Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness (23 page)

When I joined Brian, the announcer blared over the speakers, “Scott Jurek is about to pace!” I was merely there to help someone else, but hearing my name out loud like that unleashed a surge of adrenaline into my blood. Then it was time for business.

At mile 62, Brian was in fourth place. I told him that by the time we got to the Rucky Chucky river crossing—16 miles away—we were going to have passed everyone. I told him we’d be leading then, and we would lead all the way to the finish line.

He turned it on. He became a different runner. He didn’t say anything, because runners don’t talk much. They want to conserve all their energy for the race. But I talked. I turned into Dusty. I became Brian’s second brain, cajoling, sweet-talking, demanding when I needed to demand. Within 12 miles we had passed everyone. By the time we came to the river crossing, he was hooting and hollering. He was super pumped even though we were both boiling. I did what I knew how to do, which was to push him as hard as I could, but making sure it wasn’t too hard. I made him lie down in creeks, and I shoveled water over him. I remember once having to lie down in a puddle that I immediately realized was half horse manure, but I didn’t move. I knew how overheated we both were. I had him drink at aid stations. There was never a point where I thought he wasn’t getting enough water or was getting too much. By mile 78, when we turned to look behind us, there was no one there. We weren’t running scared, but when you’re in front, you want to send a message to your competitors: “Don’t even try.”

I told Brian, “Let’s crank it up. As long as we keep running 8-minute miles, if we throw a 7:30 in every so often, you’ve got this.”

We got to Highway 49, over 93 miles in, and I told Brian’s crew chief (and fiancée), Andrea, that I was going to need someone else to take over. With all my attention to Brian’s drinking enough water and eating, I hadn’t drunk or eaten enough myself. I was sick to my stomach. I was fatigued. I was dehydrated and bonking. I thought I might slow him down. Andrea asked if I could keep going, to stay with him for another 3 miles until No Hands Bridge, which was 3 miles from the finish. At that point, Brian’s victory wouldn’t be in question. I could stop then.

So I dug in, and we ran another 3 miles through choking dust and heat. Brian told me the downhills hurt, but I told him pain was temporary, to get through it. Otherwise, we didn’t say much. There was no need. Three miles from the finish line, I had pushed him as hard as he needed to be pushed, and when another pacer, Jason Davis, appeared, I told Brian he was in good hands and I’d meet him at Robie Point, a mile from the finish line. I said I’d follow him to his first Western States victory.

Brian and Jason climbed another 2 miles on dirt. I caught a ride and met them on the road in Auburn. Brian hadn’t seen pavement in some time. There were cars and houses and people having parties in their yards, waiting for the top finishers. Physically, he looked fine. As far as I was concerned, this race was over. All we had to do was jog along city streets to the finish line. All Brian had to do was get there. But when he spoke, I knew he wasn’t feeling quite so confident. “How far back are they?” he asked, and he looked over his shoulder. He was scared. I laughed and told him to relax, that he didn’t need to worry. We were running slightly uphill and he was
hammering.
He was going at an 8-minute-mile pace, and I told him he didn’t have to run that fast, but if he wanted to finish strong, that was cool.

“How far back are they?” he asked again. “How far back?”

I had suffered late race hallucinations myself, and I did my best to not freak out, and especially to make sure he didn’t freak out.

Luis Escobar, my photographer friend, was running with us now, and so was Jason Davis. We were motoring down the last downhill and we could hear the crowd, we could see the lights. Brian was yelling, “Where is it? Where is it?” The race ends in Auburn at the Placerville High School track, and we were all yelling back, “It’s there. You got this! You got this!”

It was ten at night when we rounded a corner and stepped through the small opening in the fence and onto the track. People were cheering, but not as loud as Luis, Jason, and I were yelling, “You did this, Brian! You’re the Western States champion!”

About seven strides onto the track, our cheers went from “Brian,
you did this,
” to dead silence. Twenty feet in, 300 yards from the finish, Brian collapsed.

“What’s the matter, Brian?” I asked.

He said, “I can’t get up.”

I had noticed him weaving on the final downhill, but I had weaved a lot myself in races. The ultra is a brutal thing.

“You gotta get up, Brian. You
gotta
get up!”

Jason and I helped him stand, but he wouldn’t walk. I said, “You
gotta
keep moving.” I was Dusty again, but this time nothing seemed to work.

Maybe we should have let him stay on the track. He couldn’t stand on his own, and now he was babbling, not making sense.

It was a really stupid mistake when I look back on it. Jason and I put Brian’s arms around our shoulders, and we walked him toward the finish line. We didn’t cut across the infield, toward the medical tent. We took him around the track. It was instinct. I was in survival mode, taking care of someone who was in really bad shape, but I was in pacer mode, too, and racer mode. I was in runner mode. I wanted Brian to get what he wanted. I wanted to help him get to the finish line. And I did.

We got him to the finish line, and from there the medical staff took over. One of the doctors asked him if he knew who won the race.

“Scott Jurek,” he said.

“No,” the doctor said, with a thin smile, “you won. You won the race.”

Within 15 minutes, he was in an ambulance. And as they were lifting him in, I was standing next to him, and he looked at me and said, “Scott, I did it. I won the Western States.”

I was hanging out at the finish line, greeting the next finishers as I always did, and they were happy to see me, but I started hearing other people, onlookers and race board members, saying things. I heard that Brian was going to be disqualified. I heard people saying it was my fault for helping him around the track. And then finally a board member walked up to me and said Brian didn’t win and he would be disqualified for accepting help.

I told him the board didn’t need to do that, that being disqualified was a black mark for a runner, and if anyone deserved sanction, it should be me. I told them if they weren’t going to award Brian the victory, the very least they could do was to give him a DNF, Did Not Finish.

Nope, it would have to be a DQ. I thought the board members were just doing it to bolster their egos and make a statement about the sanctity of the race. I walked to the Auburn hospital the next day—no one from the Western States board had been there. When I entered Brian’s room, he spoke first.

“Hey, Scott, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be out of here in time for the awards ceremony. I want you to accept it for me.”

I got straight to the point. I said I’d been at the track all night and that the board had made a big to-do about his not making it to the finish line and DQ’d him. They had awarded the win to a runner named Graham Cooper, who finished
12
minutes
after him. I told him I was sorry and that I wished I could do something to change the board’s decision. I told him I was sorry I didn’t take him across the infield. I said I knew how hard he had worked and how close he was to winning. I said I knew what being close felt like (I had only recently failed to catch Arnulfo) but that I could only imagine his pain. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do.

When I got back to Seattle, there was already chatter about the race all over the Internet. Some of it was unbelievable. I read that I had pushed Brian too hard, that I was his “coach.” I read that I had not given him enough water and that I had given him too much. I read that I sabotaged his race because I didn’t want anyone taking the spotlight off of me.

I learned more than one lesson at the 2006 Western States. One I hadn’t been expecting: No matter what you do, there are going to be haters out there. 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.

People still ask me about what happened to Brian. The short answer is, I don’t know. The longer answer is, it could have been one of many things. I don’t believe it was really a medical issue, at least not in the traditional sense. I think Brian stopped because his brain saw the finish line and told his body, “Hey, dude, you’re done, you did it, you can rest now,” and his body shut down. As powerful as our legs are, as magnificent as our lungs and arms and muscles are, nothing matters more than the mind.

The Western States doctors identified a number of reasons that might have explained why Brian couldn’t make it that one last time around the track. They said that his disorientation and lack of coordination were consistent with hyponatremia. They said he might have been dehydrated, had low blood sugar, that there may have been something wrong with his heart. They suggested, finally, that it was total muscular fatigue. He had pushed himself too hard those final miles leading up to the high school track, and his leg muscles were simply too tired to go on. From a medical perspective, the proximity of the finish line was not an issue. Conventional wisdom holds that our ability to push ourselves and keep pushing is limited by peripheral measures of fitness such as VO
₂
max, the amount of oxygen we can use for aerobic respiration, and lactate threshold, the point at which our muscles accumulate lactic acid faster than they can clear it. Efficiency comes into play in determining how well we can exploit our body’s fitness level, as does the resilience of our muscles and bones. In an ultra, there are the additional issues of maintaining hydration and nutrition. From this perspective, Brian’s body had just had enough, and it could have been any of a number of factors that caused it to happen to him.

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 VO
₂
max or take their blood sugar reading and say it’s low. It’s not possible to measure the mysterious workings of will. In
Lore of Running,
Dr. Tim Noakes promotes an alternate theory about how our bodies endure exercise. He believes that a central governor in the brain evaluates the athletic task and determines how many muscle fibers should be recruited. In the case of a run, the brain judges how far away the finish line is, compares it to past training runs, and sets a pace that, barring accidents, the body can maintain without injury. Push too hard, and the brain ramps up sensations of fatigue and pain, trying to fool you into slowing down. Once you understand this, you can reprogram yourself to go much faster. Noakes teaches us to stop giving credence to negative thoughts that are only related to how close we are to the finish line.

The central governor theory is controversial, but it squares with my experience of the sport. I have always run better than I should have, given my physical gifts and my marathon time. I have always said that the 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.

Brian’s collapse was dramatic, and from a medical point of view, provocative. But—and this is the lesson known by anyone who has ever tried with all his will to attain something and fallen short—how Brian finished wasn’t what defined him. Collapsing 300 yards from glory made him a fascinating footnote in Western States 100 history, but it didn’t make
him.

Brian put everything he had into an ultra. He was a champion. That year, to me and many others, he was
the
champion.

POSTURE

To run far, fast, or efficiently, you have to run with proper posture. Keep your shoulders back and your arms bent 45 degrees at the elbow. Allow your arms to swing freely, but don’t let them cross the imaginary vertical line bisecting your body. This will create openness in the chest, better breathing, and more balance.

Lean forward, but not at the hips. Imagine a rod running through your body from the head to the toes. Keep the rod at a slight forward angle to the ground, with a neutral pelvis. When the entire body participates, you’re using gravity to your advantage. Remember, running is controlled falling.

Incan Quin-Wow!

Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) is one of the first grains (technically a seed) humans ever cultivated and used in cooking. It has a dense, earthy flavor and is one of the few grains with all nine essential amino acids, so it’s perfect for a dish like porridge—hearty, basic, and satisfying in an almost primal way. When I learned about quinoa, it helped me appreciate the many ancient foods and cultures that could enrich my life, if only I made room for them. Make it the night before, so you can warm it up to eat before a long morning run. A great mixture of carbs, protein, and fat, this porridge is sweetened with fruit and cinnamon. Replace the vanilla with almond or hazelnut extract for a nutty variation.