Read Online Running on Empty by Marshall Ulrich - Free Book Online Page A

else, would be the high daily mileage. We’d be attempting to log seventy miles—essentially two and a half marathons—every day, for well over forty days. (He also, gently, questioned whether Charlie was the right man to attempt this with me. He didn’t tell me about it, but I suspected something had happened out in the desert that had left a bad taste in Ray’s mouth. I assured him that I knew how Charlie could be, but that I also felt confident I could handle whatever might set him off, plus I respected Charlie as one of the toughest athletes we knew.)
    In the training schedule Ray devised, he demanded of me a kind of rigor that suited my body type: sturdy, strong, compact, “a tank,” some say. It was also made to capitalize on my many years of experience with extreme endurance sports, and to help me adapt to the particular demands of running across the country, mostly on asphalt and concrete. Specifically, the schedule was designed to improve my agility and occasionally give me a break from the pavement with trail running, my core strength using tire drags and cross-training, my leg strength with hill repeats, my speed with tempo runs, my endurance with long runs and multiple runs in a day, as well as long runs, back to back, on consecutive days. We would also further train my digestive system to accept food every mile, a few mouthfuls at a time. At my peak volume, I was running up to two hundred miles per week, a mixed bag of long runs, peak runs, strength training, and cross-training.
    I had my moments of doubt. Ray’s schedule taxed me, took me to my physical and mental limits over and over again. At the end of 2007, as a training exercise, I participated in a seventy-two-hour run with the goal of completing seventy miles a day for three consecutive days, the same daily mileage we hoped to cover once we began the “real” event in California. About ten hours into the first day of the race, as I circled the looped course, I was right on schedule with more than fifty miles behind me, when I began to question myself. Why am I doing this? What’s the purpose? Do I really want to be here? This is incredibly hard, and I don’t want to be out here for another sixty-two hours.
    I’d had enough.
    I quit.
    When I told Heather that I was through, that I was done with the whole endeavor—forget this race, this insane training schedule, and running across America—she didn’t believe me, however much she may have hoped it was true. Quitting was out of character, out of the blue. But, I insisted, I’d been thinking about it for a full hour before I stopped. I wasn’t ready to carry this burden.
    Everyone goes through these periods, not just in athletic pursuits but also in life, and we all find our way through them somehow, even if they last longer than we want. We call on our friends. We lean on our spouses and ask them not to worry too much. Ultimately, we suck it up and start talking ourselves out of whatever tailspin we’ve been in. It took me a good month to get over it, to regain my confidence and motivation after quitting; it took the people I love counseling me to accept what I was going through and give myself permission to let it be; it took one of my closest friends telling me that it didn’t matter if I never ran another step and that everyone loved me for myself, even without the running; it took my coach, Ray, telling me that it would pass and not to force it.
    It took me realizing that it was okay to lose the battle so I could come back to win the war. I could be kind to myself about a temporary “failure” to complete, and it served to save me, psychologically, for the times when it would be really important to continue no matter what.
    Ultimately, the start-date delays allowed me to train hard and taper several times before we got to the starting line in San Francisco. During this time, I also devoted an hour or two each week to