Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

On his wall hung an old advertisement, yellowed with age, for Eagle Electric. In small print, it read: PERFECTION IS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

Why did I run? Is ultramarathoning crazy? Is it hopelessly selfish? Can I have solitude and also love?

“Scott,” Kee told me in 2001, “running is my new drug.”

Can running become its own addiction? One gruesome study showed that rats love running so much, they can actually run themselves to death.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. —RUMI

For over a decade, I’ve been inspired by John Annerino’s Running Wild and Colin Fletcher’s The Man Who Walked Through Time.

More books for my list

There were no aid stations. No crowds. No challengers. No race directors. Just the earth and a friend and the sky and movement. The landscape diminished us. Nature’s arena has a way of humbling and energizing us. I had never felt so tiny. I had never felt so big.

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. —JEREMY COLLINS

It’s not the losing that defines us. It’s how we lose. It’s what we do afterward.

I did want to find that place of egolessness and mindlessness that only the monotony of a 24-hour race can produce. But mostly I wanted to run because of my mother. If she, after decades of losing nearly all her muscle control, in the last hours of a grueling last week could proclaim her toughness, then I could do my best to live up to her example. Much of her life, she couldn’t walk. I would run for her.

I wanted to push my body as far as it could go without going too far. Once again, I was seeking that elusive edge.

I avoided music for the first 8 hours because I wanted to be open to everything around me and because when the monotony became too much, I would need music. The thought of tunes became something to look forward to, the snowcapped mountain that marked the forward progress in my mind. Researchers speculate that music suppresses pain by, basically, focusing the brain on something else—tunes. In one study, researchers found that listening to music created the same pain-easing results of taking a tablet of extra-strength Tylenol.

We can live as we were meant to live—simply, joyously, of and on the earth.

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.” I repeated it like a mantra.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in deadlines and debt, victory and loss. Friends squabble. Loved ones leave. People suffer. A 100-mile race—or a 5K, or a run around the block—won’t cure pain. A plate filled with guacamole and dinosaur kale will not deliver anyone from sorrow. But you can be transformed. Not overnight, but over time.

Acknowledgments

Steve Friedman has been my pacer and humble cowriter. A long-time fan of his work, I knew that if I ever did write a book, I would want Steve and his creative keyboard at my side. Besides putting up with my ultra persistence and scattered ideas, Steve helped narrate my life in a way I never would have been able to do, this despite his never running a single step in an ultramarathon. I suspect he now harbors secret ambitions of turning vegan and running a 100-miler. If he does, I’ll be there to pace him.

Often we need to retrace our steps back to the beginning. I would not be able to run if not for my parents. Dad, while we may not have always seen eye to eye, you provided a simple yet profound wisdom that has made me who I am. “Do things,” you told me. Not sometimes. Always. Mom, while you lost the ability to perform basic tasks that many of us take for granted, you never stopped smiling and finding the morsels of joy in life. If I can maintain that same attitude I will have succeeded. My running idols may have logged more miles and climbed bigger mountains, but you are my main inspiration. I will never stop running for you.

Recipe Index

They all look amazing!