Running on Empty (33 page)

On an individual basis, that seems to be true, too. During one conversation I had with Ted Corbitt, he told me that he'd gone vegetarian for a few years in his forties, but then he'd developed anemia. On doctor's orders, he became a moderate meat eater from then on. Problem solved. Certainly, it's possible to eat a vegetarian diet without winding up with some kind of deficiency, but then you're back to shopping for nutrients instead of food.

Keep it simple.

At an ultrarunning training camp, I met a superb African runner, Jackton Odhiambo, a 2:12 marathoner who was tall, lean, and muscular. I was giving a nutrition presentation and emphasizing a 60 percent carb, 20 percent fat, 20 percent protein ratio, when I turned to Jackton and asked what he did to make sure he got plenty of protein back home in Kenya.

His answer was unexpected: “We drink cow's blood.”

That's a little over the top, even for me, but a balanced diet of whole foods—not manufactured “foodstuffs”—delivers what you need. When we're young and burning up the calories, we can get away with a lot, but age and wisdom guide us back to the basics. As humans, we're lucky to be able to survive on just about anything we put into our bodies (I call this my “incinerator theory”), but in the long run, we need to pay attention to what has been proven by the past: a balanced diet of real food.

During the run, I ate four meals a day and a ton of “mini-courses,” or snacks, in between, and drank constantly, consuming somewhere between eight thousand and ten thousand calories in about sixty or more servings a day. I'm the first one to admit it wasn't exactly health food, either. A lot of it was, for convenience's sake, processed and packaged, cooked in a microwave or heated up on the RV's stove top. Yet the crew did such an amazing job of keeping me fueled up and hydrated that I lost only four pounds in the 52½ days I was traveling across the country on foot. That's pretty remarkable for a guy my size; I'm five feet, nine inches tall, and four pounds on my frame is nothing.

Initially, my first meal of the day would come at varying times, 5:30 a.m. if I was getting on the road early, or as late as 9:00 a.m. if I'd run all night and gotten only a few hours of sleep. After we established a regular routine somewhere in Nebraska, breakfast was served around 7:30 a.m. so I could be on the road by about 8:00.

Typically, breakfast included two fried eggs, sunny-side up; a few strips of bacon; and a couple of slices of toasted banana bread with butter. I'd eat while getting dressed, sitting down every now and then on the edge of the bed for a couple of bites at a time—a small luxury I didn't take for the rest of the day. Every other meal was eaten on the go.

Before walking out the door of the RV, I'd grab a thermos of oatmeal with sugar and butter, as well as more toasted banana bread, and eat that over the next couple of hours, or about eight miles.

Usually, my lunch was served after the first marathon, no later than about 2:00 p.m. each day, and it would include the sort of thing we eat at home: a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, or spaghetti with sausage and sauce, tacos, pizza, or something like that—always packaged or prepared so that it was easily portable.

After I reached forty miles, dinner would appear. Again, this meal would mimic something we'd have at home but was made to eat in hand rather than on a plate: fried chicken, pork chops, steak or a burger, or fish. I was especially fond of the fried clams and lobster bites from Long John Silver's, and I found that I didn't crave red meat at all, except in tacos or as an addition to spaghetti sauce. Whenever production brought us dinner, it usually came from the deli counter of a local grocery store or takeout restaurant: a pan of lasagna, Chinese food, various salads, bread, fresh fruit, vegetables, and so on.

Food from sit-down restaurants was, of course, more tasty: the kraut burger Elaine got for me in Colorado, pork burritos from El Jalisciense in Utah, and delicious chicken burritos Chris Frost brought me in Illinois, a full dinner, including a baked potato (!), in Indiana, and another home-style meal from a family restaurant in Pennsylvania. These were second only to some homemade dishes that friends or family members brought. Pot roast, chicken noodle soup, even baked desserts . . . heaven!

We started a routine of eating hot food at the fifty-mile mark when the nights got cold, just before we reached Craig, Colorado, and then we kept it up all the way to New York. Somewhere in the Midwest, Brian started calling it “happy hour,” and the name stuck. This “meal” always included some popcorn and a couple of O'Doul's nonalcoholic beers. I'm not normally much of a beer drinker, but during extreme events, I like this nonsweet drink as a change of flavor. I'd also have some kind of hot food, such as macaroni and cheese, soup or stew, or a microwaved frozen dinner.

Between meals, I ate constantly. Yogurt. Fruit. Pudding. Cheese and crackers. Salads. Nuts. Trail mix. Cheez-Its. Granola. Cereal with milk. Ice cream. Milk shakes. Hot fudge sundaes. Homemade goodies that friends and family brought for us: banana or pumpkin bread, cookies, pastries, coffee cake, scones, cobbler. All delicious! And I really enjoyed the fancy rolled wafer cookies; they were so delicate, elegant, and fussy—so completely opposite of how I was feeling. Having them made me feel somehow special, like a patron in a restaurant where the chef comes out to say hello, or a child whose mother knows his favorite dish and serves it on a dreary afternoon.

Sometimes, Heather would bring me Andes chocolate mints as a signal that I could stop and soon put my head on the pillow. No check to pay, just my reward for finishing the day's mileage before turning in for the night.

It's been said that caffeine isn't good for athletes, because it serves as a diuretic and can dehydrate you. It's also been said that it's beneficial to performance, so the jury is still out on this one, at least among the scientists. However, I've found that during my extreme events, caffeine's essential. As we made our way across the United States, I had coffee in the morning, and Red Bull in the evening. During the day, I often drank Starbucks DoubleShots and Frappuccinos in my Muscle Milk, a high-protein sports powder mixed with whole milk that I drank all day long (with or without a caffeinated boost). During the 52½ days on the road, I went through twelve 2.98-pound containers of Muscle Milk, a total of 228 ten- to twelve-ounce servings, or more than four servings per day. In addition, I drank Ensure, another high-protein “liquid meal.”

Not one ounce of plain water crossed my lips, as every sip needed to deliver some of my calories for the day. I did enjoy orange juice every morning; throughout the day, I had various fruit juices, soft drinks, yogurt drinks, Kool-Aid “slushies” that the crew whizzed up (loved 'em!), and energy drinks like Fuze and SoBe; and I drank at least two O'Doul's at “happy hour” each night. And the pièce de résistance, the treat that always made my day: a root beer float.

In Roosevelt, Utah, Dr. Paul told me that he'd seen more ailments during our run so far than in the entire lineup of athletes at the Western States 100 and Badwater 135 combined.

“Are they worth shooting?” Joking, I was asking if our legs and feet were bad enough to warrant us being put down, like disabled farm animals.

He laughed. “Well, I told Charlie that he's lucky I'm not in veterinary medicine.”

We were both lucky not to be racehorses, that's for sure. But I should speak only for myself: I stumbled, I hobbled, I broke down. Still, I maintained my form as best as I could, even walking into the hospital the one time we sought medical attention, strutting like there was nothing at all wrong with me. It was a point of pride:
Okay, I may be injured, but you're not going to tell me to stop running unless you can
prove
to me that I can't continue. I sure as hell won't give you your evidence.

God, I'm hardheaded. Case in point: herewith a general log of the injuries and ailments, along with their treatments, while I was running across the United States.

 

While everything ached pretty much from the start, late during our first week, significant pain began in my right knee. Dr. Paul treated it with manipulation, and I wore elastic pullover knee braces to help stabilize the joint as I ran. I also wore a more substantial brace from VQ OrthoCare for one day. About halfway across the country, I was able to ditch the braces and use them only occasionally if the knee flared up.

My hips became an issue during the second week. Tired and overworked back muscles and my tendency to over-pronate were likely contributors, as well as the length of my stride, quite long given my height. There wasn't much to do for this pain, and it stayed with me throughout the run. Unlike some of the other ailments, though, this one would come and go.

With temperatures reaching into the nineties during the first few weeks, I did my best to minimize the impact of the heat, but it was inevitable: the heavy sweating, the paleness, the muscle cramps, the fatigue and weakness, the dizziness and headaches. My crew kept me hydrated, I replaced electrolytes using Sustain, and I sought shade wherever I could find it. The high temps ceased to be a problem on day twenty, when we reached cooler weather.

Periodically, I experienced muscle cramps, involuntary and forcible muscle contraction, including severe cramps like a charley horse, when the muscle locked in spasm. At various times, my hands, the arches of my feet, my calves, and especially toward the end of the run, my back would cramp up. This is a common problem most runners face at some point or another, usually near the end of intense exercise, or a few hours later, and in the heat because sweat drains the body of fluids, salt, and minerals. These cramps were annoying, and the more serious spasms occasionally stopped me in my tracks, but this was probably one of the more minor issues during the transcon.

Perhaps every muscle and tendon in my legs and feet was strained at one time or another, or maybe even throughout the run, from overuse. One main area of strain was in my hamstrings, which tightened up every day. Strains are more likely to happen when one muscle group is stronger than its opposing muscle group, as with hamstrings and quadriceps. The quads on the front of the thigh are usually more powerful, so during endurance events, the hamstring can become fatigued faster than the quads, leading to strain. The problem with hamstring strain—aside from the immediate issue of pain in the back of the legs—is that it can compound into lower-back issues, which it did for me later in the run (see page 276).

During the first ten days of the run, I wore Zensah compression sleeves on my calves to increase circulation and oxygen blood flow. To deal with muscle strain and reduce inflammation throughout the run, we used ice therapy on various parts of my body, including my feet, ankles, calves, knees, and thighs. Whenever possible, we elevated my legs—in fact, every night except one, when she wasn't there, Heather put pillows under my legs and ice on the sore spots to treat injuries. Stretching and massage were both an effort to keep me as limber as possible to prevent minor strains from becoming major injuries.

Various tendons in my feet, ankles, and legs were overworked from the start, and my Achilles became inflamed nearly immediately. Connecting the calf muscles to the heel bone, it's the largest tendon in the human body, and can withstand forces of one thousand pounds or more. Still, it's a vulnerable spot, a common area for an overuse injury among all types of athletes. It's likely that my Achilles tendonitis came from my tight and tired calves, bringing some severe pain, both while running and at rest, as well as terrible stiffness after sleep.

Another serious tendon issue was posterior tibial tendon dysfunction during the first eleven days of the run, when this tendon—which starts in the calf, stretches down behind the inside of the ankle, and attaches to bones in the middle of the foot—became inflamed and tight, causing pain and swelling in the inner ankle down into the arch in my foot. This gradually developed into pain on the outer side of my ankle and foot, and tenderness over the midfoot. It's hard to say if this ever resolved; it certainly contributed to, or maybe just graduated into, the plantar fasciitis described on page 274.