Running Toward Life: Finding Community and Wisdom in the Distances We Run

Introduction

I WILL NEVER FORGET the events of June 24-25, 1995.

It was on that weekend that I ran 38 miles and became an ultra marathoner. I find it personally comforting and altogether appropriate given how the intervening decades have played out, that if you went searching for my result, you would never find it. I ran that day as a pacer for my friend Joe Braninburg, who was 51 at the time and gunning for a top-10 finish at the Western States Endurance Run. For years, Western States, one of the world’s first and arguably most well-known mountain hundred-milers (first held officially in 1977), defined a pace runner as a trail companion who may accompany a runner along designated sections of the trail. Pacers are allowed solely as a safety consideration for fatigued runners in the remote and rugged territory of the Western States Trail. When I joined Joe on a sweltering afternoon at the 62-mile mark at Foresthill School, the day would see temperatures soar to 104 degrees, still the hottest day ever recorded at Western States. The plan was to run the final 38 miles for a newspaper story I was writing for my employer at the time, the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Before he even got to the tiny town of Foresthill, California at about 5:30 p.m., or about 12½ hours after starting the race, Joe and the rest of the 360-plus runners had skimmed, slipped, slid, and fallen over the first 24 miles of the course, which was treacherously covered in snow and ice courtesy of an endless, record-setting Sierra winter. Now it was my job to serve as Joe’s shadow for the final 38 miles. The navy blue Ultimate Direction fanny pack I wore overflowed like a picnic basket from the overthinking that comes when you have no idea what you are doing and what might lie ahead. My pack holstered two constantly sloshing 12-ounce water bottles. There were four Power Bars tucked tightly inside one of the pack’s pockets. Like everything else that oppressive day, the contents quickly melted from the heat and were reduced to a gooey mess, streaking my hands yellow whenever I took a bite from them. I packed two six-inch, AA-battery-powered flashlights I’d purchased from Wal-Mart a few days before. My lights were about as sturdy as a couple of glass test tubes. I’d never run at night with flashlights. I had no idea if they would be strong enough. As the sun dropped and the night running began, the lights were tossed around inside my fanny pack, quickly sounding like loose marbles inside a tin can, shattered to pieces from the hard and aggressive running Joe would do on a surprisingly rocky and technical trail.

And, even more important than the water and the sticky Power Bars and the lights that were crushed to pieces, I made sure to carry with me the tools of my sportswriter trade—a classic, Pitman-ruled, 4-by-8-inch, 70-sheet, spiraled, and essentially palm-sized reporter’s notebook, along with two black ballpoint pens. Every few miles, whenever Joe would cruise into an aid station, or maybe the few times when he would stop running and methodically hike like a man on a mission, his powerful, tanned, and sun-freckled contractor’s arms pumping with purpose up a hill, I would pull out my notebook and one of my pens and madly jot down the details of what I was experiencing. The famed sportswriter W.C. Bill Heinz once remarked that quoting someone is like walking on thin ice: You go gently so you don’t break through. There was nothing gentle to my note taking that day. My arms and hands flowed with sweat that wouldn’t stop. More than a few times, my pen slipped right out of my fingers and fell to the ground, disappearing into a tiny mushroom cloud of trail dust. The sweat on my hands soaked the pages of my notebook into near-incomprehensibility. With each note I’d attempt to record, the page became stubborn, surfeited with my sweat, almost as if it were refusing the ink. The dialogue and details of a run that felt increasingly epic to me were being translated onto the pages of my notebook in black smudges and streaks. The frantic fragments of memory that I’d managed to scrawl out came in between fitful bouts of muttering under my breath and trying not to trip and fall on a trail that seemed to have cruel intentions for my well-being.

Looking back on it now, beyond the fact that it was a minor miracle that I could even read my notes afterward, I wasn’t just noting the critical moments of an amazing race that would see Joe become one of the few over-50 runners to ever finish in the top 10 at Western States. He would do so heroically, summoning a strong surge just past the 90-mile mark, passing two of the famed Tarahumara runners from the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico. He splashed determinedly by them through a slippery creek bed, sending the cold California Gold Country water fishtailing crazily behind him, to move from 12th place to 10th place. The presence of the Tarahumara runners gave meaning and haunting sound to the experience. The Tarahumara were an Indigenous people who could trace their relationship with running back centuries. They were legendary for having worn rawhide sandals and having the ability to run for miles from their enclave of hillside caves. The Tarahumara that Joe chased that sweltering June were lithe and moved with the effortlessness of clouds moving across the sky. I will never forget their sound, the only thing that betrayed their presence on the trail. There was the almost imperceptible slapping of their sandals (huaraches, no longer made from plants or animals but from the rubber of tires) against the trail, which was so light it was like a pleasing murmur or a soft breeze. The white tunics they wore were cinched tightly around their stout waists with metal bells, which, when worn during their persistence hunts of long ago, were said to fill the Tarahumara with the speed of the deer they were hunting. As we had given them chase, we could hear the bells of the Tarahumara on the switchbacks down below us, rising mystically up through the muggy night air as if from a different place and a different time, their sound beckoning us to run as they did. Once Joe sped past the two Tarahumara through that creek bed, for nearly a half mile after, we could hear the bells behind us, the beat quickening as the Tarahumara gave chase. It was a soundtrack of pure competitive effort that made me want to linger and listen in the way that beautiful music always makes us yearn for a great song to keep going and never to end. Joe, of course, wasn’t feeling nearly as reflective as I was. He determinedly kept pushing the pace. His sole motivation was to out-run the sound of the Tarahumara. Gradually, the haunting bells that I can still close my eyes and hear nearly 30 years later faded into the night behind us.

Joe would eventually get his 10th-place finish. He would finish in 20 hours, 55 minutes, and 26 seconds. It was a day that saw one of the highest drop-out rates in Western States history. Only 53.4 percent of the race’s more than 360 starters would complete the 100.2-mile trek from Olympic Valley, California to the Placer High School track in Auburn, California. And if there was any question if the experience, on a day that would become known in Western States lore as the The Year of Ice and Fire, was worthwhile for Joe, that was quickly answered only a few seconds after he had crossed the finish line. Joe’s girlfriend at the time handed him a sealed manila envelope, which Joe promptly passed on to a surprised but smiling race director Norman Klein. Puzzled, Norm opened the envelope. Inside was a $165 check and completed entry form for the next year’s Western States. This was a race, as I was to find out in my own experience, that was impossible to simply be one-and-done with.

I recorded all of those sounds and scenes in a sweaty, messy, excited, and entirely insufficient scrawl. I remember thinking, as I sat at my computer terminal in the RGJ’s newsroom the next day trying to decipher the trail cacophony of my handwritten notes running up and sliding down the pages, that what I had experienced was something I would always remember. But it was more than that. To that point in my life, I had run 10K’s, half-marathons, and marathons. The standard 26.2-mile distance had always seemed as far as I would’ve ever wished to run. Then, pacing Joe, I had run as far as I had ever run in my life—38 miles. As I pored over my notes and attempted to compose my story in the air-conditioned comfort of a quiet newsroom a little less than 12 hours after having paced Joe, shifting my weight about every five minutes or so to minimize the stiffness that was raging through my battered quads and burning hips, I felt as if my horizons as a runner had suddenly, substantially, and inescapably broadened. I was no longer a runner. I was now an ultra runner, even if it hadn’t been my race that I had finished. In fact, it was an almost instantaneous innermost desire I felt as I sat there that Sunday afternoon, writing about how someone else had gone the great 100-mile distance. As I was composing Joe’s story, I was gripped with a surprising sense of wanting to embark, someday soon, on a 100-mile journey of my own. From that day forward, I wanted to be an ultra runner. Continuing to this day, I have been an ultra runner. My experience in the sport started by bearing testimony to an amazing run by a 51-year-old man. Today, this is my testimony. I am the possessor of tens of thousands of trail miles, finishes in nearly 100 ultra-marathon races (including 17 hundred-milers), and, perhaps most importantly of all, a better and abiding sense of who I am.

Ultra running has taught me lessons that I don’t know I could’ve understood in any other context. I’ve come to understand, through a lot of trial, error, and unending belief in the good that is inherent in the sport, that going the distance only tells part of the story. Who we are and what we determine to be important is always magnified by the great distances we run. I am convinced that we acquire experiences—either our own or those that we share with our friends whom we crew and pace—that make us better people, or at least remind us that the best lives lived make us strive and aspire to be better people. They make us do our best to contribute in some small way—as participants, as volunteers, as supporters of the dreams of our friends, as members of trail crews—to the wonderfully eclectic community of ultra runners who are spread out throughout the country and the world. Ultra running has made me feel more connected with who I hope to be. It has filled me with more of a common purpose, more of a willingness to take a chance. It has allowed me to expose my deepest feelings for people to view in plain sight and to nurture the shared humanity that resides in us all.

In 1997, two years after my experience running with and being inspired by Joe, I ran my first Western States. Although the race has a 30-hour time limit, many entrants shoot for the stretch goal of finishing the race in a little less than a day, in under 24 hours. If you finish in under 24 hours, you receive what is considered one of the most coveted finisher’s awards in all of running, an exquisite hand-crafted silver belt buckle produced by a family-owned business, Comstock Heritage. I wrote another newspaper story about that 1997 experience, one that if it had followed the perfect script that day would’ve seen me triumphantly finish in under 24 hours. The crescendo would have been a few hours later during the awards ceremony, when I would’ve been presented with one of those beautiful silver belt buckles.

It didn’t happen that way. Just as I had two years earlier with Joe, I had run further that day in 1997 than I had ever run in my life: 100.2 miles. But I had somehow come up short. I finished in 24 hours, 1 minute, and 36 seconds. I missed a silver belt buckle, with the words 100 MILES ONE DAY emblazoned across it by a mere 96 seconds. The solemn finality of those words that had tantalized me throughout months of hard training and seemed to immortalize those who were lucky enough to achieve it had evaded me. I received instead a bronze buckle, with the simple words 100 MILES. To my way of thinking then, 100 MILES ONE DAY sounded much more substantial and fuller of triumph than the more restrained, 100 MILES.

This may sound strange, but not reaching the sub-24-hour milestone that day was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. In the wake of the 1997 Western States, I was determined to dust myself off, swallow my injured pride, and try the 100-mile distance again. I felt this way because the experience, though it didn’t achieve a goal, taught me something much more important. I met people that day whom I have never forgotten. Among the most memorable was 57-year-old Gary Ritchie from Sacramento. Gary was a cancer survivor. He ran that day, proudly, in a pair of red, white, and blue USA shorts, as a man who was incredibly grateful to be alive. Gary was a well-known and respected person in the ultra community. As Gary ran into each of Western States’ more than 20 aid stations, he seemed to know everybody. He was greeted with raucous cheers, as a home-town hero whose grit and tenacity in overcoming cancer was not only well-known but revered. There were moments where it seemed that Gary was the most popular runner in the world. At one point, I trailed behind Gary as he swept into the Dusty Corners aid station near mile 38. Volunteers and friends swarmed him like he was a wildly popular presidential candidate during primary season. It was miraculous that Gary actually extricated himself from the Dusty Corners people, all of whom offered hugs and handshakes and wanted to wish Gary well. By contrast, I remember being pretty much forgotten as I chugged into the aid station behind Gary. Such was the wattage of a man who was clearly loved by everyone. I stood by myself, left alone to pour my own cup of Coke, and watched with a mix of awe and envy as Gary was given the royal Dusty Corners treatment.

Gary, like me, just missed finishing in under 24 hours. He finished about five minutes behind me. I remember how crushed I felt as I stood at the finish line on the Placer High School track. I fought the urge to cry. But eventually I couldn’t help myself and was bawling in front of my wife, Jill, our two young daughters Annie and Katie and several of my friends who had helped that day. Gary and I had run parts of about 50 miles that day together. After he finished, Gary made it a point to put his disappointment of breaking 24 hours behind him and to put the moment into its proper place. In his life, Gary had faced challenges far greater than missing a time goal by a few insignificant minutes. I was 34 years old at the time. Gary was about the same age as I am now. He did what all people who have experienced the difficulties and triumphs and tragedies of life should always do with people who haven’t lived as long and who haven’t had the life experience they have had. Gary slipped through my family and friends, stood next to me, and smiled like a proud father. He gave me a hug. He said, You gave it all you had, John. That’s all we can ever ask of ourselves.

Gary’s story, like so many other stories since then, has clung to me, reminding me that there are important lessons we can take from our time on the trail. For a long time after my Western States experience in 1997, I kept the cotton socks that I wore that day pinned like a prized fresco to one of the walls of our garage. The socks were stained by the peach-colored dust of 24 hours, 1 minute, and 36 seconds of what felt like deeply disappointing running on the Western States Trail. But as the days passed after that initial disappointment, I came to look at the socks as less tinged with 96 seconds of competitive failure and more colored by the grace and goodness of 100.2 miles of human experience. The dust of the trail that my socks had collected was just like the stories and the special people that I’d experienced and collected along the way that day. Looking back on it now, it was a day that felt like it had been filled with a thrilling electrical shock … before everything went completely to black just 96 seconds short of my goal. Eventually, even the 96 seconds where I fell short came to represent a certain determination and defiance. I was far from being done. I would try to run 100 miles again. And eventually I would finish. Again. And again. And again. There were many more days still to come that would be much more uplifting and soul-affirming. But the point was becoming clear. Every time I’d pull something out of my garage, I couldn’t help but stare at my Western States socks with wonder and a small bit of pride. This was a sport that was sticking to me. It was becoming a part of who I was.

My hope in writing this book, which is loosely divided into three parts all speaking to various points of development in one’s running life, Finding Your Mentors, Choosing Your Companions, and Overcoming Your Challenges, is that those who read it will come away with a similar sense of understanding of who they are and what is important to them. Although these stories are highly personal, they contain some of the larger truths that we all experience in our lives. That we are constantly learning and evolving. That as time passes and as we accrue thousands of hard-earned miles on the trails, there are important lessons that are equally hard-earned and can stick with us if we allow them to live on. And that as we gain these experiences, we come to view them more like a way station and not a final destination, where we have the opportunity to continually ask ourselves important questions that help us grow and learn. No matter what distance of ultra we run, we come to understand that whenever we go the distance, it isn’t just the number of miles that we have run that matter. As I found out in 1995, you can run an ultra distance that comes on the periphery of something larger and it may not ever be remembered—except by you. Running ultras is a way of running toward what matters most: understanding and finding a greater meaning in the life that we live. It helps us run toward our lives.

CHAPTER 1

The Making of a Writer and a Runner

Mrs. Shineesta Williams was the type of person that you quickly made note of and never forgot. I had the good fortune of being in Mrs.