Running on Empty

by Marshall Ulrich

  I laid it all on the line. At the end of my e-mail, I revealed my thoughts about challenging the record:. . . That would involve running at least sixty-eight miles per day (or more) for a forty-four-day finish. The old record is sixty-seven miles per day for forty-six days. Publicly, I would say I’m going for the Grand Masters (over fifty years old) men’s record of sixty-four days, completing forty-five miles a day. Confidentially, I would be going for the overall record——at least giving it a shot. . . .

  I realize that it would be a huge effort, and I don’t take this lightly. What you guys are doing is unbelievable——keep it up!!!

  Marsh

  Calling a transcontinental run a “huge effort” wasn’t hyperbole. If anything, I was underplaying it. This would be the biggest thing I’d ever done, the hardest, the longest, with the most potential for both injury and enlightenment, my magnum opus. At the time I wrote that note, I didn’t fully grasp the impending transformation, the personal revelations that would turn something I’d believed for my whole life upside down. How it would completely alter my sense of reality and relationships, my definitions of independence and self-reliance. How the distance would chastise my body and the experience would scald my soul.

  But I wouldn’t fully understand that until later, during the run. What I did understand, even just contemplating this, was the intense effort it had taken Frank Giannino, who’d set the record with his second attempt in 1980 at the age of twenty-eight.

  When I’d contacted Frank, some months before I wrote to Ray and Charlie, and asked his advice about challenging his record, he had been encouraging and told me to go for it. He’d also admitted how difficult it was, during his first crossing in ’79 (coincidentally, the same year I started running), to start out with a friend, have that friend falter and drop out, and watch his crew disintegrate. It ruined the friendship, and he wasn’t satisfied with his finishing time.

  The next year, he’d come back with his mother, father, and brother to crew, run alone, and set the record on his own, completing the course in a little more than forty-six days. Frank counseled me to get into a routine as soon as possible, as I’d need to have small, consistent things to look forward to as I ran. He never said anything about how physically demanding the run would be. That was understood, a basic fact, an undeniable reality of what would come.

  I also understood there’d be no second chance for me: Unlike Frank, I didn’t have the youth, the money, or the heart to put my family through this ordeal twice. As with Everest, I was going to succeed, or fail, in one try.

  It took Ray a while to get back to me. He and Charlie were busy putting in forty-mile days across the largest desert in the world. But when I heard from him, Ray’s news was positive. Yes, Charlie was interested. In fact, Charlie decided later that he’d like to attempt the run with me, to take his own crack at the transcon record set in 1980.

  Would I like some company on the road?

  Sure, I said. Let’s do this thing.

  We’d have to map out a course, sticking to legal pedestrian roads, per the Guinness World Record guidelines, choosing the most direct, legal route. We’d both need to recruit our own crews, two separate groups of people who’d take care of us on the way. We’d have to secure some vehicles, product sponsors, and financial backing. We’d have to train. Hard.

  It was all coming together: Charlie was on board and would pitch my idea to his movie contacts, plus he thought that a documentary would help attract sponsors. A race director and close friend of mine had offered to underwrite the run, so we just had to go and meet with her to see how she felt about a two-man attempt on the record and get her blessing to proceed.

  One hitch: After the three of us met in New York, she told me that although she was still willing to finance the run, and she could see great reasons to do a two-man race, she didn’t like my choice of running mate. To be blunt, she couldn’t stand Charlie, didn’t trust him, and didn’t think much of his résumé.

  She had good instincts, but I thought she was wrong about him. Sure, he was less experienced than I, but he was also a tough competitor and I’d watched him keep a sense of humor under some tense circumstances during the adventure races we’d done together. Yes, he could be volatile: I’d seen him blow up before. When we’d climbed Denali together, I’d been clipped to a steep-incline rope above him and our guide, Gary Scott, when the two of them got into a heated argument over I don’t remember what. That had been unnerving, and I’d wondered if they were going to start punching each other out while we all dangled there. Thank God they didn’t. And true, Charlie had hollered at me on the phone once, angry when I’d told him it was time to pay back some money he owed me, threatening to kick my ass or beat the shit out of me (one or the other) the next time we crossed paths. He just didn’t like to be called on his bad behavior. And sure, there were . . . other times, other trivial arguments, other things that showed me that Charlie could be a powder keg. But I felt sure I could handle whatever might come up. Under all that bluster, I believed, was a good guy who had what it would take to run across the country. He also brought a lot to the table with his media and sponsorship contacts.

  We would have to find a different backer. I couldn’t, in good conscience, take my friend’s money when she didn’t feel a hundred percent confident in the venture. Besides, I was squeamish about putting her personal funds at risk. What if something went sideways and it ruined our friendship? Not worth it.

  By then, it seemed chances were good that Charlie could come through with a viable documentary deal, get us involved with producers who would make a film that could fulfill my grandiose vision. And with the right production company, we could pursue big-name sponsors and serious money. That was a better plan all around—less risk—so I thanked my friend profusely for her offer, and then explained that she wouldn’t have to put even one cent of her own cash on the line.

  “Don’t worry. I’m still going to run across the country.”

  There was one more problem, though. In passing, I mentioned my brewing plans to Heather, who shot me a pained look. Usually supportive of my exploits, she nonetheless rejected this idea.

  “What?! You never told me about this . . . no. No, no, no. You can’t.”

  She knew the price Everest had exacted—temporary cognitive problems and permanently impaired concentration—and worried that a run of this magnitude would be like that multiplied many times over. The numbers were dizzying, unimaginable: 3,063 miles, 117 marathons back to back over more than 40 consecutive days of running. The farthest I’d ever gone was for the Badwater Quad, nearly six hundred miles that took me more than ten days and pushed me to my limits mentally, emotionally, and physically. This would exceed five times that distance and grow exponentially more difficult as we neared the end. Any suffering I’d experienced in my earlier pursuits, including Everest and the Badwater Quad, would seem transient and insignificant by comparison. She also knew my history, including how my compulsion to keep going farther had contributed to the demise of my second marriage and still affected my relationships with all three of my children, Elaine, Taylor, and Ali. Extreme sports had been a wedge between my family and me, and it looked as if I was going to repeat that pattern all over again.

  She fought me for a year. As plans progressed, she fought harder. She didn’t understand why I was still so compelled to do this, and she wasn’t buying any of what she called my “bullshit reasons.” She fought me right up until about two weeks before we were supposed to go to the San Francisco starting line, and then she finally acknowledged the inevitable: I was going to traverse the United States, from San Francisco to New York City, on my own two legs. Starting in mid-September, I’d begin to run the equivalent of more than two marathons and a 10K every day, chasing autumn from west to east for at least six weeks.

  3.

  It’s Just Who I Am

  Some people find my feet fascinating because I have no toenails. Magazine and newspaper folk have interviewed me about them
and photographed my toes, which friends have described as little bald-headed men, or ten nursing piglets. Why, reporters always ask, would a man go so far as to have his toenails surgically removed? What kind of person alters his anatomy for sport?

  Look, the toenails are the least of it. The kind of sacrifices you make when you’re running hundreds of miles are considerably more profound than whether you’ll ever get a proper pedicure again. But I understand the freak-show quality of my feet. It’s like the Everest mountaineers’ blackened, frozen fingers that mesmerized me years ago: It symbolizes something, says something about a person’s commitment. What that something is—unlimited human potential and extraordinary daring, or something darker, like madness and obsession—seems a mystery.

  The real sacrifices? Family relationships often suffer in the ultrarunning community; clearly, mine are no exception. The time away from home, the solitariness, the stubborn self-reliance all take their toll. Marriages are ruined, children alienated. During the races themselves, people battle dehydration, salt loss, sleep deprivation, blisters that make the most hardened athletes buckle, trashed knees, pulled hamstrings, acute tendonitis, and more. In the face of all this pain, ultrarunners also tend to develop a morbid sense of humor. Dr. Ben Jones used to bring a coffin, fill it with ice, and submerge himself to cool off during the Badwater Ultramarathon. (Ben is a coroner, but still.) Actually, it’s rare for someone to die doing this sport, but it’s not at all rare to want to. Once, I asked a physician friend of mine, a cardiologist, if a person could run himself to death—I wanted to know how hard I could push myself. No, he told me. Your body is smarter than you are and will “put you down” first, meaning you’ll drop from dehydration, or pass out or something, before you can run yourself to death.

  Why do we go the distance? Is it a cult? An addiction? Some kind of penance? Do we have something to prove? What do we get out of it? The answers to these questions are nearly as individual as the runners themselves. Charlie Engle, for example, would say yes, it’s like an addiction—he traded cocaine and alcohol for competition. Ray Zahab would tell you that he started running for his health, dropped a pack-a-day smoking habit, and then got hooked by the personal discovery that comes from covering long distances in exotic lands, and finding opportunities to connect with and contribute to people from different cultures.

  As for me, sure, there’s an underlying compulsion: survivor’s guilt and a need to punish myself, to prove myself, to face down my own mortality, to defy death. But my running is also a reflection of my upbringing, a work ethic, a personal challenge. My love of history gets interwoven, too—the feats of other people in other times—coupled with the alluring possibility that I might be able to go farther, faster, today.

  In the fall of 2007, I began training for the transcon and reaching out to friends in the running community to ask them to crew for me. Charlie and I had decided to make our record attempt in the spring of 2008 and were also working out the details of the route, securing funding, and seeking sponsorship. A few of my longtime supporters came on board, most notably ENGO/Tamarack Habilitation, the company that makes ENGO blister patches, which provided both products and money for the run; as well as GoLite, Injinji, LEKI, Pacific Outdoor Equipment, Pearl Izumi, Sportslick, and Zensah—all of whom stocked us up with most of my favorite gear.

  Charlie came through in a big way. He signed us a documentary deal (he became one of the producers, too) for the transcontinental run. The production company—NEHST, the same folks who’d bought distribution rights for Running the Sahara—decided to title the film Running America. This was huge, as NEHST helped promote the event with a Running America ’08 website, which they launched in July 2008, and no doubt the documentary did help attract additional big-name corporate sponsorship. NEHST would manage the finances for this twomonth adventure, taking receipt of sponsorship money and establishing a budget for everything from hiring the filmmakers to feeding us to providing us with two RVs (a place to cook, sleep, have medical care, and house off-duty crew), as well as two vans, one for each crew to stock and drive.

  The crews would be paid little and work hard, staying within a mile of their runners on the road. Charlie and I might start out together, but we were sure to get separated, due to varying paces, possible injuries, and any other obstacles each of us might face on our own. So we’d need at least four or five people to staff each crew: one to drive each runner’s RV, which would be stationed for long stops, where we’d need a kitchen and a place to sleep; one to drive each runner’s crew van, which would go a mile ahead of the runner, stop, and prepare to meet him as he passed to deliver whatever he needed (from food and drink to encouragement and changes of clothing), then do it all over again, every mile of the way; plus one or two more for medical support and miscellaneous duties. NEHST would take care of feeding and providing lodging for these folks, and pay their small stipend.

  Among the sponsors Charlie and the producers secured were Super 8, which would provide some funds and hotel rooms for the production crew (and for us and our own crews, if we ever desired); VQ OrthoCare, who’d make a huge financial contribution and supply both equipment and a representative from the company to assist during the run; AXA Equitable, which would give funding and arranged to have its logo “wrapped” on one of the RVs; Vita-Mix and Crocs, both of whom would give us money and products to use on the road; plus Spin Vox, Champs, and SPOT, who’d give us products and services. We had a stellar lineup of sponsors and underwriting.

  But all of that didn’t come together before the spring start date, so it was postponed from March to May, and then again to August. Finally, everything was set up for September 2008, so it turned out that we had about a year to train for this event. Early on, I consulted with Ray, asking him to give me the benefit of his experience with having just run thousands of miles to help me get ready for my own cross-country journey. We talked about how the surface would make running America particularly challenging. We’d be on pavement, and the pounding would surely take its toll. But the biggest physical challenge, and Ray understood this better than most anyone else, would be the high daily mileage. We’d be attempting to log seventy miles—essentially two and a half marathons—every day, for well over forty days. (He also, gently, questioned whether Charlie was the right man to attempt this with me. He didn’t tell me about it, but I suspected something had happened out in the desert that had left a bad taste in Ray’s mouth. I assured him that I knew how Charlie could be, but that I also felt confident I could handle whatever might set him off, plus I respected Charlie as one of the toughest athletes we knew.)

  In the training schedule Ray devised, he demanded of me a kind of rigor that suited my body type: sturdy, strong, compact, “a tank,” some say. It was also made to capitalize on my many years of experience with extreme endurance sports, and to help me adapt to the particular demands of running across the country, mostly on asphalt and concrete. Specifically, the schedule was designed to improve my agility and occasionally give me a break from the pavement with trail running, my core strength using tire drags and cross-training, my leg strength with hill repeats, my speed with tempo runs, my endurance with long runs and multiple runs in a day, as well as long runs, back to back, on consecutive days. We would also further train my digestive system to accept food every mile, a few mouthfuls at a time. At my peak volume, I was running up to two hundred miles per week, a mixed bag of long runs, peak runs, strength training, and cross-training.

  I had my moments of doubt. Ray’s schedule taxed me, took me to my physical and mental limits over and over again. At the end of 2007, as a training exercise, I participated in a seventy-two-hour run with the goal of completing seventy miles a day for three consecutive days, the same daily mileage we hoped to cover once we began the “real” event in California. About ten hours into the first day of the race, as I circled the looped course, I was right on schedule with more than fifty miles behind me, when I began to question myself. Why am I doing this? What’s
the purpose? Do I really want to be here? This is incredibly hard, and I don’t want to be out here for another sixty-two hours.

  I’d had enough.

  I quit.

  When I told Heather that I was through, that I was done with the whole endeavor—forget this race, this insane training schedule, and running across America—she didn’t believe me, however much she may have hoped it was true. Quitting was out of character, out of the blue. But, I insisted, I’d been thinking about it for a full hour before I stopped. I wasn’t ready to carry this burden.

  Everyone goes through these periods, not just in athletic pursuits but also in life, and we all find our way through them somehow, even if they last longer than we want. We call on our friends. We lean on our spouses and ask them not to worry too much. Ultimately, we suck it up and start talking ourselves out of whatever tailspin we’ve been in. It took me a good month to get over it, to regain my confidence and motivation after quitting; it took the people I love counseling me to accept what I was going through and give myself permission to let it be; it took one of my closest friends telling me that it didn’t matter if I never ran another step and that everyone loved me for myself, even without the running; it took my coach, Ray, telling me that it would pass and not to force it.