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Illustration by Alexander Wells
Illustration by Alexander Wells

Published: 

Run for Your Life

What motivates an amateur racer to rack up thousands of training miles and take on the pain and tedium of marathons and ultramarathons? Sometimes it's about keeping a step ahead of your ghosts.

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鈥淒o something, or die.鈥 鈥擬eghan Daum

Twenty-three miles down, 26 and change to go. Ought to be an aid station in a couple of miles, and I鈥檓 thinking I should pop another energy gel about now. But I鈥檝e already had three this morning, and I鈥檓 sick of the gelatinous, glucosey goo, which tastes like sweat-flavored cake frosting. They鈥檒l have peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and Cheetos and Coke and potato chips up ahead, so screw the goo. More gels are inevitable鈥攁nd salt tablets, too, to stave off cramps as long as possible鈥攂ut for now I can hold out.

Just over four hours into this mess and it鈥檚 finally midmorning on the ultramarathon, held every spring in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, in southeastern Wisconsin. I鈥檇 love it if I can do the rest in six hours. That鈥檚 roughly twice as slow as my fastest marathon this year, but it鈥檚 also a marathon on top of what I鈥檓 running this morning. I鈥檝e run nearly 2,000 miles since I ran a race called last fall, but never more than 26.2 in one stretch, and pretty much every time I get up over 20 miles, all bets are off. The first half of an ultra, they say, you can run with your legs. For the second half, you鈥檒l have to come up with something else.

There are about 300 of us today. We range from the best ultrarunners in the world, including Western States 100 winner Timothy Olson鈥攚ho looks like a hot, athletic version of Jesus and is just about as nice, spouting paragraphs of encouragement as he passes people on this cloverleaf-like course鈥攁ll the way down to chubby amateurs like me. I just spent the past four miles with Mike from Chicago, a guy who was greeted rowdily by everyone we passed or were passed by. He鈥檚 pretty easy to recognize, since he has only one arm.

We鈥檝e been talking about shoes. I鈥檓 going light with Brooks PureFlows, like nobody else I can see. Mike鈥檚 wearing the ubiquitous, trail-ready, toe-bumpered Salomon S-Labs. Seeing those tanks on his feet gives me pause, but there鈥檚 nothing to do about it now, so I just try to jettison the thought.

鈥淔ucking Christ,鈥 Mike says. About what I鈥檓 not sure. Shoes maybe. Maybe not.

The pain comes in waves. On uphills like this, my quads feel like there are badgers inside, clawing their way out. My calves are OK, but my knees are rickety. The pain isn鈥檛 constant, nor is it a curse, really. It鈥檚 mine, and since all it takes to make it stop is stopping, I feel an affectionate ownership of it.


Because it鈥檚 both logistically difficult and not socially acceptable to flog yourself in public, I run. I run a lot, and I鈥檓 not saying that to impress anybody. I run so much that it鈥檚 kind of weird. Last year I ran almost as much as my wife drove, and she does an 8.6-mile round-trip commute every weekday. This raises the question that every runner will get from somebody at some point: Why? What the hell is wrong with you?

What鈥檚 wrong is that I鈥檓 compulsive, though not, I hope, to a clinical degree. I can enter a room without licking the doorknob or turning a set number of circles. But I鈥檓 definitely obsessed. Obsessed, I think, with obsession. I live to be consumed by obsession, and running might be the perfect occasion for it.

Running is not an attractive sport, other than the violent beauty of sprinters or the histrionic slow motion of runners in, say, Chariots of Fire. But that鈥檚 make believe. Most real runners, by which I mean distance runners鈥攏ot the gym-rat treadmillers or ring-around-the-reservoir pageant participants鈥攁re not pretty. We run slowly, and we鈥檙e constantly evacuating our various septic systems鈥攂elching, farting, blowing streamers of snot, the remnants of which spangle our hair, our faces. Our shirts, if we鈥檙e real long-distance runners and also guys, often display the marathoner鈥檚 stigmata of nipples rubbed so raw that they bleed.

Running is hard, I think we can all agree. And there鈥檚 nothing quite so easy as not running. What it takes to run, on the other hand, is at the threshold of the obscene. But once you accumulate a good number of miles, running farther and faster becomes more urgent than running less, never mind stopping. At its best, running is sport in its purest form. Virtually no equipment is needed, except for shoes and clothing that keeps your body parts from flopping around. Running doesn鈥檛 require a track, road, finish line, start line, or destination. All it takes is the decision to begin and the sustained commitment to not stop.

And that鈥檚 what running comes down to for me, in several complicated and inextricable ways. I love and want the family that I have. But being a father and a husband and a son鈥 well, no matter what the outdoor magazines and catalogs advertise as the fun and vibrant and stress-free modern active family life, there鈥檚 nothing simple about being an athletic guy and balancing that with the demands of others. The responsibility of being indebted to another person, of belonging to another person, of coming from another person鈥攖hat responsibility sometimes feels like I鈥檓 physically carrying my mother, my wife, and my son on my back. Or when I鈥檓 not, it鈥檚 as though I have somehow let them down so profoundly that I fear for their lives.

I know it鈥檚 not what they ask me to do, nor what they need me to do. Believe me when I say: It鈥檚 not them. It鈥檚 me. All I can tell you is that the obsessive drive is there. It鈥檚 a large part of why I run and why I find myself throwing grotesque amounts of interest and passion into it, year after year after year.

Illustration by Alexander Wells
Illustration by Alexander Wells

鈥淔uckety fuck. We don鈥檛 got hills like this in Chicago,鈥 Mike says. 鈥淟otta guys I train with come all the way up here, but Christ that鈥檚 a long way just to punish yourself. How you like them ninja toes? Supposed to make you have better big-toe pushoff, or is that just bullshit?鈥

I think that鈥檚 the idea, I say, adding that I didn鈥檛 know any of this until he told me. They just fit the best when I tried them on.

We鈥檙e grinding hard but slow up what I think is called an 鈥渆sker,鈥 but I don鈥檛 know that, either. I ask Mike, but he鈥檚 had enough banter for a while. This long, ridgelike hill rises a few hundred feet from bottom to top. It鈥檚 steep enough to ski down in winter.

He pulls a gel from his hip pack, tears the top off with his teeth, spits it out, sucks down the goo. We lope the last few paces to the crest. (鈥淚f you can鈥檛 see the top, walk,鈥 ultrarunners say, and you don鈥檛 need to tell me that one twice.) I really want to ask Mike how he gets his shoes on and tied with just one hand, but he veers off the path.

鈥淒own the trail, buddy,鈥 he says, starting to dig around in his shorts. 鈥淕otta wizz here. Kill it, amigo.鈥

I wish him luck and go over the top, then jog into a gallop, which isn鈥檛 that hard, because I鈥檓 now headed down a lovely hill. To keep my mind busy, I do the math to calculate pace and my ETA. At nine minutes per mile for 26 miles, I figure I鈥檒l come in at 234 minutes, and that鈥檚 almost four hours, plus what I already ran, plus pit stops, plus walking hills, plus lord knows what else. I tumble the words around in my mind like they鈥檙e rocks I鈥檓 polishing into something precious: esker, glacial till, kettle, moraine, driftless.


Ultrarunning has a way of insulating you from the typical blight of modern existence, where our lives hang in the balance of every social-media post or middle-management employee evaluation. As a runner, you aren鈥檛 owned by these things because you don鈥檛 want to be owned by them, and you feel superior to most of the civilians walking around because you motherfucking are superior to them.

Well, sort of. You鈥檙e living life intentionally by not doing all the stuff people do just to keep up with each other. Spending all your free time on Facebook. Playing golf. Nightclubbing. Going on cruises. Watching The Hunger Games or reading Twilight or whichever one is not about vampiristic perpetual virgins. You. You run.

And it has more to do with being obscure, and being sure of that obscurity, than with actually belonging to anything. Especially with running, where, more often than not, you鈥檙e running from and alone rather than to or with. If it hurts, you鈥檙e doing it right. If it feels good, you鈥檙e fucking up.

Which is, of course, a lot like life in all respects, but not how we鈥檙e told it is. It鈥檚 certainly not how we鈥檙e supposed to say it is. Especially if you鈥檙e a parent.

The pain isn鈥檛 constant, nor is it a curse, really. It鈥檚 mine, and since all it takes to make it stop is stopping, I feel an affectionate ownership of it.

I run, as I believe most runners do, not to win anything or to lose weight or to knock something off my bucket list or to lower my blood pressure. I don鈥檛 run in pursuit of any trophy or medal or fictive runner鈥檚 high, which in 25 years of serious running I鈥檝e never, ever felt. I don鈥檛 run so that my wife doesn鈥檛 worry about how late I stay up or how much I drink or how poorly I sleep or how bad my temper is. And while it鈥檚 tempting to say otherwise, I don鈥檛 run to set a good example for my son or to clutter his bedroom with my finisher鈥檚 medals or the belt buckles from all the races I did last year鈥攖en marathons, two 50Ks, and one 50-mile ultra.

If I鈥檓 really honest with them and you and myself, the reason I run is this: I don鈥檛 want to die.

And when I say that I don鈥檛 want to die, what I really mean is that I don鈥檛 want to kill myself. And when I say that, what I really mean is: I鈥檓 afraid sometimes that I do.


Before I plunge into any dark holes, I need to say quite clearly how good my life is and how grateful I am for my many gifts. I鈥檓 an associate professor of English at a good college with students who more often than not embarrass me with their kindness and intelligence. I鈥檓 in very good health for a 40-year-old man. I don鈥檛 have any physical complaints, I don鈥檛 take any prescription drugs, never have, rarely use pain relievers, don鈥檛 need glasses, and weigh about what I should, despite the fact that I drink and eat pretty much whatever I want, always have, and don鈥檛 worry about it.

My wife and I are well into the second decade of our marriage and have a peaceful, easy relationship in which she does most of the family鈥檚 emotional and moral guiding and I handle the logistics, and that works well for both of us. We disagree on nothing significant, can safely complete each other鈥檚 thoughts, dinner orders, and spiritual stances, and endure most of our mutual shortcomings with ease and graciousness.

And we have a sweet, smart, funny, pickle-eating five-year-old son. He鈥檚 kind to the toddlers and teachers at his preschool, calls our friend Olga 鈥淵oga,鈥 and, whenever we leave a party or a funeral or anywhere else and tell him it鈥檚 time to say goodbye, he hugs every last person in sight, even if we鈥檙e in rural Nebraska, where my wife is from and where men typically just grimace at one another鈥攁nd only if they鈥檙e really close. He鈥檚 an unmitigated blessing to us and my mother and, except for the ways in which he resembles me in his moments of deep fatigue or sleep-deprived frustration, I wish for him nothing more in life than to continue being the boy he鈥檚 best at being.

But.

I know, I know, I know. I don鈥檛 deserve to keep all of the above and still say 鈥渂ut.鈥

But.

What am I getting at? The best way I can think to describe it comes from a TV interview I saw long ago with David Foster Wallace, a brilliant writer who suffered terribly from depression. He was talking to Charlie Rose, I think, but it doesn鈥檛 really matter who was asking the questions. Everybody was probably asking him the same questions. Some variation of 鈥淪o you鈥檙e pretty much the anointed king of the literary world right now. Feels pretty good, huh?鈥

And Wallace, seemingly restrained only by the tension of his bandana from tearing Rose鈥檚 esophagus out, said something like, You just don鈥檛 get it. There is no fucking brass ring. No. I am not on top of the world. No. I am not happy.

And though I鈥檓 many miles away from being the king of anything, when I heard Wallace say that, I thought, maybe for the first time ever: I know what he鈥檚 talking about.

And then in 2008 he killed himself. Somebody I couldn鈥檛 help but fanboyishly look up to. Gone.

Anyway.

That鈥檚 what I mean when I say 鈥渂ut.鈥


My breathing is regular, and I chew through it as it makes a huruffandchuff sound. I don鈥檛 like to think too much about cardiovascular issues, since that always leads me to recent spitball theories about how ultrarunning might, in fact, be terrible for your heart, and it could have everything to do with the death of Micah True, the mythic figure known as Caballo Blanco in Christopher McDougall鈥檚 Born to Run. Instead I focus on keeping my hands moving, using them as a kind of flailing ballast to hold things together as I start rolling down this esker or whatever the hell it is. Then I see the 24-mile sign鈥攁 white piece of foam-core board with a printed-out 鈥24鈥 taped to it, stabbed into the trail with a stick.

The hills have been relentless, as I knew they would be. I grew up near the Kettle Moraine region of Wisconsin, and I used to mountain-bike and run here as a kid with friends from the Torque Center, a bike shop where I worked in high school. I remember how often even the best cyclists would have to dismount and walk up the hills, because they鈥檙e so steep and rocky, slippery with loose glacial till.

Relentless, I think about the hills, and the word gives me a mental exit ramp away from heart trouble and on to Bryon Powell, an ultrarunner, blogger, and author who coined the phrase 鈥渞elentless forward progress.鈥

I repeat the words in my head, then see how RFP works as an initialism and decide I don鈥檛 like it all that much. And I realize, without quite meaning to, that I鈥檝e made it almost halfway.

Halfway becomes a new bauble for my mind as I try to remember what Powell said about how, when you鈥檙e going down steep hills like this, you should try to imitate a lumberjack in a logrolling contest鈥攆ast up-and-down steps to keep you from slipping.

Right then I realize I鈥檓 coming up kind of hot on another downhill runner who鈥檚 being more careful than I am. I glance at my feet to make sure my stride is nice and tight, so I don鈥檛 munch on the guy鈥檚 heels. I look down just in time to see my left shoe slam into a rock the size of a loaf of bread, and away I go.

Illustration by Alexander Wells
Illustration by Alexander Wells

Despair is as human as the imagination, only it鈥檚 easier to use and needs no special fuel or encouragement. An insatiable omnivore, despair is as happy to forage through a mediocre life as it is to dig deep into the stores of real wealth that a life like mine contains in abundance.

In so many ways, the more you have, the more you have to lose, therefore the more you have to carry, guard, and worry about. The blessing and burden of my life is that I have everything I have ever hoped for, and I am still a sad, sorry son of a bitch. Mine is a loneliness that never flees, never sleeps, rarely flags, especially when I don鈥檛 have too much work to do or when I can afford to spend the day with no worries other than what adventure to undertake with my family.

Michael Chabon, in Wonder Boys, tried to get at something similar. Writers, he said, all too often succumb to something he called the midnight disease, wherein they suffer from a kind of 鈥渆motional insomnia.鈥 Much as I like that description, I鈥檓 not sure it鈥檚 what I鈥檓 experiencing.

Depression, too, is a terribly inadequate term. It makes despair sound like an unfortunate weather pattern or a small dent in an otherwise smooth and firm fuselage. It implies exceptionality rather than the broad, horizon-to-horizon condition of a life. I have no doubt there鈥檚 medication for how I feel, and also that taking such drugs would be the pharmaceutical equivalent to a frontal lobotomy, which is, it seems to me, nothing more than medically approved, low-grade suicide.

I like my job. I like where I live. I love my family, though I鈥檓 afraid of how all this will sit with them. I鈥檝e got nothing but a plethora of things for which I am grateful.

So why the but?

It鈥檚 not me, in fact. I lied. It鈥檚 you other people.


Lately, it seems, everywhere I turn for artistic or personal inspiration, many of those I鈥檝e admired or looked up to have taken their most hasty exit.

Wallace鈥 Plath鈥 Hemingway鈥 Rothko鈥 Ian Curtis鈥 Kurt Cobain鈥 Spalding Gray鈥 John Berryman鈥 Phil Ochs鈥 Diane Arbus鈥 Hunter S. Thompson鈥 Elliott Smith鈥 Virginia Woolf鈥 Robin Williams鈥

And then all the people you don鈥檛 know who I鈥檓 not going to name out of respect. Or worse, the ones you know who tried but didn鈥檛鈥攊t seems so wrong to say it鈥攕ucceed.

I can鈥檛 go on.

I鈥檒l go on.

It鈥檚 probably reckless, but when I run, I don鈥檛 carry a phone. Not on short runs. Especially not on long runs. It鈥檚 selfish, I know, but I chalk it up to self-preservation. It is literally the only space I have found where I鈥檓 not constantly worrying about other people. About losing them. About losing themselves.

Even still, they find me.


Just across from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds is a bus-, bike-, and police-only transitway connecting the University of Minnesota鈥檚 St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses. I bike and run there almost daily, drawn by the lack of traffic, the solitude. The fairgrounds, when the fair鈥檚 not there, is also among my favorite places to go. Like Giacometti鈥檚 Palace at 4 a.m., what walls there are are rendered almost abstract. The buildings, the roads鈥攁ll of it鈥攎ore suggestions or thoughts I can take or leave. Both the fairgrounds and the transitway often feel as though they wait just for me鈥攍ike the one stray cop with almost nothing but a single runner to police.

A couple of years ago, I was running on the transitway and found, at the apex of a bridge that crosses some defunct railroad tracks, a ragged bunch of plastic flowers wired to the fence.

His name, I read later in a newspaper story, was John. Many days had passed before anybody reported him missing. His roommate found a note after he had been gone a week.

Every time I pass the crest of that hill, nearly every day, I swear I see the ghosts of his footprints鈥攖he last steps he ever took, nothing much more than two smears on a rail鈥攁nd I can鈥檛 help but wonder if they鈥檙e not also just about my size.

Right there, within full view of the fair grounds, which also, because of his epic essay on the subject, reminds me of Wallace.

All these lives lost. Our heroes. Our friends. Our parents. Our children. Strangers. Ourselves.

If they couldn鈥檛 keep it together, how the fuck can I?

There are other places to run, yet I find myself here almost daily.


For me there is a rock and a hill. Sometimes that rock has been cycling, other times baking bread. At other times it was music, and skiing, and rock climbing, and always now, and for the foreseeable future, it is family life, raising a child, working, doing my best to love people who deserve to be loved by someone who is better at it than me. But alas, getting another is no easy proposition, either, and so I do my best, and then I run away, and then I come back.

Every time I run, dot-dot-dotting the trail, my footprints like so many ellipses in the dirt, I leave them all behind, and yet I carry them all with me. But because I can鈥檛 do anything about them when I鈥檓 five and ten and twenty miles away, they become abstractions I can manage and regard more platonically. Not in the superficial way, but the way in which each and every person in my life is a perfect thing if regarded with a pure heart and a clear head. And my head is only ever that clear, and my heart is only ever that pure, when I am far enough away from the people I love to not be able to do a single damn thing for them.

Within each run there is the potential to find those moments in the plasma, the nanoseconds between footfalls鈥攖he moments when we are neither touching the ground, nor leaping from it, nor falling back onto it.

In that way, a run is a perfect space. The fairgrounds in winter. A house where everyone is sleeping. The palace at 4 a.m. A space that is ultimately unsustainable, but what鈥檚 available there is holy, and also terrible, too, because it is something that only really exists at the effervescent verge of the void鈥攁 moment that cannot be preserved.

But within each run there is the potential to find those moments in the plasma, the nanoseconds between footfalls鈥攖he moments when we are neither touching the ground, nor leaping from it, nor falling back onto it.


Though I鈥檓 apparently capable of running upwards of 100 miles a week and 50 miles in a single day, the one game I absolutely loathe is tag.

On a recent vacation to a bucolic spot just north of Grand Marais, Minnesota鈥攐ur rented house with a huge lawn right on Lake Superior鈥攖ag was practically the only game my son wanted to play. Having to work a demanding job with regular hours, my wife is usually only able to play with him during the day on weekends, and so almost every time he demanded to play, she acquiesced, and round and round they would go, Frances, our spry Australian shepherd, frantic at their heels.

To me it looked like the perfect image of love鈥攚hat more, after all, do any of us want than to be perpetually chased after? Perpetually wanted?

But at the same time, there鈥檚 just something about the game I can鈥檛 stand. Yeah, sure, it probably has to do with the fact that even though I鈥檓 a stout enough runner, I hate sprinting, but I think it also has mostly to do with the fact that when I start running, I hate to stop.

And to my family, I hope, they can see a kind of love鈥攁t the very least a kind of way toward absolution for my many sins鈥攊n the fact that I do stop.

To me that鈥檚 the essence of ultrarunning. Knowing that life is a point-to-point race, but family life, no matter what the course looks like, has to be a circuit, and that, whether it鈥檚 a material finish line or simply a decision to return home, that鈥檚 the essence of it.

Stopping. Turning around. Going home.

Even though to pay for all these races is silly, at the end of each comes just a little bit more ballast鈥攁 belt buckle, a medal around my neck鈥攖o help keep me down and tell me to bring them back home so that I can give them all away to my boy.

Each ribboned medal is proof, not that I ran, but that I stopped.


I sail a good ten feet, maybe more, out over the trail in a kind of diagonal pirouette, and I know before I land that I鈥檓 going down hard. My right shoulder takes the lead, followed by my left hip, and I rag-doll for a few rocky feet on my shoulder, hip, and back until I slide to a halt, my face about an inch from a rock that鈥檚 big enough to be someone鈥檚 memorial.

For about three breaths, I assess whether standing up will do more harm than good, running a systems check to make sure I haven鈥檛 injured my spine or my head. Satisfied, I stand and work quickly through the rest of the moving parts. Other than a bruise already blooming on my hip and a scrape on my shoulder and my arm that鈥檚 severe enough to draw a little blood, and what is almost certainly a broken big toe, I鈥檓 hunky-dory. Hell, I didn鈥檛 even spill any water. I take a drink from my handheld bottle and start off downhill again. One marathon down, I think, one to go. Now I know what鈥檚 going to hurt, and for today anyway that鈥檚 one mystery I no longer have to court. Others remain.

The pain comes in waves. But it is, again, mine, something that belongs to me, like a suitcase that I pack for a trip and take to the ticket counter at the airport, where I can carry it on or I can check it, place it on a belt and watch it vanish, only to reappear later, outside my window, with everyone else鈥檚, where someone none of us has ever met will pick it up without even passing regard and fling it like a curse into the belly of the plane, where it will sit for some time, if not dormant, at least inert, until we arrive later鈥攚e know not when鈥攁nd must of course claim it as our own, but it鈥檚 better than lugging it with us, constantly, clinging to it like the flotation devices they tell us will save our lives in the unlikely event of a water landing. The pain comes in waves, I think, I know, I love, as I start running again. The pain comes and waves, I say. And today, anyway, I wave back.

is the author of Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House into Our Home Sweet Home. He teaches creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.