Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness Read Free

strong. Maybe accepting my limits meant it was time to stop being a runner, to start being something else. But what? If I wasn’t a runner, who was I?
    I looked again at the stars. They had no opinion on the matter.
    Then, from the desert, a voice, an old familiar voice.
    “You’re not gonna win this fucking race lying down in the dirt. C’mon, Jurker, get the fuck up.”
    It was my old friend Dusty. That made me smile. He almost always made me smile, even when everyone around him was cringing.
    “Get the fuck up!” Dusty yelled, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
    “Sweeney is out there dying, and you’re gonna take that dude. We’re gonna take that dude!”
    I looked at my friend. Couldn’t he see that I wasn’t going to take anyone?
    He squatted, folded himself until our faces were inches apart. He looked into my eyes.
    “Do you wanna be somebody, Jurker? Do you wanna be somebody?”
    Rice Balls (Onigiri)
    I first saw these seaweed-wrapped rice packets when I asked a Japanese runner to show me what was in his race pack. I’m grateful I did, because white rice is a great food for cooling your body, especially in hot climates like Death Valley. It’s packed with carbohydrates, it’s not too sweet, and it’s soft and easy to digest. A great source for electrolytes and salt (via the seaweed), rice balls have always been a portable pick-me-up in Japan. These days, you can even find them at convenience stores in Asia. For a soy-free variation, substitute pickled ginger or umeboshi paste for the miso.
     
2
cups sushi rice
4
cups water
2
teapoons miso
3-4
sheets nori seaweed
    Cook the rice in the water on the stovetop or using a rice cooker. Set aside to cool. Fill a small bowl with water and wet both hands so the rice does not stick. Using your hands, form ¼ cup rice into a triangle. Spread ¼ teaspoon miso evenly on one side of the triangle. Cover with another ¼ cup rice. Shape into one triangle, making sure the miso is covered with rice. Fold the nori sheets in half and then tear them apart. Using half of one sheet, wrap the rice triangle in nori, making sure to completely cover the rice. Repeat using the remaining rice, miso, and nori.
    MAKES 8 ONIGIRI

2. “Sometimes You Just Do Things”
    PROCTOR, MINNESOTA, 1980
The only line that is true is the line you’re from.
—ISRAEL NEBEKER OF BLIND PILOT
     
    I sat on a stool in our kitchen. My mother thrust a rough wooden spoon at me and told me to stir, but the batter was too thick. She told me to use both hands, but still I couldn’t move the spoon. Suddenly it moved and kept moving. She had put her hands around mine. We made spirals of pale yellow out of sugar and butter, and I pretended I was doing it all by myself. It’s one of my earliest memories.
    I thought my mom was famous. She worked for the Litton Microwave company, showing women how to cook bacon and make chocolate cake with the new invention. The Minnesota Egg Council hired her to go on the radio to talk about eggs and that led to television commercials and that led to her own cable cooking show. Her motto (which I still believe): “You don’t have to be a chef to cook great food.” For her family she roasted pork, baked chicken, broiled steak, and whipped up mashed potatoes from scratch. In the childhood of my memory, there was always a pie cooling on the kitchen windowsill, the scent of pastry and fruit stealing into our kitchen, enveloping my mother and me in its thick embrace.
    I don’t remember anyone talking about a primal connection to food, or how by eating the vegetables we grew we were connecting ourselves to the place where we lived and each other. I don’t remember anyone remarking that the act of catching and cleaning and frying and eating walleye together was akin to a family sacrament. At my mother’s insistence, we did sit down together for a full hour at dinner. If someone had praised her for baking cookies from scratch rather than using a mix, she would have thought they