The ground swayed.
My teacher regularly walked over chasms thousands of feet deep. He scaled terminal granite rock faces with no safety equipment. He pioneered the sport of freeBASE climbing (free solo climbing with a parachute as the only means of protection) and at the moment was trying to figure out a way to dive off a cliff, soar through the air, and land without a parachute. He said it was merely a matter of physics. Because he practiced "dark" arts, they called him the Dark Wizard.
His real name was Dean Potter. Jenny introduced us in January 2010, and he invited us to the small cabin he rented in Yosemite Valley. He called it "the shack."
I had heard-and read-about Dean, how he sought to alter his consciousness through feats of extreme athleticism and challenge. He had read Born to Run and saw me as a kindred spirit.
Yosemite was Jenny"s favorite place on earth. I loved the outdoors. It seemed like a perfect place to go after my mother died. Dean"s shack was clean and neat. His refrigerator was stocked with chia seeds, young coconuts, and spirulina powder. On his wall hung an old advertis.e.m.e.nt, yellowed with age, for Eagle Electric. In small print, it read: PERFECTION IS NOT AN ACCIDENT.
I wanted to spend time in the valley grieving, healing from my mother"s pa.s.sing. I also wanted to understand why I ran and to decide whether I wanted to continue. To help me understand and to help me decide, I would walk on webbing between trees. Slacklining is a discipline that requires extreme focus, yet your body has to remain fluid and relaxed. You must calm the instinctual fear that has allowed humans to survive. It teaches you to let go of your fears and forces you to trust the power of your mind-to trust a power somewhere else. Dean had started me 4 feet off the ground. Learning took time. When I stepped on the line, it would shake uncontrollably from side to side, making it impossible to balance. It was a challenge in itself to stand up on the line, let alone take a step. Progress was slow; time after time the line bucked me off until I realized that I was causing the line to shake and learned to calm it with my body and mind in sync.
I considered quitting before. I talked about it once to a nonrunner I had met a few years earlier. We were at an aid station on a ridge line 3,000 feet above Ojai, California, welcoming runners, offering them bananas, filling their water bottles, and telling them they were doing great. It was November 2008, the Rose Valley 33-Miler, and I didn"t realize it, but I must have been telling the guy about my doubts.
The guy had fixed me with an odd glare.
"Dude," he said, "you had better take advantage of what you"ve accomplished. You"re not going to be Scott Jurek forever."
There are ultrarunners who don"t question why they do what they do, but I"m not one of them. Why did I run? Is ultramarathoning crazy? Is it hopelessly selfish? Can I have solitude and also love? Is there any value in winning? Compet.i.tion drives me, but I know that losing myself is the real key to fulfillment. How can I win without ego?
Was I too focused on winning? Had I lost the capacity for being in the moment that had-paradoxically-brought me my greatest recognition? Or were my doubts and loss of motivation merely chemical?
Countless studies have pinpointed the source of "runner"s high" as being elevated levels of endorphins and endocannabinoids, naturally occurring substances that affect the brain, produced in large amounts by exercise. This might explain the apparently large number of recovering addicts in the ultrarunning community.
I met a runner named Bill Kee when I was in Southern California in 2001, training for the Angeles Crest 100. He had long gray hair and a gray handlebar mustache. He wore cutoff shorts with flames painted on both sides. Running from one pocket to a belt loop was a heavy metal chain, holding his wallet. This was the uniform he ran in. He carried two 48-ounce Gatorade bottles and when he finished a race, he put them aside and put on his leather jacket, with its Team Death insignia, got into his big black Chevy van, and drove toward the horizon.
Kee told me that he started drinking and doing drugs when he was eighteen, and he didn"t stop till fourteen years later, when he decided that life as a drunk and an addict-with its jail time, three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, and other wonders-wasn"t working. He was living in Ojai, California, right next to the foothills of the Topatopa Mountains, and every night, jonesing for a cigarette, he"d hike into those hills. One cold night, he parked his car at the bottom of his driveway and decided to run the quarter mile to his house. Then, on a dare, he ran up a 3-mile hill, 1,700 feet of ascent. Marathons followed. He didn"t know what he was doing, bonked often, learned fast. He didn"t even know what an ultramarathon was until he read about it in a magazine.
He ran his first one in 1999. He"s fifty-four now. He lost a kidney in a motorcycle accident in 1980. He"s been suffering from Lyme disease since 2005. But he"s been sober and smoke-free since he started running. "Scott," Kee told me in 2001, "running is my new drug."
Kee has plenty of company. The mohawked, tattooed, reptile-toting Ben Hian didn"t become an ultrarunning legend until he kicked his addiction to mood-altering drugs and trained his obsessive focus on running long distances. And many of the runners I have encountered in my career have talked about their struggles with marijuana, as well as eating disorders, and a general difficulty finding peace anywhere but on the trail.
Can running become its own addiction? One gruesome study showed that rats love running so much, they can actually run themselves to death. When offered food for only one 90-minute period per day, the rats in the control group (without an exercise wheel) soon learned to adapt, taking in all the calories they needed during that meal. Rats with running wheels, however, ran more and more every day while eating less and less. They eventually starved to death.
Some of ultrarunning"s greatest champions seem to have burned out or just given up at a certain point. Cautionary tales abound in the ultra community, pa.s.sed from runner to runner at prerace breakfasts and postrace award ceremonies like the story of Icarus and his doomed wax wings was whispered among ambitious, worried Greeks.
My hero Chuck Jones ran his last ultra in 1988, when, after watching a UFO hover over Death Valley during the Badwater Ultramarathon (he suspects it was a hallucination brought on by dehydration), he pa.s.sed out.
"Now I"m a sunset runner," he says. "I work all day in the sun [laying asphalt] and then I just want to run, relax, and recover, to see what the body can do."
The great Ann Trason, who won fourteen Western States and almost beat the Tarahumara in a widely publicized Leadville 100 in 1994 (the Indians called her Bruja, or "the witch"), has suffered numerous injuries, and though she hasn"t stopped running, she hasn"t entered an ultra for several years. She lamented to a reporter, "I just wish I could go out and run every day. I think I took it for granted. I knew I"d slow down and get older, but I didn"t know there"d be a cliff."
The summer after he showed me around the San Juan Mountains, in 2007, Kyle Skaggs returned to Silverton to run the Hardrock 100. He set a new clockwise and overall course record by almost 3 hours. He also set speed records for the Wasatch Front 100, circ.u.mnavigating Mount Rainier on the Wonderland Trail, and running the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim.
Then, at the age of twenty-four, he quit. He now grows organic vegetables on his farm in New Mexico. He hasn"t run a compet.i.tive step since 2008.
Had I reached my cliff?
I had always been careful to rest when I needed to, especially when hurt, conscientious about treating my body right. But was burnout-or apparently happy abstinence-the inevitable price of intensely focused training like mine? Could I succeed without my focus? Had I been lying to myself by thinking I was living a life of balance?
Jenny thought we should take a break to process the recent events in a peaceful place. A week after my mother died, we drove the 6 hours to Yosemite.
We spent three days with Dean.
I saw that he was a balance of yin and yang: There"s exquisite sensitivity and softness in his movements when he"s walking a line or free soloing a granite wall. He seems to work with rock and sky, as though he"s able to sense-and surrender to-currents of air that are invisible to the rest of us. At the same time, he climbs with ferocity and maintains a crushing training routine. You need that kind of ego strength to overcome fear.
Dean was married for eight years before divorcing in 2010. It was one of the things we bonded over. Another thing we had in common was our age. Like me, Dean was nearing the peak of his physical ability. At thirty-eight, he was starting to talk wistfully about the rising generation of whippersnappers with intact joints and the fearlessness of innocence-he called these climbers "monkey children"-who made everything seem so easy. I liked the way he was handling his transition. He lived in a simple cabin in Yosemite with his little dog, Whisper. His life was minimal, lit up by solitude and nature.
We talked about nutrition, and about the deaths of my mother and his father years earlier. He said he was so focused when he was on 20-hour link-up climbs of big walls that he went into a trance and was convinced he heard radio frequencies. We talked about G.o.d, the limits of technology, how in order to win, one had to realize that winning didn"t matter.
I didn"t think I could make it to the tree in front of me. I antic.i.p.ated a fall.
"One step at a time," Dean said, as I faltered and swayed. "Stay present."
Connecting with Others If you"re an ultrarunner and you spend hours and hours alone on a daily basis, training in remote, unpopulated areas, running can be a solitary undertaking. It"s ironic, then, that some of the greatest and deepest joys in my running career have come from the people I have met and the things we have shared. You don"t have to be an ultrarunner to take advantage of the social rewards of running. Try running-at least on some of your routes-with a friend. Join a running club or weekly group run. Enter a 5K or 10K race. Do something for running that doesn"t involve running. Working at the finish line or at an aid station or joining trail work parties-all of which I"ve done-provided great ways for me to partic.i.p.ate, to give back to the sport that"s given me so much. Running can be a lonely activity. It can also introduce you to people worlds beyond your imagining.
Smoky Chipotle Refried Beans The Tarahumara eat these beans smeared on corn tortillas. They ate them on our burly 30-mile hike over and down into the Copper Canyon, and they ate them before, during, and after our race, too. At home I eat them with fresh tortillas as a snack or with a plate of chile rice, guacamole, and some salsa on the side for a hearty meal. If you have leftover beans, freeze them for future lunches and dinners.
3 cups dried pinto beans 1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped 23 garlic cloves, chopped 1 -inch piece dried Kombu seaweed (optional) 12 dried whole chipotle peppers or canned chipotles in adobo to taste 1 tablespoon chili powder 2 teaspoons dried epazote (see Note) 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 teaspoons sea salt Soak the beans in water to cover by 2 inches, 8 hours or overnight. Drain and rinse the beans in a colander a few times, then transfer to a large pot. Add the onion, garlic, seaweed, chipotles, and spices. Add water to cover the beans by 2 inches. Bring to a boil and simmer over medium-low heat for about 1 hour, or until the beans are soft and cooked through.
Drain the beans, reserving 4 cups of the liquid. Remove the seaweed. Remove the chiles, or leave one in if spicier beans are desired. Cool the beans for 15 minutes, then place in a food processor along with cup of the liquid and process until smooth. If desired, you may thin the beans with additional cooking liquid.
Return the pureed beans to the pot with the olive oil and salt. Simmer over low to medium-low heat for 20 minutes to allow the flavors to blend. Serve warm.
Refried beans keep refrigerated for 5 to 6 days or freeze well for several months. For a quick meal or snack, spread cold beans on a corn tortilla and toast in a toaster oven for 1 to 2 minutes and top with "cheese" spread (see recipe, [>]), guacamole (see recipe, [>]), salsa, and/or hot sauce.
MAKES 7 CUPS, 810 SERVINGS NOTE: Epazote is an herb that can make beans more digestible, as well as adding a distictive flavor. Look for it in Mexican grocery stores or near the Mexican foods at the supermarket. If you can"t find it, you can subst.i.tute 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro, stirred in just before serving.
21. Back to My Roots.
TONTO TRAIL, GRAND CANYON, 2010.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
-RUMI.
Here was another good place to stop, cold, dark, silent as a deserted cathedral. A velvety snowfall. In my running career, there had been so many of these places. This time, I would submit. Almost twenty years of serious running, more than a decade since my first Western States, a lifetime of sometimes you just do things and I had done them, and what had it accomplished? It hadn"t prevented my marriage from failing. It hadn"t warded off injuries. I had done things when I didn"t think I could do them anymore. Dusty was angry. Dave Terry had killed himself, and my mother was gone. I could do things every day the rest of my life, every minute. What would it matter?
On this day, my food was almost gone. My headlamp had dimmed and was losing battery life fast. I was at least 50 miles from a phone or a road. It was 2 A.M., cold, and part of me knew that it might be dangerous to stop. Part of me didn"t care.
I had been running for 20 hours. Below, a yawning chasm. Above, a black dome, smeared with stars. And there, on my right, a flat rock outcropping with a shallow cave. A perfect place to lie down, to hide from the darkness and the cold. I would lie there and wait, and rest, and in a few hours the dome would pale, and tumbleweeds would stir, and the cacti would emerge from the gloom like gentle, friendly sentries, and I would be rested and warm, and then I could run, then I could do things.
"Not a good idea, man. It"s too cold. Once you lie down, it"s going to be really hard to get up. If we stop now, we might be stopped forever."
How many times had someone urged me on? How many times did someone tell me to get up, to get moving, that even if I didn"t think I could go on, he or she knew better.
"Let"s go. Just a few more hours of running before the sun comes up."
Another friend, with more sensible, optimistic advice. But I was so tired. My backup light, a single, dim, LED bulb (basically a keychain light), was putting me to sleep. I would feel better after lying down. The hard sandstone would feel soft to my fatigued and sore muscles. It was such a perfect spot. I wanted to stop.
The plan had been to run free to honor my mother"s pa.s.sing, to recapture the feeling I had on the game trails with Dusty before I started running for belt buckles and corporate sponsors. Dusty and I were barely talking, though. So I asked my twenty-eight-year-old buddy Joe if he might want to accompany me on a 90-mile traverse of the Grand Canyon on the Tonto Trail, unsupported. No other human being in modern times had run the trail in one push, carrying his own food and water. For over a decade, I"ve been inspired by John Annerino"s Running Wild and Colin Fletcher"s The Man Who Walked Through Time. I had met Joe the year before, and he was fast and hungry for adventure. Best of all, I had a feeling he would know what I was trying to capture. He had traveled to Copper Canyon to race the Tarahumara two years earlier (he had won).
We each carried seven energy bars and thirty Clif Shot gels, as well as headlights with emergency backups. A lightweight, water-resistant sh.e.l.l would be our only shelter. I packed two bean burritos, some cookies, an almond b.u.t.ter sandwich, and a map. For water, we would drink from streams that were flowing due to the South Rim"s melting snow. We had to make sure we avoided the creeks that were contaminated with uranium from turn-of-the-century mines, now dormant.
It was first light, 20 degrees. Although the Grand Canyon is known for its scorching temperatures, it was bitter cold. Our first step was straight down, and in the first 4 miles we plunged 3,000 feet, crossing cliff bands, running alongside a narrow trail lined first with ponderosa pine, then oak and sagebrush, and finally cacti. We followed drainage chutes between the rocks that marked geologic time in millions of years. By the time we made it to the Tonto Trail, which follows the broad plateau that parallels the canyon and stands watch 3,000 feet above the mighty Colorado River, our shins were shredded and raw.
It had been a while since I was so cut off from civilization, so far away from telephones and e-mail and race forms and travel arrangements. There was just us-and the empty sky and the rocky ground and the cactus. The temperature rose swiftly to a warm 85 degrees, reminding us that this place was home to desert creatures. Sometimes I took the lead, other times Joe did. We were never more than a quarter mile apart. Progress was slower than we had expected, as we learned from the hikers (the only people we saw that day) who informed us we were four drainages behind our estimated location. We weren"t discouraged. We had plenty of water and food, and the abundant beauty made every mile drift by without antic.i.p.ation.
By late afternoon, our shadows had disappeared, and bulging, dark clouds had filled the empty sky, bullying one another for position. We heard a low moan, which turned into a shriek. Dust and sand flew from the plateau on 50-mph winds, and then the rain started. Drops splattered sideways against the rock. At 45 miles, after running for 16 hours, lightning crashed ahead of us and behind us. There was nowhere to hide on the barren plateau, so the only option was to run. Finally, we climbed down a pebbly drainage to a campground called Indian Gardens, at the intersection of the almost highway-like Bright Angel Trail and the Tonto Trail. We filled our water bottles in a downpour, the winds still shrieking. Thunder boomed and echoed in the canyon. A skinny bank of dirt snaked down to the valley floor, and in the distance faint lights twinkled from Phantom Ranch, along the banks of the Colorado. Above us, the Bright Angel Trail wound its way 3,500 feet up to the South Rim and the Grand Canyon Lodge at almost 7,000 feet above sea level.
There was a little unmanned ranger station next to us. It was the one spot on the trail where we could abandon the journey. Joe thought we should. He had some races coming up in the spring. I wasn"t done with compet.i.tion. Joe was also running low on food, and we were only halfway. Just then he dropped half of an energy bar to the ground. From his comfortable seat on a bench, he slowly bent over to pick up the sand-covered chunk. He didn"t even bother to brush off the precious calories. Completely out of it, he tossed the bar to the bushes while letting out a helpless sigh. Wouldn"t it be better to bail now than to risk it? Even if this storm pa.s.sed, what if another came along? We both knew that too much water from above could wash us off the plateau into the canyon below or leave us hypothermic in the dark chill of the night.
I make a point to plan, to reduce risk. I measure danger against desire. I told Joe that I thought we had run through the worst. I told him we had both gutted our way through worse difficulties. I said the weather report had said the storm cell was expected to move through. Then I pointed to a circle of stars (the only one I could find) directly above us.
We ran for 3 more hours. The rain stopped, the clouds vanished. We didn"t talk. My headlight went out around mile 70, and my reserve light failed an hour later. We had spent the last hour and a half in a dry creekbed searching for the now scarcely defined Tonto Trail. I had eaten both of the burritos, countless gels, and several Clif Bars, but I was hungry. And cold. Mostly, I was tired.
When I saw the rocky overhang, I measured desire and danger again and came to a conclusion. This would be a good place to stop. Just for half an hour. Just to get a short nap.
Joe didn"t think so. (Obviously, Joe was right.) "C"mon, we just have a few hours before sunup and 5 hours until we finish," he said.
It turned out to be 12 hours. There were no aid stations. No crowds. No challengers. No race directors. Just the earth and a friend and the sky and movement. The landscape diminished us. Nature"s arena has a way of humbling and energizing us. I had never felt so tiny. I had never felt so big.
The sky grew colder and darker, and then I could see my breath. My shadow returned, along with the neighborly cacti, the warming, welcoming sky. Explosions of red, orange, and yellow blasted the canyon walls above us and lit up the great formations across from us. The great chasm opened below. Yesterday melted, and with it all yesterdays. To consider the future seemed as silly as trying to divine meaning from the melting morning dew.
Joe and I would literally claw our way, at times on all fours, almost 5,000 feet out of the canyon on the New Hance Trail. Some 30 hours after we entered, we stumbled into a tourist trap, gorged on guacamole and chips, and washed them down with Negra Modelo beers. Joe excused himself to go to the bathroom, where he promptly fell asleep on the toilet. After I pounded on the door and awakened him, we both pushed the seats back in the rental car and slept for an hour and a half. Afterward, we drove to Ian"s place in Flagstaff and told him what he had missed.
But we didn"t know that when we ran along the wide plateau, chasing our shadows, alone on a giant ledge 3 miles from the ancient river, 3,500 feet below the humanity-packed rim.
For those hours on the Tonto Trail, we didn"t know anything except the land and the sky and our bodies. I was free from everything except what I was doing at that very moment, floating between what was and what would be as surely as I was suspended between river and rim. Finally I remembered what I had found in ultrarunning. I remembered what I had lost.
Salsa Verde This brilliant green salsa adds a delicious tang to a wide variety of dishes, such as grilled tempeh or tofu and rice. Though I appreciate raw foods and greatly prefer some items (cabbage, carob) uncooked, the vegetables in this dish-delicious on their own-reveal hidden tastes and treasures when roasted. And for the practical-minded, this salsa freezes well. Omit the jalapeno if you prefer a mild salsa.
Coconut oil or canola oil 12 medium tomatillos 3 garlic cloves, unpeeled 1 small white onion, peeled and quartered 12 jalapeno peppers (optional) 1 poblano pepper 2 sprigs fresh cilantro 1 teaspoon sea salt Preheat the oven to 425F. Oil a baking sheet. Place the tomatillos, garlic, onion, and peppers flat on the baking sheet and cover with foil. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes, until the veggies are lightly browned on the edges. Remove the foil and cool.
Peel the garlic and slice the peppers, removing the stems and seeds, unless more heat is desired. Add the roasted veggies to a blender or food processor along with the cilantro and salt. Process until smooth, about 1 minute. Serve over refried beans ([>]) and brown rice, with beans and corn tortillas, or with tortilla chips. Salsa keeps refrigerated for 5 to 6 days or freezes well for several months.
MAKES 6 CUPS, 1012 SERVINGS.
Epilogue.
World 24-Hour Championships, 2010.
Sometimes the best journeys aren"t necessarily from east to west, or from ground to summit, but from heart to head. Between them we find our voice.
-JEREMY COLLINS.
We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It"s not the losing that defines us. It"s how we lose. It"s what we do afterward.
I decided I would make another attempt at a 24-hour race, and chase a new American record. So I flew to France for the 2010 IAU World 24-Hour Championships.
There were hundreds of other runners, never farther than a few feet away, all circling (in this particular event) a 1.40-km (0.9-mile) course of pavement and hard-packed dirt through the village of Brive-la-Gaillarde. The course was shaped like a snake twisting its way through the park (even doubling back on itself with hairpin corners), and on its longest stretch, it pa.s.sed a street filled with bars and restaurants. There were two tiny rises that added up to 10 feet of elevation change per lap. Barely noticeable to a spectator, the hills would feel, after a few hours running, like constant, painful pinp.r.i.c.ks.
People-even many ultrarunners-wonder why anyone would run a 24-hour event. The overarching question people ask usually takes the form of one word: Why? The more particular questions in my case, as articulated on Internet message boards and blogs, in magazine articles, and sometimes put to me by friends and acquaintances, were more pointed: Why now? Do you have something to prove? Are you running away from something?
The answers were more complicated. I did want to win again. (But I wasn"t all that worried about a single year without a major victory, especially in the context of my career.) I did want to find that place of egolessness and mindlessness that only the monotony of a 24-hour race can produce. But mostly I wanted to run because of my mother. If she, after decades of losing nearly all her muscle control, in the last hours of a grueling last week could proclaim her toughness, then I could do my best to live up to her example. Much of her life, she couldn"t walk. I would run for her.
Jenny and I arrived nine days before the race, and spent six of them in a tiny village outside Paris called Boutigny-sur-Essonne, 5 hours and two train rides from the race site. I wanted to re-create at least the spirit of my Western States preparations. I wanted the quiet and the solitude.
We stayed in a garden apartment owned by some friends of ours. It had been a mill hundreds of years ago, built above a small river next to multicolored vegetable gardens and a field of rapeseed yellow as egg yolks. The streets were narrow and cobblestoned, and the night sky was brilliant with stars. Jenny spent many of those days climbing in nearby Fontainebleau, and I loped through the outlying fields-of more rapeseed, of wildflowers, of young wheat and rye. Together, we slacklined in an area of Fontainebleau called "the sea of sand."
Except for the tiny travel blender I had packed-and our computers-it was a quiet, simple existence. We would wake and have smoothies every morning with fresh whole-grain bread from the small bakery in town, then run and climb and take walks together, and catch up on e-mail in the evening before we went to bed and talk about food and music and life and death and meaning and love. We fell asleep to the rushing of the stream and the cool spring breeze wafting through the window.
Most mornings I would run 6 miles through the woods to the nearest village with a natural food store. I prepared simple meals from the local produce and traditional French herbs. I love how the French value good food and the basic necessities of life. The rustic cobblestone village felt like stepping back in time before we overcomplicated our lives.
By the time of the race, on May 13, I had done my best to empty my mind of everything but my goal-to run as hard as I could for 24 hours. I wanted to push my body as far as it could go without going too far. Once again, I was seeking that elusive edge.
The city buses carried signs blaring details of the event. Teams brought acupuncturists, physicians, and athletic trainers. The patrons at the bars and cafes on the long stretch of the course cheered whenever we pa.s.sed. I was part of the U.S. men"s team, made up of seasoned veterans and solid newcomers. We would be competing against the j.a.panese, South Koreans, Italians, and runners from twenty other countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Australia. The j.a.panese were the perennial favorites, although this year many of their top runners would be competing in a 48-hour race the following weekend, so a lot of unknown runners were ready to shake things up.
A Spaniard I didn"t know jumped out in front and I-along with 228 others-followed. After just a few miles, the Spaniard had dropped back, and the lead was changing hands every lap around the twisted course. With that many runners on that short of a course, misunderstandings are almost inevitable. But this international crowd kept the peace. Since I didn"t know anything but English, whenever I pa.s.sed someone, I would just shout the international Nordic skiing words for pa.s.sing: "Hup, hup."
I started out too fast (I could tell because the timing chip triggered the clock, and my splits were just over a 6-minute-mile pace), but after a few miles I fell into an easy rhythm of 7-minute miles.
Lee Dong Mun of South Korea lapped me around the marathon mark, along with Shingo Inoue of j.a.pan a few laps later. I let them go. I wasn"t racing against them. I was racing with myself and against the ticking clock.
The next 6 hours my life was stripped to its essentials-eating, drinking, and running. I avoided music for the first 8 hours because I wanted to be open to everything around me and because when the monotony became too much, I would need music. The thought of tunes became something to look forward to, the snowcapped mountain that marked the forward progress in my mind.
Researchers speculate that music suppresses pain by, basically, focusing the brain on something else-tunes. In one study, researchers found that listening to music created the same pain-easing results of taking a tablet of extra-strength Tylenol.
An ultrarunner needs a finish line to stay sane, but if it obsesses him, he"s doomed. I avoided thinking of the hours ahead. I avoided thinking of Shingo. When memories of my mother coursed through me, I used them to press me on. I wanted to lose myself and by doing so to discover new limits and to go beyond them. I wanted to pry myself open, going beyond the body and beyond the mind.
Shingo stayed two laps in the lead, and even when shadows lengthened and beers and wines replaced the small cups of espresso at the streetside tables, I stayed with my pace. Revelers shouted and cheered all through the night.
The rhythm continued until it wasn"t even a rhythm. It was just being. It was everything and nothing. The great Yiannis Kouros-who holds the world record of 180 miles at 24 hours on the road-has spoken and written of looking down on himself as he ran. I didn"t leave my body. But I saw my father in the woods and watched him mime G.o.d letting dirt slide through his fingers. There was my mother, laughing, ladling my plate of mashed potatoes with b.u.t.ter. There were blindingly orange carrots, tomatoes redder than fire trucks. There were mouthfuls of guacamole so rich that I started salivating. I heard Dave Terry opening a bottle of beer, watched him lean back in his kitchen and tell me that not all pain is significant. There was Dusty, beckoning me to keep going, keep going. I saw the electric blue of Silvino and the majestic stride of Arnulfo, and I didn"t wonder how they did it anymore, I understood their secret. We can all understand it. We can live as we were meant to live-simply, joyously, of and on the earth. We can live with all our effort and with pure happiness.
I ran for 8 hours before I listened to music. The piercing clarity had left me by then. Would it return? I put on my iPod then, but I didn"t know what songs were playing. I ate noodle soup as I ran, and as much as I loved food-as much as eating brought me unmitigated joy-there were times when I couldn"t taste it. I had never been so lonely. On the edge of the course away from the revelers, there was only the sound of the river ma.s.saging the rocks, the wind combing the leaves of the trees, and the birds about to welcome a new day.
Nine hours. Ten hours.