Running on Empty

by Marshall Ulrich

  We were in the grain belt, America’s breadbasket. Along Nebraska’s Highway 6, corn lined the road, the tall stalks providing privacy for quick bathroom breaks but not giving much of a shield against the wind, which was my new bane. Early on, it had been the heat and the dryness; we’d had a taste of rain and snow; and now came the wind, pushing at me and slowing me down, which affected the number of miles I could cover in a day. Occasionally, the air currents would come from behind and urge me forward. At those times, I’d imagine that the tailwinds carried the spirits of the four men who’d died the year before, Ted’s wisdom whispering in my ear, my dad’s strength buffeting my body down the road, Rory’s ebullience breathing new life into my steps, Chris’s adventurous spirit infusing my forward motion.

  Thinking about my goals and my ghosts, I was also reflecting on the people who’d crossed the country before me. Yes, there had been other contests, like the Bunion Derby. And other runners. Plus people who’d walked it and run it solo. Even before that, pioneers had moved across it with horses and wagons, on some of the very roads I was now traveling.

  WALKING ACROSS AMERICA BEFORE THE BUNIONEERS: TWO BOLD WOMEN AND AN “OLD” MAN

  Helga Estby (1860–1942)

  In 1893, the United States was in a panic. Speculative investing in railroads had caused overbuilding, and iffy railroad financing had resulted in bank failures, sending the country into a serious economic depression. (Sound familiar? Just substitute railroads for houses, and we saw a repeat of the same dynamic while I was running across America in 2008.) According to some sources, unemployment rates peaked in 1894 at about 18 percent, and the credit crunch affected people who’d never even been on a train, much less invested in the railroads.

  Helga Estby was one of these people caught up in the domino effect of the depression, in jeopardy of losing her home and descending into poverty. Recently arrived from Norway, she’d married her husband Ole (also from Norway) in 1876, and they’d farmed and were raising eight children together in Spokane County, Washington. By 1896, they’d fallen on hard times; Ole had injured himself and couldn’t work, and they couldn’t pay their mortgage or back taxes.

  That year, an anonymous sponsor offered $10,000 to any woman who could walk across America in seven months. It was a huge sum, comparable to about $200,000 today, and enough to save the family farm. So, desperate and defying the conventions of her time—women were supposed to be weak and in need of protection—Helga left home with her eldest daughter, eighteen-year-old Clara, and they became the first women to travel across the country without male company. In fact, they were the first people, men or women, to cross the United States on foot since the pioneers. Yet they were hardly “unprotected.” The women were packing: They were savvy country folk who knew the dangers of back roads, stayed alert to any trouble, and carried a Smith & Wesson revolver.

  They arrived in New York on Christmas Eve after more than a few misadventures and averting serious danger, having nearly lost their lives in the crossing. They’d left home with only five dollars (a stipulation of the sponsors) and worked to earn money as they went. They’d faced hardship, but they’d also had kindness from the ordinary people they met along the way; most wanted to help, and supported their effort. They’d also collected autographs from prominent politicians (another stipulation) who wished them well, including President-elect William McKinley. The sponsor balked and refused to pay the prize, however, when the women missed their deadline by a couple of weeks. Penniless, Helga and Clara returned to their family farm, partway by train (on a free ticket) and partway on foot, only to discover that two of Helga’s children had died of diphtheria while she was gone.

  The local Norwegian-American community, including her own family, disparaged Helga for having “deserted” her husband and children, but she felt convicted about what she had tried to do. Later, she became a suffragist, and this trailblazer, who embodied stamina and self-reliance, ultimately made strides to secure women’s right to vote.

  Edward Payson Weston (1839–1929)

  “Weston the Pedestrian” set out in the spring of 1909 to walk from the east to the west coast, having already made a name for himself as a record breaker. His renown began nearly fifty years earlier, when he made a 453-mile trek from Boston to Washington, D.C., on a bet that he could arrive just ten days later and in time for Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861. (According to a pamphlet Weston wrote, he “made no money-bets, but had wagered six half-pints of peanuts.”) While the new president prepared to address the fears of a nation now facing civil war, Weston was making his way to the capitol, too, as people cheered and bands played along the way— the event was sponsored and heavily publicized to defray costs—plus local eateries supplied plentiful food for free, and the townswomen gave him kisses to keep his spirits up. Perhaps distracted by all the fanfare, he arrived a day and a half late, missing Lincoln’s oath of office, but the celebration surrounding Weston’s arrival was so lavish that he was invited to meet the president at the inaugural ball, and Lincoln even offered to pay his way back home so he wouldn’t have to return on foot. He declined; having failed the first time to arrive in ten days, as promised, he was determined to meet his goal on the return trip, which he succeeded in doing.

  Years later, after the Civil War had come and gone, Weston gained greater notoriety by racking up records at a time when his sport became quite popular and the cash prizes plentiful. He cut a dashing figure; the dapper dresser smashed records and pleased crowds during walking matches staged in packed arenas. He walked one hundred miles in twenty-two hours nineteen minutes. He walked 127 miles in twenty-four hours. (Both are remarkable achievements; becoming a “Centurion,” someone who walks more than one hundred miles in less than twenty-four hours, is extraordinary.) He walked five hundred miles in six days and was crowned the Champion Pedestrian of the World.

  As Weston aged, he gained strength and speed. At sixty-eight, he improved his time on a Maine-to-Chicago trek, which he’d taken forty years earlier, by twenty-nine hours. And so, at age seventy-one, he decided to walk across America, and to do it in one hundred days.

  Although he was well supported financially, Weston still had to deal with the unavoidable obstacles: In the Rockies, he had to crawl because the winds were so strong; in other places, rain and snow made the going plenty miserable. He also had to battle mosquitoes, which were coming to life in the spring thaw, as well as vagabonds who harassed him. Occasionally, he was separated from his crew:Lost—One automobile, one chauffeur, and one trained nurse; incidentally several suits of underclothes, three pairs of boots, dozen pairs of socks, two dozen handkerchiefs, two white garabaldis, one oilskin coat, and one straw hat. All belong to Edward Payson Weston, en route from New York to San Francisco via a devious route, over sundry obstacles, chiefly clay mud, knee deep, and still becoming deeper. Last seen on Wednesday morning in Jamestown, N.Y. When last heard of it was jammed in a mud hole between Waterford and Cambridge Springs, Penn. Thursday night with a busted engine. Any one discovering this outfit will please notify it to get a move on.

  (From an article by Edward Payson Weston, special to The New York Times, April 3, 1909)

  This must have been completely unnerving, although he apparently kept a sense of humor about it. Weston arrived in San Francisco in 104 days, and is supposed to have said that this was the worst failure of his life.

  So of course he tried again. Walking from Santa Monica to New York with a goal of completing the crossing in ninety days, he finished in seventy-six. He was seventy-two years old.

  Once a day, my reveries would be interrupted by the sound of a kiddie horn coming at me from behind. Charlie had rigged his mountain bike with the thing and would honk, wave at me as he rode up, peddle alongside me for a few minutes, then honk again as he sped ahead. Annoying as hell. Okay, it was kind of funny, but it was also irksome. I’m sure that’s exactly what he had in mind: Most of Charlie’s antics were equally humorous and irritating, and he was clearly trying
to diffuse his frustration at not being able to run and truly compete with me any longer. Zipping by me on his bike, he reminded me of a preschooler who has to beat his friends at everything, even if it’s meaningless.

  Yet now I knew that I wouldn’t stop until I was done. Charlie could ride in circles for all I cared; I was headed straight for New York City. One of the things the crew and I would say to each other all the time now, as a kind of mantra, was that we’d keep on going until we ran out of land.

  8.

  States of Mind

  Days 27—35

  On October 9, as we arrived in the large town of McCook, Nebraska, a police escort joined us in front of the documentary production van, which was filming me and a couple of locals we’d just met, Mitch Farr and Blaine Budke, as we moved down East B Street. The attention-worthy scene: Mitch and Blaine on either side of me, riding low-slung custom motorcycles, all glistening chrome and badass paint jobs. The choppers’ engines roared along, and I was amazed that Mitch and Blaine were able to go at my pace without tipping over, only about five miles per hour—fast enough for me but incredibly slow for them.

  As I ran between them, the deep rumble of the engines was loud enough that I had to turn my head and yell at the easy riders to start a conversation, who quietly looked the part of leather-jacketed bikers. Blaine, who owned a hot tub company, suggested at one point that maybe I’d like to have a soak. We all laughed, knowing there was no way.

  Riding along on his chopper with yellow ghost flames, Mitch offered, “If you stop long enough, I’ll feed you a steak, too,” as he owns a bar and grill in McCook. Again we laughed, but I told them both I wanted rain checks.

  “The next time I see you, Heather and I will be on bikes, for sure! You guys have the right idea—riding definitely would beat running!”

  They had it figured out: I wanted to see McCook and the surrounding area from the vantage of a soft seat, but still exposed to my surroundings with nothing between me and the environment. And I imagined that with my legs propped up on the foot pegs, everything would seem a damn sight more comfortable.

  I’d never been escorted by choppers before, and I don’t imagine they’d ever ridden alongside a runner, so we all made the most of it, joking, cutting up, and teasing one another, mostly about our age, for the couple of miles we were together. Getting to know them, I formed the opinion that the next time I came through, I could count on them for anything.

  Meeting and running with Mitch and Blaine energized me and also provided some colorful film footage for the documentary (which, sadly, didn’t make the final cut). The producers had arranged the whole thing during their dinner at The Looking Glass the night before, and I was grateful—jealous that they’d had Mitch’s steaks, which they reported were delicious, but unreservedly grateful. Especially at this time, when I was still in a funk and doing everything I could to avoid thinking about my foot, having the opportunity to talk with a couple of guys, check out the detailing on their Big Dog and Texas choppers, hear about their local businesses, and kid around for a while was a highlight. Perks like this kept me going, put me in a better state of mind.

  Ray Zahab is fond of saying that the challenge of ultrarunning is 90 percent mental, and the other 10 percent is all in our heads. He’s got it right: Beyond the marathon, the primary test becomes entirely psychological. If you can run twenty-six miles, then your body can surely carry you even farther (barring calamitous injury), and the only question is whether your mind can go the distance, too. As you push the body beyond its limits, running hundreds of miles a week for weeks on end, the physical challenges are predictable, with injuries and ailments nearly inevitable, and the mind can either help you or it can destroy you and diminish your chances of completing the task you’ve set for yourself. The difference involves certain skills and the ability to use the mind’s tricks to your advantage.

  Take hallucinations, for example. They’re common during adventure races when a team goes beyond extreme fatigue, and they can range from mildly interesting to horrifying. During an Eco-Challenge in the northeastern United States, our group was sleeping about fifteen minutes a day for six days, and as we were paddling on the ocean near the beach in Newport, Rhode Island, all five of us started envisioning other people in the boats, some familiar to us and some not. I’d look at a teammate and see someone else instead. In my delusion, Alfred E. Newman from Mad magazine was aboard, for example. We also all started to think we were on a huge spillway, ready to plunge over the falls, because we could hear the waves crashing on the beach. The group paranoia got so intense that we paddled as hard as we could to reach the shore—and as we got closer, the sound of the waves grew louder, of course, making us even more frightened—which we could still recognize as our refuge, at least. By coming ashore there, we’d abandoned our original plan to go around the peninsula, so we wound up beaching our kayaks and portaging our boats through the city, right through downtown. We were lost for hours, struggling to find our way back to the beach on the other side of Newport, where the race finished. All of us walked away from that escapade with at most 20 percent of our faculties functioning; in fact, one of our teammates was hallucinating so badly that he didn’t even recognize his significant other until after he’d slept for six hours. The race doctors had wondered if he’d ever regain thoughts of reality. We were all lucky that sleep brought him to his senses.

  That was a dangerous situation, but there have been entertaining hallucinations, too: The wingless 747 that pulled up next to me during my solo crossing of Death Valley, people inside the plane waving at me and cheering me on. Or the silver bikini–clad woman on roller skates who glided in front of me, her lithe figure swaying side to side for about ten minutes. I hung onto that one for while, as I’ve learned the art of perpetuating the illusions that suit me as well as the skill of putting the nightmarish ones out of my head.

  Was the out-of-body experience about which I asked Yiannis another form of hallucination? It’s possible that they’re on some kind of continuum, that hallucination holds a glimmer of the transcendence I felt just one time, and that Yiannis experiences all the time, but no. To say it was like a grand hallucination would be like saying that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a really nice doodle. Nonsense, not even close.

  During the run across America, I didn’t hallucinate, although that would have been okay by me. It’s a compelling dichotomy: Running takes discipline and focus. What makes it tolerable, though, is letting the mind drift, checking out of “real life,” where the legs keep moving as the world keeps turning, but the mind focuses elsewhere and notices, for example, the beauty of a bristlecone pine, bent and twisted by the wind.

  A sports psychologist friend of mine, Dr. Murray Griffin, evaluated me in 2002, as he was interested in discovering what unique psychological traits athletes bring to their pursuits. My only off-the-charts mental skill, as it turns out, is my imagination. In fact, he says, what’s most remarkable about my psychological profile is how “normal” it is. He observed:When Marshall’s concentrating on running, or concentrating on blotting out pain or discomfort, he can ignore all around him. He clearly can get himself into an almost Zenlike meditative state where he detaches himself from his immediate environment. When he’s in this place, if you stood in front of him he’d flip round you without breaking his stride. When he gets locked on and goes to “that place,” he is in what psychologists call a flow state, but unlike others he can keep it up for hours. That one piece of psychological abnormality that we found is relevant here. Marshall scores high (off the scale) on ability to fantasize, and he is clearly able to use this to detach himself from the collateral damage of the race.

  Yes, I am great at fantasizing! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. My aunt once told me a story about my father, how he’d come home from school with all the buttons ripped off his shirt. Seems his first-grade teacher was so frustrated with him that she’d grabbed him and popped them all off trying to get him to pay attention. Ultim
ately, he repeated that grade. My own mother used to tell me, all the time, to get my head out of the clouds, as I was a daydreamer. But she didn’t fully discourage me: Mom, like my dad’s mother, understood that her boy was bound for some version of greatness. Notably, my grandmother didn’t say much about the button incident, either to Dad or his teacher. She just sewed the buttons back on his shirt. Dad went on to be extremely successful in business, due in large part to him being such a visionary.

  Whenever I run through wilderness areas, I see myself embedded in the landscape, one of the trees, part of the wildlife. I think about how long the rocks have rested in a place, the swelling and drying up of the rivers over eras of rainfall and drought, the lives of the land’s first people or of those who eventually developed the area. In my mind’s eye, I picture a small settlement, or hunters moving across the plains, or a railroad or granary or industrial plant being built. When I cross paths with an animal, it stokes my imagination. What does the coyote think of me as I run past it? Where does the rattlesnake sleep? What did the falcon have for breakfast? What are the last thoughts of prey? What would it be like to make my home in a grove of Aspen trees, burrow under the leaves on the ground, catch my food with my bare hands?

  Not too long ago, Elaine sent me an essay by Annie Dillard, “Living Like Weasels,” which hit me right between the eyes. It seems Ms. Dillard and I share a common train of thought, an appreciation for what nature can teach us about ourselves:I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular . . . but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.... I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.... Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses.... We can live any way we want.... The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way . . . yielding, not fighting . . . yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.