I didn"t, though. I held on to the pain. In my second Minnesota Voyageur, I made the pain mine. I used it. All through the 50 miles of the race, I listened to it. You could have done more. You can do more. Sometimes you just do things! I ran away from the pain, but it seemed as if I were running toward it. I thought of my mom, crippled. I thought of my life, my ridiculous, petty worries. I thought of the distances I had gone, all the work I had done. I didn"t even have to ask myself the question. It was a part of me now. Why?
I shot off the starting line-just me this time, no Dusty. And I swallowed that course. I had never run harder. I finished in second place again.
Somehow, I would have to run faster. But I couldn"t run harder. What was the secret?
A sick old man told me part of it. He had just shuffled back from his physical therapy session and was slowly climbing back into his hospital bed. With each painful step he took, I could see his frustration, feel his anger. It was my senior year at St. Scholastica, which doubled as my first year in physical therapy school. As part of my training I was an intern at a hospital in Ashland, Wisconsin. I was supposed to be helping the old man, and we both knew I was failing.
He climbed into bed and looked at the lunch tray waiting for him: Salisbury steak drenched in something brown and congealed, instant potatoes, iridescent-looking canned peas. His expression said it might as well have been a tray of rocks. He didn"t say anything, but it was as though he was shouting. That"s when I heard part of the secret.
What we eat is a matter of life and death. Food is who we are.
I had listened to Hippie Dan. I had remembered my grandmother showing me how good carrots pulled fresh out of the garden tasted. I knew that cutting down on meat and sugar was better for me. But watching a frail, sick man look at his lunch with a cross between nausea and indifference made me think of something else.
The food they served at the nursing home where my mother was bedridden was processed, filled with starches and sugars. The meals my clients ate at hospitals were heavy on meat, low on vegetables. As an athlete, I was ostensibly dedicated to health. As a physical therapist, I was supposed to be helping people with their bodies, but I didn"t spend a second focusing on their diet. The healthier I had eaten, the faster and stronger I had become. Was it a coincidence that sick people were being served starchy, c.r.a.ppy food? If a balanced diet could make someone faster, could a bad diet make someone sick?
The answer, I discovered, was yes. I learned that diabetes now affects nearly 10 percent of Americans, and that type 2 diabetes, once nearly unheard of in children, is on the rise, bringing with it a host of complications such as kidney failure, blindness, and amputations, not to mention increased chances of stroke and heart disease in adults. The three most common causes of death in our country-heart disease, cancer, and stroke-have all been linked to the standard Western diet, rich in animal products, refined carbohydrates, and processed food.
Another part of the secret was revealed to me when I did my second internship the next spring in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was shopping at a grocery store-possibly even getting a steak-waiting in the checkout line when I picked up a magazine to pa.s.s the time. There was an article about a doctor named Andrew Weil and one of his books, Spontaneous Healing. He said the human body possessed an enormous capacity to take care of itself as long as we took care of it by feeding it well and not putting toxins in it. Shortly after, I sought out that book and devoured it, cover to cover.
Neither my reading nor the old man"s lunch marked a come-to-Jesus moment for me. But they did open my eyes to the benefits-and importance-of a plant-based diet. I didn"t realize it then, but that spring marked the beginning of my lifelong commitment to learning about food, to eating better, and to living more consciously.
Cutting out processed foods and refined carbohydrates was not difficult. I had grown up eating bread my grandmother baked and fish my dad had caught. Meat and dairy were other matters. I didn"t want to consume either-because of stress to my kidneys, possible loss of calcium, increased chances of prostate cancer, stroke, and heart disease, not to mention the chemicals and hormones injected into the country"s food supply and the environmental degradation caused by cattle farms-but I was racing now, not just running with Dusty for kicks, so I was even more conscious that I still needed fuel to burn.
I knew I had to figure out a way to get enough protein, to marry my healthy eating with my long-distance running.
Combining vegetarian protein sources like legumes and grains every meal-until recently an article of faith among vegetarians- seemed too labor intensive. And it might have been. But I learned that our bodies pool the amino acids from the foods we eat over the course of the day. I didn"t have to sit down and do the math every time I ate. As long as I ate a varied whole-foods diet with adequate caloric intake, I would get enough complete protein. Even the conservative American Dietetic a.s.sociation, the largest organization of dietary professionals in the world, has stated in no uncertain terms: "Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."
Those last two words were music to an almost-vegetarian ultrarunner"s ears.
The next summer, I won the Voyageur on my third try, eating more plants and less meat. I didn"t run harder. I had been right: I couldn"t run harder. But I had learned something important. I could run smarter. I could eat smarter. I could live smarter. I knew I could keep going when others stopped. I knew I had good legs and good lungs. I wasn"t just a runner now, I was a racer. And I was a mindful eater. How many races could I win with my newfound secret? I aimed to find out.
Landing Zone In an ideal world, all runners would land on their forefoot or midfoot when they run. In an ideal world, though, all runners would be lean, healthy, and have spent most of their lives clocking 5-minute miles.
There"s no question that forefoot striking is more efficient than heel striking. It uses the elasticity of the Achilles tendon and the arch of the foot to translate the body"s downward force into forward motion. Less energy is lost to the ground. It"s also a given that landing on the forefoot, as barefoot runners do, prevents the heel striking that cushioned shoes enable, which can lead to so many joint and tendon injuries.
But it"s also true that it"s not a perfect world. Beginners run. Out-of-shape people run. And for them forefoot striking might increase the risk of tendonitis or other soft tissue injury. That"s especially true for anyone who hasn"t grown up running barefoot through rural Kenya.
Most researchers would say that a midfoot landing is the most efficient and shock-absorbing technique. But there are people who fall on both ends of the spectrum-heel strikers and those who run on the b.a.l.l.s of their feet-and they do fine.
What"s important isn"t what part of the foot you strike but where it strikes. It should land slightly in front of your center of ma.s.s or right underneath it. When you have a high stride rate and land with the body centered over the foot, you won"t be slamming down hard, even if you connect with the heel.
"b.u.t.tery" Omega Popcorn Who says vegans can"t have fun or that ultrarunners don"t like to kick back? Certainly not me. I ate a lot of junk food in college, and an evening with a bowl of this popcorn takes me back to those enjoyable evenings-without the junk or guilt. All popcorn is fun and flavorful. With this version, you"re getting essential fatty acids and B vitamins as well. The Udo"s Oil makes it taste b.u.t.tery.
cup unpopped popcorn 23 tablespoons Flora Oil 3-6-9 Blend 1 teaspoon sea salt 34 tablespoons nutritional yeast Using an air popper, pop the popcorn into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the popcorn with the oil, salt, and nutritional yeast to taste, mixing thoroughly.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS.
8. Attack of the Big Birds.
ANGELES CREST 100, 1998.
Strength does not come from physical capacity.
It comes from an indomitable will.
-MAHATMA GANDHI.
Dusty was screaming at me in Spanish. It felt as if I had stepped into a familiar nightmare. I was tired and sore, trying to will myself up a mountain trail at 7,000 feet. Dusty was already there, on the ridge, and he was hurling insults my way, just as he had hurled them at me for so many years in Minnesota. But it wasn"t a nightmare. And why Spanish?
My dad and I had started talking again. No big hugging, I"m-so-sorry-now-I-see-what"s-important moment. We weren"t those kind of people. Leah and I had gotten married at her folks" house on August 17, 1996, just west of Duluth, and my dad brought my mom from the nursing home. Dusty was there, too, wearing a black suit and a tie printed with a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He called it his going-to-court outfit. Dusty and my dad were both p.i.s.sed that I was getting married and there was no alcohol, so they went back to my dad"s place and drank Milwaukee"s Best.
Soon after that my folks divorced (I found out later it was my mom"s idea to move to the home and her idea to divorce-she didn"t want to be a burden). I was starting my second and final year of physical therapy training, still skiing, but just for fun and to keep in shape for running, and still eating meat four or five times a week. I was making clam chowder and grilling chicken and pork chops. I was dipping into a few of the less crazysounding recipes from The Moosewood Cookbook, but I was still an animal protein athlete.
And then another epiphany hit me. This time it came in a giant bowl of chili. It was December, a cold Wednesday night, and fifteen of us had just finished a 10-mile ski through Duluth"s Lester Park. It was a regular gathering of some of the local ski crowd, usually followed by burgers and beers at a nearby pub. That night we went to a microbrewery, where the cook had a reputation for being adventurous-in Duluth it meant he might serve burgers on something other than white bread. One of the guys suggested I try the vegetarian chili, and even though I had never liked regular chili, I agreed.
I couldn"t believe the taste. The chilies, the tomatoes, and the beans combined into a spicy winter ambrosia. I suppose it"s possible that I was overtired or in such a good mood after a long ski that anything would have tasted good, but that vegetarian chili was about the best thing I had ever eaten. And because of the bulgur wheat, it had the texture of beef chili (see [>] for the recipe).
Meanwhile, I ran farther. I ran faster. The periods of soreness and fatigue that resulted were shorter and less severe. I was convinced it was the result of the plants I was eating and the meat I was not eating. The chili showed me I could recover faster without abusing my taste buds.
In the spring of 1997, I left for my final physical therapy internship, at an orthopedic clinic in Seattle. Leah stayed in Minnesota, and to save money, I stayed at a hostel on Vashon Island. Every morning I would wake at six, drive to the ferry, then, after the 20-minute ride through Puget Sound to Seattle, ride my bike the 8 miles to the clinic.
Seattle is where I became almost completely converted into a vegetarian. Part of it was the city itself. It seemed like every grocery store I visited was filled with information about local produce or a new vegetarian restaurant around the corner. The grocery stores all sold grains and spices I had never heard of. In Duluth, ethnic cuisine meant Chinese or Mexican restaurants, usually run by Midwesterners. In Seattle, though, there was j.a.panese, Ethiopian, Indian, and just about everything else. Back in Minnesota I had hidden my brown rice before ski race meets to avoid ridicule, but in the Northwest, it was the carnivores who weren"t cool.
I absorbed the culture there-the notion of leaving a small footprint, of living low on the land. My grandparents had actually lived that way, with their gardens and the way they killed the vast majority of the meat they ate. I wanted to live that way, too.
I hung out with South Africans and New Zealanders at the hostel, and they told me about couscous curry and peanut stew. On the ferry I met a guy doing his physician a.s.sistant internship, and he introduced me to polenta. I read more of Doctor Weil. On the ferry, I would plug in my earphones and listen to audiobooks that talked about the connection between heart disease and a diet high in animal fat and low in vitamins and minerals.
By the time I drove back to Duluth that fall, I was almost completely a vegetarian. But not quite. I stopped three times at McDonald"s for chicken sandwiches and a few sausage-egg biscuits. What can I say? I was hungry.
I stopped long enough in Duluth to pack my bags and write my thesis, and then, in April 1998, Leah and I moved to Deadwood, South Dakota, where I took my first full-time job as a physical therapist. It turned out that Deadwood was where my meat eating reached its dead end.
That I could change in Deadwood isn"t so strange, but that I could move from meat and toward plants is something that people still don"t believe. To get even a simple cheese pizza in Deadwood, you had to drive 20 minutes. To shop for something organic or whole grains like barley? Not in Deadwood. So I shopped for the week in Rapid City and planted a garden. My neighbor was a former Navy SEAL who told me I wouldn"t be able to grow even a weed in the rocky hills, but I proved him wrong. We had squash, beans, tomatoes, and peppers.
I ran nearly every day, anywhere from 10 to 35 miles, through the ponderosa pine forests of the Black Hills and across occasional open plains of gra.s.s. One day I found myself surrounded by wild echinacea and picked some. We had echinacea tea that night. My craving for meat had left me, but not my worries about the limits of a meatless diet. My body became a laboratory. I tried combining vegetables and grains, fruits and nuts. One of my more ill-advised experiments involved carrying a small flask of olive oil on a 35-mile run, reasoning that my body needed energy and that oil and fat are the most concentrated forms of calories. A few big swigs, a few episodes of diarrhea, a lot of gas and bloating, and general nausea forced me back to the drawing board.
At every opportunity, I ran out my back door into the surrounding hills or drove to the Bighorn Mountains, where I"d spend hours running through the wild mountains of Wyoming. I loved those runs, but I didn"t love my life. Many of the people I was trying to help were smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, ignoring their exercises, and eating junk. It was frustrating, but it was hard to blame them. They didn"t know any better. Deadwood was lonely for a pair of newlyweds, especially when one of them worked at a job that seemed like pushing a rock up a hill. I brought my worries home with me. I didn"t know what to do with them, and neither did Leah. I began to spend more and more time running in the hills with my training partner, Tonto, an Alaskan husky who loved to run free as much as I did. I felt a calling from those hills, a primal urge to run, something that kept beckoning me.
I had been reading more about Buddhism and self-actualization. I wanted the peace that these mystics talked about. I wanted the serenity I found in movement, the calm that spread through me the longer I ran and the more fatigued I got. Winning had thrilled me, but what thrilled me more was forgetting my worries, losing myself.
Every day I ran 10 to 15 miles; every weekend, 20 to 30. After a long talk with Leah, I flew to races in Virginia and Oregon, going deep into credit card debt in order to pay my travel expenses. I wanted to push my boundaries, to explore my potential. I was pa.s.sionate, but I was also practical. It was still debt. For a kid who grew up eating government cheese, it was terrifying. But I won the McKenzie River 50K and the Zane Grey 50-Miler. Then I set a new record in the Minnesota Voyageur 50-Miler. Was it compulsiveness or just the determination of a Minnesota redneck or, as Dusty described my heritage, "Norwegian stubborn, French arrogant, and Polish stupid"? Or was it something more pure inside me, something good? I wasn"t sure. To find out, I needed a test. I needed to run a 100-mile race. I decided on the Angeles Crest 100, held on a Sat.u.r.day in late September. It was one of the hardest 100-mile races in the country, climbing 22,000 feet and descending 27,000 feet through the San Gabriel Mountains of California. I logged more distances and refined my diet even more. And I made a call to the man I wanted to be my pacer.
Now, waiting to meet me at 50 miles in Chilao Campground, he was screaming at me again. But this time it wasn"t "You"re a p.u.s.s.y, Jurker," or "C"mon, you Polack," or any of Dust Ball"s other charming greetings.
It was Spanish.
I looked over my shoulder, finally realizing who he was yelling at. There was a knot of sinewy, coffee-colored men with ink black hair wearing loose shirts, long things that looked like skirts, and huarache sandals made from discarded tires. They looked to be in their forties. I had first heard about them from a friend from New York, Jose Camacho, whom I had worked with at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque during one of my PT internships. He had a quote taped to his locker: "When you run on the earth and with the earth, you can run forever."
Anyone who had competed in more than one ultrarace in the United States had probably heard of these men. They were the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico"s Copper Canyon, an ancient people who supposedly could run hundreds of miles without even breaking a sweat. As the story went (and as the bestseller Born to Run would later doc.u.ment), they didn"t talk much, subsisted on a mostly plant-based diet, and grew up running the way American kids grew up watching television or playing video games. Dusty and I had seen them at the starting line, smoking cigarettes (or joints; we weren"t sure). They stood apart from everyone else, neither smiling nor frowning. While other runners stretched and warmed up, they just stood there. Some of their skirts were obviously put together recently. One of them had fashioned his from a sheet printed with Big Bird.
A runner named Ben Hian, who had won the race three of the past four years and was one of the best 100-milers in the country, had sidled up to Dusty and me. Ben was a recovering drug addict who loved tattoos: men crawling out of coffins, skulls, that sort of thing. His entire upper body was covered in ink. He wore a Mohawk, loved Ozzy Osbourne, and ran a business where he took tarantulas, snakes, and lizards to libraries and Girl Scout troops, among other places. Oh, and he taught preschool.
"Those guys don"t even get warmed up till 100 miles, and they stop at the top of each ridge and all smoke something. Peyote, marijuana, I"m not sure what," Ben said with a grin. Or was it a smirk? He stretched a little, flexed his tattoos.
Was he s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with us or was he serious? I didn"t know.
"Yeah, right," Dusty had replied. "That is total bulls.h.i.t." Then he told Ben that I was going to beat his a.s.s. Good old Dusty.
But now he was yelling Spanish at them. (Later I learned it was something along the lines of "f.u.c.k you, you slow Big Birdwearing idiots.") I glanced back again and did a double-take. They really did seem to be floating up the mountain with no effort. Had they been smoking something? If so, I wouldn"t have minded some.
Before the race, I had confessed my concerns about running 100 miles, and Dusty had told me not to be a p.u.s.s.y, that "this is just a 50-mile race, then another 50-mile race after. And you get stronger the longer you run."
As I suspected, Ben Hian was my main compet.i.tion. The other guy I knew I had to beat in order to win was Tommy Nielson, aka Tough Tommy. Tommy was known for his grit and a particular trick. If he was pursuing someone at night, he would switch off his headlamp until he was next to his quarry, then flash it on and move into a near sprint. It had demoralized runners who thought they had the lead, only to be pa.s.sed before they knew they were even being chased.
I chased Ben Hian the first 50 miles of the course, and the Tarahumara chased us. Every steep incline, I"d gain ground on Ben, but the Tarahumara would gulp ground on me. How were they doing that floating thing? Every downhill, Ben and I would crash over rocks and bushes, and the Tarahumara would gingerly pick their way. I suspected it was the huaraches. But I also knew if they ever figured out the trick to descending in a race, they"d be invincible.
As the miles added up-Dusty joined me at mile 50 to pace me the rest of the way-I kept waiting to seize with cramps or for my knees to blow up or to look down and see I had swollen hands. I had never run so far, and I wasn"t at all sure I could take the distance.
The Tarahumara chased me all the way to mile 70, gliding up mountains, tiptoeing down. After that, they slowed.
At 90 miles, it was the middle of the night, and Dusty and I saw lights behind us and ahead. That"s when we decided to pull a Tough Tommy, and we shut off our lamps. Evidently, though, Tommy pulled a Tommy, too, because suddenly the light chasing us had disappeared. Ben also pulled a Tommy. We ran that way until the end, chasing invisible Ben, running from invisible Tommy. It was an amazing feeling, and somehow I didn"t feel my tired legs and sore feet. I ran as if I had run only 10 miles instead of 90. We finished with 10 minutes between each of us.
When we got to the finish line, I had a second-place finish. I had defeated the members of a legendary tribe and almost caught the Man of Tattoos. I had almost won my first 100-miler.
Now I knew I could run this distance. I knew I could win, too. But few others knew it.
It was my little secret.
My mom, Lynn, taught me to cook. My dad, Gordy, taught me to hunt and fish. Though I suspect they didn"t know it at the time, they both taught me, in word and deed, to endure.
I was four years old and had just finished digging potatoes with my dad. I already knew that the best food in the world was the food you grew yourself.
In 1984, finishing (but not winning) the Park Point Kids" Mile along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior, I discovered two things: I wasn"t particularly fast, but I seemed to get stronger as the race got longer.
As an 18-year-old high school senior, I started placing near the top in open ski events. Skiing was my pa.s.sion. Running was a means to stay in shape for that.
"Hippie Dan" Proctor was a local running legend when I met him in 1992, and he taught me about the joys of living a simple, attentive life. When I returned to Duluth in 2010, to visit him in his solar-powered house, I found he hadn"t changed much.
The first time I beat my best friend and running mentor, Dusty Olson, was the 1994 Minnesota Voyaguer 50-miler. When I finished, I fell to the ground, convinced this was the hardest thing I would ever do. If only I had known.
I heard about the Western States 100 the way Little Leaguers hear about Babe Ruth. When I first ran it, in 1999, I decided if I didn"t win, it wasn"t going to be because I didn"t give everything I had.
My dog taught me a lot about running. For four years, Tonto trained with me on the mountain trails of Washington and Northern California, preparing for the Western States 100.
Run an event enough times and you"ll identify the spot where your race really begins. For me and the Western States 100, it"s the Rucky Chucky river crossing, mile 78, a final chance to cool down before grinding out the last 20 miles.
Every summer, I loved living dirtbag style with the king of the dirtbags, the Dust Ball. We"d camp at Robinson Flat, just off the Western States Trail, and I"d whip up gourmet meals in my VW Westfalia.
Eating while running is a critical skill for any ultramarathoner. Here I am at mile 50 of the 2003 Western States, chowing down on a homemade burrito.