Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

Dusty was screaming at me in Spanish. It felt as if I had stepped into a familiar nightmare. I was tired and sore, trying to will myself up a mountain trail at 7,000 feet. Dusty was already there, on the ridge, and he was hurling insults my way, just as he had hurled them at me for so many years in Minnesota. But it wasn’t a nightmare. And why Spanish?

Snow. Sun. Sandstone. Sky. He was doing what he liked and knew. It was now. And this now had no pressure, just permission. —JAMES GALVIN

Dusty spent his time making fun of me and scouring the surrounding area for women. One year we were approached by a couple of girls who turned out to be Mormon. One of them asked Dusty if he believed in anything, and he said, “Oh, yeah, most certainly. I believe in the almighty butt.”

I wanted more—more victories, more speed, more spiritual development. I wanted more answers, and I thought ultrarunning could provide them. I pored over texts, exploring the link between endurance sports, altered states of consciousness, and wisdom—books like Running Wild: An Extraordinary Adventure of the Human Spirit, by John Annerino; Running and Being: The Total Experience, by George Sheehan; and The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, by John Stevens. The monks call their practice of Tendai Buddhism kaihogyo, an extensive daily pilgrimage through the mountainous terrain that encompasses hundreds of remote shrines, sacred peaks, stones, forests, glades, and waterfalls. To these monks, the sacred is everywhere.

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