Eat and Run Part 7

WESTERN STATES 100, 2002 AND 2003.

Don't work towards freedom, but allow the work itself to be freedom.

-DOGEN ROSHI.

I knew my fourth try was going to be brutal. It was 105 degrees, I had a touch of the flu, and I was sure people were talking about me the way I had talked about Twietmeyer. The world was filled with guys like Ricklefs. I had been a guy like that. Maybe the past year someone had been holed up in a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment on the outskirts of Seattle, emerging at night only to run Mount Si, back to back to back to back. Maybe that guy was faster than me, stronger. Maybe he was a better athlete.

If I thought biology was destiny, I would have given up a long time ago. I've got scoliosis, my left foot toes out, I had high blood pressure in elementary school, and my marathon time of 2:38 is nothing special. My height is a mixed blessing-good for stride length, bad for heat and technical trails-which makes my brain that much more important.

In a sprint, if you don't have perfect form, you're doomed. The ultra distance forgives injury, fatigue, bad form, and illness. A bear with determination will defeat a dreamy gazelle every time. I can't count the number of times people have said, "I can't believe he beat me." Distance strips you bare.

So what if other bodies might be stronger? I would use my mind. Bushido.

"I want to make everyone work hard," I told a reporter before the race. "I want to make them hurt."

I loved ultrarunning and I loved ultrarunners, but even a superpolite vegan could be a d.i.c.k during compet.i.tion, sometimes even to a friend.

Dave Terry, the world-cla.s.s projectile vomiter, was running on my shoulder by mile 15 of the Western States. Three years had pa.s.sed since I'd first rolled to the finish line, and Dave and I had become pals. I had grown to admire his work ethic and the way he went out of the way to show kindness to everyone he met. Dave was a solid runner, often in the top three, but seldom a winner. He never let his frustration boil into anything like rudeness. What was most striking was the way he seemed to understand someone's sadness before it was even mentioned. Dave always had a few wise words of encouragement to share-especially, it seemed, to those who needed them most.

"Hey, Scott," Dave said as he pulled alongside. Such a sweet guy. I smiled.

"Hey, Dave!" I said in the same tone of voice I might have used if we had been sharing a beer at his kitchen table or discussing plans for a Sat.u.r.day night movie.

And then, before he could answer, I said, "What are you doing up here? You must really want to hurt today."

Then I took off.

No one called me flatlander anymore. No one opined (at least in my presence) that I was going out too fast or that Twietmeyer-or anyone else-was going to reel me in. When I wasn't leading, I reeled others in.

It wasn't just compet.i.tors who were treating me differently. People came into the store just to ask me questions-about what I ate, how I trained, and what shoes I liked. I had sponsorship deals from various footwear, clothing, and energy bar manufacturers, but that only covered travel expenses (not necessarily lodging or food).

It was all because I could run far, fast. And I could do that, I was convinced, because of what I was eating. I stopped the raw diet right after my 2001 Western States victory-the extra time involved in chewing was too much. I'm serious. That, combined with my concern about getting enough calories, drew me back to cooking. But I kept a lot of what I had learned: the smoothies, a large salad for lunch, paying attention to ingredients and preparation. Eating raw was like getting a Ph.D. in a plant-based diet-hard work, but worth it.

At the same time, due to losing a food sponsor, I started making my own gels. I mixed brown rice syrup with blueberries or cocoa powder and made it in bulk. I also experimented with kalamata olives and hummus on whole wheat tortillas for long runs.

My blood pressure and triglyceride levels dropped to all-time lows; my HDL, "good" cholesterol, shot up to an all-time high. I had virtually no joint inflammation, even after miles of pounding trails and roads, and on the rare occasions I sprained an ankle or fell and whacked my elbow or knee, the soreness left faster than it ever had before.

Was it the fiber that sped food through my digestive tract, minimizing the impact of toxins? Was it the food I was adding-the vitamins and minerals, the lycopene, lutein, and beta carotene? Almost every day a new micronutrient is discovered in plant foods that offers protective effects against disease. Or was it what I wasn't eating, the concentrated carcinogens, excess protein, refined carbohydrates, trans fats? Factory-farmed animals are treated with growth hormones and steroids to encourage their rapid transit from birth to slaughterhouse. If we wouldn't take steroids ourselves-or eat a bowl of transgenic, pesticide-soaked soybeans-why would we eat the flesh of an animal that has?

Or was the sum of a plant-based diet greater than its parts? Vegetarians are likely to have healthy habits outside the kitchen as well as more active lifestyles and less smoking. A major study shows that vegetarians watch less television, smoke less, and sleep more per night than meat-eaters.

I wasn't sure of the answer, but my diet seemed to be working. So when I came across naysayers-and there were plenty-I weighed my experience against their theories. When I read Eat Right 4 Your Type, by Peter D'Adamo, right before my first Western States and learned that my blood type, O, was the least suited of all types to vegetarianism, I worried a little, but not too much. According to D'Adamo, my ancestral profile made me a "canny, aggressive predator" who preferred baby seal meat to bean burritos. But those burritos had fueled me through that first Western States as well as two others. (I wasn't the only one who didn't go along with matching diet to blood type. Dr. Fredrick Stare, founder of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health, calls this book "not only one of the most preposterous books on the market, but also one of the most frightening. It contains just enough scientific-sounding nonsense, carefully woven into a complex theory, to actually seem convincing to the uninitiated.") I maintained my smoothie habit. I made more friends at farmer's markets. I soaked beans, baked bread, rolled oats. I entered other races, searched for new training routes. Even though I knew the Western States would be more challenging than ever, I was confident.

Before the race, Dusty had bet an old friend of his in Minnesota, Rod Raymond, one of the standout endurance athletes of Duluth, that I would win a fourth consecutive Western States. Rod took the bet. If Dusty lost, he would have to landscape the Raymonds' front yard, a job worth $2,000. But if Dusty (and I) won, Rod had to give Dusty his 1984 Suzuki Tempter motorcycle.

The race was tough but not close. The last 20 miles, Dusty ran beside me, repeating over and over: "Vroom, vroom, c'mon, Jurker, gotta get my motorcycle."

Later, Dusty called Rod and got his voicemail. He yelled into his cell phone. "You owe me a motorcycle, b.i.t.c.h!"

I won a fifth Western States in 2003 in 16:01, another 20 minutes faster, and UltraRunning magazine called it "Performance of the Year." During that race, Dusty, behind me, screamed something as we were descending a dried creek drainage, headed to the American River, but I didn't pay attention. It was 72 miles in and I was gliding, effortlessly. "Dude," he said, "do you realize you just stepped on a rattlesnake back there?"

That was the race when Tonto died. He had been spending the week with Dusty and me, running every day. During the race, Tonto stayed at my friend Shannon Weil's ranch, which was on the course. I saw Tonto at mile 55 when I pa.s.sed the ranch. The next morning, after I had won, Shannon called to tell me Tonto was gone. After the awards ceremony, Dusty, Scott McCoubrey, and another friend and runner named Brandon Sybrowsky helped me bury Tonto just outside of Michigan Bluff, right next to the Western States Trail.

I won again the next year, in 2004, and set a new record of 15:36 (9:22 per mile pace), earning another "Ultrarunner of the Year" honor and, more importantly, accomplishing what I had set out to do six years earlier. Brooks Sports hired me that year to work with their design team on a new trail shoe called the Cascadia and to do presentations and store appearances. In 2005 I won a seventh consecutive Western States, something no man had done before (or since). I also trimmed off 14 inches of my hair to donate to Locks of Love, for children with cancer. It was no big ceremony, but it felt better than any other haircut I had ever received.

I treasured those races, but just as much I treasured the weeks before the compet.i.tion. The local press sought out Dusty, and he always had a quote ready. In 2003, the Auburn Journal accidentally ran Dusty on the front page with the caption, "Scott Jurek 5-time winner of WS100." We laughed about it and even had him go up at first to accept my award. The WS board wasn't happy. But we loved it.

At night, at the campsite Dusty and I had set up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the temperature would drop into the 30s, and before turning in we'd look at the sky. Neither of us talked about the way Dusty had inspired me to run or the success that accrued to me because of that running. We didn't talk about how being with each other was in many ways an escape for both of us. For Dusty, those weeks took him away from his peripatetic life, his wanderings in Minnesota and Colorado, chasing snowflakes and trying to eke out a living through odd carpentry jobs. For me, it was a refuge from a life of responsibilities I had never antic.i.p.ated.

Not even ten years earlier, I had been trudging snowmobile trails, dreaming big and spending big. I had planned on running hard, counted on winning. What I hadn't antic.i.p.ated were sponsorships with Brooks, Pro-Tec, and Clif Bar, delivering presentations, and attending trade shows in between races. But, as I had discovered, those were flags on the path of ultrarunning, markers on the path Hippie Dan had urged me to find. Or were they warning signs? I didn't know.

I wanted more. I wanted to push myself, to crack myself open and discover something fresh. I wanted a new challenge.

Tamari-Lime Tempeh and Brown Rice The big concern I hear from people about a plant-based diet is difficulty. It takes too long. It requires too much focus. For those folks I make this dish, which-if you cook the rice beforehand-you can have on the table in less than 20 minutes. The brown rice gives the dish a nutty texture and provides essential amino acids. Tempeh contains 3 grams of protein for every gram of fat, which makes it one of the leanest, most protein-heavy of the soy products (which was invaluable when I was cranking up my training, looking for more protein). Better, it's fermented and easily digestible, even for people who have trouble with most soy products.

4 cups uncooked brown rice 2 cups water 1 teaspoon coconut or olive oil 812 ounces tempeh, sliced - to -inch thick Juice of 1 lime or lemon 1 tablespoon tamari or shoyu mixed with 1 tablespoon water Red Curry Almond Sauce (see recipe, [>]) Add the brown rice and water to a pot and bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat for 30 to 40 minutes, until the water evaporates and the rice is tender. Fluff with a fork and cool.

Coat a large skillet with the oil and heat over medium-low heat until a drop of water sizzles when it hits the pan. Saute the tempeh for 3 to 5 minutes on each side, until lightly browned. Remove from the heat. Squeeze the lime or lemon over the tempeh and sprinkle with the tamari or shoyu.

For each serving, place a cup of brown rice on a plate or in a bowl. Crumble several pieces of tempeh on top and drizzle with 1 to 2 tablespoons Red Curry Almond Sauce. Enjoy with a side of Indonesian Cabbage Salad (see recipe, [>]).

MAKES 4 SERVINGS.

14. A Hot Mess.

BADWATER ULTRAMARATHON, 2005.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

-j.a.pANESE PROVERB.

On August 3, 1977, the hottest day of that year, a fifty-year-old named Al Arnold tried to run from Badwater, California, through and across Death Valley to the summit of 14,000-foot Mount Whitney. Six-foot-five and 200 pounds, he had tried the feat twice before, failing both times. This effort would be his last. He succeeded (and thus was born the Badwater Ultramarathon) and said, regarding the last 40 miles or so: "It was like all tranquility that can exist . . . existed for me." He said that photographs taken of him after mile 100 show an unearthly glow coming off his body.

Today, the 135-mile course starts in Death Valley, at 280 feet below sea level, and arrows on a paved road straight to the portal of Mount Whitney, at 8,300 feet. It was the crazy race Rick Miller had told me about four years earlier.

The Badwater Ultramarathon (or simply the Badwater) is big overseas and has been the subject of more than one doc.u.mentary film. Part of the reason is that the race director, Chris Kostman, is something of a publicity genius. The press material calls it "the world's toughest foot race," which I seriously doubted, as it was on roads and (for ultrarunners) relatively level. Most untough of all, the cutoff time was 60 hours. You could walk the thing and finish. I had run in hot weather before, at the Western States. I had climbed (and descended) 10,500 feet on my training runs on the Twelve Peaks. I caused despair in others, not the other way around, so the Badwater didn't scare me, but it did intrigue me. It was not as obviously difficult as other events I had won, but there was something perversely challenging about it. I aimed to find out what. Most serious runners wait at least a month between ultras. But less than a week after winning my seventh Western States, I flew to Las Vegas. A lot of people said I was crazy to enter another race, especially this race, especially so soon.

When I arrived in Death Valley, I took a training run that singed my nose hairs. I felt as if a branding iron were pressing on my skull-from the inside. I drove to a Home Depot and purchased an industrial-strength sprayer. I helped Rick and Barb Miller rig up a coffin-sized cooler, which would be filled with ice water. I had, of course, asked Dusty to pace me. (When he felt the heat, he said he would do it only if I promised to take him to Las Vegas for a few days afterward, strippers included.) My main compet.i.tion would be last year's second-place finisher, a Canadian baggage handler named Ferg Hawke, who said things like: "The first half of the Badwater is run with the legs, the second half with the heart." He sounded interesting. Not a threat, but interesting. There was another guy, a fifty-year-old named Mike Sweeney. He had brought vests of synthetic ice packets that he had duct-taped together. He had also stored-on dry ice-small Tupperware bowls inside larger Tupperware bowls, anch.o.r.ed by an inch-thick layer of ice between the two. He planned to wear the device (he had three) on his head, duct-taped around his chin. Sweeney dove off cliffs for fun and smacked his head a lot. He said it made him and his skull stronger.

Also competing would be a trio of large German men wearing floppy garden hats, who, recognizing me before the race, chanted, "Vee vill overtake you!"

Ultramarathons tend to attract obsessive people. To undertake a race of over 50 miles requires training that can occupy 3 hours a day, a routine that involves cramps and pain and loneliness, not to mention the inevitable moments of doubt and maybe even a little self-loathing. Ultras seem to attract seekers of all kinds, including recovering addicts and alcoholics, seers, sages, some very wacky engineers and poets, and a.s.sorted windmill-tilters. Not to mention the monks and holy men.

Consider Sri Chinmoy, who, after arriving in New York City in 1964, taught meditation and a lifestyle of personal transformation in which athletics featured heavily. He attracted thousands of followers, among them Carlos Santana and Carl Lewis, and maintained a center in Queens. He demanded that his followers practice celibacy and vegetarianism and abstain from drugs, alcohol, and smoking. Many of them worked for Chinmoy in his a.s.sociated businesses, such as the Smile of the Beyond Luncheonette in Jamaica and the Oneness-Fountain-Heart in Flushing.

The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, founded in 1977, has gone on to promote and compete in numerous ultras. The most famous is the 3,100-mile Self-Transcendence Race, the longest footrace in the world, held on a city block in Queens-164th Place to Abigail Adams (84th) Avenue to 168th Street to Grand Central Parkway. The 3,100-mile distance honors the year ('31) of Sri Chinmoy's birth. Runners must complete 5,649 laps of the .5488-mile course in fifty-two days (extended to fifty-four in 2011 due to extreme heat). It is tantamount to running two marathons a day. Many run for 17 or 18 hours a day. The experience is so grueling and repet.i.tive that few even undertake, much less complete, the race. In 2011, ten runners competed and eight finished.

But the most famous (and infamous) contemporary band of allegedly spiritual long-distance runners is probably the group known as Divine Madness. Members make a monthly financial "commitment" to the group. Its founder and leader, Marc Tizer, aka Yo, encourages communal living, ultrarunning, and free love. He will tack on extra miles in the middle of the group's training runs to keep them "adaptable." He has runners hold out their arm and he presses against it, then diagnoses their problems, what kind of running shoes they need, and who they should sleep with. They eat and sleep on the floor and work at subsistence jobs. Two former members of the group filed a civil lawsuit against Yo in 1996, joined in 1997 by a third, alleging mind control through sleep deprivation, fasting, and isolation. That case was settled out of court. One woman lodged a s.e.xual a.s.sault case with the police. Mark Heinemann was an apparently healthy group member who dropped dead of pneumonia after a 48-hour race. He was forty-six.

Mike Sweeney pa.s.sed me at mile 15, but I wasn't worried. Even if he hadn't been a head-smacking, ice helmetwearing cliff diver, I wouldn't have been worried. I was looking forward to the uphill at 40 miles-that's when I would reel him in. That's when I would claim the Badwater as mine.

A few miles later I dropped from second to fourth place. Ferg had pa.s.sed me, and a guy I never heard of named Chris Bergland did, too. I felt as if I might puke. One of my crew members said to slow it down, to take it easy, but I was getting my a.s.s kicked by a bunch of underdogs. I was hearing reports that Sweeney was ahead by 25 minutes.

It was the heat. My training runs had helped, but nothing could have helped me enough for this. Imagine a sun so pitiless that it seemed to want to personally torture you. Imagine that every time you inhaled, the air was so hot that it seared your already parched throat and stung your lungs. Now imagine that a tall, cool, iced bottle of water was waiting for you, along with an aquamarine swimming pool and giant puddles of shade under oversized umbrellas and that fans were wafting cool breezes your way as you lay down on crisp, chilly sheets. Now imagine that all that relief was only another 110 miles away, and you had to run there, through heat every bit as awful as what you had just endured-maybe worse.

I ran (mostly uphill) to the aid station at Stovepipe Wells, 20 miles away, where my crew had prepared the giant coffin cooler. Dusty was jumping up and down in the parking lot, barefoot, wearing a black down expedition jacket, shouting "Hot potato, hot potato!" He was doing it to amuse me, I'm sure, to take my mind off the difficulties ahead. If I hadn't felt like my internal organs were liquefying, I might have chuckled.

I took off my sun pants and long-sleeved sun shirt-both specially designed by Brooks-and wriggled in. I thought I heard my crew discussing Sweeney's lead, and I remember thinking that I should get out, that if sometimes you just do things, then that moment would be certainly be an auspicious time to start. My body thought otherwise. I don't think I ever felt so good. Dusty suggested it was time to go, but I demurred.

When-finally-I climbed out, I wanted to immediately climb back in. After 2 miles, I told my crew I needed it again. Two more miles, one of them said, but they drove 3 miles. When I arrived, I told them I was ready, but again they said 2 more miles. And again they drove 3 miles. Rick Miller told me to stop thinking about the giant cooler, and he sprayed me down with the contraption I had bought at Home Depot.

There's something profoundly lonely about any ultra, but the Badwater is the loneliest of all. Ancient sand dunes roll over the valley floor like waves. Huge boulders lounge in the middle of emptiness. The salt flat shimmers and beckons with its treacherous beauty.

The wonderful thing about ultramarathons is that, no matter how awful things get, how searing the pain you're in, there's always a chance to redeem yourself. If you're willing to work, salvation awaits. Sweeney was still a good 5 miles ahead, and I had 10 miles to go before I got to the top of Town's Pa.s.s, mile 59 of the race. Those 10 miles-with their choking heat and blowing dust and the murderous incline and alt.i.tude-were popular among automakers. They used the stretch to test their latest models for performance under rigorous conditions. It had gotten too hot even for the desert rat Rick Miller, so Dusty joined me and ran me up the next 10 miles. "You da man. Yeah brotha', that's how you do it, Jurker, h.e.l.l yeah!" the Dust Ball hollered. We crested the pa.s.s just as the sun set. Dusty peeled into the twilight to get some rest for the night shift, and my friend Justin Angle took over.

I learned how to run downhill on Mount Si, and I put those lessons to use on the descent to Panamint Valley. I felt as if I was floating. I flew by Ferg and yelled, "Free speed!" I found out later that I was clocking 5:00-minute miles. I blazed into the valley at dark. Night had not just fallen, it had thudded and crashed and the air had cooled-to 105 degrees. But that was all right because out of the blackness jogged the jester of the dark, the rogue prince of the cake eaters. We blazed into the night. We might as well have been back on the game trails of Duluth. What could go wrong?

I found out at mile 70. One minute I was flying, the next I was dying. I started looking for a sidewinder in the desert. If one bit me, I could quit without shame.

Ferg pa.s.sed me a few miles out of Panamint Springs. I sat by the side of the road. Then I puked. And puked some more. My crew joined me. They told me to put my feet in the air, and my crew moved me to the desert side of the van so Ferg's crew, who were always sneaking up on me or back to me to see where I was and how much Ferg needed to worry, couldn't learn anything. Leah and Barb and Rick huddled over me, telling me I had beat longer odds, that I'd run tougher races. I was dry heaving. I heard a voice say, "I don't think this is gonna happen," and I realized it was my voice.

I had studied enough nutrition and physical therapy to know that what was happening should not have been happening.

In some ways, an ultra isn't even as hard as a marathon. My heart rate was lower and my lungs were less taxed than they would have been during a shorter, faster race. Sure, most marathons don't go through the heart of Death Valley, but I had done my homework on that front, so my body should have been primed. All those runs through the heat at Rick and Barb's had made my sweating and circulation more efficient. The time spent training at alt.i.tude had sparked adaptations such as an increased network of capillaries, bigger energy-producing mitochondria, and elevated levels of the enzyme 2,3-diphosphoglycerate to help oxygen reach my tissues. The body's ability to adapt is truly astounding. That's why I say that, with the right training and support, anyone can do an ultra.

Yet there's a reason why top marathoners aren't flocking to the sport, and it's not just the lack of cash and prizes. Although the pace of an ultra is slower, maintaining that effort for hours and hours can leave the best of us huddled at the side of the road, dry heaving. For one thing, there's the c.u.mulative loading on the muscles and bones. Every time the foot hits the ground, the quadriceps and calf muscles have to lengthen to absorb the shock of the impact, and that adds up when you go a hundred miles, whether you're barefoot or in Brooks, running or walking, slapping your heel or landing on your toes. Downhills are the worst of all. When you see runners shuffling across the Badwater finish line, it's not because they're too tired to push off, it's because they're too sore to land.

Even if you're able to keep food down under these conditions, you'll eventually hit the famous "wall" where the glycogen energy stores in your liver and muscles are depleted. In a marathon, the wall comes at the tail end of the race, but in an ultra, it's not even at the midpoint and it happens many times. You'll have to spend hours in the catabolic state where your body is forced to burn fat, protein, and even its own muscles to ensure adequate energy reaches the brain.

A cascade of stress-related hormones floods the body in response to the sustained exertion. Blood tests after ultras have shown elevated cardiac enzymes, renal injury, and very high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, the proinflammatory compound interleukin-6, and creatine kinase, a toxic byproduct of muscle breakdown. That's a lot for the immune system to handle. Approximately one in four runners at the Western States gets a cold after the race, and this is in the height of summer!

Most of all, the ultra distance leaves you alone with your thoughts to an excruciating extent. Whatever song you have in your head had better be a good one. Whatever story you are telling yourself had better be a story about going on. There is no room for negativity. The reason most people quit has nothing to do with their body.

Was my mind failing me? Could I have done something differently?

"You're not gonna win this f.u.c.king race lying down in the dirt. C'mon, Jurker, get the f.u.c.k up."

I got up, tried to run, and almost fell.

"C'mon, Jurker," Dusty said. "We're just gonna walk. We're just gonna take a little walk in the desert."

We walked, and after a little while, Dusty said, "Let's run 20 feet. It'll be just like Nordic ski training. It'll be like ski walking." He said "valking," imitating our old Russian coach, and I couldn't stop chuckling. But I managed a sip of water.

Sweeney was miles ahead. I couldn't even catch the crazy Canadian. What was I doing? I might have said this to Dusty.

"We'll just take this piece by piece," he said. "Piece by piece."

I forgot about catching anyone. I forgot about finishing. I forgot about everything except making it up the next switchback. Dusty saw the expression on my face. He told me this wasn't life and death, I didn't need to kill myself.

Piece by piece. Switchback by switchback. We crested a lonely hummock freckled with Joshua trees. My stomach felt better. I started to run. Dusty started to run. I picked up speed. So did the Dust Ball. "Rhythm and form, Jurker. Rhythm and form. C'mon, stretch it out! C'mon, you want to f.u.c.king be somebody? Let's do this!"

We ran. I had traveled 85 miles. We ran over a rolling plateau on the border of Death Valley National Park. A crew member told us Ferg had pa.s.sed Sweeney and that the cliff diver was cracking. Dusty and I flew. We ticked off an 8-minute mile, then a 7:30 mile, then another 7:30. I felt as if I could run forever.

If you're an athlete and you're fortunate, you've felt it. Being "in the zone," tasting satori-the sudden, Zen-like clarity that comes when you least expect it, often when your body is pushed to the limit. Running backs speak of the game slowing down until all the other players are moving with almost cartoonish sluggishness as the running back in the zone darts among and between them. Basketball players testify that the hoop at which they're shooting not only seems larger but is larger. Runners speak of feeling absorbed into the universe, of seeing the story of life in a single weed on the side of the road.

When I've been lucky enough to feel it, the sensation is one of effortlessness. It occurs when the intensity of the race, the pressure to win, the pain, build to a level that's nearly unbearable. Then something opens up inside me. I find the part of me that is bigger than the pain.

Satori can be sought, but it cannot be held. A few strides after an epic feeling of bliss, I'll get an ache in my knees or the urge to pee or I'll start worrying about how the person I'm chasing down is feeling. I can't beat back those feelings or desires, but I know they're not what really matters. What matters is the place of effortlessness, of selflessness. There might be many paths to that magical region-prayer and meditation come to mind. My way leads up to and past the point of absolute, maximal effort. It's only when I get to a place where all my physical and psychological warning lights are flashing red, and then run beyond it, that I hit the sweet spot. I know people who get there on a 5-mile jog or by mindfully chopping a carrot. I've traveled to the zone myself by those activities. In an ultramarathon, though, a trip to the zone isn't a luxury, it's almost a given. At half past midnight, I had stopped floating. Where was Mike? At 1 A.M., surrounded by the stunted Joshua trees under a moonless, starry sky, Dusty and I heard him. He was gasping and moaning. The vest had not only melted but had dragged at Mike with its 20 pounds of dead weight. The ice helmets had been too cold to wear. Mike's pace had been suicidal. He was suffering from hyponatremia, drinking too much water combined with his kidneys' failure to expel enough from his body. He was stumbling, and his face looked swollen. His sodium levels were plummeting.

As we pa.s.sed, I saw the expression on Mike's face. There's no way he should have been standing, much less moving forward. I gained a lot of respect for Mike that night. I gained a lot of respect for Badwater.

Dusty and I pa.s.sed Ferg at 90 miles, and he pa.s.sed us a half-mile later. "Sorry, Scott," he said. "I have to do this for the folks back in Canada."

I hadn't actually raced this late in an ultra since dueling Ben Hian and Tommy Nielson at Angeles Crest. For more than five years, when an ultra was 80 miles old, I had already won. Not this time. I added Ferg Hawke to the list of ultrarunners who had earned my respect.

A few minutes later I pa.s.sed him again, this time for good.

I ran through the dried bed of Owens Lake at sunrise with my best friend, and as the darkness clicked to red and brown, Dusty slowed down and shuffled off to a shadowy pickup truck to do what only the patron saint of wild men knew. I ran to Lone Pine, where the deerflies came out, and toward Mount Whitney, and I ran past the 100-mile mark, farther than I had ever run before. A legend known as Badwater Ben sat in a car and watched me run. Fourteen years earlier he had been running the Badwater when he came upon a body. He had interrupted his race to perform an autopsy. I learned later that when Badwater Ben saw me running and gauged my speed and the distance I had come, he had remarked to his companion in the car that he was worried.

I crossed the finish line, 135 miles from where I had started, after 24 hours and 36 minutes. No one had ever run it faster, nor had anybody won the Western States 100 and the Badwater 135 a mere two weeks apart.

When it was done, I sat in the pine needles, and I thought about my mother, who would never walk, and my father, who had never seen me run. I thought of the coaches who had helped me, the runners and writers who had inspired me. I thought of my wife and my best friend, who even though they seldom spoke to each other anymore had both supported me.

"Hey, Jurker!"

It was Dusty, as usual dragging me from my reveries.

"When're we going to Vegas? When're we going to see the strippers? You f.u.c.king promised."

FINDING THE TIME.

If you're going to run regularly, you're going to need to carve out part of your day, even if it's 30 to 60 minutes. If that seems impossible, ask yourself: How much time do I spend watching television? Or surfing the Internet? Or shopping? Take some of that time and devote it to doing something good for yourself. If you're still in a bind, double up on activities. Run to work and back. Many companies have become increasingly helpful to employees who want to exercise, providing showers, changing rooms, and sometimes even incentives; they realize that a fit worker will incur fewer health costs. Run to work and get a ride home. Run to the grocery store and have someone pick you up. Combine errands, running from place to place, and you'll get a workout in while you're taking care of business. And if you're already working out regularly, you'll be that much more fit.

Coco Rizo Cooler I learned of this combination while traveling and eating my way through Italy (thus the Italiano name), and it proved invaluable during my Spartathlon training and racing. Rice milk is cooling and tastes great, which is often overlooked but in fact a critical factor in race foods. The coconut adds even more taste, as well as another body-cooling substance and a source of quick energy. Chia seeds deliver yet a third flavor, as well as texture and easily digestible protein. The thick, almost gelatinous liquid slides down the most parched throat. For a sweeter drink with more carbohydrates, add 3 or 4 dates or 2 tablespoons maple syrup.

1 cup cooked brown or white rice cup light coconut milk 4 cups water 2 tablespoons agave syrup teaspoon sea salt teaspoon coconut extract 2 tablespoons chia seeds Place the rice, coconut milk, water, agave, salt, and coconut extract in a blender and blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until completely smooth. Add the chia seeds and shake. This mixture can be poured into a water bottle for a refreshing drink before, during, or after exercise.

MAKES 5 8-OUNCE SERVINGS.