Ultramarathon Man Read online

  Just as I was finishing this first course, I heard the manager’s truck approaching again. The loose muffler was a dead giveaway. He’d forgotten to give me the coffee. We filled one of my water bottles with the dark brew and I drank the rest. I tried to pay him for it, but he wouldn’t take any money.

  As he was about to drive away again, the young man tilted his head out of the truck window and asked, “So dude, do you mind me asking why you’re doing this?”

  Where to begin? “Oh man,” I replied, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

  And now’s the time to ponder his question. Millions of Americans run. They run for the exercise, for their cardiovascular health, for the endorphin high. In 2003, a record-setting 460,000 people completed one of the country’s many marathons. They pushed the outer limits of their endurance to complete the 26.2 miles.

  Then there’s the small hardcore group of runners, a kind of runners’ underground, who are called ultra-marathoners. For us, a marathon is just a warm-up. We run 50-mile races, 100-mile races. We’ll run twenty-four hours and more without sleep, barely pausing for food and water, or even to use the bathroom. We run up and down mountains; through Death Valley in the dead of summer; at the South Pole. We push our bodies, minds, and spirits well past what most humans would consider the limits of pain and exertion.

  I’m one of the few who’s run beyond 100 miles without resting, which I guess makes me an extra-ultramarathoner. Or just nuts. Whenever people hear that I’ve run 100 miles at a clip, they inevitably ask two questions. The first is “How can you do that?” The second, and much harder to answer, is the same one that pizza guy asked me: “Why?”

  It’s an excellent question, though addictions are never neatly defined. When asked why he was attempting to be the first to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory offered the famously laconic, “Because it’s there.” That seems to satisfy people enough for it to have become a famous adage. But it’s really not much of an answer. Still, I can understand Mallory’s clipped response. When people ask me why I run such improbable distances for nights on end, I’ve often been tempted to answer with something like, “Because I can.” It’s true as far as it goes, and athletes aren’t always the most introspective souls. But it’s not a complete answer. It’s not even satisfying to me. I’ve got questions of my own.

  What am I running from?

  Who am I running for?

  Where I am running to?

  Every runner has a story. Here’s mine.

  Chapter 2

  The Formative Years

  Of all the animals, the boy is the most

  unmanageable.

  —Plato

  Los Angeles 1969-1976

  I’ve been running much of my life. I grew up the oldest of three kids. My brother Kraig is a year younger than I am, and my sister Pary came along two years after him.

  Some of my earliest memories are of running home from kindergarten. We were a working-class family living in Los Angeles, and my father worked two jobs to make ends meet. I didn’t want to burden my mother with getting me home from school every day, so I started running.

  At first, my route was the most direct path from the school back to our house. In time, however, I began to invent diversionary routes that would extend the run and take me through uncharted territory and new neighborhoods. Running home from school became more enjoyable than attending it. Running gave me a sense of freedom and exploration that school never did. School was about sitting still and trying to behave as someone explained what the world was like. Running was about going out and experiencing it firsthand. I watched buildings go up, witnessed the birds migrating south, saw the leaves falling and the days shortening as the seasons changed. No textbook could compare to this real-life lesson.

  By the third grade, I was participating in organized running events (some of which I organized myself ). The distances were short, often only the length of a football field. Sometimes it was hard finding other kids to run with, and I found myself constantly campaigning for classmates to join me. My relatives from the Old Country frequently reminded me that the Greeks were great runners. The marathon, after all, was conceived in Greece.

  “Constantine,” they would say, using my given name, “you will be a great Greek runner, just like your ancestors.” Then they would down another round of ouzo and seal my fate with a collective “Oppa!”

  Never mind that Pheidippides, the Greek runner who ran from the Plain of Marathon to Athens with the news that the Athenians had defeated the Persians, dropped dead from exhaustion after delivering his message. That part of the story never got mentioned.

  As I grew older, I became more passionate about pushing my small body to extremes. Advancing the limits of personal endurance seemed part of my hard-wiring; I found it difficult to do anything physical in moderation. By age eleven I had already trekked rim-to-rim-to-rim across the Grand Canyon, a weeklong journey carrying all my supplies on my back, and had climbed to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States.

  For my twelfth birthday, I wanted to celebrate with my grandparents, but they lived more than forty miles away. Not wanting to burden my folks to drive me there, I decided to ride my bike. I had no idea how to get to my grandparents’ house. But I didn’t let that dampen my sense of adventure. I tried to talk Kraig into joining me, but there was absolutely no way. Even a bribe with allowance money didn’t work. So I stuffed the money in my pocket, told my mother I was going to the local mall, and set a course for Pasadena.

  I got a lot of confused and worried looks when I asked for directions.

  “That’s gotta be over forty miles from here,” one gas station attendant told me.

  “Which way do I go?” I asked.

  “You can get on this freeway and go to the 210 North, I think,” he replied doubtfully.

  Of course, I couldn’t ride my bicycle on the freeway. I’d need to take surface streets.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to call your parents?” he asked.

  “That’s okay,” I said nonchalantly, pointing at the freeway. “So you think Pasadena is that way?”

  He nodded, though not with a great deal of conviction.

  “Thanks,” I smiled, and set a course for the closest surface street in the direction he had indicated. This was going to be good.

  Ten hours later, I arrived in Pasadena. The course I’d followed meandered haphazardly through the Los Angeles basin, and there was no telling how many miles I’d covered along the way. I stopped a couple times at other service stations to ask for directions, and also to buy a soda and use the restroom. My money was entirely depleted, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I made it to Pasadena. Now what?

  I didn’t know the name of my grandparents’ street, or their phone number. In fact, they didn’t even live in Pasadena, but in nearby San Marino. But after some wandering around, I recognized a familiar landmark—The Galley, a large ship on the corner of an intersection that had been converted into a fish-and-chips joint. We had eaten there many times, and I knew the way to my grandparents’ house from there. It was about five miles from The Galley to San Marino.

  Riding up their driveway, covered in black road grime, I felt a grand sense of accomplishment. I just as well could have been standing atop Mount Everest, or the moon. It was my best birthday ever.

  Luckily they were home, and were both delighted, and mortified, to see me. We called my mom and dad, who were relieved to know I was safe. They weren’t upset, just thankful that I was okay. Nobody ever explained to me that what I had done was dangerous. I think they were too shocked to reprimand me. And, I hoped, they were actually proud of me. My grandparents put my bicycle in the trunk of their car and drove me home. We were greeted by the entire family—a birthday party with cousins, aunts, uncles, and many neighbors. There was music and dancing, plenty of food, and ample drink for the older folks.

  The conversation at the party kept coming back to my adve
nture. For a kid my age to do what I had just done was almost unthinkable, and I could feel the power in it, the ability to inspire. All I needed to do was get on a bike or start running for some extraordinary distance, and the family would join together and rally around me in celebration. Naive as that may seem, it’s the lesson I took away on that day.

  As we grew older, Kraig became convinced that my behavior was excessive. Being the middle child, he was prone to cynicism, and, in my case—given that the centerpiece of my weekend usually revolved around some extreme adventure—his feelings were probably justified. Pary, on the other hand, seemed to appreciate my peculiarities and always encouraged me to follow my passion, regardless of how strange it seemed.

  “If running makes you happy, keep going,” she once said to me. She was like that—even as a kid, she was heartening.

  Running did make me happy, so I kept going, right into junior high, where I met my first mentor and learned more about the odd appeal of long-distance running.

  Rumor was that as a young enlisted man, Jack McTavish could do more push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups than anyone in his platoon, officers included. And he could do them faster. Other recruits feared being paired with him; his strength and focus left them shamed. His approach to life was straightforward: he would rise earlier, train harder, and stay longer than anyone else. On those days when he didn’t feel like giving 100 percent, he forced himself to give 120.

  This bullheaded drive and discipline served him well as a military man. But as my junior high school track coach, I found his approach intimidating. I don’t think many of the other students, or faculty members for that matter, really knew what to make of him. It was Southern California in the seventies, and he was slightly out of place. The other teachers wore puka shells, tie-dyed shirts, and long, scraggly hair. McTavish kept his hair in a tight crew cut. He wore the same outfit every day, regardless of the season or the setting: gray gym shorts, a perfectly pressed white V-neck T-shirt, and black mid-top gym shoes. He always looked freshly shaven and neatly groomed. At five-feet-seven, one hundred fifty-five pounds, he was built as solidly as a tree trunk. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was cut like an inverted pear.

  Coach McTavish didn’t speak much, and when he did it was direct and to the point. Idle chatter was out of the question.

  I met Coach for the first time outside the men’s locker room, where he was doing sit-ups on the concrete floor. He stood, gave me a crushing handshake, introduced himself while looking me squarely in the eyes, then got right back into the sit-ups, hardly missing a beat.

  All of us on the track team were seventh- and eighth-grade boys, but Coach always referred to us as men. There were two kinds of people in his view of the world: those he took orders from, and those he gave orders to. We were happy to obey.

  Coach’s approach to running didn’t come out of any textbook; he simply instructed us to run as fast as we could until we crossed the finish line. Words of advice and encouragement were few and far between. His most frequent instruction to me was, “Go out harder.”

  Once I tried to explain that if I started faster, I would have less kick left at the end.

  “Nonsense,” he replied. “Go out harder and finish harder.”

  That was one of the few complete sentences Coach ever spoke to me. In two years, we probably exchanged fewer than fifty words. And of all the runners on the team, he spoke to me the most, as though I held some promise and could do right by him.

  He always had my full attention. There was something strangely appealing about his balls-to-the-wall training technique, and I came to respect, even enjoy, the practice of pushing my body to the brink of collapse. The theory was simple: Whoever was willing to run the hardest, train the longest, and suffer the most would earn the spoils of victory.

  At the season-end California State Long-Distance Championship, a prestigious affair held on the legendary Mount Sac track, Coach issued his dictum: “Go out harder than those other chumps,” he said. And then he walked away.

  All the other schools seemed to know what they were doing. Their runners wore matching, neatly tailored track-suits that shimmered in the morning sun. They were doing wind sprints and stretches, then quietly consulting with their coaches as though they were in complete control of the situation. Our school wore the same thing as Coach, gray gym shorts and white V-neck T-shirts.

  I stood on that starting line, shivering with anxiety. I thought the other runners around me knew things I didn’t about how to train better and go faster. I was scared. But the mile was my event. It was the longest race in junior high, and the most physically punishing. Even without a formal running strategy, I could endure more pain than anybody. That much I was sure of. No one, I was certain, had worked as hard as I had, or was willing to push as hard as I was about to push.

  The gun went off and I did exactly as Coach had instructed: I went out as hard as I possibly could. I ran as though I were in a sprint rather than a one-mile race. The aggressive start put me immediately in the lead, and I maintained a blistering pace that broadened the distance between me and the rest of the pack as the race progressed. I ran faster and faster, and my lead increased. When I broke the finish tape in first place I was so focused that I kept right on running until I noticed that people were waving at me to stop.

  As I stood doubled over, trying to catch my breath, runners and coaches kept coming over to congratulate me. They said things like, “I’ve never seen anyone go out like that.” Clearly they were taken aback by my raw determination. It was more like complete tunnel vision.

  Eventually, after everyone else had walked away, Coach casually strolled up.

  “Good work, son,” he said. “How’d it feel?”

  I was shocked. Coach had never asked me a question before.

  “Well,” I answered slowly, “going out hard was the right thing to do. It felt pretty good.”

  Coach kicked some dirt around with his foot. “If it felt good,” he said, squinting like Clint Eastwood, “you didn’t push hard enough. It’s supposed to hurt like hell.”

  My dad got transferred and my family moved to another city a week after that race. Those were the last words Coach said to me, and I live by them to this day: If it comes easy, if it doesn’t require extraordinary effort, you’re not pushing hard enough: It’s supposed to hurt like hell.

  Chapter 3

  Run with Your Heart

  He who suffers remembers.

  —Fortune cookie

  Southern California 1976-1977

  My family relocated from the Los Angeles area to San Clemente, a lovely little beach town at the far reaches of Southern California best known as the home of Richard Nixon’s Western White House. My friend’s dad headed Nixon’s Secret Service detail and let us walk through the compound to get to the best surf spots. Occasionally, the ex-president would drive by in his Rolls-Royce golf cart. “How’s the water today, boys?” he’d ask. “Good, Mr. President,” we’d answer and, surfboards under our arms, leave it at that. No need to shoot the breeze with Nixon when the surfing was so great.

  High school freshman

  As much as I surfed, I still loved to run. So when try-outs for the cross-country team rolled around, I was raring to go. What I quickly discovered is that high school running was divided into two camps: those who ran cross-country, and those who ran track. There was a clear distinction. The kind of runner you were largely mirrored your approach to life. The cross-country guys thought the track runners were high-strung and prissy, while the track guys viewed the cross-country guys as a bunch of athletic misfits.

  It’s true that the guys on the cross-country team were a motley bunch. Solidly built with long, unkempt hair and rarely shaven faces, they looked more like a bunch of lumberjacks than runners. They wore baggy shorts, bushy wool socks, and furry beanie caps, even when it was roasting hot outside. Clothing rarely matched.

  Track runners were tall and lanky; they were sprinters with skinny long legs and nar
row shoulders. They wore long white socks, matching jerseys, and shorts that were so high their butt-cheeks were exposed. They always appeared neatly groomed, even after running.

  The cross-country guys hung out in late-night coffee shops and read books by Kafka and Kerouac. They rarely talked about running; it was just something they did. The track guys, on the other hand, were obsessed. Speed was all they ever talked about. “Think we’re doing tempo work today?” they would ask each other in the hall. “Did you clock your splits on Monday?” Track members seldom stayed out past 8:00 P.M., even on weekends. They spent an inordinate amount of time shaking their limbs and loosening up. They stretched before, during, and after practice, not to mention during lunch break and assembly, and before and after using the head. The cross-country guys, on the other hand, never stretched at all.

  The track guys ran intervals and kept logbooks detailing their mileage. They wore fancy watches that counted laps and recorded each lap-time. The mile was divided into four quarters, each quarter-mile split being logged and compared to previous benchmarks. Everything was measured, dissected, and evaluated.

  Cross-country guys didn’t take notes. They just found a trail and went running. Sometimes the runs would last for an hour, sometimes three. It all depended on how they felt that day. After the run they would move on to the next thing, which was usually surfing.

  I gravitated toward the cross-country team, partly because I loved to surf, but mostly because the culture suited me. During my interviews with the coaches and captains of both teams, the differences were obvious. The track team was cliquish and hierarchical. I felt like I was being interrogated and examined. The cross-country team, on the other hand, seemed to be about working together. They ran for the good of the team rather than for personal gain. One runner might cover for another’s weakness, so both would hang together through the low points of a run rather than trying to “drop” each other.