Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman Page B

forgetting my worries, losing myself.
    Every day I ran 10 to 15 miles; every weekend, 20 to 30. After a long talk with Leah, I flew to races in Virginia and Oregon, going deep into credit card debt in order to pay my travel expenses. I wanted to push my boundaries, to explore my potential. I was passionate, but I was also practical. It was still debt. For a kid who grew up eating government cheese, it was terrifying. But I won the McKenzie River 50K and the Zane Grey 50-Miler. Then I set a new record in the Minnesota Voyageur 50-Miler. Was it compulsiveness or just the determination of a Minnesota redneck or, as Dusty described my heritage, “Norwegian stubborn, French arrogant, and Polish stupid”? Or was it something more pure inside me, something good? I wasn’t sure. To find out, I needed a test. I needed to run a 100-mile race. I decided on the Angeles Crest 100, held on a Saturday in late September. It was one of the hardest 100-mile races in the country, climbing 22,000 feet and descending 27,000 feet through the San Gabriel Mountains of California. I logged more distances and refined my diet even more. And I made a call to the man I wanted to be my pacer.
    Now, waiting to meet me at 50 miles in Chilao Campground, he was screaming at me again. But this time it wasn’t “You’re a pussy, Jurker,” or “C’mon, you Polack,” or any of Dust Ball’s other charming greetings.
    It was Spanish.
    I looked over my shoulder, finally realizing who he was yelling at. There was a knot of sinewy, coffee-colored men with ink black hair wearing loose shirts, long things that looked like skirts, and huarache sandals made from discarded tires. They looked to be in their forties. I had first heard about them from a friend from New York, Jose Camacho, whom I had worked with at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque during one of my PT internships. He had a quote taped to his locker: “When you run on the earth and with the earth, you can run forever.”
    Anyone who had competed in more than one ultrarace in the United States had probably heard of these men. They were the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, an ancient people who supposedly could run hundreds of miles without even breaking a sweat. As the story went (and as the bestseller Born to Run would later document), they didn’t talk much, subsisted on a mostly plant-based diet, and grew up running the way American kids grew up watching television or playing video games. Dusty and I had seen them at the starting line, smoking cigarettes (or joints; we weren’t sure). They stood apart from everyone else, neither smiling nor frowning. While other runners stretched and warmed up, they just stood there. Some of their skirts were obviously put together recently. One of them had fashioned his from a sheet printed with Big Bird.
    A runner named Ben Hian, who had won the race three of the past four years and was one of the best 100-milers in the country, had sidled up to Dusty and me. Ben was a recovering drug addict who loved tattoos: men crawling out of coffins, skulls, that sort of thing. His entire upper body was covered in ink. He wore a Mohawk, loved Ozzy Osbourne, and ran a business where he took tarantulas, snakes, and lizards to libraries and Girl Scout troops, among other places. Oh, and he taught preschool.
    “Those guys don’t even get warmed up till 100 miles, and they stop at the top of each ridge and all smoke something. Peyote, marijuana, I’m not sure what,” Ben said with a grin. Or was it a smirk? He stretched a little, flexed his tattoos.
    Was he screwing with us or was he serious? I didn’t know.
    “Yeah, right,” Dusty had replied. “That is total bullshit.” Then he told Ben that I was going to beat his ass. Good old Dusty.
    But now he was yelling Spanish at them. (Later I learned it was something along the lines of “Fuck you, you slow Big Bird–wearing idiots.”) I glanced back again and did a double-take. They really did seem to be