Running on Empty

by Marshall Ulrich

  • The runner is protected from the elements as much as possible. Although sunscreen would have been a good idea, it was sticky and irritating, so we dropped it early on, and by the time we left California, I was sporting an impressive tan. The lipshit, though, stayed with us the whole way, as I was prone to cracking and chapping and cold sores. Tubes of Neosporin and Carmex were always on hand. God only knows how many times the crew members asked one another, “Did you lip him?”

  • Regular stretching, massage, and physical therapy are provided. In addition to the scheduled stretching that Dr. Paul provided on most days, Kathleen and, later, Kira would massage me whenever I needed it. Often, it would mean lying on the grass or on the shoulder of the road somewhere, having them work out the kinks and tightness of the last hour or so. On stops when we didn’t include massage, I would sleep in the back bench seat of the van, a roll of paper towels for a pillow, while hooked up to one of the cold therapy devices provided by VQ OrthoCare. The company’s representative, Robert Spieler, was usually within shouting distance, and he turned out to be one of our go-to pillars of support. Each of the devices provided a way to “ice,” whether it was one of the cooler contraptions with a hose attached to sleeves/bags you could apply to the injury, a portable system that was basically a cooler and cast, or the simpler blue jelly packs we could freeze and roll onto and around my elbow or knee or what have you.

  • Any minor medical needs receive prompt attention. This included blister care (though I didn’t suffer too many of those, thanks to Sportslick skin lubricant, ENGO patches, and Injinji toe socks). Back in Utah and Colorado, the inside of my mouth got very sore from eating all the time, so at Dr. Paul’s direction, the crew would make me a mouth rinse of Mylanta and Orajel. Yum! Not really, but it worked.

  • The runner is as happy and content (and undistracted) as can be expected. The crew made sure I had my music (mp3 player or satellite radio), sent friends out to see me when they knew it would lift my spirits, cheered me on, told me how great I looked, and didn’t ask much of me except that I run. Little things, again, made a big difference. Kira once presented corn dogs as hors d’oeuvres for me, with “toothpicks” made out of a cut-up straw and a “serving tray” she’d made from a Triscuits box, just because she knew I’d think it was funny; Brian decided to call our fifty-mile snack “happy hour” and would bring out the popcorn and O’Doul’s like a genial bartender; Heather always thought of ways to eliminate any extra effort, like removing the caps from the lipshit or opening any packaged food before handing it to me. Along with everything else she was doing for my morale, Heather kept all the behind-the-scenes stressors to herself. She was always smiling, complimenting, encouraging.

  In addition to all these elements of direct support, the crew was responsible for preparing a daily planner that detailed the route, including terrain, towns, and major landmarks, expected weather, and plans for the night (RV or hotel); making entries as required by Guinness World Records in all log books; food shopping; ensuring that the crew van was fueled and filled with supplies—beverages, food, ice, clothing for the runner, medical and health/sanitary supplies, etc.; cleaning the crew van, keeping it usable, organized, and livable; monitoring the mechanical condition of the van; cooking and cleaning up; making sure the SPOT tracker (a personal GPS for monitoring my position) was turned on, working, and on my person while I was out running.

  Ah, the SPOT tracker. That orange device started to get on my nerves, I guess just because I’m an ornery, independent old cuss, and the idea that a little dot on a website was showing my exact location to whoever wanted to know it annoyed the hell out of me. Plus the thing kept falling off. Once, after I’d relieved myself in a cornfield and traveled a half-mile down the road, I looked down at my belt and saw that the tracker had gone missing. Motherf . . . ! I realized it must still be back in the cornfield. Normally, I would have asked someone from the crew to go and get it, but I figured this one was far, far beyond the call of duty. There’s no delicate way to put this: I’d defecated in that cornfield, and I didn’t want anybody to have to go, literally, looking for my shit.

  Indeed, I found it in the cornfield, right where it had dropped from my pack belt—and I’d accidentally defiled it, like some bear using scat to mark its territory. Disgusting, but it perfectly expressed my feelings, so I had to laugh. I picked up the thing and wiped it off the best I could using the dewy grass, then sheepishly asked Dr. Paul to give it a good once-over and return it to me when it was reasonably clean.

  Crewing: The squeamish, faint of heart, self-centered, and glamour-seeking need not apply. It’s a grind, plain and simple. Repetitive, demanding, detail-obsessed, often boring, sometimes distasteful. It takes a certain kind of person, someone who’s really invested either in the runner or in the athletic accomplishment, to be an effective member of the crew.

  Now that Roger was gone, and since Jesse and Kathleen had left some time ago, the remaining crew were doing their best to keep up with everything. Heather had been setting the crew schedule since the beginning, but in the last few days, Chuck had taken that over. Kira had learned how to stretch me whenever Dr. Paul wasn’t with us. Without much fanfare, Roger had monitored food supplies, serviced the RV, cooked, and done the cleaning and laundry, but now those chores were backing up, although Heather, Brian, and Dr. Paul were pitching in. Roger’s daily planner had been abandoned altogether, and I missed it. Not having a sense of where I was headed and what was expected set me on edge. Silently, I would growl at no one in particular, Why don’t you try this: Go that way. Keep running for sixty miles. Who knows what you’ll find? Heh, heh. Maybe there will be hills, or rain, or no shoulder to run on. We’ll tell you when to stop, and then we’ll tell you where to sleep. You don’t need to know where anyone else will sleep, what they’re doing, or if their needs are being met. Run. Just run. Go on, now—run thataway.

  SEEING AMERICA, ONE MILE AT A TIME

  A “Typical” Day on the Crew

  No two days were the same for the crew, although many of their duties were routine. Long hours and repetitive tasks tended to make the days blur together, and the close quarters made for plenty of laughter and the occasional short temper. But the big perk was, as the crew mantra declared, they got to see America, one mile at a time.

  Morning Drill: Often, whoever was on duty to crew in the morning would have slept in the RV with Heather and me (and other people) the night before. Cozy! Starting at about six a.m., someone prepared my breakfast; someone else massaged my foot and ankle; someone else checked that the van had been stocked the night before with food and clothes and anything else needed for the day. Two people would get into the crew van and drive me to the stakeout point from the night before (if we weren’t there already), and anyone else stayed behind to clean up the RV and make it ready for my nap later, prepare food, run errands, service the RV, and take care of anything unexpected. Some collaboration with the film crew facilitated route planning.

  On Course: One person drove the van, pulling over onto the shoulder every mile and waiting there for me to run up from behind. This was the coveted job, as the driver controlled the music and any DVD they might be playing. The “wheelman” also maintained the logbook, jotting down mileage and times, pace, injury updates, landmarks, people we’d meet, and any other thing of note. Another person did the “kitchen” job, preparing my food and drink, as well as serving as “the gimp” (our admittedly tasteless name for the job—thanks, Pulp Fiction), handling my gear and bringing me whatever I needed, including meds and lipshit. The gimp would walk with me for a short distance, check on me, see what I might need next, and then return to the van. In other words, drive, tend to the runner, repeat.

  At the end of the “day,” usually sometime between one or two in the morning, they’d stake out my finishing point and either drive me to a hotel or leave me at the RV.

  TMI: Most of the time, the crew used the great outdoors as their bathroom. They reserved the RV toilet for me, whi
ch I used whenever I was there for a nap or the night, mostly because maintenance of the thing would have become a full-time job if we’d made it the public restroom, and even as it was, we occasionally had a backup into the shower drain. To understate it, the crew put up with a lot. Gimps would scrunch in the backseat of the van between the two big coolers, one filled with food and the other with drink. I know their bodies got sore from sitting back there and climbing in and out of the vehicle. Rarely did they take time for themselves, although I hear that some showered more regularly than others, and therefore smelled better. Occasionally the crew ate a meal somewhere other than the RV or van. It was grueling, unrelenting, focused work. As Roger would say, “This train doesn’t stop.”

  Crew Roster: Here’s a full accounting of all the wonderful people who came out to help, in order of appearance. Heather Ulrich, Dr. Paul Langevin, Kathleen Kane, Jesse Riley, Roger Kaufhold, Dave Pearson, Brian Weinberg, George Velasco, Colleen Oshier, Becky Clements, Theresa Daus-Weber, Amira Soliman, Todd Holmes, Chuck Dale, Elaine Ulrich, Alexandra Ulrich, Taylor Ulrich, Kira Matukaitis, Rick Baraff, Jenny Longpre, Dave Thorpe, Alex Nement, Bob Becker, Cole Hanley, Kate O’Neil, Michael Mezzacupo, Tom Triumph, Mark Macy, Therese Triumph, Kathy Farrell.

  We laughed our heads off. We missed our friends and family. We saw America. We watched Marshall accomplish something—daily—that is difficult even to wrap your head around. We met people from across the country, and saw towns and places and landscapes that many never get to experience. We cried. And we argued at times. We made memories. I think we all came away changed.

  —Kira Matukaitis

  I’ve never been so tired, but I’ve never had such a unique experience. This adventure took me into the heart of America: I either drove very slowly or walked very briskly along a ribbon of highway that never ceased to introduce me to the beauty of city, ocean, vineyard, desert, mountain, evergreens, scrub bushes, a fall palette of glistening leaves, streams, rivers, sunrise, sunset, the first star, the Milky Way spilled out across the heavens from horizon to horizon, the waxing and waning moon. The quiet where I could find myself and God. And the people. One mile at a time, I met humanity.

  —Kathleen Kane

  There were many times when I thought it was over. There were several instances in which Marshall found himself doubting or having a hard time, not wanting to be alone out there. It’s part of being human. It would have been that easy for him to quit, and we would all have understood. But he didn’t. So I’d go out with him on these nights for as long as he wanted, until we were either laughing hysterically or so inspired that he finished extra mileage. He told me later that these conversations were pivotal to his success.

  —Brian Weinberg

  It felt dehumanizing. Of course, I asked for details. Sometimes, Chuck, Dr. Paul, or Brian would give them to me. But it was frustrating not to be fully informed about our plans for the day, and it started to feel as if I was running to nowhere. Dammit, I missed Roger, and I missed the care he’d taken to let me know what was going on. Now that production had asked Heather to back off, and even taken her off the crew schedule a couple of days, she felt that she had even less authority (and, I came to find out, had never felt that she’d had much to start with) to ask questions and get answers.

  But to be honest, all of that—the crewing details, who was doing what and how they were getting along and who was in charge—didn’t occupy much real estate in my mind as we pushed through Illinois toward Indiana, rain still coming down, only four states left before we reached New York. As from the beginning, for me, it was all about the run. Run, then run some more. Breathe and step, no matter how difficult, how delusional, how drained. Stride after stride.

  My focus was derailed, though, one afternoon when Charlie rode up, as usual, honking that ridiculous kiddie horn. Out of the blue, he asked, “What’s up with you and needing clean laundry?”

  “Why,” I wondered aloud, “wouldn’t I want clean clothes?”

  He reminded me that when we’d done adventure races together, we’d never had clean laundry, and when he’d run the Sahara, they’d never had clean laundry. Right, I thought. And the bunioneers didn’t have clean laundry, and the pioneers didn’t have clean laundry. I bet Alexander the fucking Great didn’t have clean laundry, either.

  What on earth was he getting at?

  “Well,” I pointed out, “I believe there are laundromats in all these towns we’re passing through. Do you see a problem with us using them?”

  The conversation went on, with me stating the obvious: Clean clothes and towels and sheets were preferable to dirty ones, and small comforts had come to mean an awful lot to me. They were the only comforts I had. Charlie then started suggesting, insinuation and accusation creeping into his tone, that maybe I didn’t want clean laundry; perhaps my wife was behind what he implied was an unreasonable standard of cleanliness.

  I sighed. “Don’t even go there, Charlie.” I told him that I wished for him what I had in Heather.

  But he was on a roll. Agitated now, he told me that Running America was his baby. He’d gotten all the sponsors, he owned 25 percent of the project, and everyone out there was working for him. He was called “Mr. Atomic, the detonator,” he said, because it was within his power to blow the whole thing up. Thirty-seven days into it, he could just make Running America go away, he assured me.

  Still unclear about what he hoped to get out of this hostile exchange, I asked him about the documentary and its producers. He asserted, yes, they all worked for him, and some of them weren’t doing a very good job, in his opinion. NEHST, he said, didn’t have ultimate power—he could pull the plug on the project anytime, and he wanted us to stop interacting with Kate or anyone working on the documentary. It was his baby, and we weren’t to touch it. Kate worked for him, he said, and he wanted her to focus exclusively on filming—nothing to do with the run was under her purview anymore. Now, everything dealing with my athletic endeavor would go through Chuck, Charlie’s right-hand man.

  I kept plodding, and Charlie kept pedaling. Was he actually threatening to kill Running America over laundry? It was all so overblown. And this business of being cut off from the people in production? It was nutty, and sounded like an attempt to gain total control over my support system, to isolate me and make me dependent upon him and the people who reported to him. I couldn’t believe that Kate and the rest of production were on board with all that.

  “You know, Charlie, I’m going to have to get back to you on all this after I check with everyone to be sure that what you’re telling me is true.”

  But, again, he didn’t stop. He continued griping about the documentary crew, saying they’d gotten overly involved in the run. When I asked him about what the sponsors might say if he decided suddenly to halt production and stop all efforts on Running America, he gave me some blather about how he’d been blogging all this time and the sponsors had already gotten what they needed out of him and didn’t care if we finished or not.

  Now I knew for sure that he was full of shit.

  Without breaking stride, I told him, “Listen, Charlie. It’s very simple for me. I was hired to do this. Running America is a job I said I’d do, and I want to make it clear to you that no one and nothing is going to stand in my way of finishing it. That’s it, Charlie, plain and simple. That’s what I’m about.”

  Finally, he rode away. As he pulled out ahead of me and I lost sight of him, I had to wonder, Was he really “the detonator”? Or was he just a frustrated guy on a bike, trying to get in the way of me accomplishing my goal?

  Either way, it was glaringly apparent that he wasn’t my ally, and he wasn’t going to let me focus only on running anymore.

  10.

  Competitive Spirit

  Days 39—45

  When Charlie and I met for the first time, he turned out to be a hero. It was eight years before we started running across America, during an Eco-Challenge in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

  That event required
a lot of trekking though thick jungles; days of paddling crude, outrigger-style boats; and entering the mountains’ hot, humid caverns, where we’d jumar up the walls and have to wade through ankle-deep bat guano. My team, long ago named the Stray Dogs since we tended to pick up whoever was available and ready for a good adventure, included Mace, Adrian Crane, Maureen Monaghan, and me, and we felt our prospects were good, as all of us were accomplished athletes: Mace, Adrian, and I were ultrarunners of some distinction, and Mo was a champion bicyclist.

  Minutes into the race, though, we went from being in the top twenty to dead last as a rogue wave in the South China Sea hit our outrigger from the side, immediately capsizing us. We’d been told that if the boat went over like this, there was little hope of righting it, and as we bobbed in the water, Mace and I joked that we’d be the first team ever to be done in less than an hour of racing. But the four of us gathered our wits, stood on one side of the craft, pulled on ropes we’d attached to the opposite side, and in a cooperative tug, heaved the craft upright. We’d done it! We all looked at each other in disbelief and then burst into laughter.

  It would have been a simple thing to break out the radio and call it quits, and we considered it, mostly in jest. After a few wisecracks, we got over that and decided to press on.

  We paddled to the first island and then had to split up. Since our mast had broken, Mo and Adrian stayed behind to fix the outrigger, while Mace and I went on the island swim and trek, and that’s when we met up with Charlie and his teammate, who were also completing this portion of the race. Our map had sunk when the outrigger turned over, so Charlie agreed to share his with Mace and me. All right now! We were back in the game. The four of us spent the rest of the day and that night swimming and slopping through mud, generally having a great time, poking fun at our predicament when we got slightly off course. Once again, Mace and I didn’t much care about losing our way, and we loved it that Charlie didn’t, either. Some of the inexperienced teams had thought (wrongly) that because we were Eco-Challenge veterans, they should follow us. (One of the Stray Dogs’ trademark navigational tactics is getting completely lost and laughing our asses off about it.) Using Charlie’s map, we did eventually get our bearings and met back up with Mo and Adrian, and Charlie went his own way, rejoining his team.