50/50 (9 page)
The Boulder Backroads Marathon was a typical case. I ran the live event alongside twenty-two hundred other runners as marathon number eight of the Endurance 50. Since it was a live marathon and I didn’t have a group to keep pace with as I did at the re-created marathons, I was able to run the race at my own natural pace. But because of the visibility surrounding the Endurance 50, dozens of runners chose to converse with me for varying lengths of time throughout. Some just wanted to encourage me in my quest. Others wanted to ask me questions. Still others wanted to run together for a few miles and talk about whatever.
Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong’s cycling coach, who had given me lots of valuable advice in the run-up to the Endurance 50, had suggested a strategy to use in this type of situation if I grew tired of talking.
“If someone asks you a question,” he said, “ask them that same question right back.” This tactic would allow me to minimize my talking and conserve my breath while encouraging the other runner to really think about his or her own solution. It would prove especially helpful in Boulder, because my body was already oxygen-deprived by our high-elevation location and by the sinus infection I had picked up within the past couple of days.
“Do you run with a GPS?” one runner asked shortly after the starting horn sounded.
“Yes. Do
you
run with a GPS?” I asked, instead of elaborating on how or why I used a GPS.
“On long runs, do you prefer a backpack or a waist pack?” another runner asked.
“Backpack,” I said. “Which do
you
prefer?”
Of course, I felt obligated to provide a little more substance in some of my responses. I did not want to abuse Carmichael’s tactic, after all. But I was also genuinely interested in hearing others’ answers to some of these questions. While I may have run a few more miles than most, I still have a lot of learning left to do. I’ve gained plenty of valuable new tips from my peers, whether they’re more or less experienced than me. One of the things I love about running is how open most runners are to sharing ideas with one another. Another thing I love is that you never stop learning, as long as you keep an open mind and maintain a willingness to experiment.
“Don’t you ever get injured?” a female runner asked me as we climbed a small hill in the latter miles of the marathon.
“Not yet,” I said, rapping my knuckles on my skull. “Knock on wood.”
Short Answers to the Three Questions I Hear Most Often
Q.
How do you train?
A.
I train by feel. I run as far and as fast as my body tells me to each day, though I do try to do at least two very long runs per week. Those base-building long runs are critically important to me.
Q.
. What do you eat?
A.
I try to base my diet in natural, whole foods that existed hundreds of years ago (vegetables, meat, dairy) and avoid modern processed foods (fast food, packaged products, soft drinks).
Q.
How do you keep from getting injured?
A.
I do a lot of cross-training with other sports, including mountain biking and windsurfing, to strengthen all my muscle sets.
“That’s incredible,” she said. “How do you do it?”
“They say one of the best things you can do as a long-distance runner is to choose your parents well,” I said, meaning I was lucky to have inherited favorable biomechanics for running. “It’s nothing I’ve trained for,” I admitted. “I’m one hundred percent Greek, and my dad insists we’re from the same village as Phidippides. I always tell him, ‘Dad, we’re from Southern California; what
village
are you talking about?’” Joking aside, there’s more and more research showing that common injuries are linked to stride irregularities. But it’s not much easier to improve one’s running biomechanics than it is to choose one’s parents, so I let my questioner in on my third secret, and perhaps the only one that’s useful to other runners.
“I’ve also done a lot of cross-training,” I said. The truth of the matter is that I mountain bike, windsurf, climb, surf, and snowboard primarily for fun, not to prevent injuries. But I am certain these activities have increased my injury resistance by strengthening muscles that oppose the primary running muscles, thus enhancing the stability of my joints.
“What do you eat?” asked the next runner to pull alongside me, a mountain of a man who looked like he ought to be wearing pads and running on artificial grass. I hear this question often. Some people are very food-focused and seem to believe it is the cause of everything, for better or worse.
“Do you mean in general or when I’m running?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “What did you eat for breakfast today?”
“I had a bowl of Greek-style yogurt [there is no added sugar in Greek-style yogurt] and granola with banana slices,” I said. “I find it easy to digest, and it provides carbohydrates for fuel, protein for muscle integrity and recovery, and fat for satiety. I also had an apple on the drive over to the start for a little extra fuel.”
“I’ll have to try that,” he said.
“Well, it works for me,” I said. “But there’s no guarantee it will work for you.”
QUICK TAKE:
Peel appeal. The peel of many fruits may be the most valuable part. That’s because the peel contains triterpenoids, a powerful type of antioxidant. So use the whole fruit if you want maximum health benefits.
If I could offer only one piece of advice to runners, it would be this: “Listen to everyone, follow no one.” That’s because each runner is unique, so there’s no single training system, shoe, or breakfast that is equally effective for every athlete. I always encourage other runners to experiment during training and find what works best for them.
During my early days as an ultrarunner, a more experienced acquaintance advised me to double-knot my shoelaces to keep them from loosening. The first time I tried it, my feet swelled up, causing them to throb with constriction pressure, which happens sooner or later in every ultra. But this one happened to be a trail run that passed through a burr patch, leaving dozens of spiky little burrs clinging to my double-knotted shoelaces. I needed to loosen my shoes to relieve the pressure, but I could not untie the laces to save my life, so I wound up having to have my shoes cut off at the next aid station. I never double-knotted my laces during a wilderness trail run again (although I still do so in road races). This experience taught me to be more circumspect in applying the bits of advice I receive from other runners.
Recommended Reading
I enjoy learning most by talking with fellow runners, but I do my share of reading as well, and I encourage you to do the same. Here are three good resources for valuable information to improve your running performance and experience:
• The Courage to Start,
by John “The Penguin” Bingham. An inspirational and educational book for beginning runners.
• Marathon & Beyond.
A bimonthly publication that’s always packed with great articles for marathon and ultramarathon runners.
•
www.injuredRunner.com
. A valuable source of tips to identify and treat a number of common running injuries.
My most involved conversation during the Boulder Backroads Marathon was with Stephen, an experienced runner of about my age who was training for the New York City Marathon. He had signed up for the half-marathon that was being held concurrently with today’s marathon but wound up running all the way to the twenty-mile mark.
Stephen was very interested in learning how ultrarunners do things, so I clued him in on a new
enhancement
trend I had recently heard about.
How Do You Do It?
One of the questions I was asked most frequently was how on earth I’d be able to run fifty marathons in fifty days.
As I worked with Chris Carmichael, we theorized that the best way to recover from one marathon was not to put myself too far in debt during the previous day’s marathon. We did two things to meet this objective: First, we set a baseline fitness goal of being able to run a four-hour marathon with an average heart rate of 110. We got there prior to the start of the first Endurance 50 marathon. Second, I participated in numerous ultramarathons that were much longer than 26.2 miles (see appendix A). The thinking here was that if I could run a hundred miles comfortably, I could click off a marathon without undue strain.
Would this strategy work? We would have to wait fifty days to have our answer.
“Viagra,” I said.
“Viagra?”
“People swear by it, although personally I never touch the stuff. I’m Greek; I don’t have to,” I joked. “Apparently there’s even been a study showing it improves performance at altitude.”
“
Running
performance?”
“Yeah, that too,” I said. We both laughed.
A few hours later, as English began to guide the tour bus toward our next destination in Casper, Wyoming, I fired up the laptop. I had been blogging most days since starting the Endurance 50. As I began to read and answer e-mails, I found that many of the messages were from runners offering cold remedies. I had complained about my sinus infection in the previous day’s blog post. Some of the proposed remedies were familiar, others were intriguing, and still others were plainly off the deep end—like sleeping with a magnet attached to my nose. Conventional, unusual, or downright bizarre, however, I appreciated the gesture symbolized by every single one of them.
We are all teachers and we are all students in this sport.
Running Wild
Day 9
September 25, 2006
Casper Marathon
Casper, Wyoming
Elevation: 5,200'
Weather: 65 degrees; very dry
Time: 3:54:12
Net calories burned: 28,683
Number of runners: 9
R
ecently, I participated
in a rather unusual publicity event on behalf of the makers of Accelerade sports drink. I ran for twenty-four hours straight on a treadmill suspended above Times Square in New York City. It was different, to say the least. My image was displayed on those giant video screens that are attached to the sides of buildings all around Times Square. Pedestrians gawked at me from the street two stories below. They were mostly tourists from other parts of the country and world, who seemed awestruck that someone could run for twenty-four hours, let alone on a treadmill.
Reporters from major media outlets, including CNN, lobbed questions at me as I treaded the mill. Howard Stern, who happens to be a runner himself, interviewed me live on his radio show. I found it difficult to keep my balance while turning my head to engage these interviewers, and feared that I would trip and fall to the belt, which would shoot me off the back at six miles an hour. Fortunately, I stayed upright.
One thought played over and over again in my head throughout that long day and night of running nowhere:
I can’t believe I’m doing this
. Fifteen years earlier I was a tiny moving part in a corporate machine and my only ambition was to become a somewhat bigger and more influential moving part in that machine. If you had told me that I would one day make a living by doing things like running for twenty-four hours on a treadmill hanging twenty feet above Times Square while TV cameras beamed my image across the world, I would have said you were crazy.
There was also a second thought that echoed repeatedly inside my skull on the treadmill:
I can’t wait until this is over
. As much as I love running, I’m not a big treadmill runner. If treadmills were the only places to run, I would probably stick with windsurfing and other outdoor sports. I’m also not a big fan of running in close proximity to taxis and buses spewing diesel exhaust in the middle of a major city. One of the biggest appeals of running for me is the way it connects my body and spirit to nature—given the right environment. Times Square is not exactly that environment.
I happen to live in an urban area, but San Francisco is a good running city. In fact, it was voted the best running city in America by the readers of
Runner’s World
magazine. My home is located one mile from the Presidio, a massive, lush forest park with miles of inviting running trails and clean air that is purified by the vast Pacific Ocean.
As big as it is, the Presidio is too confining for my longer outings. That’s okay. When I long for some real wilderness, I can easily run there. I have a personal policy of never driving somewhere to run if I don’t have to, and living where I do, I seldom have to. I do a lot of my running in the Marin Headlands, just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is accessible from the Presidio. When I am charging along a technical singletrack trail on Mount Tamalpais, overlooking the headlands, the smell of sage thick in the fresh air, I feel as though I am five hundred miles, not five miles, from the nearest city. That’s my idea of a good place to run.
Wyoming is also a great place to run. Something about the landscape there makes you feel as though you’re always standing on a mountain summit. You can see so much. The high plains spread for miles around you in every direction. The sky is even more wide-open above. Snowcapped mountains mark the horizon in the seemingly unreachable distance. You certainly don’t have to worry about dodging pedestrians or stopping for red lights.
The sinus infection that had nagged me the past few days was worse than ever on the morning of the Wyoming Marathon. I felt like my head was going to explode, and soon enough it did. I was riding toward the starting line on the tour bus when a powerful urge to sneeze overtook me. I dashed to the bathroom to grab a tissue, but the sneeze erupted before I got there. Two streams of thick, yellowy green snot poured down my chin. It was really gross, and I thought,
How am I going to run a marathon today?