We wandered inside, and saw Caballo had a small camp bed, a pile of trashed sports sandals, and three or four books about Crazy Horse and other Native Americans on a shelf next to a kerosene lamp. That was it; no electricity, no running water, no toilet. Out back, Caballo had cut away the cactus and smoothed a little place to kick back after a run, smoke something relaxing, and gaze off at the prehistoric wilderness. Whatever Barefoot Ted’s heavy Heidegger word was, no one was ever more an expression of their place than Caballo was of his hut.
Caballo was anxious to get us fed and off his hands so he could catch up on sleep. The next few days were going to take everything we had, and none of us had gotten much rest since El Paso. He led us back down his hidden driveway and up the road to a tiny shop operating from the front window of a house; you poked your head in and if shopkeeper Mario had what you wanted, you got it. Upstairs, Mario rented us a few small rooms with a cold-water shower at the end of the hall.
Caballo wanted us to dump our bags and head off immediately for food, but Barefoot Ted insisted on stripping down and padding off to the shower to sluice away the road grime. He came out screaming.
“Jesus! The shower’s got loose wires. I just got the shit shocked out of me!”
Eric looked at me. “You think Caballo did it?”
“Justifiable homicide,” I said. “No jury would convict.” The Barefoot Ted-Caballo Blanco storm front hadn’t improved a bit since we’d left Creel. During one rest stop, Caballo climbed down from the roof and squeezed his way into the back of the bus to escape. “That guy doesn’t know what silence is,” Caballo fumed. “He’s from L.A., man; he thinks you’ve got to fill every space with noise.”
After we’d gotten settled at Mario’s, Caballo brought us to another of his Mamás. We didn’t even have to order; as soon as we arrived, Doña Mila began pulling out whatever she had in the fridge. Soon, platters were being handed around of guacamole, frijoles, sliced cactus and tomatoes doused in tangy vinegar, Spanish rice, and a fragrant beef stew thickened with chicken liver.
“Pack it in,” Caballo had said. “You’re going to need it tomorrow.” He was taking us on a little warm-up hike, Caballo said. Just a jaunt up a nearby mountain to give us a taste of the terrain we’d be tackling on the trek to the racecourse. He kept saying it was no big deal, but then he’d warn us we’d better pound down the food and get right to bed. I became even more apprehensive after a white-haired old American ambled in and joined us.
“How’s the giddyup, Hoss?” he greeted Caballo. His name was Bob Francis. He had first wandered down to Batopilas in the ’60s, and part of him had never left. Even though he had kids and grand-kids back in San Diego, Bob still spent most of the year wandering the canyons around Batopilas, sometimes guiding trekkers, sometimes just visiting Patricio Luna, a Tarahumara friend who was Manuel Luna’s uncle. They met thirty years before, when Bob got lost in the canyons. Patricio found him, fed him, and brought him back to his family’s cave for the night.
Because of his long friendship with Patricio, Bob is one of the only Americans to have ever attended a Tarahumara tesgüinada—the marathon drinking party that precedes and occasionally prevents the ball races. Even Caballo hasn’t reached that level of trust with the Tarahumara, and after listening to Bob’s stories, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“All of a sudden, Tarahumara I’ve been friends with for years, guys I knew as shy, gentle amigos, are in my face, butting against me with their chests, spitting insults at me, ready to fight,” Bob said. “Meanwhile, their wives are in the bushes with other men, and their grown-up daughters are wrestling naked. They keep the kids away from these deals; you can imagine why.”
Anything goes at a tesgüinada, Bob explained, because everything is blamed on the peyote, moonshine tequila, and tesgüino, the potent corn beer. As wild as these parties get, they actually serve a noble and sober purpose: they act as a pressure valve to vent explosive emotions. Just like the rest of us, the Tarahumara have secret desires and grievances, but in a society where everyone relies on one another and there are no police to get between them, there has to be a way to satisfy lusts and grudges. What better than a booze-fest? Everyone gets ripped, goes wild, and then, chastened by bruises and hangovers, they dust themselves off and get on with their lives.
“I could have been married or murdered twenty times before the night was over,” Bob said. “But I was smart enough to put down the gourd and get myself out of there before the real shenanigans started.” If one outsider knew the Barrancas as well as Caballo, it was Bob, which was why, even though he was liquored up and in a bit of a ranting mood, I paid careful attention when he got into it with Ted.
“Those fucking things are going to be dead tomorrow,” Bob said, pointing at the FiveFingers on Ted’s feet.
“I’m not going to wear them,” Ted said.
“Now you’re talking sense,” Bob said.
“I’m going barefoot,” Ted said.
Bob turned to Caballo. “He messing with us, Hoss?”
Caballo just smiled.
————
Early the next morning, Caballo came for us as dawn was breaking over the canyon. “That’s where we’re headed tomorrow,” Caballo said, pointing through the window of my room toward a mountain rearing in the distance. Between us and the mountain was a sea of rolling foothills so thickly overgrown that it was hard to see how a trail could punch through. “We’ll run one of those little guys this morning.”
“How much water do we need?” Scott asked.
“I only carry this,” Caballo said, waving a sixteen-ounce plastic bottle. “There’s a freshwater spring up top to refill.”
“Food?”
“Nah,” Caballo shrugged as he and Scott left to check on the others. “We’ll be back by lunch.”
“I’m bringing the big boy,” Eric said to me, gurgling springwater into the bladder on his ninety-six-ounce hydration backpack. “I think you should, too.”
“Really? Caballo says we’re only going about ten miles.”
“Can’t hurt to carry the max when you go off-road,” Eric said. “Even if you don’t need it, it’s training for when you do. And you never know—something happens, you could be out there longer than you think.”
I put down my handheld bottle and reached for my hydration pack. “Bring iodine pills in case you need to purify water. And shove in some gels, too,” Eric added. “On race day, you’re going to need two hundred calories an hour. The trick is learning how to take in a little at a time, so you’ve got a steady drip of fuel without overwhelming your stomach. This’ll be good practice.”
We walked through Batopilas, past shopkeepers hand-sprinkling water on the stones to keep the dust down. Schoolkids in spotless white shirts, their black hair sleek with water, interrupted their chatter to politely wish us “Buenos días.”
“Gonna be a hot one,” Caballo said, as we ducked into a storefront with no sign out front. “¿Hay teléfono?” he asked the woman who greeted us. Are the phones working?
“Todavía no” she said, shaking her head in resignation. Not yet. Clarita had the only two public phones in all Batopilas, but service had been knocked out for the past three days, leaving shortwave radio the only form of communication. For the first time, it hit me how cut off we were; we had no way of knowing what was going on in the outside world, or letting the outside world know what was happening to us. We were putting a hell of a lot of trust in Caballo, and once again, I had to wonder why; as knowledgeable as Caballo was, it still seemed crazy to put our lives in the hands of a guy who didn’t seem too concerned about his own.
But for the moment, the grumble of my stomach and the aroma of Clarita’s breakfast managed to push those thoughts aside. Clarita served up big plates of huevos rancheros, the fried eggs smothered in homemade salsa and freshly chopped cilantro and sitting atop thick, hand-patted tortillas. The food was too delicious to wolf down, so we lingered, refilling our coffee a few times before getting up
to go. Eric and I followed Scott’s example and tucked an extra tortilla in our pockets for later.
Only after we finished did I realize that the Party Kids hadn’t shown up. I checked my watch; it was already pushing 10 a.m.
“We’re leaving them,” Caballo said.
“I’ll run back for them,” Luis offered.
“No,” Caballo said. “They could still be in bed. We’ve got to hit it if we’re going to dodge the afternoon heat.”
Maybe it was for the best; they could use a day to rehydrate and power up for the hike tomorrow. “No matter what, don’t let them try to follow us,” Caballo told Luis’s father, who was staying behind. “They get lost out there, we’ll never see them again. That’s no joke.”
Eric and I cinched tight our hydration packs, and I pulled a bandanna over my head. It was already steamy. Caballo slid through a gap in the retaining wall and began picking his way over the boulders to the edge of the river. Barefoot Ted pushed ahead to join him, showing off how nimbly he could hop from rock to rock in his bare feet. If Caballo was impressed, he wasn’t showing it.
“YOU GUYS! HOLD UP!” Jenn and Billy were sprinting down the street behind us. Billy had his shirt in his hand, and Jenn’s shoelaces were untied.
“You sure you want to come?” Scott asked when they panted up. “You haven’t even eaten anything.”
Jenn tore a PowerBar in two and gave half to Billy. They were each carrying a skinny water bottle that couldn’t have held more than six swallows. “We’re good,” Billy said.
We followed the stony riverbank for a mile, then turned into a dry gully. Without a word, we all spontaneously broke into a trot. The gully was wide and sandy, leaving plenty of room for Scott and Barefoot Ted to flank Caballo and run three abreast.
“Check out their feet,” said Eric. Even though Scott was in the Brooks trail shoe he’d helped design and Caballo was in sandals, they both skimmed their feet over the ground just the way Ted did in his bare feet, their foot strikes in perfect sync. It was like watching a team of Lipizzaner stallions circle the show ring.
After about a mile, Caballo veered onto a steep, rocky washout that climbed up into the mountain. Eric and I eased back to a walk, obeying the ultrarunner’s creed: “If you can’t see the top, walk.” When you’re running fifty miles, there’s no dividend in bashing up the hills and then being winded on the way down; you only lose a few seconds if you walk, and then you can make them back up by flying downhill. Eric believes that’s one reason ultrarunners don’t get hurt and never seem to burn out: “They know how to train, not strain.”
As we walked, we caught up with Barefoot Ted. He’d had to slow down to pick his way over the jagged, fist-sized stones. I squinted up at the trail ahead: we had at least another mile of crumbly rock to climb before the trail leveled and, hopefully, smoothed.
“Ted, where are your FiveFingers?” I asked.
“Don’t need ’em,” he said. “I made a deal with Caballo that if I handled this hike, he wouldn’t get mad anymore if I went barefoot.”
“He rigged the bet,” I said. “This is like running up the side of a gravel pit.”
“Humans didn’t invent rough surfaces, Oso,” Ted said. “We invented the smooth ones. Your foot is perfectly happy molding itself around rocks. All you’ve got to do is relax and let your foot flex. It’s like a foot massage. Oh, hey!” he called after us as Eric and I pulled ahead. “Here’s a great tip. Next time your feet are sore, walk on slippery stones in a cold creek. Unbelievable!”
Eric and I left Ted singing to himself as he hopped and trotted along. The glare off the stones was blinding and heat kept rising, making it feel as if we were climbing straight into the sun. In a way, we were; after two miles, I checked the altimeter on my watch and saw we’d climbed over a thousand feet. Soon, though, the trail plateaued and softened from stones to footworn dirt.
The others were a few hundred yards ahead, so Eric and I started to run to close the gap. Before we caught them, Barefoot Ted came whisking by. “Time for a drink,” he said, waving his empty water bottle. “I’ll wait for you guys at the spring.”
The trail veered abruptly upward again, jagging back and forth in lightning-bolt switchbacks. Fifteen hundred feet… two thousand … We bent into the slope, feeling as though we only gained a few inches every step. After three hours and six miles of hard climbing, we hadn’t hit the spring; we hadn’t seen shade since we left the riverbank.
“See?” Eric said, waving the nozzle of his hydration pack. “Those guys have got to be parched.”
“And starving,” I added, ripping open a raw-food granola bar.
At thirty-five hundred feet, we found Caballo and the rest of the crew waiting in a hollow under a juniper tree. “Anyone need iodine pills?” I asked.
“Don’t think so,” Luis said. “Take a look.”
Under the tree was a natural stone basin carved out by centuries of cool, trickling spring water. Except there was no water.
“We’re in a drought,” Caballo said. “I forgot about that.”
But there was a chance another spring might be flowing a few hundred feet higher up the mountain. Caballo volunteered to run up and check. Jenn, Billy, and Luis were too thirsty to wait and went with him. Ted gave his bottle to Luis to fill up for him and sat to wait in the shade with us. I gave him a few sips from my pack, while Scott shared some pita and hummus.
“You don’t use goos?” Eric asked.
“I like real food,” Scott said. “It’s just as portable and you get real calories, not just a fast burn.” As a corporate-sponsored elite athlete, Scott had the worldwide buffet of nutrition at his fingertips, but after experimenting with the entire spectrum—everything from deer meat to Happy Meals to organic raw-food bars—he’d ended up with a diet a lot like the Tarahumara.
“Growing up in Minnesota, I used to be a total junk eater,” he said. “Lunch used to be two McChickens and large fries.” When he was a Nordic skier and cross-country runner in high school, his coaches were always telling him he needed plenty of lean meat to rebuild his muscles after a tough workout, yet the more Scott researched traditional endurance athletes, the more vegetarians he found.
Like the Marathon Monks in Japan he’d just been reading about; they ran an ultramarathon every day for seven years, covering some twenty-five thousand miles on nothing but miso soup, tofu, and vegetables. And what about Percy Cerutty, the mad Australian genius who coached some of the greatest milers of all time? Cerutty believed food shouldn’t even be cooked, let alone slaughtered; he put his athletes through triple sessions on a diet of raw oats, fruit, nuts, and cheese. Even Cliff Young, the sixty-three-year-old farmer who stunned Australia in 1983 by beating the best ultrarunners in the country in a 507- mile race from Sydney to Melbourne, did it all on beans, beer, and oatmeal (“I used to feed the calves by hand and they thought I was their mother,” Young said. “I couldn’t sleep too good those nights when I knew they would get slaughtered.” He switched to grains and potatoes, and slept a whole lot better. Ran pretty good, too).
Scott wasn’t sure why meatless diets worked for history’s great runners, but he figured he’d trust the results first and figure out the science later. From that point on, no animal products would pass his lips—no eggs, no cheese, not even ice cream—and not much sugar or white flour, either. He stopped carrying Snickers and PowerBars during his long runs; instead, he loaded a fanny pack with rice burritos, pita stuffed with hummus and Kalamata olives, and home-baked bread smeared with adzuki beans and quinoa spread. When he sprained his ankle, he eschewed ibuprofen and relied instead on wolfsbane and whomping portions of garlic and ginger.
“Sure, I had my doubts,” Scott said. “Everyone told me I’d get weaker, I wouldn’t recover between workouts, I’d get stress fractures and anemia. But I found that I actually feel better, because I’m eating foods with more high-quality nutrients. And after I won Western States, I never looked back.”
By basing his diet on f
ruits, vegetables, and whole grains, Scott is deriving maximum nutrition from the lowest possible number of calories, so his body isn’t forced to carry or process any useless bulk. And because carbohydrates clear the stomach faster than protein, it’s easier to jam a lot of workout time into his day, since he doesn’t have to sit around waiting for a meatball sub to settle. Vegetables, grains, and legumes contain all the amino acids necessary to build muscle from scratch. Like a Tarahumara runner, he’s ready to go any distance, any time.
Unless, of course, he runs out of water.
“Not good, guys,” Luis called as he trotted back down. “That one’s dry, too.” He was getting worried; he’d just tried to piss, and after four hours of sweating in 95- degree heat, it came out looking like convenience-store coffee. “I think we should run for it.”
Scott and Caballo agreed. “If we open it up, we’ll be down in an hour,” Caballo said. “Oso,” he asked me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “And we’re still packing water.”
“All right, let’s do it,” Barefoot Ted said.
We began running single file down the trail, Caballo and Scott up front. Barefoot Ted was amazing; he was speeding down the mountain hard on the heels of Luis and Scott, two of the best downhillers in the sport. With all that talent pushing up against each other, the pace was getting ferocious. “YEEEEEAAAHHH, BABY!” Jenn and Billy were hollering.
“Let’s hang back,” Eric said. “We’re going to crash if we try to hang with them.”
We settled into an easy lope, falling far behind as the others slashed back and forth down the switchbacks. Running downhill can trash your quads, not to mention snap your ankle, so the trick is to pretend you’re running uphill: keep your feet spinning under your body like you’re a lumberjack rolling a log, and control your speed by leaning back and shortening your stride.
By midafternoon, the heat had bottled up in the canyon until it was over 100 degrees. We’d lost sight of the others, so Eric and I took our time, running easily and sipping often from our quickly emptying hydration packs, feeling our way carefully down the confusing web of trails, unaware that an hour before, Jenn and Billy had vanished.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen Page 21
