Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

Whatever the problem in my life, the solution had always been the same: Keep going!

in my line of work, lack of preparation was tantamount to self-abuse.

And an ultrarunner’s mind is what matters more than anything.

Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique.

I had realized that no matter how much something hurt, I could gut it out. I wondered what that skill would ever be good for.

What we eat is a matter of life and death. Food is who we are.

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

I considered eating well to be good, cheap health insurance.

But now that I knew the rewards of pain, I wanted more pain. I wanted to use it as a tool to pry myself open.

According to bushido, the best mind for the battlefield—or the race—is that of emptiness, or an empty mind.

It’s easy to shut your brain off when you’re running long distances, and sometimes it’s necessary, but I stayed plugged in.

Asking why was fine, but it wasn’t action. Nothing brought the rewards of moving, of running.

Run for 20 minutes and you’ll feel better. Run another 20 and you might tire. Add on 3 hours and you’ll hurt, but keep going and you’ll see—and hear and smell and taste—the world with a vividness that will make your former life pale.

If you’re new to plant-based eating, that’s my biggest piece of advice for you: Think about what high-quality foods you can bring into your diet to replace the calories from animal products you’re excluding. And make sure you get enough.

The trick to uphill racing wasn’t so much sheer force as it was turnover.

My targeted training made me a more efficient runner. My expanded diet made food taste better and my body work better. Together, they helped change my approach to life.

The more I measured and adjusted, the more I trusted my instincts.

By combining instinct and technique, I searched for that small zone where I could push myself as hard as possible without injury and the unraveling of the body’s systems. Accessing and staying in that small zone is the key to success.

I knew that will wasn’t just a matter of strength but a matter of focus. The health of my body was critical to running an ultra. But to run it well, my mind was what mattered.

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.

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

A bear with determination will defeat a dreamy gazelle every time.

Eating raw was like getting a Ph.D. in a plant-based diet—hard work, but worth it.

The wonderful thing about ultramarathons is that, no matter how awful things get, how searing the pain you’re in, there’s always a chance to redeem yourself.

Approximately one in four runners at the Western States gets a cold after the race, and this is in the height of summer!

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.

It’s only when I get to a place where all my physical and psychological warning lights are flashing red, and then run beyond it, that I hit the sweet spot.

If you’re going to run regularly, you’re going to need to carve out part of your day, even if it’s 30 to 60 minutes.

the Tarahumara fell to the ground, almost as if their calf tendons had been cut. The first time I was shocked. Then I realized that they were resting, that it was a highly efficient way of conserving energy.

These guys had never heard of “tempo runs” or interval training. That’s when it hit me, the real secret of the Tarahumara. They didn’t prepare for runs. They didn’t run to win or for medals. And they didn’t eat so they could run. They ate, and they ran, to survive. To get someplace, they used their legs. To use their legs, they had to be healthy.

They run—and live—with great efficiency, without a lot of needless thought.

I would say they were super efficient. They were just much, much more in tune with their bodies and their surroundings. They knew things we had forgotten, with all of our stopwatches and sports foods and fancy running shoes.

Anyone who pays attention to what they eat and how it affects them will naturally move toward plants—and toward health.

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

I wanted to blend my running and my diet as seamlessly into my day-to-day life as the Tarahumara did.

But whether you get what you want isn’t what defines you. It’s how you go about your business.

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.

when you’re in front, you want to send a message to your competitors: “Don’t even try.”

Science is about objective measurement, so it’s understandable that it has an innate bias for things that can be measured. It’s easy to put someone on a treadmill and read their VO2 max or take their blood sugar reading and say it’s low. It’s not possible to measure the mysterious workings of will.

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.

Many runners have learned that a strong upper body helps with technique and speed. Kouros, though, seems to have discovered a secret about transferring propulsive power from the arms to the legs.

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.

Rational assessments too often led to rational surrenders.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was sympathetic to him and admired his courage and tenacity, but when you have a chance to demoralize a competitor, you take it. I took it.

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

If you’re an ultrarunner, you can fight nature or embrace it. I suggest the latter.