Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

the great paradox of distance running. It’s a solitary activity, and to be a champion one must block out nearly everything except the next step and the next, and the one after that. Notwithstanding the thick ties that bind runner and pacer, teamwork doesn’t enter the strategic or tactical considerations of top ultrarunners.

And yet ultrarunners—even the fiercest competitors—grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise

in self-sacrifice and pursuit of t...

“...

One of the most important things you can do as an ultrarunner is to breathe abdominally, and a good way to learn that skill is to practice nasal breathing.

Nasal breathing humidifies and cleans the air. As a bonus, it allows you to eat quickly and breathe at the same time, whether running easy or hard.

Don’t work towards freedom, but allow the work itself to be freedom.

bear with determination will defeat a dreamy gazelle every time. I can’t count the number of times people have said, “I can’t believe he beat me.” Distance strips you bare.

So what if other bodies might be stronger? I would use my mind. Bushido.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Whatever song you have in your head had better be a good one. Whatever story you are telling yourself had better be a story about going on. There is no room for negativity. The reason most people quit has nothing to do with their body. Was my mind failing me? Could I have done something differently?

“in the zone,”

When I’ve been lucky enough to feel it, the sensation is one of effortlessness. It occurs when the intensity of the race, the pressure to win, the pain, build to a level that’s nearly unbearable. Then something opens up inside me. I find the part of me that is bigger than the pain.

Satori can be sought, but it cannot be held. A few strides after an epic feeling of bliss, I’ll get an ache in my knees or the urge to pee or I’ll start worrying about how the person I’m chasing down is feeling. I can’t beat back those feelings or desires, but I know they’re not what really matters. What matters is the place of effortlessness, of selflessness.

My way leads up to and past the point of absolute, maximal effort. It’s only when I get to a place where all my physical and psychological warning lights are flashing red, an...

When you run on the earth and with the earth, you can run forever.

what the Tarahumara probably don’t articulate themselves, but when I was with them I couldn’t help but feel that they were experiencing a peace and a serenity, that they—through running and through living with great simplicity—were able to access a state of being, a zone, a “sixth sense,” where they were in touch with the world in its purest form. It’s the zone I had been seeking for so long.

What I saw in the Tarahumara was a group of people who ran—and ate—the way their ancestors had run and eaten. They depended on food that was grown locally and obtained with some difficulty. They ran with abandon and un-self-consciousness. They ate meat, but they ate it the way generations past ate it—on the rare occasions they could get it. It was a precious commodity, not a staple.

try to let science steer my training while staying open to the animal joy of running.

Ultrarunners need to bring all the knowledge we can bear to our training, but we can’t afford to be rigid.

there’s one thing I can count on in a 100-mile race, it’s that I will encounter t...

All it takes is all you got.

What matters more than victory is what I do to reach it and how. Have I prepared? Am I focused? Have I have been treating my body with attentiveness, eating healthfully and with care? Have I been training properly? Have I pushed myself as far, and as hard, as possible? Those are the types of questions that have guided me in my career and that can guide anyone who seeks something (which is to say, everyone). You want to get the promotion at work, or the girl, or the guy, or the personal best in the 5K race, of course. But whether you get what you want isn’t what defines you.

It’s how you go about your business. Ultras teach that lesson with unforgiving precision. Never did I see it more clearly than in the Western States 2006. And I wasn’t even competing.

Winning at an elite level demands technique and strategy, to be sure, but mostly it’s heart. Brian had plenty. He had drive and powerful ambition. In many ways he reminded me of me. It was strange at the starting line, not screaming, not sprinting to the head of the pack.

dealt with my anxiety the same way I had dealt with my bum ankle in the 2001 Western States. Four simple steps: First, I let myself worry. Second, I took stock. I would be doing the equivalent of a 38-mile training run with someone who had been running for the better part of a day—not a huge deal. Third, I asked myself what I could do to remedy the situation. That was easy. All I had to do was be a good pacer. The fourth and final step: Separate my negative feelings from the issue at hand. Realizing that my negative feelings had little to do with reality made this step the easiest of all.

Brian told me the downhills hurt, but I told him pain was temporary, to get through it.

My Zen self tells me they’re no worse than people who idolize you for the wrong reasons. What people think about you doesn’t really matter. The trick is to be true to yourself.

ultra is a mental game. Consequently, I don’t believe it was necessarily an accident that Brian stopped so dramatically right when he did. I think it’s possible Brian’s central governor, under tremendous physiological stress, caught sight of the finish line, believed the race was over, and pulled the plug. In the context of a 100-mile race, one lap around a high school track doesn’t seem that long, but once Brian’s brain had made that decision, it was impossibly far. When the captain jumps ship, you can’t help but sink.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

The reward of running—of anything—lies within us. As I sought bigger rewards and more victories in my sport, it was a lesson I learned over and over again. We focus on something external to motivate us, but we need to remember that it’s the process of reaching for that prize—not the prize itself—that can bring us peace and joy. Life, as countless posters and bumper stickers rightly attest, is a journey, not a destination.

To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness. It was to see more clearly. As my yoga teacher would say, “Injuries are our best teachers.”

in a race this long, at a moment this hot, with lips this parched, thinking could be dangerous. It too easily led to a calm, rational assessment of where I was, how far I had to go. Rational assessments too often led to rational surrenders. I tried to go to that place beyond thinking, that place that can bring an ultramarathoner such happiness. People always ask me what I think about when running so far for so many hours. Random thinking is the enemy of the ultramarathoner. Thinking is best used for the primitive essentials: when I ate last, the distance to the next aid station, the location of the competition, my pace. Other than those considerations, the key is to become immersed in the present moment where nothing else matters.

It was that time when everything seems hopeless, when to go on seems futile, and when a small act of kindness, another step, a sip of water, can make you realize that nothing is futile, that going on—especially when going on seems so foolish—is the most meaningful thing in the world. Many runners have encountered that type of crystalline vision at the end of a race, or training run, that brings with it utter fatigue and blessed exhaustion. For ultrarunners, the vision is a given.

When I got to the 50-mile mark I couldn’t think that I had 100 miles to go. I had to remember and forget. We move forward, but we must stay in the present. I tried to do so by breaking races into small, digestible parts. Sometimes I focused on the next aid station, three miles ahead. Sometimes I pictured the next shady spot down the road, or the next step.

Did “Sometimes you just do things” really mean “Try not to think about consequences, just trust in your body and yourself and the universe”?

one of the many great pleasures of an ultra-marathon. You can hurt more than you ever thought possible, then continue until you discover that hurting isn’t that big a deal.

Forget a second wind. In an ultra you can get a third, a fourth, a fifth even. I still had more than 40 miles to go, but that’s a second wonderful thing about 100- (and plus) milers. You can trail, and despair, and screw up, and despair more, and there’s almost always another chance. Salvation is always within reach. You can’t reach it by thinking or by figuring it out. Sometimes you just do things.

took stock. I was slightly pissed off that I had just expended so much energy, all to put distance between myself and someone I needn’t have worried about. And I was still exhausted and upset. But it wasn’t life-threatening. Three: I asked myself what I could do to remedy the situation. I could stop, but that wasn’t an option. The answer: Keep moving. And four: Separate negative thoughts from reality. Don’t dwell on feelings that aren’t going to help. I kept moving.

went over the race in my mind and thought about the things many ultrarunners think about. Chief among them is how to go on when you feel you can’t go on anymore. The Yale study demonstrates that Special Forces soldiers are different than regular ones but not how they got that way. Did they obtain the required stuff of super warriordom through a lucky draw in the genetic lotto, or did it develop through training? Are elite athletes born or can they be made? More to the point: What were my limits? And how could I discover them unless I tried to go beyond them? The last was a question I asked myself each time I ran an ultra. It’s a question that every ultrarunner and anyone lucky enough to reach for something outside her comfort zone can ask—and answer—herself. It was a question I had come close to answering in my second, grueling Spartathlon. I planned to keep asking.

definitely do not provide the answer to getting out of a funk.

I find the best way to get your running mojo back is to lose the technology, forget results, and run free.

Run for the same reason you ran as a child—for enjoyment. Take your watch off. Run in your jeans. Run with a dog (does he seem worried?). Run with someone older or younger, and you’ll see running, and the world, differently. I know I have.

hollowed out myself. Running allowed me to define myself as an athlete. It had honed my discipline and strength and sped my path toward healthier, more joyous eating. Pursuing goals with single-mindedness had ultimately bestowed on me the greatest gift of all: the capacity to forget myself, to be absolutely present in the moment, and to appreciate the perfection of every moment.

For those hours on the Tonto Trail, we didn’t know anything except the land and the sky and our bodies. I was free from everything except what I was doing at that very moment, floating between what was and what would be as surely as I was suspended between river and rim. Finally I remembered what I had found in ultrarunning. I remembered what I had lost.

Sometimes the best journeys aren’t necessarily from east to west, or from ground to summit, but from heart to head. Between them we find our voice.

But on the snaking French course, the future didn’t matter. The past was gone. There was only the trail, only movement. There was only now. And now was enough. It was more than enough. It was everything. I ran. I ran and I ran.

“This is what you came for.”

“Sometimes you just do things.”