North

by Scott Jurek

  He had physically and mentally cracked. I was beginning to know what that felt like.

  He wasn’t unusual only in the running world; he was eclectic everywhere and in the things he did. I never saw him wear anything but a T-shirt, hiking shorts, and running shoes or wool house slippers. He always raced with a hydration waist belt; no newfangled high-tech hydration vest or torso pack for the old-school Goat. He wore bicycle-racing gloves while he ran, because, well, you know: “Dude, you think I want my hands messed up when I eat shit?” For years he raced with a bulky, low-tech MP3 player and big-ass headphones with a wire headband. He did it way before most runners ran with music and then way after more compact and convenient devices came out. In some ways, he was both a trendsetter and a throwback. And it worked for him. Monotony and boredom were absent from Speedgoat’s mentality. In hundred-milers he could eat gel after gel, consuming sixty of them in twenty hours. Everyone was shocked he didn’t get sick of gels. Speedgoat’s response? “Dude, I just suck them down, doesn’t matter.” Evidently, palate fatigue was not a part of his mind-set either.

  He was also a fanatic golfer. And no surprise, given his nickname, the Speedgoat played world-class speed golf, setting a record for 230 holes in twelve hours. He had a secret life goal of playing on the Masters tour.

  He was simple and stubborn to the core. He still ate like it was the 1950s. The nutrition revolution had reached nearly every corner of the running world—even nonvegans were at least eating consciously—but not Speedgoat. Burgers, steak, pizza, whatever was around, Speedgoat was game. Well, except mayonnaise—or anything white, for that matter. Oh yeah, and most vegetables. But he loved his brewskis. And, of course, Red Bull. The beverage giant was one of his sponsors and it was a match made in heaven. Karl was always well stocked with Red Bull in every flavor, including prototypes no one had ever heard of. “Dude, I got the keys to the warehouse,” he would joke as he thrust a kiwi-flavored Red Bull into the hands of someone nearby.

  But he wasn’t even consistent in his craziness. As careless as he was in his eating habits, Speedgoat was exceptionally fussy in other aspects of his life. His necessities of “Speedgoat livin’ ” were always ready in his van, and it was a meticulously curated collection of stuff. I rarely saw any item switched out or replaced or upgraded. Speedgoat had his stuff, and his stuff was a symbol of his simple yet calculated existence.

  Now he was out here with me. At least I’d have some entertainment for the last stretch of the Virginia Blues. But I wasn’t sure JLu was ready for two weeks with the Goat.

  * * *

  By the time we got to the Shenandoahs, we were different people than we’d been when we left Boulder. Horty wasn’t with us, but his words pervaded the air; this was who we were, and this was what we did. Our systems were dialed. We were making up for lost time and we were in a groove. So I was less than excited about another person joining our team, even if it was the legendary Speedgoat.

  It’s not that I didn’t like him; I barely knew him. I knew he and Scott had developed a happy rivalry over the years, and he’d come to our wedding, but he and I had never established any kind of relationship. Some of my friends had crewed for him and I’d heard he could be a real grump, so I didn’t want that energy here because we were having fun.

  But I’ve been told that you should be careful of being too happy—it makes you soft. Speedgoat was here to remind us of that.

  Jurker had schooled me on the history of Speedgoat and the AT FKT. I knew the AT was his obsession, I knew he had gone for the speed record twice before and had come close both times, which only fueled his mania. I wondered if he would be upset if Jurker scooped his project on the first try. Maybe he was coming out here to sabotage us or spy on us? He’d jumped at the opportunity to help out, so I was a little suspicious of his intentions.

  But Jurker really wanted him here, and he could use the company. He wasn’t the least bit worried; he assured me that Speedgoat was a true champion and would welcome the competition. Karl knew the AT like the back of his hand; he had rehearsed sections and driven to literally almost every single road crossing. That all sounded like it would be helpful, but I really didn’t need another know-it-all out here. We were unlocking the AT FKT puzzle on our own terms. Far from precise, we had no idea if one bad decision or disappointment would be our demise or the very thing that bolstered us up over the next mountain. That’s what made it exciting; the uncertainty kept us sharp.

  Speedgoat texted me a few days before he met us to make sure I had reserved a campground in Shenandoah. I hadn’t figured that out yet and I wasn’t able to reply right away. When he showed up, he had already reserved a campsite for us. Okay, maybe he was going to be a helpful addition to this team of two. He found us out on the trail and all my anxieties went away when I saw how relaxed he was out here; he had the same youthful expression I’d seen on Jurker on day one. I could see that Speedgoat was genuinely excited to help Jurker succeed.

  Karl referred to his vehicle as “the Inconspicuous White Van,” which was equal parts creepy and funny and exactly on-brand. When we pulled into a trailhead parking lot, I was curious to see his rig. This was the vehicle he’d used in his last attempt on the AT, so I wanted to see how ours compared. It was bigger than ours, for sure, with lots of windows, but it was more rustic inside. He had a raised platform for a big bed, two inflatable Therm-a-Rest mattresses and some sleeping bags, plastic bins under the bed for storage, a nicer cooler than ours, a two-burner propane stove, and a blue plastic cube-shaped water jug. He didn’t have installed solar panels, just portable ones, so he always parked his van in the sunniest spot possible and then unrolled the panels and lay them on top of his van.

  Castle Black was no palace, but I’d tried my best to make it cozy. I hung curtains to cover up the patchwork of steel walls and duct-taped insulation. I threw a rug on the plywood floor. We had a twin-bed-size foam mattress and a comforter with a cute duvet cover (it was the little things that kept me sane). Speedgoat’s van was for survival; it reminded me of a college dorm on wheels, minus the tie-dye tapestries.

  I was getting ready to meet Jurker here in the parking lot, grabbing his food and setting his supplies out. Speedgoat pulled out his lawn chair from the back of his van and walked over to me. “Ready?” he asked.

  “For what?” I was confused.

  “To hike down. The trail doesn’t run through the parking lot.” Blunt, always blunt. I liked that about Karl.

  “I know, but I think it’s pretty close.”

  “Always meet him on the trail; never make him walk extra steps. Doesn’t matter how short it is—it all adds up. A tenth of a mile here, a half a mile there, and next thing you know, you’re looking at an extra mile per day over forty-six days. That’s forty-six miles, which equals a full day on the AT. So, do you have a chair? If not, I have one.”

  The man had a point. I grabbed my camping chair out of Castle Black. It still had the price tags on, since it had been a last-minute purchase before we left Boulder. I loaded his energy food and water into a backpack and locked up.

  “Do you have any hot food for him?” He read the answer in my face. “Always have something hot to offer him. He’s so sick of eating energy food. Have a couple different options of real food every time you see him. And whatever you make, be sure it has a ton of calories.”

  Right. Normally I do not like taking orders from people, but I had to hand it to him—he knew what he was talking about. I got back in the van and fired up the stove. It was the first time I’d used it during the day. I slathered two pieces of bread with coconut oil and made a grilled vegan cheese sandwich with avocado slices. That was about the fattiest thing I could make, and I was proud of myself for not burning it!

  We hiked down to the trail, which was longer and steeper than I’d expected; good thing I hadn’t made Jurker hike up that. Karl plopped down in his big lawn chair on the trail, put on his reading glasses, and started paging through his guidebook, occasionally jotting
down notes. I set my chair next to his and began looking for signs of Jurker. Like a beater truck with high mileage and bad suspension, Jurker rolled our way, much to my relief.

  I offered him my seat and he took a bite of the sandwich. I told him about my morning, about the Speedgoat rig, and caught him up on the daily news. He took off his pack and sifted through his food supply, assessing what he would need for the next section.

  “You guys are taking too long,” said an authoritative Speedgoat. “No sitting down; you can eat that sandwich while you walk out of here. Jenny, you need to grab his pack as soon as he gets here and do the resupply. No chitchat.”

  I was starting to really like Karl. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy and he approached the AT speed record like a NASA scientist. He had all these detailed maps of the trail that I hadn’t known existed. He’d taken one look at us and could tell we didn’t have our act together. I’d thought we were moving like a well-oiled machine, but apparently we were leaking at every seal. Guess we wouldn’t be stopping for swims and backtracking for border crossings anymore. Without sounding righteous or bossy, he initiated an overhaul of our go-with-the-flow, easy-breezy attitude.

  After Jurker left, Speedgoat and I hiked back up to the vans. “Listen, this record is legit; there is no room for error. Every second matters. How often are you meeting him?”

  “I don’t know…we try to meet up at least every four hours. Sometimes every six, or even eight.” That was the rhythm we’d gotten into down south.

  “From now on, we meet him at every road crossing; that way he can carry less. Plus it’s a huge mental boost for him to see you more often.” The advantage Speedgoat brought to this one-woman-crew operation was that he could put himself in Scott’s position better than I could, since he’d made the run himself. Sometimes he seemed to know what Jurker needed even before Jurker knew.

  I followed him to the Big Meadows Campground, where Speedgoat had made reservations for us. We found our campsite and he parked his van. Then he backed into a different spot, came out, backed in again, then did it once more at a different angle. He spent about ten minutes positioning his van in just the right spot. It seemed like a lot of work to make sure his van was level. But then he told me about how he took care of his lawn at home. He had a croquet court in his backyard that he manicured daily and meticulously mowed every three days. And not with a power mower—with a push one, and a battery trimmer. He didn’t trust anyone else to maintain it, not even his wife, Cheryl.

  I found the Speedgoat’s quirks endearing. He was like an old man set in his ways. I think when you race ultramarathons or attempt something like the AT, there are so many things out of your control that the few things in your life you can control, you want to master. For Jurker, it was his diet. That was the one thing he liked to have complete control over. And out here, he handed the reins to me, which was no small task.

  I dropped Speedgoat off at Pinefield Gap so he could run with Jurker that evening. He pulled on his waist belt and slid two beer cans into the water-bottle holders. Legendary. I saw three black bears in the direction they were running and I’d seen three more by the time I drove to the final meeting spot of the day. I had asked Speedgoat if he was worried about bears in this notoriously bear-filled section and he said, “Nope, I just put on my headphones and turn the music up louder.” Jurker was in good hands.

  Mid-Atlantic

  450 Miles

  Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

  —Yoda, Star Wars

  Chapter 9

  Rocksylvania

  Day Twenty

  “You hear that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  JLu and I were headed to Hogwallow Gap, running the evening light away on one of the last stretches of Shenandoah National Park. Speedgoat had offered to shuttle Castle Black there, so we took the now-rare opportunity to run together. It had been days since we’d had trail time alone, and we were catching up and chatting so it wasn’t surprising she didn’t hear it. But I did. By day twenty, I’d already become attuned to the circle of wilderness that had evolved into my entire world. My Spidey sense was on alert.

  “That growl,” I said. “Listen.”

  JLu and I paused, listening closely this time. Nothing. Maybe I was wrong. We took a few strides ahead. And then the growl again echoed through the thick woods, louder, reverberating into our bones. I scanned the surroundings and quickly located our visitor on the left.

  A huge black bear materialized from the forest’s natural camouflage. She had reared up on her hind legs and was about twenty feet away—a distance the bear could cover in only a few seconds if she chose to charge.

  My first thought was cubs. I knew that if we were positioned between the bear and her cubs, we could be screwed. We might already be. Keeping my body mostly static, I swiveled my head around and searched for cubs in all directions—nothing. After that, JLu and I remained still. If we moved toward any cubs, we’d almost certainly provoke an attack.

  But something eventually had to give. I took a breath, raised my arms, made my body look as big as I could, and hollered back at the standing bear. She looked to be about three hundred pounds and six feet tall, and she stayed up on her hind legs, glared at us, shook her head, and growled again, totally unfazed by me. A standoff.

  I couldn’t help thinking of old Horty in that moment, even with the threat of death in the air. Horty loved talking to bears; he spoke to them as if they were humans. He’d holler at them as they were running off scared: “Hey, bear, get back here. Yeah, you! I said come back here!” Unfortunately, one time we were running together and came across a bear that seemed to understand English. Horty unloaded his typical threats and taunts and actually provoked the bear to turn back around and full-on chase after Horty and me. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he was still alive.

  On the trail, I spoke to the bear again. Louder but calmer this time. I even took a step forward. Then I spotted two cubs. They were about fifty feet up a tree, just above their mama, only a few paces off the trail.

  Now Mama went ballistic, roaring like mad and slamming her giant paw on the tree. It sounded like somebody was pounding the trunk with a baseball bat, and it seemed to be a clear warning for us to get the hell out of there. The only problem was that we were heading north. She wasn’t letting us past her even though they were off to the side of the trail. But I wasn’t about to head back to Georgia on account of one bear.

  “She’s not gonna let us by,” I said to JLu. “We’ve gotta give them space.”

  “Space? What space? We can’t step off the trail, what if we walk into a rattlesnake den or tick colony?” JLu had a point. The trail was a thin ribbon through dense brush that hid hazards of its own.

  Mama Bear tracked us with her eyes and stood her ground between us and her cubs. She stopped smacking the tree but remained on her hind legs. We inched forward on the farthest tangent of the trail possible. After we got far enough past the bear and saw no indication that she was following us, we resumed running with intensity.

  Speedgoat loved hearing about our mama-bear showdown when we closed out the day. He shared a story of his own about being charged by a moose while racing the Bighorn hundred-miler. “Dude, that was a close one. Almost my last hundo.” Every trail runner knows that an aggressive moose is about as terrifying an experience as there is out there. Speedgoat had escaped multiple lethal assaults by ducking behind aspen trees. He was lucky he was no wider than those aspens and that moose have terrible vision right in front of their bodies.

  When I woke up on day twenty-one, I already felt the pull of a new section of the adventure. The Appalachian Trail linked disparate places and feelings together in a way that was unlike any other trail I’d ever run. As Speedgoat, JLu, and I approached the northern border of Virginia and the sliver of Maryland just beyond it, we became increasingly aware that we were leaving the South behind. Or, rather, that the trail and the world around it seemed to be slowly transitioni
ng. It hadn’t been easy to make it this far. But there we were, and we were still moving. That thought, at least, gave me comfort. Perhaps I was weathered now. Perhaps the oldest mountains in the world and their endless peaks were shaping me into something stronger.

  Not that I didn’t have doubts. There were plenty of things that made me question myself, but they could also fuel my fire.

  I’d met an older runner who was checking on me. He asked how many zeros I had taken. Zeros, in trail speak, are days when no miles are hiked. A lot of hikers take zeros occasionally, to rest, to socialize, to clean up and refuel. When I told him none, that I couldn’t even consider setting a speed record if I took any zeros, he laughed and said, “Record? There’s no way you’re going to set the record. I’ve been following you—you’re way too far behind.”

  He wasn’t even close to getting in my head; I had been shutting down the critics my entire racing career. Nobody expected a twenty-five-year-old from Minnesota to show up and win the Western States 100, first try. Nobody expected a sea-level Seattleite to win the Hardrock Hundred, and certainly nobody expected a stagnant forty-something to run the Appalachian Trail in record time. Nobody—except the man in the ring. I thought about that Roosevelt quote printed on my 1999 Western States race guide: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles…. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”