by Scott Jurek
Best of all was what happened to my mind. In the predawn darkness before my final trip through the swamps and peaks of the Issaquah Alps, I heard something. I had made my three trips up Mount Si the day before. It was a familiar sound, but it took a few seconds before I recognized it. I almost laughed. It was the siren song that had beckoned with such urgency two months earlier. Rest, come back to bed. That morning, though, it was just a faint little ditty. It was background noise. The Western States would be easy.
MAKING PROGRESS
Regular running is satisfying in itself. If you’re the competitive type, even greater satisfaction lies in running faster and longer, in challenging yourself. Progress can be a great motivator and a great incentive to keep exercising.
If you want to improve as a runner, you can (and should) do supplemental training, which involves strengthening, flexibility, and technique work. But the simplest way to improve is to run faster. And the way to do that is to train yourself to run harder, the way I did during my long climbs at Mount Si.
Here’s how: After you’ve been running for 30 to 45 minutes at least three times a week for six to eight weeks, you’re ready to start running occasionally at 85 to 90 percent of your physical capacity, or the point where lactate is building up in your muscles but your body is still able to clear and process it. Build to where you can maintain that lactate threshold level for 5 minutes. Then take 1 minute of easy running to give the body time to recover, then repeat. As you progress, increase the number of the intervals and their length while maintaining a 5:1 ratio between work and rest. So you would do 10-minute intervals of hard running followed by 2-minute breaks, or 15 minutes of hard running followed by 3 minutes of rest, and so on.
After four to six weeks, you’ll be able to maintain this effort level for 45 to 50 minutes. And you’ll be faster.
Chocolate Adzuki Bars
If you’re going to eat a moist, dense dessert on the run, this one is ideal. Made from the most digestible of beans, along with banana, rice flour, and vanilla, these lightly sweetened bars taste even better than their ingredients suggest. Plus, they are an excellent source of carbohydrates and protein.
½ teaspoon coconut oil
1 15-ounce can adzuki beans, drained
1 medium overripe banana
½ cup almond or rice milk
½ cup light coconut milk
½ cup barley flour
¼ cup rice flour
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon miso or ½ teaspoon sea salt
⅓ cup goji berries, currants, or raisins (optional)
½ cup vegan chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease a 9-inch square cake pan with the coconut oil. Using a blender or food processor, puree the beans and banana with the almond milk and coconut milk until smooth and creamy. Add the flours, cocoa powder, maple syrup, vanilla, and miso, processing until they are thoroughly mixed. Stir in the dried fruit. Pour the mixture into the cake pan and sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until firm.
When the bars have cooled, they can be cut into squares, placed in small plastic bags, and refrigerated overnight for the next long day on the road or trail.
MAKES 16 2-INCH-SQUARE BROWNIES
11. “Are You Peeing?”
WESTERN STATES 100, 1999
If you are not on the edge, you are taking up too much room.
—RANDY “MACHO MAN” SAVAGE
The week before the 1999 Western States, I spent a lot of time worrying. I worried that my vegan diet might fail me. I worried that I’d run out of energy. I worried that the heat might prove too much.
True, I wasn’t as sore as I had been before going to a plant-based diet, and my recovery time was faster than ever. True, I almost never got congested, and whenever a cold or flu swept through Seattle, sending a lot of other runners to bed, I stayed healthy. And of course, I had battled Mount Si and prevailed, if a man could be said to prevail. I had also gone to California a week earlier and trained every day in the 100-degree canyons.
But if you can imagine running 100 miles, you can imagine almost anything. I tried to ignore my darkest visions. I reminded myself how hard I had worked, of my gasping, aching labor. I told myself that the work would protect me at my most trying moments. I didn’t need to remind myself of how much I wanted to win. That hunger burned. Did it burn as fiercely in my competitors? I had no reason to think otherwise, and I doubted that I could dim their zeal, at least directly. So I did something else. I tried to stoke their doubt. The morning of the race I shaved my head, and I let people know that I didn’t plan to cut my hair again until I lost the race, and I told myself that it would be a few years. And I said to my pacer, Ian Torrence (Dusty had to attend a wedding), loud enough so people could overhear, “When I take the lead, when I come through in front at Dusty Corners, at 42 miles in . . . ,” just so they would know I was planning to win.
If the other runners saw someone so confident, maybe their courage would melt a little bit. That was the plan, anyway. It didn’t quite work out that way.
When Ian and I had shown up at the prerace meeting the day before, all we heard was talk of Twietmeyer’s sixth victory, which almost everyone agreed was imminent. When Ian had asked one of the organizers if he could tell him the splits for the record time (set by Mike Morton in 1997), people had snickered. Twietmeyer had raised his eyebrows.
Here’s what those eyebrows said to me: Who did Ian think he was? And the tall, bald guy? He was from Minnesota! This was a race for mountain men. What did he think he was doing here?
Ian got the splits, though. He wrote on his right forearm (he was left-handed) the time Morton had arrived at each of the fifteen aid stations. On my left forearm I scrawled the same times. Those were the numbers I would need to set a Western States record.
When I got to the starting line at Squaw Valley, I heard comments from people. “Flatlander,” people muttered, “second in the Angeles Crest and he thinks he belongs here?” I think I heard some people snicker, “The Minnesota VoyaWHAT?”
Fifteen years evaporated. Suddenly, I was a teenager again.
“Hey, Pee-Wee!”
“Sometimes you just do things!”
“I don’t want you around here anymore.”
When the gun sounded, I unleashed a guttural, almost barbaric, rebel yell, one that seemed to begin at my ankles. People thought I screamed because I loved running so much, and that was true. But that yell embodied the exhilaration I felt now that I was finally competing in the most storied race against the best ultrarunners in the United States. I had trained as hard as I could imagine. Now I would learn if it had been enough. Could I go the distance against the best in the sport or would the mountain men send me squealing back to the flatlands? I was in first place the first mile, and I was in first place after 10 miles. I was in first place at 20 miles and 30 miles and 40 miles. I ran through snowfields and alpine forests, down wide canyons, over dusty, sun-baked ridges, through the heavy, sweet scent of manzanita, through air so hot it singed my nose hairs, so dry that red dust puffed from the ground with each step, with each rare breeze.
What I heard from the volunteers in the aid stations and spectators wasn’t “Wow, the dude from Minnesota is showing us something today” or “Maybe we shouldn’t have underestimated him.”
What I heard was something else.
He went out way too fast, he’ll bonk any minute.
Dumb rookie mistake.
He’ll implode by mile 50.
Twietmeyer is going to reel him in, Twietmeyer is going to catch him soon.
He’s going to learn that the Sierra Nevadas aren’t the same as Minnesota.
The guy’s only a 2:38 marathoner, why should we give him credit?
Douglas firs and snow-packed mountains loomed above, rocky canyons yawned below. Yellow sunflowers rioted all over. It was high noon an
d at least 100 degrees. I was in front, alone with my imagination and my questions.
Why didn’t people realize how hard I had trained, how much I wanted to win?
Why was my mom sick? Why had my dad thrown me out of the house? Why did no one, including me, think I would ever beat Dusty—until I did? Asking why was fine, and even if it wasn’t, it’s what I did. It had led me to link what I ate to how I ran, to link what anyone ate to how they lived.
Two o’clock in the afternoon, and I was out of the canyons, into cool 95-degree foothills, still physically strong, still asking why. Asking why had somehow led me to the thing that I loved—the feeling of moving over the earth, with the earth, the sensation of being in the present, free from chores and expectations and disappointment and worry. Asking why had given me the answer, too. I don’t think my dad intended it that way, but what he said—Sometimes you just do things—carried the weight of hard-earned wisdom.
“There’s the flatlander dude,” someone whispered—loud enough for me to hear—at the 55-mile Michigan Bluff aid station. “He’s in front now, but he won’t be for long. That guy’s going way too fast. He’s gonna crash. Wait until Twietmeyer gets warmed up. That guy’s toast.”
The naysayers’ doubts were whispers compared to the screaming in my head: Did you train too hard? Did you train enough? Can you really run 100 miles on only plants? Did you go out too fast, too early? Are you doomed? But—and this is what I had learned—the screaming in my head could be reduced to faint hissing. All I had to do was remember why I was here, what I wanted—how bad I had wanted it. I had faced difficulties before. You work through them. The lung-burning climbs and quad-pounding descents? A small price to pay for entry into the promised land I had dreamt about. Part of me felt the scalding air. Part of me didn’t care. Part of me winced at each painful, jolting step. Part of me didn’t care. I was running toward that region where my body couldn’t go on, to see if I could will it to do so. It was exactly the place I wanted to be. And there was only one way to get there.
You could carry your burdens lightly or with great effort. You could worry about tomorrow or not. You could imagine horrible fates or garland-filled tomorrows. None of it mattered as long as you moved, as long as you did something. Asking why was fine, but it wasn’t action. Nothing brought the rewards of moving, of running.
Sometimes you just do things.
I jogged into the Foresthill aid station at 62 miles, bare-chested, my wet shirt wrapped around my smooth skull. I screamed and hooted—to celebrate that I was still in first place, to express gratitude that I had made it this far, to remind myself that I was alive and on the journey of my choosing. This was the first aid station where a runner could pick up his pacer. I looked for mine.
“Have you been drinking? Are you peeing?”
I told Ian I’d been drinking and peeing plenty, that I felt fine. And it was true, though “fine” is a relative concept for anyone who has just traveled the equivalent of an hour’s drive on an interstate highway by foot. Other than normal soreness and fatigue, I felt great. I felt delighted, in fact. My consumption of bananas, potatoes, bean and rice burritos, with the occasional energy gel and Clif Bar, had me running exactly as I wanted to.
Ian shoved two 20-ounce water bottles into my hands, two more into his.
“Before the next checkpoint, I want you to have finished those,” he said.
But the next checkpoint was only 3 miles away. If I had been dehydrated, it would have made sense. If I hadn’t been peeing, I would have sucked the water down as fast as I could. I started to protest, then thought better of it. The whole idea of having a pacer is that your brain can shut off a little bit. And Ian wasn’t just any pacer. In 1999, he would run sixteen ultramarathons and win twelve of them. He had run this course the previous year and knew its challenges. We left the little town on Main Street, then made a quick left onto California, both easy, slightly downhill jogs. Then we plunged down a trail. We would be going mostly downhill for 16 miles. I knew I was supposed to be slugging back the water, but I didn’t. It would have made sense to drink before a steep climb. I would have needed the extra fluids. But now?
The air got warmer as we descended 1,000 feet through a crimson dust trail, fine as cake flour. I smelled ancient rock and rich soil.
Run for 20 minutes and you’ll feel better. Run another 20 and you might tire. Add on 3 hours and you’ll hurt, but keep going and you’ll see—and hear and smell and taste—the world with a vividness that will make your former life pale. That’s what was happening now.
“How do your feet feel? How are your legs? Are you still drinking?”
It was Ian, behind me, checking, worrying, doing what pacers often do.
I had to think for a second. How did my feet feel? Now that he mentioned it, they hurt. I had a few blisters. My legs? Yeah, come to think of it, they were kind of shot through with invisible knives.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Are you drinking?”
I hadn’t been, but I did now, drank till a bottle was drained and kept running.
We ran for a few minutes, and Ian didn’t say much. Finally, after a twisty descent, there was a climb. It felt good. I felt good. I checked my left forearm. We were way behind on the record splits, but we were still leading. I was doing what I had dreamed and visualized on those snowmobile trails in northern Minnesota and on the mossy trails of the Cascade foothills.
“How we doing?”
We were doing fine, I thought. We were doing great.
Then I felt the weight of my full water bottle. It felt like a particularly heavy cookie I had snuck out of a cookie jar. Ian saw me glance down.
“I want that entire bottle gone by the time we reach the next station.”
I chugged it down. We had crested the hill, rounded a bend, and there in front of us was a wooden platform no bigger than 10 by 10 feet, built into the side of a hill. There were three people under an awning—volunteers—and they stared at us.
“Who’s this guy?” one of them asked, and before I could say anything, Ian said, “This is the guy who’s going to win the race.”
We filled our empty bottles, and Ian handed me an inch-long transparent electrolyte capsule with salt crystals inside, which I swallowed. And just as we were bounding away it hit me. Uh-oh, my stomach felt funny.
We cruised out of the station, about 100 yards through that fine red cake powder, around a bend. That’s when I started spewing.
First came liquid, and there—still intact—the electrolyte capsule. Then more liquid. And then—when it started coming out my nose—more liquid. Some chunks of banana. Some green, stinging bile. Just when I thought there couldn’t be another wave, there was.
My body was fighting a battle on two fronts: inside, against the heat generated by my muscular exertion, and outside, against the sun-baked canyon air. A rise of more than 4 degrees in core temperature would cause my body systems to begin to malfunction. Fortunately, the last week of training in the heat had helped my cooling systems adapt. The increased blood flow in the surface of my body was allowing extra heat to escape through my skin. I had started sweating earlier and would keep sweating longer and with less sodium (or electrolytes) in my sweat than non–heat acclimatized runners.
The increased perspiration had its downside, though: dehydration. Depending on my pace, I was losing about a liter of water every hour along with a half-teaspoon of salt. My hypothalamus was pumping out antidiuretic hormones, which told my kidneys to mitigate fluid loss by concentrating my urine. Still, even with my body performing its miraculous adjustments, without enough water, dehydration would thicken my blood, increasing the workload of my already-taxed heart. That’s what Ian was worried about. That’s why he was pushing the water.
He was also worried about another danger: hyponatremia, in which overdrinking, combined with the kidneys’ failure to compensate, leads to plummeting blood sodium levels. Runners with hyponatremia will actually gain weight over
the course of a race, as the cells in their body swell with retained fluid. Temporary swelling in the extremities isn’t so bad, but when brain cells swell, they press against the skull, causing disorientation and confusion. In severe cases, hyponatremia can even be fatal. Hence Ian’s pushing the salt.
Making sure you take in enough water and salt during a long period of intense effort sounds simple. Tell that to your stomach. A race is a “fight or flight” situation, so my sympathetic nervous system was fired up, shunting blood away from my digestive organs and toward the muscles, lungs, heart, and brain. The pounding of my feet against the ground raised the pressure in my abdomen to two to three times its normal level. Under those conditions, it’s hard to keep anything down. Some runners take Prilosec before a race to avoid the inevitable gastric upset, but if I was committing to plant-based, non-processed foods, I wasn’t about to do that.
I aimed the puke into the grass off the trail.
Ian patted me on the back. He told me it would be okay, that I would be okay, I would feel better in a minute. I thought he was lying or delusional. Neither option seemed attractive.
I had never thrown up in a race before. Whether it was my cast-iron stomach or because I’d eaten well and taken care of my body, I didn’t know. But now, at what should have been one of the crowning points of my life, I was bent over, head turned to the right so I would puke into the grassy hill rather than the other direction, which might alert any competitors who happened upon us and, worse, might lead me to fall down a steep embankment.
Was it the vegan diet? I totaled up my intake since the race began. A bowl of thick rolled oats with banana, walnuts, soy yogurt, energy gel as sweetener, a plum, an apricot, and kiwi. I had awakened at 3 A.M. to eat it so it would have two hours to digest. Two slices of sprouted-grain bread with almond butter. A bean burrito (with rice) at 42 miles. Bananas and cooked potatoes dipped in salt along the way. Clif Shot energy gels, electrolyte drink, and an occasional Clif Bar. I’d been consuming about 300 calories an hour.
