Ultramarathon Man

by Dean Karnazes

  Unbelievable. It didn’t seem humanly possible to run 100 miles nonstop, let alone 100 miles through the mountains. That’s nearly four marathons without rest, more than three times the distance that had left me temporarily incapacitated on my thirtieth birthday. No way could I possibly see myself attempting such an unimaginable feat.

  But then I thought of those two runners blowing past me on Lovers’ Lane. Somewhere in the soil of my mind, a seed took root.

  The Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run didn’t start as a run at all; its inception can be traced to a long-distance horse race, the Tevis Cup, 100 miles through the mountains on horseback. But in 1974, a man named Gordy Ainsleigh changed everything. Gordy had trained relentlessly with his horse for a year, and, as legend has it, just prior to the event his horse came up lame.

  Crushed, but undeterred, Gordy announced that he would still be competing in the 100-mile race, only without his horse.

  This did more than raise a few eyebrows. It was complete lunacy. But on August 3, 1974, a bare-chested Gordy Ainsleigh took his place at the starting line of the Tevis Cup alongside a row of horses. Apparently right before the race began, one of his friends was overheard asking him whether he wanted a ham sandwich or a feed bag. Another bystander purportedly asked a race official if the event was reserved exclusively for animals. To which the official replied, “He is an animal.”

  Amazingly, twenty-three hours and forty-two minutes later, out from the trailhead popped Gordy. He was somewhat incoherent and despondent, but still shuffling forward. With a will of iron, he’d covered the entire 100 miles on foot. He even managed to beat a few of the horses.

  It was this astonishing accomplishment that ushered in the modern era of ultra-endurance trail running.

  Endurance is a relative term. Some might think a marathon, at 26.2 miles, with its two to five hours of continuous pounding to the body, is the ultimate test of human endurance. Hills make the undertaking all the more demanding; the Boston Marathon, for example, includes the infamous “Heartbreak Hill,” a climb of 280 vertical feet. That’s nearly the length of a football field straight up into the air. It’s the vertical equivalent of climbing one quarter of the way to the top of the Empire State Building. Heartbreak Hill can be a demoralizing obstacle that forces many runners into submission, and they walk.

  For an ultra-elite group of athletes, however, a single marathon is child’s play. The challenges these individuals seek are beyond comprehension, bordering on psychotic. They participate in endeavors so physically demanding that some have perished in the act.

  Near the top of the intensity scale is the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run. It involves a total elevation change of 38,000 feet, climbing the equivalent of over fifty football fields straight up into the air. That would be like climbing the entire distance to the top of the Empire State Building and back down again—fifteen times! It means climbing and descending Heartbreak Hill not once, not twice, but fifty-six times. For a comparison of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run and the Boston Marathon, check out the chart below.

  The Western States is run on rugged single-track mountain trails with harrowing drop-offs and unpredictable terrain. It crosses snow and ice fields, descends into murderously hot valleys, fords numerous bridgeless rivers, and offers little in the way of food, water, or medical support along the way. Of those who successfully complete the event—and sometimes fewer than half of the invited athletes do—it typically means twenty-five to thirty hours of continuous running.

  Outside magazine once called the Western States the “toughest endurance event in the world.” To complete it, your mental resolve must be indomitable. You’ve got to bundle up self-doubt and fear and stuff them in your shoe, cutting loose your rational mind as your body is pushed to inconceivable levels of endurance. To complete the Western States, you must transform yourself into a human machine.

  My 5-mile jaunts around the city were sufficiently demanding in their own right. How would it be possible to extend that twenty times—through the mountains? Running thirty miles had debilitated me for weeks; attempting 100 might leave me dead. Sitting at my desk, in my tailored suit and leather loafers, thumbing through Outside with its photographs of sweating, struggling, brutalized, and barely coherent runners, I had just one thought:

  Where do I sign up?

  From that point forward, my life became passionately focused on gaining entrance into the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run. Training became life; the rest was just details. Julie, who’d wanted to be a dentist since age six (when she got her first set of braces), had entered the University of the Pacific Dental School in San Francisco. This was an endurance event in its own right, and she was consumed with her studies. So there was balance, her studying into the wee hours and me running into the same. We had no children yet, so there was complete devotion to our personal goals.

  To qualify for the Western States, you must complete a fifty-mile race in less than nine hours. Like the Boston Marathon, the Western States only accepts the elite. With the enthusiasm of a new recruit, I began a formal training program. I increased my four-days-a-week five-mile runs to six-days-a-week ten-mile runs, putting in the miles regardless of the weather or lack of motivation. No more junk food and soft drinks for me; I cut out saturated fat and all refined sugar from my diet, and read ingredient and nutritional facts on food labels with painstaking scrutiny. My typical lunch consisted of a piece of salmon with fresh vegetables. What I really missed at first were sweets. I craved candy and ice cream. But I began feeling so much better after eliminating sugars from my diet that eventually I hardly missed them.

  After half a year of rigorous preparation, I found myself capable of running a full marathon on any given day. And I was strong on the hills, San Francisco providing ample training grounds. Sometimes I would run a marathon on Saturday, before breakfast, and then another marathon on Sunday. One of my favorite routes took me up the Hyde Street hill, where I’d often race the cable cars to the cheers and jeers of the passengers. My legs grew powerful and my body became taut and lean.

  Training so intensely required sacrifices in other areas of my life. A good athlete might be able to fake his way through a 10K, or perhaps even a marathon, but there’s no running fifty miles without having paid your dues. I would get up well before dawn to run before work. Anywhere I traveled, either for work or pleasure, my running shoes came along. If there was a break in my day, even for forty-five minutes, I was out the door for a “quick pop,” followed by a speedy sponge bath in the men’s room, and then back into my suit for the next meeting.

  I loved running, especially across the Golden Gate Bridge into the hills of Marin. Though some of my friends thought my antics were becoming a little overzealous, I hardly noticed that I’d progressed from a casual jogger into something more. Distances that I’d previously thought impossible were now covered without much notice. The good folks at the Fleet Feet running store kept my credit-card information on file, since I was in every few weeks to purchase new running shoes.

  After months of preparation, I felt ready to take on the fifty-miler. The qualifying run was on a course set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, just outside Sacramento. It started at 5:00 A.M. and was a couple hours’ drive from San Francisco, so I left my house at two in the morning.

  The drive was luxurious. As a perk for my job performance, the company had given me a new Lexus LS 400 luxury sedan. I’m not much of a car guy, but it sure was a nice ride. The one thing that really struck me was how quiet it was inside. The seals on the doors were so efficient that the interior seemed almost soundproof.

  When I got to the race, I was startled to discover that it was near-freezing outside—twenty degrees cooler than when I’d left the house. I sat in my new Lexus, with its heated leather seats, until just before the start.

  Coincidentally, among the few dozen runners milling about the starting line were the pair who’d passed me on Lovers’ Lane. I said hello. One of them r
aised his eyebrows at me, while the other didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. Ah, such gentlemen. We all jammed into the small starting area, and with a few yelps and hoots the race began.

  Within 3 miles of the start, I found myself running alone. There were only about forty racers, and the pack thinned quickly. The course meandered through the countryside, fairly flat and well groomed, with some sparse vegetation lining the trail. Periodically I would spot other runners ahead of me and behind me, but a reasonable distance separated the fleet. Aside from the aid stations along the route, I ran solo for the entire race.

  It was a journey into uncharted waters, and I had no one to consult for directions. So I did as Benner had instructed years ago, and ran with my heart. It was all that I knew to do.

  There was only modest elevation change as we followed the well-traveled dirt path. As the race wore on, however, a freezing wind developed, and the path became a little less orderly. It was all very exciting to me. Even though I ran alone, I was far from lonely because my mind was totally engaged in the experience.

  Although I could easily run a marathon a day for two days in a row, running the equivalent of two continuous marathons without stop proved to be much tougher than I’d imagined. The first half of the race went smoothly enough, despite the driving wind and mounting cold.

  But during the second half, things started to deteriorate. The trauma to my body was much greater than I had anticipated, and the trail conditions worsened. As I stepped over tree roots and across icy puddles of mud, there came a point in the run, at about mile 38, where every muscle in my body was in pain. My fingers hurt, my forearms hurt, my shoulders ached, and of course my legs screamed in agony.

  Early in the race I’d been downing solid food—peanut butter sandwiches, cheese, crackers—but now I was subsisting on cut fruit alone. My appetite was gone, but I forced myself to stomach the fruit to keep the energy level up. Pain has an odd way of suppressing hunger; when you most need the calories, food is entirely unappetizing.

  For the first 43 miles, the run was entirely in the realm of the physical, and pain was the dominant sensation. But then my mind started scurrying off on its own. Instead of being one continual impulse, the pain began to come and go like lightning. In between the jolts of pain were blissful, almost euphoric moments.

  There was no way for me to control the onset of either sensation, no way to shift the balance from pain to pleasure. I tried holding my breath until I turned blue, tightening the muscles in my forearms in an attempt to pull the pain from my legs, running with my hands over my head—nothing worked. My body was on autopilot, and I was just along for the ride.

  Despite this quasi-out-of-body experience, I kept trudging onward, ecstasy flirting with pain. The last 2 miles of the course were more about survival than running. I just shuffled along, step by step, barely able to lift my feet. After eight hours and twenty-seven minutes, I staggered across the finish line, 50 miles completed. “Victorious” is probably an overstatement. But it was a glorious moment nonetheless—I’d just qualified for the Western States 100!

  On shaky legs, I stumbled to the finishers’ tent and received a ribbon and a few handshakes and slaps on the back. Then I lumbered painfully to my car. When I plopped down on the leather seats, my legs went strangely cold. Something wasn’t right. Then, without warning, the quadriceps and calf muscles of both legs seized in wicked cramps. My torso swung violently left, and then wildly back to the right. My legs were pegged to the floorboard, completely rigid. All ten toes were locked in place, forcefully curled against the soles of my shoes. My calf muscles were tight as baseballs, and my thighs were like solid planks of wood. The pain was mind-bending, pounding, entirely owning every drop of me.

  Sweat poured down my face, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. Out of the corner of my eye I could see people casually strolling by my car, totally oblivious of the situation inside. Apparently the seals that were so effective at keeping noise out were also pretty good at keeping noise in. There was nothing I could do but scream: other than the ability to open my mouth, I was completely immobilized. I yelled louder and louder and louder, but no one outside could tell that I was inside on the verge of blowing apart.

  My screaming was interrupted by a curious belch. Then came a few more burps. Something was rising up inside my stomach. Suddenly my mouth opened, and projectile vomit began streaming out. I tried to tilt my head downward toward the floorboard, but I was completely incapable of altering the flow of things. I must have looked like Godzilla blowing fire into the air.

  It lasted maybe thirty seconds. When I’d run dry, the entire dashboard and steering wheel were covered in vile sludge. The cramps were still so severe that all I could move were my eyeballs. The rest of my body felt like brittle glass. What to do now?

  Perhaps if I could force my body into a different position, the rigor mortis might be broken. With a few spasmodic jerks, I dislodged my left arm from the armrest. It fell to the floorboard like a piece of limp rubber, my hand flopping numbly to the plush carpet. Slowly walking my fingers back, I located the seat-adjustment buttons. The first button I pushed moved the seat forward, cramming my outstretched legs farther into the floorboard. This action sent a bolt of pain shooting up my body like an electrical shock. Not good. I quickly retracted my finger, and then moved it to the next button back. This lowered the headrest and began squashing my skull like a melon. By the time I was able to release the control, my head was wedged below the headrest and the seat back and I was feeling faint. Really not good.

  With the third button, my upper body began to recline. Weird creaking and crackling noises resonated from my torso as I slid backward. As I approached horizontal, the pain began to ease. When the seat was fully reclined, I took my finger off the control and lay there motionless.

  Now that I was in less agony, I could begin to assess the situation. Partially digested chunks of cantaloupe dripped from the steering column. I could sense dampness on my legs, but my entire lower torso was completely numb, so I really wasn’t sure what was going on down there. I knew my next step was to get out of the car. Reaching up, I tugged on the door handle. At first it wouldn’t yield, but with a more forceful jerk the latch unexpectedly released and the door swung open.

  My upper body came flailing out of the car and my arms were too weak to buttress my fall, so I came crashing down face-first into the dirt. I lay splayed on the ground, half of my body outside of the car and my legs and feet still inside. My face rested in the dirt, and I watched little swirls of dust flowing out from under my nostrils with each exhalation. Though I must have looked utterly pathetic lying there, I could just as well have been standing on a podium having a medal placed over my head. After months of dedicated training and preparation, my goal had been achieved, my mission accomplished. It was a proud moment.

  Eventually I was able to drag the rest of my body out of the car. My face was covered in dust and my clothes were filthy. My pride was intact, though, as I piloted the Lexus home, utilizing the cruise control to regulate my speed, too petrified to push on the pedals for fear that my legs would cramp again and I’d crash.

  As for the car, it never was the same. But I began to appreciate the vehicle more now that it had been properly christened. We had lived through the worst, and our shared history brought us closer together. When my boss inquired about the rancid odor, I told him some fruit had rotted inside . . . which wasn’t far from the truth.

  Julie was thrilled to learn that I’d qualified for the Western States, although at first I didn’t tell her about the little post-race episode in the car. She asked about the difficulty of running fifty miles nonstop, and I told her it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, by far. That’s why I loved it.

  When I told my parents that I was going to attempt to run 100 miles, their response was amazement. “Can you do it?” my mom asked.

  “I’m not sure, that’s why I want to try,” I told her.

  They had all kinds of questions
and we talked at length about running, and about life. It was our most spirited conversation in years. My newfound love of running seemed to awaken a sense of hope. There was something in our future to look forward to; something, perhaps, grand and monumental. Attempting to run 100 miles was a spectacular aspiration, and the pursuit of this dream seemed to transcend career goals and other ambitions. My parents could sense my enthusiasm, and I could sense theirs. A flame had been ignited.

  Chapter 6

  Leaving Normal

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took

  the one less traveled by.

  —Robert Frost

  The Bay Area 1993-1994

  To call running “fun” would be a misuse of the word. Running can be “enjoyable.” Running can be “rejuvenating.” But in a pure sense of the word, running is not fun.

  After qualifying for the Western States, I ran every chance I got. Mostly I ran early in the morning or late at night. Sometimes I could squeeze in a run at lunch. But just like most runners, running was something that had to fit around my hectic work schedule, so it would be a stretch to call it fun.

  Now “entertaining” might more accurately describe things. Showing up for Monday-morning meetings after having run for the previous five hours was entertaining. Running a quick eight miles during lunch, and then changing in the backseat of my car, was entertaining. Running through places like Bentonville, Arkansas, and Lubbock, Texas, was, well, entertaining (and I’m glad to have escaped alive, given the many strange looks I received from people with gun racks in their pickups).