Eat and Run

by Scott Jurek

  That’s when I realized I had been wrong about Dusty. He was one tough bastard.

  The rest of the week was vintage Dusty. First he snuck into the Alaskan team’s room and stole their Nintendo game. When they found out, he told them they were pussies and launched a water fight with them that lasted all week. Every night Dusty would hold forth at the hotel bar over Cokes and ginger ales. He told stories about getting chased through the woods by cops and their K-9 units. He talked about all the women he’d slept with. He told us about how he had befriended a guy who knew which janitors’ closets were open at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and how he’d steal ninety rolls of toilet paper at a time, then TP the houses of people he wanted to piss off. He said he never ran out of houses. He said he once ran 18 miles from his house to the start of the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, then ran the marathon, then ran the 5 miles home.

  I said “yes sir” to adults and Dusty asked coaches, “Why the hell are you making us do this?” I wore button-down shirts and Dusty shaved half his skull. Our differences were obvious to anyone who was looking. What wasn’t so apparent was the hunger we shared, the way we defined ourselves by our effort. When Dusty regaled everyone with outlandish tales of superhuman endurance, they all hooted and hollered. Except me. Dusty was hilarious, but everyone thought he was totally full of shit. I wasn’t so sure. He had something that allowed him to keep going when everyone else stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I wanted it.

  When graduation rolled around, with some money I’d saved from the Dry Dock Bar I bought my grandpa Ed’s beige Toyota Corolla so I could drive the 2 miles to work rather than run or ski. I was president of the National Honor Society, and I had read Solzhenitsyn and Thoreau. I was thinking about life beyond Proctor and Duluth and Minnesota—life way beyond our house on the dead-end road—but I couldn’t quite see it. I definitely didn’t know how I’d get there. I wanted to ski cross-country in college and to study physical therapy. I had become pretty good at helping my mom and had become friends with her physical therapist. Steve Carlin was a real down-to-earth guy, not like the doctor who wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine. Steve would help get my mom up, and when she didn’t want to, he would help me motivate her. She had a big wound on her hip from the surgery after her fall, but that didn’t scare me. Steve said that was another reason I’d be good at physical therapy—I wasn’t squeamish.

  In my valedictory speech I said, “I would like to leave you with four messages to help you and others benefit from life.” (I still have the speech.)

  “First of all, I ask you to be different.

  “Second, find a way to help others rather than thinking solely of yourself.

  “Third, everyone is capable of achieving. Never let anyone discourage you when trying to pursue a goal or a dream.

  “And finally, do things while you’re young. Be sure to pursue your dreams and goals even if they seem impossible.”

  It all sounded good, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure what my own goals and dreams were beyond skiing and a job as a physical therapist. I knew I wanted to go to college, but my dad had made it clear I would have to pay my own way. I dreamed of going to Dartmouth, but the Ivy League was financially out of the question. I ended up choosing the College of St. Scholastica, my mom’s alma mater. It was a small private liberal arts school and had a highly regarded physical therapy program. Best (and worst) of all, it would allow me to stay at home, to continue helping around the house. Mom’s spasticity was getting worse, and Steve had stopped coming as much. There just wasn’t a lot he could do anymore. When I started taking classes, it was a relief to be out of the house. (That might sound like an awful thing to say, but it was the truth.)

  Only one in five kids from Proctor attended college, so most of my friends stayed around and took jobs. I took a job, too, at the NordicTrack shop at the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth. I would put on a polo shirt and demonstrate and sell NordicTrack machines. I was polite, and I knew about the movements of cross-country ski machines. Nick the Greek, who worked a few evening shifts, wanted to fix me up with his daughter. I took medieval history and chemistry and freshman composition. I ate at McDonald’s at the mall at least four times a week. I’d get two McChicken sandwiches, extra-large fries, and a Coke. As a kid, I had rarely had fast food. Between my mom’s dedication to cooking and my dad’s dedication to saving, it was a luxury we couldn’t afford. So being able to buy a burger or chicken sandwich whenever I wanted felt like freedom. And it tasted good. While salads and veggie stir-fries might have been okay for some people, I was an athlete, and everyone said serious jocks needed serious protein. That meant meat.

  I ran cross-country in the fall but only lasted about half the season, three meets. It was a total junk show. The baseball coach was coaching the team. We wore uniforms that the girls’ team had thrown out a decade or two earlier. To stay in shape for the coming ski season, I ran on my own or, more and more often, with Dusty.

  We would drive to ski races in my car, and while I would be getting gas, he would be shuffling out of the convenience store attached to the station with a package of baloney or potato chips in his pants. I’m surprised we never got arrested. While I drove down the freeway in my old wagon, Dusty would hang out of the passenger window and high-five fellow skiers on their way to races. He loved the all-you-can-eat buffets. He taught me how to stuff my jacket full of slices from Godfather’s Pizza after our stomachs could hold no more.

  When Dusty wasn’t stealing stuff, getting into trouble, or running, he was working at the Ski Hut, which sold ski gear. He would ride his bike to work (his skis strapped to his bike) in –15-degree weather. That guy could endure.

  And of course Dusty always beat me on our runs. He was faster and stronger, and I—I remembered that broken ankle—would never be that tough. We both knew it. But we both knew that I was changing. Dusty skied a 90K training day every year during winter break, the week after Christmas. It was called “the 90K Day.” The guy who organized it was Rick Calais, the coach at St. Paul Central High School, whom everybody called “the Ricker.” Only the hardest of the hard-core skiers did it. The last year of high school, Dusty asked if I wanted to join him. Of course he beat me, but afterward he told me that he and the Ricker had been looking back every minute or so of the last 10 miles, amazed at how close I was. He knew I had never had blazing speed, and he couldn’t believe I was keeping up. To this day the Ricker says, “The 90K Day is what made the Jurker!”

  Dusty still gave me shit—about college, about what a nerd I looked like in my polo shirt at NordicTrack, about how straight I was. I envied him. I wondered what it would be like to have no responsibility, no worries. I wondered what it would be like to have his life.

  One night in March of freshman year, I came home a little later than I had said I would. My dad had told me that when I said I would be home at a certain time, I had better be home then. I told him he had to realize I had a life outside the house. I was working full time and going to school and I had a lot going on, but he didn’t want to hear it. He said, “If you don’t like it here, you can go live someplace else. This is the way we do things around here.”

  I was sure he wasn’t serious about my living someplace else. But he was. He really meant it. He said, “I don’t want you around here anymore.” We were both yelling at each other and Mom was crying. Even when she was well, I don’t know if she could have intervened. I had a chemistry test the next day, so I grabbed my books—I didn’t even take any clothes—and threw them in my bag and walked out. I drove to an overlook at a nearby rise called Thompson Hill, pulled into a rest area overlooking Duluth, and just sat there. It was freezing. I didn’t think about where I was going to live or how my life was changing. I knew what I had to do. I pulled my car below one of the rest area lights. I pulled out my chemistry book and opened it. I started studying.

  Long Run Pizza Bread

  When I was an omnivorous teenager in northern Minnesota, the idea of pizza wit
hout cheese would have sounded like winter without snow: interesting, but impossible. As a plant-eating adult, finding a tasty vegan pizza is about as easy as clocking a three-hour marathon, off the couch (with no training): very rare. That’s why I make my own pizza. This one is not only delicious and hearty, it’s incredibly fast and easy. The secret ingredient is the nutritional yeast—aka hippie dust—yellow flakes that provide a buttery, cheesy flavor to anything they’re sprinkled on. As a bonus, they pack lots of B vitamins, including the crucial B-12.

  Tofu “Feta”

  8 ounces firm tofu

  2 tablespoons light miso (yellow or white)

  3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

  1 teaspoon lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

  Drain and lightly squeeze the water from the tofu. In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients and mash with a potato masher or wooden spoon until they are thoroughly mixed and form a feta-like consistency. Set aside while you make the sauce.

  Sauce

  1 6-ounce can tomato paste

  1 teaspoon onion powder

  ½ teaspoon garlic powder

  1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

  1 teaspoon sea salt

  ¼ cup water

  ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

  In a small bowl, combine the tomato paste, onion powder, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and water, and mix well. Add the crushed red pepper if you like a spicier sauce. Set aside.

  Crust

  Use any fresh or day-old bread of your choice (my favorite is olive bread).

  1 loaf bread

  Slice the bread into ½- to 1-inch slices.

  Toppings

  The vibrant color and pungent flavors make spinach, sundried tomatoes, and olives a favorite combination. Feel free to substitute any 3 to 5 of your favorite veggie toppings.

  1½ cups chopped fresh spinach

  ¾ cup chopped sundried tomatoes

  ¾ cup chopped kalamata olives

  Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 425°F. To assemble the pizza, spread a thin layer of sauce on each piece of sliced bread. Next, add a small amount of the spinach, followed by the tomatoes and olives. Last, crumble the tofu “feta” on top. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the bottom of the bread and the toppings are very lightly browned. Leftovers can be cooled to room temperature, placed in small plastic bags, and refrigerated overnight for the next long run or lunch.

  MAKES 4–6 SERVINGS

  6. The Wisdom of Hippie Dan

  MINNESOTA VOYAGEUR 50, 1994

  The more you know, the less you need.

  —YVON CHOUINARD

  People are always asking me the same question. Why, when I could stay in shape with a 25-minute jog, do I train for 5 hours at a time? Why, when I could run a perfectly civilized marathon, would I choose to run four of them back-to-back? Why, instead of gliding over shaded tracks, would I take on Death Valley in the height of summer? Am I masochistic? Addicted to endorphins? Is there something deep down inside that I am running from? Or am I seeking something I never had?

  At the beginning of college I ran because of Dusty. It was the summer after my freshman year. Dusty was living with guys in a place they called the House of Gravity. One of his roommates was a champion downhill skier, another was a world-class mountain biker. Dusty was bunking in the attic, where the temperature could drop to –20 degrees, and slept in a down winter sleeping bag from the army surplus store. They called it the House of Gravity because they smoked from a gigantic bong so often that much of the time they couldn’t get up. They decided the field of gravity was greater in that house than anywhere else. They even attached the bong to a rope so they could swing it from one person to another.

  Meanwhile, I was staying with the Obrechts, the family that had re-formed the Proctor High School boys’ ski team. To see my mom and little brother and sister, I had to sneak back to the house when I knew my dad was working. Dusty and his housemates lived day-to-day. I couldn’t stop thinking about the future. I knew my skiing career was coming to an end; I didn’t have Dusty’s talent, and while I could hone my technique until a casual observer would think I was born in Norway, I also had figured out that guys like Dusty—and there were a lot of them at the upper levels of cross-country skiing—could almost always sprint faster than I could. No matter how hard I worked, I could never attain the pure speed that others could. I think whoever—or whatever—gave me determination and a good work ethic forgot to throw in fast twitch muscles. Then Dusty called and told me he had won a 50-mile race called the Minnesota Voyageur. He said he was going to run it next year, too, and asked whether I wanted to train with him. Of course I said yes. (I always said yes to Dusty.) I told myself it was to get in shape for the next ski season. But in reality Dusty was living the life I envied: free, fun, and fast. He was a dirtbag, and I wanted to be a dirtbag, too.

  So we dirtbags trained. We would run for 2, 2½ hours, Dusty giving me shit the whole way. Jurker this and Jurker that, telling me I studied too hard, that I thought too much, I needed to loosen up, who cared if I was a fucking valedictorian. We picked up mud along the way and flung it at each other with various insults. Then one day, just when I was getting used to running distance, Dusty said we should mix up the training, and he threw bike riding into the equation. My experience riding was on the hunk of metal my dad had welded for me. Dusty promised it would be fun. He persuaded a friend of his to sell me his old bike—a Celeste green steel Bianchi. It was too small for me, so Dusty helped me put on an oversized mountain bike seat post. We’d go 70, 100 miles. Dusty knew how to ride, knew all the mechanics. He had raced against George Hincapie a few years earlier; Hincapie would eventually compete in the Tour de France. There I was, my giant seat post jabbing the seat into my nuts every time I hit a rock, ready to quit every 5 minutes. Except I didn’t. Maybe because it was such a relief to be away from studying and the sadness of my family, from watching my mom deteriorate and sensing my dad get sadder and more angry. I didn’t have the skills, and I didn’t have the bike, but I discovered something important during those rides with Dusty. I learned that even though I was a hack, even though I didn’t know anything about riding—I hadn’t read a single book on it, hadn’t studied a single essay on spinning or gear ratios—I could gut out those long rides. I wondered what else I could gut out.

  I moved into the dorms my sophomore year. I signed up for a class with a Sister Mary Richard Boo, who was a notorious hardass, even among St. Scholastica’s hardass nuns. The first day of class she told us to get Crime and Punishment. We had five days to read it. It was a struggle between my other classes, my 30-hour-a-week NordicTrack job, sneaking home to help my mom, and training for what I was sure would be my last season of cross-country skiing.

  I looked at my classmates (the student body was 70 percent female), laughing on their way to class. I didn’t think many of them were on scholarship. They always seemed to have plenty of time. It seemed to me their life was school and intramural sports and parties. I felt out of place. It wasn’t the first time.

  It didn’t help when Dusty would come over from the House of Gravity reeking of marijuana, hair down to his shoulders, making googly eyes at the coeds. He’d say, “Hey, maaaaaaaaaaaaaan,” and they’d blush. They all asked me, “Who’s your stoner friend?” Dusty was always a hit with the ladies. One day he slapped a sticker on my door that read: THANK YOU FOR POT SMOKING. I left it up, and the visiting students would laugh as they passed by, but I’m sure their parents didn’t.

  If someone had asked me at the time what I liked about Dusty, I probably would have shrugged. He was my friend, and that was enough. Now, though, I suspect it was because he embodied the worldview that was pulling at me. I had started delving into existential literature in high school and was continuing in college. Writers like Sartre and Camus described the plight of the outsider who felt like a stranger in an incomprehensible world. Hermann Hesse wrote about the search for the sacred amid chaos and suffering. The existentialists
did not believe in living life from the neck up. They challenged me to reject artifice and the expectations of others, to create a meaningful life.

  Back then, while my life never strayed from the conventional lines of socially approved behavior, the people I chose to hang out with created their own conventions—people like my uncle, my mom’s younger brother, nicknamed “the Communist,” who wore a Malcolm X cap, demonstrated to protect the rights of the homeless, slept on the beaches of Hawaii, worked on the Alaska pipeline, and usually had a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book in his pocket. And people like Dusty, of course, who now had a puke-green Chevy van emblazoned with a bumper sticker that read: HEY, MISTER, DON’T LAUGH, YOUR DAUGHTER MIGHT BE IN HERE.

  The most unconventional of all might have been the Minnesotan known as Hippie Dan, a modern Henry David Thoreau.

  Dan Proctor was forty-five years old when I met him in 1992 at the co-op where he worked and which he co-owned, the Positively Third Street Bakery. He was 5-foot-10, all legs and long, gangly arms. He wore a T-shirt that said BIKES NOT BOMBS, partly hidden by a beard that would have looked at home on a Hasid. He moved as if he was dancing at a Grateful Dead concert. His hair was plaited into two braids that hung over each shoulder. He talked fast—about the environment, and wheatgrass juice and whole grains, and living a mindful life. He spoke with a Scandinavian twang, and when he laughed, he sounded like a loon at dusk.