Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

The best way out is always through. —ROBERT FROST

There was only one answer: Get up and run. Whatever the problem in my life, the solution had always been the same: Keep going!

Running is what I do. Running is what I love. Running is—to a large extent—who I am. In the sport I have chosen as avocation, career, obsession, and unerring but merciless teacher, running is how I answer any challenge.

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

“Not all pain is significant.”

It’s a hard, simple calculus: Run until you can’t run anymore. Then run some more. Find a new source of energy and will. Then run even faster.

Later, I ran to find peace. I ran, and kept running, because I had learned that once you started something you didn’t quit, because in life, much like in an ultramarathon, you have to keep pressing forward.

“Sometimes you just do things!”

“Do you wanna be somebody, Jurker? Do you wanna be somebody?”

“Sometimes You Just Do Things”

The only line that is true is the line you’re from. —ISRAEL NEBEKER OF BLIND PILOT

I think he was trying to tell me that no matter how hard a man thought or worked, some things in life would remain unknowable, and we had to accept that.

He tempered his discipline with compassion and a sense of fun. He would challenge me to see how much wood I could haul into our “wood room” in 10 minutes or how many rocks I could pick out of the garden in the same time. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but he was teaching me that competition could turn the most mundane task into a thrill, and that successfully completing a job—no matter how onerous—made me feel unaccountably happy.

I learned patience while doing the tedious tasks, but more important, I learned to find joy in repetitive and physically demanding work.

I don’t think they knew it at the time—and I certainly didn’t—but my parents were training me to be an endurance athlete. By the time I started running, I knew how to suffer.

“Pain Only Hurts”

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. —LAO-TZU

Once a guy on the bus spit in my face. But I didn’t fight. I knew no matter what happened—whether I won or, much more likely, got beat up—I would get it worse from my dad when I got home.

Something was burning in me, but I don’t think I’d call it ambition. It was too vague, too shapeless. I still wanted to know why things were happening the way they were. I wanted to know what I would become.

I didn’t run because it always felt good.

I enjoyed the sense of movement and progress, discovering that I could reach places on my own without anyone driving me.

We might not have been as experienced as the other teams, and we definitely weren’t as well equipped, but we were focused.