by Scott Jurek
Other ultrarunners I had seen gorged on pizza and cookies, bagels and candy. As late as 1999, a lot of conventional thinking in the ultra community was that it didn’t really matter what you ate as long as you got lots of carbs and sugar. I was sure my vegan diet was better. I had been sure it was going to help me.
Had it been a mistake? Were Twietmeyer and the others right? Had I let my ego and my wounded pride get the best of me? Or was it simply too much water too fast?
I wasn’t just worrying about my mistakes. I was worried what would happen if I kept puking. I knew the horror stories. Some runners get dehydrated, and they puke, and that gets them more dehydrated, which causes more nausea, and then they can’t drink or eat anything, and that’s when you’re in trouble, when you’re up the creek without a paddle. Because that’s when the medical personnel at one of the stations will make you take an IV. And once you get an IV, you’re out. Disqualified.
“It’ll be fine,” Ian said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Later in my career I would depend more on a growing knowledge of race strategy and tactics to guide me. I would eat and drink at the exact places where my body demanded, because I would become an expert at reading every twitch and cramp and surge of energy. I would know when to rest and when to go. But doubled over at that first Western States, I didn’t depend on strategy or knowledge. I couldn’t. I was twenty-five, a young buck determined to become king of the mountain. I wanted something, so I moved. Simple. It’s something we all have inside us. My body wasn’t ready to go, but it didn’t matter. That’s the moment I learned the power of will. That’s the instant I found what I had been looking for.
I straightened up, and Ian removed his hand. I looked at him.
“Good to go,” I said, and we went.
I had 32 miles to go—6 miles longer than a marathon. Ian tried to scare me a few times. “Tim is right behind you,” he shouted whenever I slowed, “and he’s laughing at you.” If I dared to hike—rather than run—up a hill, Ian would crack, “Tim isn’t walking up this little hill right now, he’s running.”
Twietmeyer was 20 minutes behind when we crossed the American River, and as we climbed the 3 miles to the Green Gate aid station, we heard cheering. “Twietmeyer is closing, the Minnesota dude is about to bonk, Twietmeyer is a real champion.” Neither one of us said anything, but we picked up the pace. We looked at each other, and Ian said, “This is our chance to say to all of them, ‘Go screw yourselves.’”
I didn’t need any extra motivation. The last 10 miles we ran at an 8:30 pace. The people watching—the Californians, the fans who knew what “real” mountain racing was all about—weren’t saying anything, they were just looking. And Ian was cursing the naysayers, saying, “Fuck them.” I was angry, too.
The bushido code as I understood it espoused serenity, even in the midst of slaying one’s enemies. But I made no attempt to empty my mind of rage. I used it. Maybe it wasn’t bushido, but it felt good. I could aspire to peace in the next race. I crossed the finish line at 10:34 P.M., not a record, but 27 minutes faster than Twietmeyer, who came in second. I led the race from start to finish. When I neared the end, I rolled across the finish line in honor of Dust Ball (he liked to crawl and roll across finish lines when he won), and I yelled, “Minnesota!”
I had focused so completely on winning that I’d neglected a few other details—such as where I would stay afterward. I couldn’t afford a hotel room, and by the time I realized I might need a place to stay when I was done, they were all booked, anyway. I figured I’d lay my sleeping bag right by the finish line.
Even though I set up there out of economic necessity, I stayed—that night and the next morning and many others—because of something deeper. Camping out at a finish line gave me a chance to cheer on my buddies and to make new friends. More important, it gave me a chance to acknowledge what every single person who completed the race had endured. I had lived in my in-laws’ basement, trained when I wanted to sleep, puked, moved numerous times, and gone into debt. The other runners must have endured privations, too. Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn’t sure he can accomplish. It can be running a mile, or a 10K race, or 100 miles. It can be changing a career, losing 5 pounds, or telling someone you love her (or him). I can guarantee that no one at the Western States knew they were going to finish, much less win (including me). A lot of people never do something great with their lives. A lot of people never attempt it. Everyone here had done both. Staying at the finish line and greeting those runners, I could pay tribute to the pain and doubt, fatigue and hopelessness, that I imagined they had pushed through. Staying there allowed me to acknowledge the strength they had needed to summon, to congratulate them on setting their sights on an important goal and achieving it. I didn’t realize it till later, but it allowed me to give back something to the sport that had already given me purpose and a measure of peace, that had granted me some answers—however fleeting and ephemeral—to the question why.
I lay down on my sleeping bag and got up to cheer whenever a runner finished. I fell asleep at 1 A.M., and I’m sure I missed a few (I’d been up for 22 hours), but I tried not to. In the morning I got a lift to Latitudes, in Auburn, for some mushroom and sunflower seed tacos and then returned. I stayed there till 11 A.M., the official cutoff time. A lot of the top finishers stayed around for a while, because in those days, while there was certainly a hierarchy among runners, the only place it mattered was on the course. If you were an ultrarunner, you were an ultrarunner. In that moniker everyone was on the same level. We paid the same price and garnered the same joy. And staying at the finish line, I got to remind myself of our collective struggle, to experience that joy over and over again.
COUNTING CALORIES
My biggest challenge in plant-based eating isn’t taking in enough protein but taking in enough calories to replace those I burn on my training runs. I make a big effort to include enough calorie-dense foods in my diet—nuts and nut butters, seeds, avocados, starchy root vegetables, coconut milk, and oils such as olive oil, coconut oil, flaxseed oil, and sesame oil. When you’re eliminating so many foods in your diet, you need to be careful to include enough new ones to compensate. If you’re new to plant-based eating, that’s my biggest piece of advice for you: Think about what high-quality foods you can bring into your diet to replace the calories from animal products you’re excluding. And make sure you get enough.
Western States Trail “Cheese” Spread
When I drove to Auburn every summer, I would leave the blender at home, so I’d make this side dish before I left. Spread on Ezekiel 4:9 Bread (made with sprouted grains and no yeast), it provides a great source of carbohydrates and protein. Tahini gives the “cheese” a bite, as well as providing beneficial fatty acids.
1 16-ounce package firm tofu (see note), drained
3 tablespoons white or yellow miso
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup tahini
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup nutritional yeast
3 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoon water
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and process for 2 to 3 minutes, until a smooth consistency is reached. Spread a layer on whole grain bread (my favorite is Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted) with sliced tomato and lettuce for a “cheese” sandwich, or serve with crackers or raw veggies to dip. Keeps about a week in the refrigerator or freeze for up to 2 months.
MAKES 3 CUPS, 10–12 SERVINGS
NOTE: If using a low-powered blender, silken tofu provides better results. Be sure to drain the water first.
12. Battling Bug Boy
WESTERN STATES 100, 2000 AND 2001
If you could walk a mile in my shoes you’d be crazy too.
—TUPAC SHAKUR
Winning felt great. Kicking ass—especially the
asses of so many who had said I was doomed —was a sensation that all but the most spiritually evolved or brain-fried would enjoy. I had set a goal and achieved it. I had pushed myself to what I thought were the outer limits of my capabilities and then pushed farther—on a vegan diet. Being crowned a champion was good for both my mind and my soul. But it wasn’t enough.
I wanted to know more about that space between exhaustion and breaking. I wanted to know more about my body and my will. And I craved the joy and the peace that had filled me when I ran the game trails with Dusty, the quiet, sublime warmth that had enveloped me as the snow settled on the lonely snowmobile trails of the Great North. Besting competitors in a footrace was a thrill, and it was the goal toward which I had been bending the arc of my life. Winning had done wonders for my ego. But I wanted to lose myself, to connect with something larger. I had read enough Buddhist writings by then to realize that chasing a concrete goal was good, but it wasn’t the point. And the nuns taught us that blind ambition provided a clear path to dubious behavior, so I knew the answer to Jesus’ question, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?” The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life. I know all that now. I sensed it then.
But I was twenty-five years old, and I had just won the oldest and most prestigious trail ultramarathon in the world! I would continue to push myself, to study the limits of endurance, to seek transcendence. But for at least a little while, I would enjoy my status as champion.
It was a short little while. It lasted until I showed up for work at the Seattle Running Company. The store was the epicenter of the local (and later the entire Northwest and national) ultra scene. It was like the corner bar where all the punk rockers or skateboarders or cops hung out, except the people hanging out at the shop wore running shoes and swapped stories about electrolyte consumption.
“Congratulations,” a regular named Jeff Dean greeted me when I showed up after my victory. “You’re now officially a one-hit wonder.”
Jeff was 5'8'', stocky, with a beer belly. He wore thick glasses and talked with a little bit of a lisp. He must have been in his late forties or early fifties, but no one knew. He shuffled when he walked and he shuffled when he ran. He had such weird posture, he looked almost like a hunchback. He ran—or shuffled—7 miles downtown, and on the way he always looked for loose change. “It was a twenty-cent day,” he’d say. Or “It was a buck-thirty day.”
Jeff had run a 2:38 marathon years earlier, and that, plus his incredible knowledge about the history and legends of the sport, made him kind of a whacked-out sage in the running community. He was also the unofficial historian of ultras. He gave me two books by James Shapiro, Ultramarathon and Meditations from the Breakdown Lane, classics on not only the physical and mental dimensions of ultrarunning but the spiritual dimensions as well. Shapiro says, “If your mind is dirty you can run 10,000 miles, but where have you gotten? If you go for a 1-mile run and you’re passionately engaged with the world, who cares about the other 9,999?”
When Jeff said I was a “one-hit wonder,” I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.
I decided I was going to be far more than that. I wanted to win the Western States again, and not only for myself. Mike Morton, the navy diver who had inspired me, didn’t get to defend his title in ’98 because of an injury. He had broken the Californians’ stranglehold on the race and set a record. I wanted to show everyone that my victory hadn’t been a fluke, and I wanted to run as a tribute to the diver. Also, I wanted to break Morton’s record.
While I was preparing for another victory, I planned to make myself a more complete, mindful human being, more aware of the world around me, of myself, and even of the world I couldn’t see. That might sound weird, coming from a kid who grew up hunting and fishing and hating vegetables, but it was true.
First, I refined my training. Even though I didn’t exactly enjoy my earlier speed workouts, I added interval training to my program. Once a week I ran to the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium. I ran a mile—four laps—at 5K race pace on the state-of-the-art, rubberized track. Then I jogged easy for 3 minutes. Then I ran another hard mile. Then I rested again. I did 5 miles total.
Sometimes I ran in the early morning, between ROTC drills and cheerleader workouts. Sometimes I ran when the football team was practicing; other times in the early evening, when some track team members and other athletes were out. The stadium, which seated 70,000 people, was kind of surreal. I was running as fast as I could, and I was one of the slower people. A lot of them were college track stars. Others were local marathon hotshots.
The interval training not only built my confidence that I could, if necessary, pull away from my competitors, but it helped me focus on what was important. As the nineteen-year-old speed demons and the marathoning champs raced by me, I resisted chasing them. I knew that I wanted to defeat other runners, but in order to do so, I needed to measure my progress only against myself, not others.
When I started, I was clocking 5:25 to 5:30 miles. After two months, I was running them at 5:10. The last mile was always the most difficult. I would always run it the fastest.
I also refined my uphill running. Months of gutting it out on Mount Si and the Twelve Peaks route had helped, but Twietmeyer and Tough Tommy Nielson lived near mountains, too, and I suspected they would all be logging some mega distances for next year’s Western States.
So I focused on technique, and I refined the practice that Lance Armstrong and other cyclists had mastered. The trick to uphill racing wasn’t so much sheer force as it was turnover. In cycling, the smart (and fast) racer shifts into an easier gear when he hits inclines but maintains his pedal revolutions per minute. Mocked in mountain biking as a “granny gear,” that faster gear turned out to be the key to championships. So I looked for my own running “granny gear.” I found that by shortening my stride I could “spin,” maintaining the ideal turnover of 180 foot strikes a minute. Downhill, I lengthened my stride but stayed light on my feet, and I kept the same 180-footfalls-a-minute pace.
I loved the trails most of all—running away from civilization toward the natural world—but during the early season I started spending more time on the roads with Ian, who eventually moved to Seattle. He and I would go out twice a week for 20 to 30 miles, and we’d focus on hitting miles at a 6:20- to 6:45-minute-mile pace. There was something metric and reassuring about it. Although Ian couldn’t stand the fact that my heart rate was always five beats or more lower than his, we helped each other through those tough road miles. It felt so good to be running free and fast, pushing each other to hit that next mile on target. And when we finally made it back to my place, we reveled in the accomplishment of an honest morning’s work. I’d celebrate by making us a stack of my eight-grain blueberry pancakes with freshly ground grains or a gigantic skillet of tofu veggie scramble and Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted-grain toast—the perfect recovery food. Life was good and it was simple: hard-earned miles and delicious nourishment.
Running smarter and with more quality, I didn’t run as far. A lot of marathoners log 120 to 140 miles. I was doing 90 to 110.
I was used to attacking race courses, regarding steep ascents as obstacles to vanquish, endless trails as journeys to endure. In Seattle, I began taking a more holistic approach. I was reading more about posture and stabilization and core strength and about movement integration from the book Running with the Whole Body, one of the few books I could find on running technique. I hit the gym, working on my upper body, because I was beginning to realize how much a strong torso and arms could propel tired legs. I experimented with Pilates. I took up yoga for flexibility, body awareness, and centered focus.
I even tinkered with my breathing. I knew from reading Spontaneous Healing that mindful, deep breathing could help the body repair itself. And in yoga (which I struggled with until I understood that it was a practice, not a competition), I learned t
he concept of Pranayama (literally, “extension of the life force” breathing), which would help, not just my body, but my mind and emotions as well. I picked up a book called Body, Mind, and Sport, by John Douillard, and learned that breathing through the nose rather than the mouth lowers one’s heart rate and helps brain activity. A yogi announced in class that “the nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating.”
I experimented. I took easy, loping hour runs along Lake Washington. It was flat and damp, and the wind was blowing me sideways. I didn’t worry about speed or form. I focused only on breathing in and out through my nose. It was like when I was a kid, teaching myself to relax. I tried doing the same thing on runs that required more effort, and found it very difficult, especially climbing. But from my experimenting, I trained myself to breathe from my diaphragm, to “belly breathe,” rather than to breathe from my chest.
Finally, I tweaked my diet. Of all my stabs at self-improvement, this was the easiest, the most joyous.
I’d been vegan for a year, and Seattle was a perfect place to explore and expand the food I was eating. I made smoothies, searched the farmer’s markets and my local co-op for more fruits and vegetables. Even though I bought grains, beans, and seeds in bulk and attended member appreciation night once a month at Madison Market Co-op so I could save an additional 10 percent, I was spending more than I ever had on food. And I was fairly deep in credit card debt. While many people freaked out about the year 2000, I was secretly hoping for a Y2K crash to wipe out my debt. There are a lot of ways to live frugally. I know that better than anyone. But the fuel and medicine—the food—I put in my body was not the place to scrimp. My never-better vigor and well-being made the extra investment a no-brainer.
