Running on Empty

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

“Marshall is The Man. Definitively. His run across America at the age of fifty-seven sealed that distinction forever. He's living proof that endurance never sleeps, never gets old, never tires. Nothing can stop him, and that gives us all hope, gives us resolve to keep trying.”

—DEAN KARNAZES, acclaimed endurance athlete and bestselling author of
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

“Marshall and I go way back to the first Eco-Challenge in 1995. An athlete of astonishing grit both then and now, he never fails to push the limits of his sport, no matter what extreme endurance event he's chosen.
Running on Empty
tells the story of Marshall's greatest test: reading it, you get a sense of how tough this man is, but there's also a bit of Everyman in Marsh. He's an inspiration to all of us.”

—MARK BURNETT, Emmy Award–winning producer of
Survivor, Eco-Challenge,
The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
and other programs

“Riveting—the man has endured more, experienced more, accomplished more than you can imagine. You have to read it to believe it.”

—AMBY BURFOOT, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and editor at large,
Runner's World

“You can learn from every race, even the ones you read about instead of run yourself. Marshall is a master of mental toughness, an endurance legend, and exactly the kind of example our country needs right now.”

—KARA GOUCHER, American middle- and long-distance runner, Olympian and World Championships medalist

“I'm always secretly envious of guys like Marshall, who run for adventure and cover extreme distances. What goes on inside their heads? How do they keep going, on and on, into the night, for days on end? What do they experience that the rest of us don't?
Running on Empty
tells it all, giving a rare glimpse into the world of ultrarunning and into the life of a man who epitomizes his sport's doctrine of ‘never say quit.'”

—RYAN HALL, first U.S. runner to finish the half-marathon in under an hour and current U.S. record holder

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2011 by Marshall Ulrich

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Excerpt from “Desert Places” from
The Poetry of Robert Frost
, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1947, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine.

Excerpt from “Living Like Weasels” from
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
by Annie Dillard. Copyright 1982 by Annie Dillard.

Excerpt from “The Shore and the Sea” from
Further Fables for Our Time
by James Thurber. Copyright 1956 by Rosemary A. Thurber. Thurber and The Barbara Hogenson Agency. All rights reserved.

The poem “Running America” was written in Marshall Ulrich's honor by Joanne Gabbin, Ph.D, director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Copyright 2009 by Joanne V. Gabbin. Reprinted with her permission.

The guidelines for the world-record attempt (fastest crossing of the United States on foot) have been provided courtesy Guinness World Records Limited.

 

Most Avery books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ulrich, Marshall.

Running on empty: an ultramarathoner's story of love, loss, and a record-setting run across America / Marshall Ulrich.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-51385-9

1. Ulrich, Marshall. 2. Long-distance runners—United States—Biography. 3. Long-distance running—United States. I. Title.

GV1061.15.U47A

796.42092—dc22

[B]

 

 

 

Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

To Mom, who let me dream

 

Dad, who taught me discipline

 

Rory, my biggest fan

 

and Heather, who held me up

—Heather Ulrich, late one night during Marshall's dramatic race across America

 

 

 

The problem with the best Marshall Ulrich stories is that you never seem to hear them from Marshall Ulrich. He's one of America's greatest living adventurers and an expert without peer in human endurance, yet most Ulrich lore is passed along only by spoken word, making him a hero in other people's Greatest Hits collections and a figure who comes across less like a real human and more like a mythological creature who ferries drowning men to shore before vanishing back into the sea. Travel around the Rocky Mountains or Death Valley at the right time of year—the right time, of course, being 4:00 a.m. in a hailstorm or high noon on a 120-degree day—and you'll find endurance daredevils testing themselves against tales like these:

“You know the Pikes Peak Marathon? Thirteen miles straight up the side of a 14,000-foot mountain and thirteen miles back down again. You can't do Pikes
and
the Leadville Trail 100 in the same year when they're both on the same weekend, because you'd never be able to complete the hundred and then get to Colorado Springs in time, much less do the marathon. Then one summer, just as they're counting down for the start at Pikes, a Datsun comes roaring up and screeches to a stop. This guy comes tumbling out, all caked in trail dust and grime. He jumps into the race just as the gun booms. Marshall had finished the hundred-mile Leadville race in under twenty-four hours, then floored the three-hour drive to Colorado Springs because the race director was a buddy of his. No one else has ever done it. I don't think anyone else has even
tried
.”

“Know how Marsh spent his fiftieth birthday? Raising money for orphans by running across Death Valley—four times
in a row.
That's nearly six hundred miles, back and forth across the hottest place on earth and up and down Mount Whitney. He challenged the course, both the desert and the mountain, another time by stuffing his gear and water in a hot dog cart so he could run across Death Valley alone.”

My favorite is one I heard from Frank McKinney, a Florida real estate developer with heavy-metal hair and an ocean-view treehouse for an office. McKinney wasn't a runner—he preferred tennis, if anything—and he knew nothing about mountains or desert heat. But he found out about the Badwater Ultramarathon and got the idea that running 135 miles in awful desert heat would be kind of a kick. Somehow he got in, so off he set on race day, trotting through the salt flats in his head-to-toe sun whites. By mile seventy-five or so, McKinney had gotten the fun smacked out of him; head spinning, muscles knotting, he was a panting mess by the side of the road. He lay in the shade of his support team's van, mustering the strength to get inside and head the hell home. He wasn't just exhausted and overheated—he was
scared.
People die in Death Valley all the time, their brains slowly convection-cooking inside their skulls.