Ultramarathon Man Read Free

yeah,” I replied. “I’m like Carl Lewis, only slower.”
    â€œWhere will you sleep?”
    â€œI won’t.”
    â€œYou’re running straight through the night? This is insane. I love it!” He jumped back in his truck. “I can’t wait to tell the guys back at the shop.” He sped off.
    I liked this kid. To most non-runners, running is at best boring and at worst terribly painful and senseless. But he seemed genuinely intrigued by the venture, and we’d connected on an almost primal level, though I didn’t sense he’d take up the sport anytime soon.
    With the cheesecake stacked on top of the pizza, I started running again, eating as I went. Over the years I’d perfected the craft of eating on the fly. I balanced the box of pizza and cheesecake in one hand and ate with the other. It was a good upper-body workout. Fortunately my forearms were well developed and had no problem supporting the added weight. For efficiency, I rolled four pieces of pizza into one big log like a huge Italian burrito. Easier to fit it in my mouth that way.
    Just as I was finishing this first course, I heard the manager’s truck approaching again. The loose muffler was a dead giveaway. He’d forgotten to give me the coffee. We filled one of my water bottles with the dark brew and I drank the rest. I tried to pay him for it, but he wouldn’t take any money.
    As he was about to drive away again, the young man tilted his head out of the truck window and asked, “So dude, do you mind me asking why you’re doing this?”
    Where to begin? “Oh man,” I replied, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    And now’s the time to ponder his question. Millions of Americans run. They run for the exercise, for their cardiovascular health, for the endorphin high. In 2003, a record-setting 460,000 people completed one of the country’s many marathons. They pushed the outer limits of their endurance to complete the 26.2 miles.
    Then there’s the small hardcore group of runners, a kind of runners’ underground, who are called ultra-marathoners. For us, a marathon is just a warm-up. We run 50-mile races, 100-mile races. We’ll run twenty-four hours and more without sleep, barely pausing for food and water, or even to use the bathroom. We run up and down mountains; through Death Valley in the dead of summer; at the South Pole. We push our bodies, minds, and spirits well past what most humans would consider the limits of pain and exertion.
    I’m one of the few who’s run beyond 100 miles without resting, which I guess makes me an extra-ultramarathoner. Or just nuts. Whenever people hear that I’ve run 100 miles at a clip, they inevitably ask two questions. The first is “How can you do that?” The second, and much harder to answer, is the same one that pizza guy asked me: “Why?”
    It’s an excellent question, though addictions are never neatly defined. When asked why he was attempting to be the first to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory offered the famously laconic, “Because it’s there.” That seems to satisfy people enough for it to have become a famous adage. But it’s really not much of an answer. Still, I can understand Mallory’s clipped response. When people ask me why I run such improbable distances for nights on end, I’ve often been tempted to answer with something like, “Because I can.” It’s true as far as it goes, and athletes aren’t always the most introspective souls. But it’s not a complete answer. It’s not even satisfying to me. I’ve got questions of my own.
    What am I running from?
    Who am I running for?
    Where I am running to?
    Every runner has a story. Here’s mine.

Chapter 2
    The Formative Years
    Of all the animals, the boy is the most
unmanageable.
    â€”Plato

Los Angeles 1969-1976
    I’ve been running