50/50 (31 page)
If you enjoy running, if you embrace it as a priority in your life as important as any other, you are sure to keep it up and will probably even excel in your racing, if that’s the path you wish to follow. As the former marathon world-record holder Ian Thompson once said, “When I am running well I am happy, and when I am happy I am running well.”
The worst thing that can happen to a runner—besides injury—is burnout. How do you avoid burnout? That’s easy: Do what you love. “Every run is a great run!” said Sasha Azevedo, film star and runner.
Finally, don’t be afraid to celebrate your quirkiness as a runner. Yeah, we do something that a lot of people view as a minor form of torture, but so what? We also do a lot of zany and wacky things that only us runners can relate to, like peeing in a shrub during a desperate moment, changing in the backseat of a car, or wearing a pair of running shoes to a social function. Sure, you might get some strange looks; probably some envious ones, too. With all the running you’ve been doing, you’re probably not such a bad sight to behold, sneakers and all! Wear your runner’s stigma like a badge of honor. Take pride in the fact that you are a little different, perhaps even a little eccentric, and enjoy every step of the way. Yes, you are a runner, and running is life—the rest is just details.
The Philadelphia Marathon was another incredible, and entertaining, event. As we ran along the Schuylkill River on the path to the finish at Philadelphia’s famous Museum of Art, one of the runners, a first-time marathoner who up to this point had looked pretty darn strong, started huffin’ and puffin’ loudly.
Attack Your Weakness
One of the best ways to adapt your training for improved performance is to identify and attack a weak link in your fitness. Most runners have a clear sense of their greatest fitness weakness. Usually it’s one of three things: lack of speed, lack of endurance, or lack of race fitness (or the ability to sustain faster speeds for prolonged periods of time). For me, unfortunately, it’s sometimes all three. What are your fitness weaknesses?
Addressing a fitness weakness is simple. If your primary weakness is lack of speed, include more high-intensity intervals in your future training. This might come at the expense of duration (going faster for a shorter distance) in the short term, but building speed may boost your cardiovascular fitness to such a degree that your endurance ultimately gets a lift as well. If your primary weakness is lack of endurance, include more long endurance workouts in your future training. Maybe try dual daily workouts to achieve this end. Running twice a day sometimes makes it easier to build your endurance. And if your primary weakness is lack of race fitness, a great way to work on this quality is to include shorter-distance races as training runs. For instance, if you’re training for a half-marathon, sign up for some 10k races beforehand to build your race fitness. If your goal is a marathon, enter a couple of half-marathons beforehand as fast training runs.
“You all right?” I asked him.
“All I wanna do is go the distance,” he said in a thick Philly accent.
A bunch of the others burst out laughing. At first, the line flew right over my head. Upon further reflection, however, I recognized the voice he had impersonated so well. It had to be a line from
Rocky
.
When we crossed the finish line, in a respectable sub-four-hour time, I caught the context of the jokester’s reference. We were at the base of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the ones Rocky Balboa ran up when training for his big title bout. The imprint of Rocky’s feet is visible in the cement at the top of the stairs; there’s even a larger-than-life statue of the “Italian Stallion” in front of the museum.
If there ever was an individual who adapted and improved over time, Rocky was that guy. Now in its sixth new release (
Rocky VI
) over a thirty-year span, the “Greatest Underdog of Our Time” has definitely
gone the distance
.
After wrapping up the Finish Festival, and of course taking some snapshots in front of the Rocky statue, we headed into Manhattan for a
Runner’s World
gala, called Heroes of Running, in which I had been asked to present ultrarunning legend Tim Twietmeyer with an award. Tim is a remarkable example of a runner who has gracefully adapted his running to time’s changes. Tim has shifted his focus from speed to longevity. Shortly before the Endurance 50 started, he earned a record twenty-fifth Silver Buckle for a sub-twenty-four-hour Western States 100 finish. It was an honor to present this award to Tim, who remains one of my all-time heroes, and the evening was a regal affair. To be honest, I felt really awkward wearing a suit and being thrust into that formal setting after forty-eight straight days of running and road-tripping across the United States. It must have shown, because for the toast the hostess brought me a shot of Gatorade.
Day 49
November 4, 2006
New Jersey Marathon
Long Branch, New Jersey
Elevation: 5'
Weather: 58 degrees; sunny
Time: 4:09:02
Net calories burned: 156,863
Number of runners: 250
The field of participants for the New Jersey Marathon was capped at fifty. Two hundred fifty runners showed up at the starting line. If this had happened on the second day of the Endurance 50 instead of the second to last day, we would have imploded. Now we were so much better at expecting the unexpected and adapting as necessary that we were hardly fazed.
Koop and Garrett immediately foresaw potential problems in fueling and supporting five times the number of expected runners and made a smart on-the-fly decision. Instead of attempting the impossible task of trying to serve all these participants out the window of the SAG wagon, Koop and Garrett shot ahead and dumped off supplies at aid stations farther along the course, then continued shuttling supplies to these aid stations throughout the event. (Yes, we actually had aid stations set up for this event because of the number of people.) Smart move on their part.
This final re-created marathon was both beautiful and melancholy. It was the perfect day for running, crisp and cool, and the course paralleled the seashore for a stretch, the waves crashing brilliantly in the background. The spirit and liveliness of the crowd was remarkable, everybody smiling and joking as we ran, seemingly understanding that this was the first, and perhaps last, “re-created” marathon they might ever run. Some wore costumes. One guy ran in a blue tuxedo; another, Larry the Lighthouse, covered the full 26.2 miles inside a ten-foot-tall lighthouse costume.
There was lots of local pride in the air. A husky guy with a New Jersey accent running alongside me asked, “Hey, Ultramarathon Man, what’s been your favorite marathon?”
I turned to see a big, thick Jersey boy who looked more like a linebacker than a runner. “Favorite marathon?” I said, “Why, this one, of course.”
“Good,” he shot back gruffly. “If you didn’t say that, I’d have to break your legs.”
A Marathon Fueling Tip
Protein matters. The addition of protein in your fuel during endurance exercise has been shown to delay fatigue, speed muscle recovery, and enhance rehydration. The ideal ratio of carbs to protein seems to be in the 4:1 range. Several sports beverages now include protein along with carbohydrate, which is a good thing, because they’re easier to ingest than solid foods, especially while running. Look for those products that have a 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein.
When the finish came, I didn’t want to stop. I was having too much fun. We were all having too much fun. We had just clicked off a 4:09 marathon and it didn’t even feel like we’d been running. The finish, however, was a mob scene on an order we hadn’t yet encountered. There were simply too many people and not enough Endurance 50 team members to go around—sheer chaos. I knew it was going to take a long time to get to everyone in line, and I hoped they would be patient with me.
I started signing things and taking pictures as quickly as possible, without being disrespectful to anyone. But I could sense my crew getting restless very early on. Hopps, in particular, started suggesting that I should wrap things up shortly. This was uncharacteristic of him. Yes, it was going to be tiring to get to everyone, but I was damn well going to. These people had come out to join me and to support the endeavor and what it stood for; it was the least I could do to make an extra effort to spend some one-on-one time with each of them.
Hopps became more forceful, now insisting that we leave. What was he thinking? There were still hundreds of people waiting. We couldn’t just up and go. Then Koop came up behind me and spoke.
“Karno, it’s time to go.” His tone was emphatic.
Something was up; I just wasn’t sure what. As Hopps announced to the crowd that I had to leave and ushered me off toward the bus, my heart was broken. I felt as though I’d just deserted family. Seeing the disappointed looks on people’s faces as we left crushed me. For the first time, on this second to last day, I felt as though the Endurance 50 might have become a victim of its own success.
The Home Stretch
Day 50
New York City Marathon
New York, New York
Elevation: 95'
Weather: 68 degrees; sunny
Time: 3:00:30
Net calories burned: 160,004
Number of runners: 38,000
I
was peeved and grumpy
as I settled into a seat on the tour bus for a relatively short drive from Long Branch, New Jersey, into Manhattan. My body felt remarkably good: strong and fit. But the cumulative exhaustion of seven hard weeks of travel and nonstop obligations had hollowed out my mind and spirit, leaving only a brittle shell of emotional stability outside, and the unfortunate manner in which today’s Finish Festival had ended had now shattered that shell.
As we drove, Hopps informed me that instead of traveling directly to the hotel in Manhattan to meet up with my family and celebrate the last night of the most amazing adventure of my life, I would have to make a detour to the New York City Marathon Expo and sign autographs at a booth operated by The North Face’s biggest East Coast customer for two hours.
“No way, Hopps!” I protested, my blood boiling. “Is that why you guys pulled me out of there?”
“I know it’s a drag,” Hopps said. “But this is the last one. Two hours and you’re free.”
“Flannery’s behind this, isn’t he?” I said. Hopps just nodded. I was referring, of course, to Joe Flannery, vice president of marketing for the The North Face, without whom this amazing adventure would not have happened, but toward whom I was not feeling particularly brotherly at the moment.
Two minutes later, I was shouting at Joe on my cell phone. It was my first, and really only, emotional discharge of the entire event. I told Joe I would not—could not—make the appearance, and he couldn’t make me. I read him the riot act. I wasn’t going to the marathon expo. I was over it, I needed a break. I was going to the hotel to be with my family. My decision was final.
Half an hour later, I was at the marathon expo. The factor that tipped my hand was the thought of all the runners who might make special efforts to go where others had promised I would be, only to discover that I was a no-show. It was unfair that I hadn’t been told anything about this scheduled appearance until after completing marathon forty-nine in New Jersey, but it would be even more unfair if I were to bail on anyone who might be waiting. And as it turned out, there were some three hundred people waiting. I signed and took photos as quickly as I could, but when the expo closed, more than half of these folks were still waiting. Some of them charged forward when they heard the announcement that the expo was closing, and I quickly found myself surrounded by an agitated throng of people all requesting something of me at once.
My nerves were frazzled when I finally made my way toward the exit. I felt like I needed to spend twenty-four hours alone on a mountaintop rather than run another marathon. But within twenty minutes, the lowest moment of the Endurance 50 gave way to the highest when I reached the hotel and reunited with my family—including my brother, his wife, and their kids, who had flown in from Southern California—and the complete Endurance 50 crew, including support staff from The North Face’s home office and the other sponsors. All my family and best friends were waiting there, cheering and toasting my arrival. Instantly my extreme mental fatigue gave way to streaming tears of joy and laughter. It was an emotional roller coaster on the order of nothing I had ever experienced before.
We had reserved a block of adjoining rooms on the same floor, as at a wedding, and we celebrated as though we were at a Greek Easter party. We had food delivered to the rooms and flung open all the doors between them so everyone could hang out together. Kids ran up and down the hallways, music blared, and laughter rang out continuously. A football materialized and Omar, an Endurance 50 crew member who had done heavy setup and takedown work, taught Nicholas how to perform “bed dives”—diving from one bed to the next to catch a ball thrown in between. Chaos erupted everywhere. Finally, I felt like I was in my element.
When we finally got to bed, it was past one in the morning. My alarm sounded three hours later. By four forty-five, I was sitting aboard a bus that delivered its nervous, carbo-loaded passengers to Staten Island, where the New York City Marathon begins. Although the main field doesn’t start until 10:10
AM
, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge closes at 7:30, requiring runners to arrive very early and kill a lot of time in the marathon staging area at Fort Wadsworth.
I had hoped to find a nice quiet nook to nap in, but instead I bumped into Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and some other familiar faces, and we chatted away over coffee and energy bars. The race organizers had given me the official race number 50, because it was my fiftieth consecutive marathon, and they had given Governor Huckabee the official race number 110, because he had shed 110 pounds since becoming a marathoner. He told me how inspirational it was to be standing next to someone who had completed fifty consecutive marathons, and I told him how inspirational it was to be standing next to someone who had lost 110 pounds.