. I wasn’t the only underage youth tagging along to the bars, either. In fact, as kids, my friends and I learned to shoot pool in the local taverns.
My limited recreational time with my stepdad was also sometimes spent camping by the river and fishing into the night. Although those experiences were enjoyable, I always longed for more. That wasn’t the family atmosphere that I wanted to have, and I was determined that it wouldn’t be the family atmosphere of my home when I grew up and married. “When I become a father, I’m going to be a positive role model and spend quality time with my children,” I would often promise myself. My upbringing and relationship with Roy was far from terrible, but it was also far from ideal. I realize that we all must make sacrifices to some degree in order to take care of and provide for our families. I just did not want to replicate the experiences of my youth when I became a father. My mom and Roy ended up divorcing a couple of years after I left for the Marine Corps.
My mom was my shelter in the storm and we were very close as I grew up. When I was 4 years old we moved to West Virginia, to the same town where her family lived, after she divorced my adoptive father. Since I was an only child, my mom gave me her undivided attention as often as possible. My mom married Roy when I was 8, so that time spent with her during the four years between her marriages allowed us to build a very special bond, one which we continue to cherish to this day. When my mom got remarried, the excitement of having a father in my life again was tempered by the fact that he traveled away for work each week. That left a void in my life that I resented as I grew up.
I always felt like I had to live up to his expectations even when he wasn’t around. I would often worry about not having done something correctly or the way that he wanted it done, and I feared hearing about it all weekend. I often thought, “I wish he would have to work this weekend,” because I didn’t want to deal with my perceived failure again. I felt like I could never do anything right. And those constant feelings of falling short were factors in decisions I would make later in life, both good and bad.
I always felt as though I had to prove myself, whether it was taking the biggest risks among my group of friends when riding our bikes, being known as the hardest partier or proving how tough I could be by joining the Marine Corps. I was always driven by this notion that I had to prove to others I was better than they thought and that I could do things they didn’t think I could accomplish.
My mom, however, was one that I never felt like I had to prove myself to. She was always there for me, encouraging me, letting me know when I had disappointed her, but loving me through it all. Sure, there were times that I knew I let her down with decisions I made as a teenager, but she always pushed me to just be me. As I have raised my children now, her influence on me in that regard has helped me tremendously in loving my kids no matter what and always letting them know that I will always be there for them through the good times, disappointments and struggles. My mom, Brenda, continues to be supportive, having attended my first marathon in 2009 along with my stepdad, Alan. She was also a huge asset and a big part of my run across America.
Becoming a Military Man
I learned early on in my childhood that I was not destined to be a physically gifted athlete. I was usually the smallest child in my class, as well as one of the youngest. I graduated high school at a whopping 121 pounds, and all of about 5-foot-9. I played football in middle school, but due to the shrinking population of the area, our small school was only able to field enough players to conduct intramural scrimmages. My mom often tells a story about me running down the field on the kickoff coverage team and an opposing player literally running over me, knocking me down and causing me to roll backwards three times before I finally came to a stop. With my lack of size, getting knocked down on the gridiron was not uncommon, but every single time, I bounced right back up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that experience taught me to pick myself up and press on later in life, regardless of the situation.
Another sport I enjoyed playing was basketball. I had a pretty good jump shot, but I was small and my form was far from resembling the perfect stroke of fellow West Virginia native Jerry West. I looked like a shooter from an old western movie—I shot from the hip. I didn’t really have the strength to shoot a three-pointer from up high, using the proper shooting technique. And because my shots came from the waist, they unfortunately were easier for a defender to block.
Running was a sport that never crossed my mind, so I never joined the track and field team, and at the time, my high school didn’t have a cross country team. Most of my running was spent chasing after girls or doing the running man at high school dances. When we would play games at school that involved running, I was never the fastest. Running was just something that never really interested me.
Looking back, the cumulative experiences of my upbringing were catalysts for me making the wisest decision I made as a young man. During my senior year of high school, I was approached by a number of military recruiters at our school about joining the armed forces. I initially balked at the thought. The military didn’t seem like the right fit for me, but I also was not exactly positioning myself to be highly sought after by Ivy League universities. I maintained good grades but never really pushed myself that hard in the academic arena. I often found it easy to cram for a test, get a good grade and move on, but I never really applied myself to the best of my ability. I was more concerned with fitting in with the crowd, enjoying life and making the most of my teenage years. The only reason I took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) military acceptance test was because a number of my friends were taking it, and it got me out of classes that day at school. My academic aspirations at that time were to do just enough to skate by and spend the remainder of my time hanging out with my friends.
I started receiving phone calls from military recruiters before I ever saw my ASVAB test scores. The Navy was offering me the opportunity to hop on a submarine and join the nuke program. The Army and Air Force presented me with many different paths. But the one that piqued my curiosity the most was the Marine Corps. If I couldn’t prove myself on the gridiron or basketball court, maybe I could prove myself with the Marines, right? The thought of being a Marine—one of the few and proud—just sounded cool. They would toughen me up and help me grow into a real man. As an additional benefit, I would wind up with bulging muscles and a high-and-tight (the military version of the buzz cut) that would really impress everyone, especially the ladies. I loved their uniforms, the toughness they displayed and the fa
ct that my friends who were older and had joined the Marines were talked about around town like they were the baddest, toughest men on the planet.
Obviously, at that time in my life, I didn’t grasp the concept of what it meant to serve my country. I also had a misconception about how much the Marine Corps would change me physically. My uncle Butch McPherson had served in Vietnam in the Army, but he never talked much about his time in the service. Another uncle, Roger Clark, had been a machinist and cook in the Army National Guard, but I had no other points of reference as far as family members were concerned that could describe to me the military experience.
I had scored high enough on my ASVAB to set myself up for a guaranteed military occupation specialty, East Coast duty station and a signing bonus in the Marine Corps. What could be better for a teenager unsure of his next step in life? I didn’t want to go to college, and this was my ticket out of my small West Virginia hometown. My childhood dreams of seeing the world were about to come true. The world was my oyster, with three hots and a cot. I just needed to sign on the dotted line. The thought of finally getting away from the monotony of home, traveling the world and experiencing life outside the walls of the small state I had grown up in was very enticing to me. I would get to work on F/A-18 fighter jets known as Hornets, receive a paycheck every other week, have food and meals provided to me and experience life much different than the childhood I experienced. The opportunity was both exciting and scary.
A number of my high school classmates tried to talk some sense into me. “Are you crazy, Jamie? Why do you want to join the military, especially the Marines?” they questioned. “If you’re going to do it, at least join a different military branch. The Marines are just too demanding and you’re too small.” But at that point there was no changing my mind. I am very stubborn and always have been. That’s a trait that has pulled me through many dark nights of running, and through a lot of other challenges in my life.
My recruiter, Sergeant Bubby Sayer, had attended school in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with my cousin Darren Clark, who I looked up to as my big brother. As soon as he found that out, he reeled me in with stories of he and Darren growing up together, as they only lived a few miles from one another all through school. Going to recruiting meetings with Bubby and experiencing the atmosphere of being around other Marines was the coolest thing in the world to me at the time. And I do stress, at the time.
I stepped off the bus full of new Marine Corps recruits at about 3 a.m. on June 21, 1990. Even at that pre-dawn hour, the air was so thick and muggy that taking a deep breath was like trying to swallow a spoonful of peanut butter. We were “greeted” by a crazy Marine drill instructor screaming for all the riders to “get the hell off my bus and get onto my yellow footprints as fast as humanly possible.” Despite how fast we moved, it was never going to be fast enough to please this man who had his flat-brimmed hat (known as a smokey) pulled down so low that his piercing eyes were barely visible.
A few minutes earlier, we had driven through the dark of the night onto Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, across the only entrance and exit to the island, a place we would not leave for the next 13 weeks. If we hadn’t been awake when the driver pulled onto the island, we were certainly awakened by the deep, gravelly voice of the drill instructor, who I swear was put on this earth to make men pee themselves. Looking around at the other “boys” who exited the bus with me, I knew that I wasn’t the only one standing there wondering, “Can I go back home now?”
Just 17 days earlier, as I threw my cap into the air at my high school graduation, I really had no sense of what was to occur in my life less than three weeks later. I only knew I was excited that I was going to be a Marine—a part of an exclusive club of some of the toughest warriors on the planet. Here I stood now completely shell shocked. “This isn’t what I signed up for,” I thought. I had spent the better part of my 17 years knocking authority, doing just what I needed to get by and applying myself only when necessary. Now there was a drill instructor screaming in my ear that I am not getting off his bus and onto his yellow footprints fast enough, even though I had practically run over the other guys on the bus to get onto those yellow footprints. “What have I gotten myself into?” It would not be the last time in my life I would ask myself that question.
My Transformation
The next 13 weeks spent on Parris Island would shape me into someone I never thought I could become. I was able to push myself further than I ever imagined, in situations that I never pictured myself. Not only was I being shaped into someone different physically, I was also being strengthened mentally to handle things I had never previously faced. This idea of breaking me completely down from this roughneck, pushback kid that grew up thinking I was in control, then changing me into the man I would become in a little more than three months’ time was an amazing feat. Looking back on it now, it blows my mind that in what seems like such a short time period in my life I was molded into the man I have become today.
My transformation, however, was not easy. The first few weeks of boot camp were spent with only one thing on the mind of the drill instructors—breaking down the new recruits. The physical and mental stress was so severe and foreign in those first few days my cheeks didn’t have a reason to hit the toilet seat. Sleeping was not an option those first couple of days, either, and if you did happen to doze off, you were awakened by the sound of that gravelly voice barking in your ear.
Some of the most difficult times were spent on the quarter deck or in the sand pit. The quarter deck was an area near the instructors’ offices where you were physically ground down by being forced to do a flurry of push-ups, pull-ups and other forms of physical activity for several minutes non-stop. The sand pit, next to our barracks, was a place where we had to suffer the typical physical punishment, but we had to do it twice as hard and do it in sand. I still have vivid memories of our squad having to “double time it,” drop into a push-up position, and get back to our feet as quickly as possible. What made that even more difficult was when we had to do that while keeping our hands in our pockets. Try dropping into a push-up position with your hands in your pockets without getting a mouthful of sand. It’s not possible.
But I survived the physical and mental challenges and was actually named a squad leader for a short period of time. When in that position, when one of my guys got into trouble and was sent to the quarter deck or sand pit, I always went with him and endured the same punishment, not because I had to but because I wanted to display my support for my squad. It’s that similar type of support for your colleagues that I love so much about the endurance running community. Much like a military squadron, it’s a group that will put individual pursuits aside to lift you up when you’re struggling mentally or physically to finish an ultramarathon race.
A week before my graduation from boot camp, I was selected to “perform” on the quarter deck for incoming recruits in order to display just how miserable that punishment could be. It was an honor for me to be selected because it was affirmation to me that our drill instructors saw that toughness and ability in me. By the end of boot camp I had gone from a scrawny 121-pound kid to a tough, 146-pound man.
The character and characteristics I developed during those 13 weeks, however, proved to be good at times, and bad at others. I have been known to train, work, play and party hard. Channeling that passion into something positive and constructive has always been a struggle in my life. I can set a goal and selfishly reach for it, and do it with blinders on. I can get so focused on getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time possible that I have taken shortcuts when I should have thought things through better. Whether it’s been missing a detail in a project at work that caused an unnecessary delay or pushing myself beyond limits in life situations that have hurt others, I’ve not always made the smartest decisions.
Stubbornness is a trait that I am glad to carry with me most of the time, however, because it has helped push me through some
tough situations in life, whether it’s running a 100-mile race or not dropping behind in boot camp when I wanted to give up. One of the things that I often hear from ultramarathon runners is the fact that most of us share that simple trait of stubbornness. If channeled the right way, it will be something that will help us get through those moments in a race or training run when we feel like we can’t push any further.
Yet while being stubborn can be an asset to me during my training runs or races, ultramarathon running has also enabled me to learn how to dial back that stubbornness. I have had to learn to listen to my body a lot more, take into consideration the consequences of pushing through an injury, or even plan my training around an event as opposed to waking up and participating. I’ve had to learn to pull the reigns back instead of pushing through in certain situations, and I’ve learned that it’s a lot more difficult to do that than to simply plow ahead. I’ve only had a few minor injuries during my short running career, and I believe that they have remained minor due to the fact that I didn’t just push through. Far too often I’ve had conversations with runners who have had to take months off from training because something minor turned into a major issue because they pushed through in order to remain on a training regimen.
Yes, I’ve been pretty fortunate that I’ve been free of any major injuries, but I also think that’s attributed to my not starting distance running until such a later age in life. A number of runners and triathletes who I run with started doing distance races when they were older and did not experience the body breakdowns that so many people have had from pushing themselves so hard at younger ages. Maturity also helps. I think we become wiser in our physical endeavors, not willing to take chances for the sake of pride. I run races and choose events to see how far I can push myself and to run the race against the trail, not against others. I am convinced that is also why I enjoy running so much. I’ll never be the first person across the line in a lot of the ultramarathon events I participate in, but I know if I train properly and listen to my body and my crew that I will cross the finish line.
Freedom Run Page 2
