Eat and Run Part 2

12 teaspoons coconut oil 4 cups raw oat groats, soaked in water for 6 to 8 hours or overnight, then drained 1 apple, cored and sliced cup dried coconut flakes 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 2 tablespoons maple syrup or 1 tablespoon agave nectar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract teaspoon sea salt cup raw almonds, chopped cup pumpkin seeds, chopped cup raisins Preheat the oven to 250F. Grease two baking sheets with the oil.

Process the oats, apple, coconut, cinnamon, sweetener, vanilla, and salt in a food processor for 30 seconds. Sc.r.a.pe sides, process for another 30 seconds, and repeat one more time. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl and combine with the almonds, pumpkin seeds, and raisins. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Spread the mixture in a thin layer on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 2 to 4 hours, turning the granola over a few times with a spatula, until dried and crisp. You can set the oven temperature higher and reduce the baking time, but be sure to check frequently to avoid burning.

Cool and stir in the raisins. Serve with non-dairy milk and sliced banana or fresh berries. Keeps for 3 to 4 weeks in an airtight container.

MAKES 810 SERVINGS Hemp Milk cup raw sh.e.l.led hemp seeds 4 cups water teaspoon sea salt 12 teaspoons agave nectar or maple syrup (optional) Place the hemp seeds, water, and salt in a blender and blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until smooth and milky. For sweeter milk, add agave nectar or maple syrup to taste. Hemp milk keeps for 4 to 5 days in the refrigerator.

MAKES 5 CUPS.

5. The Pride of the Cake Eaters.

RUNNING AROUND WITH DUSTY, 199293.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

-KURT COBAIN.

Dusty's dad spent his days at the bars, and his mom-who worked at the Lutheran church-would give Dusty a quarter and tell him to go play. That was when he was five years old. He rode his BMX bike to the Y and spent the day there, swimming, running around, getting into trouble. When Dusty was twelve, his dad drove the family car to a bar and never came back. Soon after that he divorced Dusty's mom, and Dusty didn't see his father for years. His mom started dating a guy who hated Dusty and kicked him around. Dusty didn't spend much time at home.

I, on the other hand, was either studying, helping my mom around the house, skiing, lifting weights (something I learned about at ski camp), or hanging out with my girlfriend. (It seemed that girls liked athletes.) Dusty drank. All the kids knew that. We also knew (or thought we knew) that he mouthed off to cops and seduced not just high school girls but barmaids and coeds. He didn't just beat people in races but called them names, laughed at them, and insulted their families when he did it. He had no discipline and was wasting his prodigious talent. We all knew that: cake eaters, greasers, and rural rednecks alike.

But in the spring of 1992, when Dusty and I were seniors, I learned how much I didn't know.

Dusty and I stayed together at the USSA Junior Nationals in Rumford, Maine. There were cross-country skiers from every state where it was a sport. The conditions couldn't have been worse. It was 55 degrees, and the snow was like frozen yogurt. The next day it rained 2 inches, and a cold snap the following night froze the trails into skating rinks. But every day the coaches would put us through training exercises. And every day Dusty would talk back. He wanted to know why we were doing this drill or that drill. He wanted to know why we weren't doing more kilometers. He told all of us that the coaches were a joke. He told the coaches they were a joke. I couldn't believe they didn't kick him out the first day. I had never talked back to an adult. I had never questioned a coach. He read my face and told me to relax, they were just a bunch of p.u.s.s.ies anyway. He called me "Jurker" and a "dumb Polack," but the way he said it, I didn't feel insulted.

The first day of compet.i.tion, in a 10K race, Dusty took a really bad fall on an icy hairpin turn with only 2K to go. He took some time getting up, and I knew something was wrong because he was in third place and closing. He calmly announced that he had broken his ankle. The coaches told him to suck it up, no one had broken an ankle. They knew all that they needed to know about Dusty. He was just trying to get attention. They told him to get a good night's sleep and to be ready to race the next day.

In his room that night, when he took off his boot, his foot was so purple it was almost black. It looked like a black volleyball, but Dusty didn't say anything. There were no wisecracks. I was actually a little disappointed. Maybe the guy wasn't such a bada.s.s after all. When he showed up for his start the next day, his ankle was so swollen, he couldn't even pull his boot on. But he tried. He didn't say a word, just tried to yank that boot up so he could race. Finally one of the coaches from another team, who happened to be a doctor, saw what was going on and yelled at him to stop, that they were driving to the hospital. Dusty got X-rayed and sure enough, it was broken.

That's when I realized I had been wrong about Dusty. He was one tough b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The rest of the week was vintage Dusty. First he snuck into the Alaskan team's room and stole their Nintendo game. When they found out, he told them they were p.u.s.s.ies and launched a water fight with them that lasted all week. Every night Dusty would hold forth at the hotel bar over c.o.kes and ginger ales. He told stories about getting chased through the woods by cops and their K-9 units. He talked about all the women he'd slept with. He told us about how he had befriended a guy who knew which janitors' closets were open at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and how he'd steal ninety rolls of toilet paper at a time, then TP the houses of people he wanted to p.i.s.s off. He said he never ran out of houses. He said he once ran 18 miles from his house to the start of the Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, then ran the marathon, then ran the 5 miles home.

I said "yes sir" to adults and Dusty asked coaches, "Why the h.e.l.l are you making us do this?" I wore b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts and Dusty shaved half his skull. Our differences were obvious to anyone who was looking. What wasn't so apparent was the hunger we shared, the way we defined ourselves by our effort. When Dusty regaled everyone with outlandish tales of superhuman endurance, they all hooted and hollered. Except me. Dusty was hilarious, but everyone thought he was totally full of s.h.i.+t. I wasn't so sure. He had something that allowed him to keep going when everyone else stopped. I wasn't sure what it was, but I wanted it.

When graduation rolled around, with some money I'd saved from the Dry Dock Bar I bought my grandpa Ed's beige Toyota Corolla so I could drive the 2 miles to work rather than run or ski. I was president of the National Honor Society, and I had read Solzhenitsyn and Th.o.r.eau. I was thinking about life beyond Proctor and Duluth and Minnesota-life way beyond our house on the dead-end road-but I couldn't quite see it. I definitely didn't know how I'd get there. I wanted to ski cross-country in college and to study physical therapy. I had become pretty good at helping my mom and had become friends with her physical therapist. Steve Carlin was a real down-to-earth guy, not like the doctor who wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine. Steve would help get my mom up, and when she didn't want to, he would help me motivate her. She had a big wound on her hip from the surgery after her fall, but that didn't scare me. Steve said that was another reason I'd be good at physical therapy-I wasn't squeamish.

In my valedictory speech I said, "I would like to leave you with four messages to help you and others benefit from life." (I still have the speech.) "First of all, I ask you to be different.

"Second, find a way to help others rather than thinking solely of yourself.

"Third, everyone is capable of achieving. Never let anyone discourage you when trying to pursue a goal or a dream.

"And finally, do things while you're young. Be sure to pursue your dreams and goals even if they seem impossible."

It all sounded good, but the truth was, I wasn't sure what my own goals and dreams were beyond skiing and a job as a physical therapist. I knew I wanted to go to college, but my dad had made it clear I would have to pay my own way. I dreamed of going to Dartmouth, but the Ivy League was financially out of the question. I ended up choosing the College of St. Scholastica, my mom's alma mater. It was a small private liberal arts school and had a highly regarded physical therapy program. Best (and worst) of all, it would allow me to stay at home, to continue helping around the house. Mom's spasticity was getting worse, and Steve had stopped coming as much. There just wasn't a lot he could do anymore. When I started taking cla.s.ses, it was a relief to be out of the house. (That might sound like an awful thing to say, but it was the truth.) Only one in five kids from Proctor attended college, so most of my friends stayed around and took jobs. I took a job, too, at the NordicTrack shop at the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth. I would put on a polo s.h.i.+rt and demonstrate and sell NordicTrack machines. I was polite, and I knew about the movements of cross-country ski machines. Nick the Greek, who worked a few evening s.h.i.+fts, wanted to fix me up with his daughter. I took medieval history and chemistry and freshman composition. I ate at McDonald's at the mall at least four times a week. I'd get two McChicken sandwiches, extra-large fries, and a c.o.ke. As a kid, I had rarely had fast food. Between my mom's dedication to cooking and my dad's dedication to saving, it was a luxury we couldn't afford. So being able to buy a burger or chicken sandwich whenever I wanted felt like freedom. And it tasted good. While salads and veggie stir-fries might have been okay for some people, I was an athlete, and everyone said serious jocks needed serious protein. That meant meat.

I ran cross-country in the fall but only lasted about half the season, three meets. It was a total junk show. The baseball coach was coaching the team. We wore uniforms that the girls' team had thrown out a decade or two earlier. To stay in shape for the coming ski season, I ran on my own or, more and more often, with Dusty.

We would drive to ski races in my car, and while I would be getting gas, he would be shuffling out of the convenience store attached to the station with a package of baloney or potato chips in his pants. I'm surprised we never got arrested. While I drove down the freeway in my old wagon, Dusty would hang out of the pa.s.senger window and high-five fellow skiers on their way to races. He loved the all-you-can-eat buffets. He taught me how to stuff my jacket full of slices from G.o.dfather's Pizza after our stomachs could hold no more.

When Dusty wasn't stealing stuff, getting into trouble, or running, he was working at the Ski Hut, which sold ski gear. He would ride his bike to work (his skis strapped to his bike) in 15-degree weather. That guy could endure.

And of course Dusty always beat me on our runs. He was faster and stronger, and I-I remembered that broken ankle-would never be that tough. We both knew it. But we both knew that I was changing. Dusty skied a 90K training day every year during winter break, the week after Christmas. It was called "the 90K Day." The guy who organized it was Rick Calais, the coach at St. Paul Central High School, whom everybody called "the Ricker." Only the hardest of the hard-core skiers did it. The last year of high school, Dusty asked if I wanted to join him. Of course he beat me, but afterward he told me that he and the Ricker had been looking back every minute or so of the last 10 miles, amazed at how close I was. He knew I had never had blazing speed, and he couldn't believe I was keeping up. To this day the Ricker says, "The 90K Day is what made the Jurker!"

Dusty still gave me s.h.i.+t-about college, about what a nerd I looked like in my polo s.h.i.+rt at NordicTrack, about how straight I was. I envied him. I wondered what it would be like to have no responsibility, no worries. I wondered what it would be like to have his life.

One night in March of freshman year, I came home a little later than I had said I would. My dad had told me that when I said I would be home at a certain time, I had better be home then. I told him he had to realize I had a life outside the house. I was working full time and going to school and I had a lot going on, but he didn't want to hear it. He said, "If you don't like it here, you can go live someplace else. This is the way we do things around here."

I was sure he wasn't serious about my living someplace else. But he was. He really meant it. He said, "I don't want you around here anymore." We were both yelling at each other and Mom was crying. Even when she was well, I don't know if she could have intervened. I had a chemistry test the next day, so I grabbed my books-I didn't even take any clothes-and threw them in my bag and walked out. I drove to an overlook at a nearby rise called Thompson Hill, pulled into a rest area overlooking Duluth, and just sat there. It was freezing. I didn't think about where I was going to live or how my life was changing. I knew what I had to do. I pulled my car below one of the rest area lights. I pulled out my chemistry book and opened it. I started studying.

Long Run Pizza Bread When I was an omnivorous teenager in northern Minnesota, the idea of pizza without cheese would have sounded like winter without snow: interesting, but impossible. As a plant-eating adult, finding a tasty vegan pizza is about as easy as clocking a three-hour marathon, off the couch (with no training): very rare. That's why I make my own pizza. This one is not only delicious and hearty, it's incredibly fast and easy. The secret ingredient is the nutritional yeast-aka hippie dust-yellow flakes that provide a b.u.t.tery, cheesy flavor to anything they're sprinkled on. As a bonus, they pack lots of B vitamins, including the crucial B-12.

Tofu "Feta"

8 ounces firm tofu 2 tablespoons light miso (yellow or white) 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast 1 teaspoon lemon juice or apple cider vinegar Drain and lightly squeeze the water from the tofu. In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients and mash with a potato masher or wooden spoon until they are thoroughly mixed and form a feta-like consistency. Set aside while you make the sauce.

Sauce 1 6-ounce can tomato paste 1 teaspoon onion powder teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning 1 teaspoon sea salt cup water teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional) In a small bowl, combine the tomato paste, onion powder, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and water, and mix well. Add the crushed red pepper if you like a spicier sauce. Set aside.

Crust Use any fresh or day-old bread of your choice (my favorite is olive bread).

1 loaf bread Slice the bread into - to 1-inch slices.

Toppings The vibrant color and pungent flavors make spinach, sundried tomatoes, and olives a favorite combination. Feel free to subst.i.tute any 3 to 5 of your favorite veggie toppings.

1 cups chopped fresh spinach cup chopped sundried tomatoes cup chopped kalamata olives Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 425F. To a.s.semble the pizza, spread a thin layer of sauce on each piece of sliced bread. Next, add a small amount of the spinach, followed by the tomatoes and olives. Last, crumble the tofu "feta" on top. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the bottom of the bread and the toppings are very lightly browned. Leftovers can be cooled to room temperature, placed in small plastic bags, and refrigerated overnight for the next long run or lunch.

MAKES 46 SERVINGS.

6. The Wisdom of Hippie Dan.

MINNESOTA VOYAGEUR 50, 1994.

The more you know, the less you need.

-YVON CHOUINARD.

People are always asking me the same question. Why, when I could stay in shape with a 25-minute jog, do I train for 5 hours at a time? Why, when I could run a perfectly civilized marathon, would I choose to run four of them back-to-back? Why, instead of gliding over shaded tracks, would I take on Death Valley in the height of summer? Am I m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic? Addicted to endorphins? Is there something deep down inside that I am running from? Or am I seeking something I never had?

At the beginning of college I ran because of Dusty. It was the summer after my freshman year. Dusty was living with guys in a place they called the House of Gravity. One of his roommates was a champion downhill skier, another was a world-cla.s.s mountain biker. Dusty was bunking in the attic, where the temperature could drop to 20 degrees, and slept in a down winter sleeping bag from the army surplus store. They called it the House of Gravity because they smoked from a gigantic bong so often that much of the time they couldn't get up. They decided the field of gravity was greater in that house than anywhere else. They even attached the bong to a rope so they could swing it from one person to another.

Meanwhile, I was staying with the Obrechts, the family that had re-formed the Proctor High School boys' ski team. To see my mom and little brother and sister, I had to sneak back to the house when I knew my dad was working. Dusty and his housemates lived day-to-day. I couldn't stop thinking about the future. I knew my skiing career was coming to an end; I didn't have Dusty's talent, and while I could hone my technique until a casual observer would think I was born in Norway, I also had figured out that guys like Dusty-and there were a lot of them at the upper levels of cross-country skiing-could almost always sprint faster than I could. No matter how hard I worked, I could never attain the pure speed that others could. I think whoever-or whatever-gave me determination and a good work ethic forgot to throw in fast twitch muscles. Then Dusty called and told me he had won a 50-mile race called the Minnesota Voyageur. He said he was going to run it next year, too, and asked whether I wanted to train with him. Of course I said yes. (I always said yes to Dusty.) I told myself it was to get in shape for the next ski season. But in reality Dusty was living the life I envied: free, fun, and fast. He was a dirtbag, and I wanted to be a dirtbag, too.

So we dirtbags trained. We would run for 2, 2 hours, Dusty giving me s.h.i.+t the whole way. Jurker this and Jurker that, telling me I studied too hard, that I thought too much, I needed to loosen up, who cared if I was a f.u.c.king valedictorian. We picked up mud along the way and flung it at each other with various insults. Then one day, just when I was getting used to running distance, Dusty said we should mix up the training, and he threw bike riding into the equation. My experience riding was on the hunk of metal my dad had welded for me. Dusty promised it would be fun. He persuaded a friend of his to sell me his old bike-a Celeste green steel Bianchi. It was too small for me, so Dusty helped me put on an oversized mountain bike seat post. We'd go 70, 100 miles. Dusty knew how to ride, knew all the mechanics. He had raced against George Hincapie a few years earlier; Hincapie would eventually compete in the Tour de France. There I was, my giant seat post jabbing the seat into my nuts every time I hit a rock, ready to quit every 5 minutes. Except I didn't. Maybe because it was such a relief to be away from studying and the sadness of my family, from watching my mom deteriorate and sensing my dad get sadder and more angry. I didn't have the skills, and I didn't have the bike, but I discovered something important during those rides with Dusty. I learned that even though I was a hack, even though I didn't know anything about riding-I hadn't read a single book on it, hadn't studied a single essay on spinning or gear ratios-I could gut out those long rides. I wondered what else I could gut out.

I moved into the dorms my soph.o.m.ore year. I signed up for a cla.s.s with a Sister Mary Richard Boo, who was a notorious harda.s.s, even among St. Scholastica's harda.s.s nuns. The first day of cla.s.s she told us to get Crime and Punishment. We had five days to read it. It was a struggle between my other cla.s.ses, my 30-hour-a-week NordicTrack job, sneaking home to help my mom, and training for what I was sure would be my last season of cross-country skiing.

I looked at my cla.s.smates (the student body was 70 percent female), laughing on their way to cla.s.s. I didn't think many of them were on scholars.h.i.+p. They always seemed to have plenty of time. It seemed to me their life was school and intramural sports and parties. I felt out of place. It wasn't the first time.

It didn't help when Dusty would come over from the House of Gravity reeking of marijuana, hair down to his shoulders, making googly eyes at the coeds. He'd say, "Hey, maaaaaaaaaaaaaan," and they'd blush. They all asked me, "Who's your stoner friend?" Dusty was always a hit with the ladies. One day he slapped a sticker on my door that read: THANK YOU FOR POT SMOKING. I left it up, and the visiting students would laugh as they pa.s.sed by, but I'm sure their parents didn't.

If someone had asked me at the time what I liked about Dusty, I probably would have shrugged. He was my friend, and that was enough. Now, though, I suspect it was because he embodied the worldview that was pulling at me. I had started delving into existential literature in high school and was continuing in college. Writers like Sartre and Camus described the plight of the outsider who felt like a stranger in an incomprehensible world. Hermann Hesse wrote about the search for the sacred amid chaos and suffering. The existentialists did not believe in living life from the neck up. They challenged me to reject artifice and the expectations of others, to create a meaningful life.

Back then, while my life never strayed from the conventional lines of socially approved behavior, the people I chose to hang out with created their own conventions-people like my uncle, my mom's younger brother, nicknamed "the Communist," who wore a Malcolm X cap, demonstrated to protect the rights of the homeless, slept on the beaches of Hawaii, worked on the Alaska pipeline, and usually had a copy of Mao's Little Red Book in his pocket. And people like Dusty, of course, who now had a puke-green Chevy van emblazoned with a b.u.mper sticker that read: HEY, MISTER, DON'T LAUGH, YOUR DAUGHTER MIGHT BE IN HERE.

The most unconventional of all might have been the Minnesotan known as Hippie Dan, a modern Henry David Th.o.r.eau.

Dan Proctor was forty-five years old when I met him in 1992 at the co-op where he worked and which he co-owned, the Positively Third Street Bakery. He was 5-foot-10, all legs and long, gangly arms. He wore a T-s.h.i.+rt that said BIKES NOT BOMBS, partly hidden by a beard that would have looked at home on a Hasid. He moved as if he was dancing at a Grateful Dead concert. His hair was plaited into two braids that hung over each shoulder. He talked fast-about the environment, and wheatgra.s.s juice and whole grains, and living a mindful life. He spoke with a Scandinavian tw.a.n.g, and when he laughed, he sounded like a loon at dusk.

Hippie Dan made Thunder Cookies that were like chocolate chip cookies on steroids, with oatmeal and whole wheat flour and peanut b.u.t.ter and tons of b.u.t.ter. They were the best cookies I had ever tasted. (Rumor has it he once ran a secret bakery in the back of the shop, long since closed, and Dusty and his stoner pals used to sample those goods a lot.) He was also a local running legend. People said that when he was younger, he would ride his bike to the local races. Then, wearing blue jeans, he would leave all the people wearing shorts gasping as he shot ahead of them. Even Dusty seemed in awe of Hippie Dan. Dan had been running for twenty years. He didn't have a car or a phone. Eventually he would get rid of his refrigerator. He talked about solar energy and living off the grid and minimizing impact-he produced one small garbage can of trash over an entire year. He also talked a lot about fossil fuels and the foolishness of humans. Essentially, he was trying to lessen his impact on the earth long before that became the trend. Some people called him the Unabaker.

Once Hippie Dan invited me to run with him. We followed his yellow labs, Zoot and Otis, and he told me to watch how effortlessly they ran. He encouraged me to notice how they seemed connected to their surroundings. Simplicity, he said, simplicity and a connection to the land made us happy and granted us freedom. As a bonus, it made us better runners. I didn't know it, but it was a lesson I would learn years later in a hidden canyon in Mexico.

I longed for happiness and freedom as much as the next guy, probably even more, considering my schoolwork and jobs and the situation at home. I could see the wisdom in a simpler-is-better philosophy. But simple for me had never been, well, simple. I had always tackled problems by study and focus. Consequently, when I began training with Dusty for his upcoming Voyageur, I suggested we read up on race strategy and training techniques. Maybe, I said, we should do some intervals or alternate sprints and jogs. Maybe we should count our strides. I think I mentioned heart rate monitors and lactate thresholds. Dusty told me I was full of s.h.i.+t. He said I thought too much. Do monster distances, he said, work your tail off, and that's what will save your a.s.s. He mimicked the Ricker's voice as he beamed, "If you want to win, get out and train, and then train some more!"

So we spent that spring chugging monster distances that lasted 2, 3, 4 hours, runs all through and around Duluth. Dusty would come by and knock on my dorm door, and I'd take a break from The Brothers Karamazov, or War and Peace, or upper-level physics and anatomy and physiology, and we'd head out. We ran on paths that would narrow to trails and on trails that would narrow to almost nothing. We were running where deer bounded, where coyotes rambled. We ran through calf-deep snow and streams swollen with spring melt so cold that after a while I couldn't feel my feet. Somewhere between my agonized, gasping high school forays to Adolph Store and now, running had turned into something other than training. It had turned into a kind of meditation, a place where I could let my mind-usually occupied with school, thoughts of the future, or concerns about my mom-float free. My body was doing by itself what I had always struggled to make it do. I wasn't stuck on my dead-end street. No bully was spitting in my face. I felt as if I was flying. Dusty knew all the animal paths in the area, and after that spring, I knew them, too. We ran free all spring, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. We ran the way we always ran, Dusty in the lead, me behind. I knew my place, and it was fine. It was all quite fine.

I know a novelist who says he was never happier than when he was working on his first book, which turned out to be so bad that he never showed the ma.n.u.script to anyone. He said his joy came from the way time stopped and from all he learned about himself and his craft during those sessions. Running with Dusty that spring-not racing, running-I understood what the writer had been talking about.

I also thought I might do all right in a race. I entered Duluth's Grandma's Marathon in June, and all the training with Dusty paid off. I finished in 2:54. Not bad. I thought that, with focus and training, I could get faster.

Instead, with Dusty's recommendation, I decided to go farther. I would enter my first ultra.

The day of the 1994 Voyageur we were both ready, and when Dusty-the defending champion-shot off the starting line, I shot off, too. Dusty didn't call me Jurker or give me s.h.i.+t about my studies. We ran, and not just free. We ran hard. Minnesota in late July can be a muggy 90 degrees and muddy, and this day it was both of those, but we kept cranking. Then, at about mile 25, in a particularly gooey mud puddle, Dusty's left shoe came off. He stopped to fetch it, and for a second I hesitated. How was I supposed to run without Dusty in front of me? He was the legend. I was the sidekick. He was the runner. I was just a stubborn Polack. I wasn't sure what to do, so I did what I had been doing. I kept running. I ran for a few seconds, then a few minutes, and I looked back over my shoulder and didn't see Dusty. I kept running.

Maybe my ski career was over. Maybe my dad would never be happy. Maybe my mom wasn't going to get better, and maybe I'd always lead a dual life, split between diligence and the wild ways that Dusty represented. But at the moment I crossed the finish line, it didn't matter. I had completed one of the hardest things I had ever attempted, and I told myself "never again." I lay face down in the gra.s.s, panting, happy but feeling sick, totally drained. I didn't have anything left. Was this what being a runner meant? Putting everything into a single race until you had nothing left to give? I had sensed a long time earlier that I had a talent for gaining speed when others gave ground, and I had wondered how that talent might ever serve me. In the rocky hills outside Duluth, bouncing on my cruel, nut-crunching green Bianchi, I had realized that no matter how much something hurt, I could gut it out. I wondered what that skill would ever be good for. I finished second in my first Voyageur, beating Dusty (who finished third) for the first time.

Hippie Dan had told me that we all had our own path, that the trick was to find it.

I think I had found mine.

Easier, not Harder Coming from the flatlands, I had to learn to run uphill. Sharpening that skill, I improved all my running. You can, too, with or without hills. Next time you're running, count the times your right foot strikes the ground in 20 seconds. Multiply by three and you'll have your stride rate per minute. (One stride equals two steps, so your steps per minute will be twice your stride rate.) Now comes the good part: Speed up until you're running at 85 to 90 strides per minute. The most common mistake runners make is overstriding: taking slow, big steps, reaching far forward with the lead foot and landing on the heel. This means more time on the ground, which means the vulnerable heel hits the ground with more force on landing, creating more impact on the joints. Training at a stride rate of 85 to 90 is the quickest way to correct this problem. Short, light, quick steps will minimize impact force and keep you running longer, safer. It also will make you a more efficient runner. Studies have shown that nearly all elite runners competing at distances between 3,000 meters and marathon distances are running at 85 to 90-plus stride rates.) I used to train runners with a metronome. Nowadays there are plenty of websites that list music by BPM (beats per minute)-try http://cycle.jog.fm/. Either 90 or 180 BPM songs will do the trick.

Green Power Pre-Workout Drink Hippie Dan first taught me the importance of greens like spirulina and wheatgra.s.s. Spirulina is a green algae said to have been carried into battle by Aztec warriors. Used for centuries as a weight-loss aid and immune-booster, it has lately been studied and shown promising results as a performance enhancer for long-distance runners. Because spirulina is marketed as a dietary supplement rather than a food, the FDA does not regulate its production; buy it only from a health food store and a brand you trust.

Packed with protein (spirulina is a complete protein) and rich in vitamins and minerals, this smoothie is an excellent source of nutrition. For a little extra carbohydrate boost, replace 1 cup water with 1 cup apple or grape juice.

2 bananas 1 cup frozen or fresh mango or pineapple chunks 4 cups water 2 teaspoons spirulina powder 1 teaspoon miso Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend for 1 to 2 minutes, until the mixture is completely smooth. Drink 20 to 30 ounces (2 to 3 cups) 15 to 45 minutes before a run.

MAKES TWO 20-OUNCE SERVINGS.

7. "Let the Pain Go Out Your Ears"

MINNESOTA VOYAGEUR 50, 1995 AND 1996.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

-GEORGE BERNARD SHAW.

I met the woman who helped turn me into a vegan in line at McDonald's. She was waiting for a refill of a Diet c.o.ke. I was picking up my lunch. Leah was blonde and smiled a lot. Because she had what seemed like a million pairs of Birkenstocks, some of the guys at the mall called her Birkenstock Girl. She worked at a clothing store, was a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and rode her bike everywhere. And she was mostly vegetarian (which made her eating at McDonald's sort of odd, I suppose). She and I hit it off, and between Leah and Hippie Dan and some of the books he was giving me (like Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, about how the loss of agriculture is the loss of culture, how we've gone from knowing where our food comes from to not even thinking that the packages of chicken we buy in the grocery store come from anywhere), I was changing.

I began to put Havarti cheese and spinach on my sandwiches instead of summer sausage. I cut down on breakfast sausage egg biscuits, but not much. I would make granola once in a while. I cooked brown rice and broccoli in my grandmother's Litton microwave (my mom gave it to me when I moved into my own apartment). I made the rice just as she had taught me.

Still, I was an athlete and a young man who felt invincible. So when I was a junior, beginning to embrace the earth-conscious sensibilities of people like Hippie Dan, I was also shoving down two McChicken sandwiches and a large order of fries (as well as the occasional Big Mac) at least four times a week. I figured I needed the protein and that a little junk food never hurt anyone. I loved to grill and was always cooking up sausage, steaks, bratwurst, pork chops, and whatever other animal flesh I could find, all on a giant grill I had bought at a garage sale and lugged to the apartment I shared with my pal Damon Holmes. I was the grill master. Besides, I worried that a plant-based diet would ensure round-the-clock bland food.

It's not that I was totally ignorant. The brown rice had helped me carb up before a race. I had tasted the wonders of granola. The salads and other vegetables at the Team Birkie ski camp helped my endurance. And Hippie Dan had been trying to sell me on the nutritional and ecological benefits of drinking wheatgra.s.s juice and eating more fruits and veggies. Serious student that I was (and frugal), I even planted a little wheatgra.s.s.

I promised myself to keep reading up on the whole plant-based diet thing, but in the meantime, Damon and I spent many a night on our back porch, feet on the banister, barbecued steak (or burgers, or brats) in our mitts, downing a tin of Planters Cheese b.a.l.l.s and a box of Malted Milk b.a.l.l.s in a single sitting.

I was occasionally hunting and fis.h.i.+ng and I was still committed to protein and what I thought was the fastest way to get it-through eating dead animals. I didn't want to risk running my second Voyageur without it.

I needn't have worried about getting enough protein. The average 19- to 30-year-old American consumes 91 grams a day, nearly twice the recommended daily amount (56 grams for an adult male, 46 for an adult female). I wasn't aware that too much protein stresses the kidneys (an organ long-distance runners worry about in the best of times, due to our careful attention to water consumption, retention, and elimination) and can leach calcium from the bones. I didn't quite believe that you could get an adequate supply of protein-even if you're an ultrarunner-from plants. I certainly didn't think it would be easy.

So I had the occasional sausage egg biscuit, the random burger. Like it or not, I was still a Minnesota redneck, a hunter and fisherman. I was still my father's son. When Leah would show up with organic apples or milk and I would see the price tag, I went berserk. I'd yell, "You paid how much for that? What's in it, gold dust?"

Leah and I saw a lot of each other that year. I had landed a second job at a running store called Austin Jarrow, named for Jarrow (who had legally gotten rid of his last name, like Madonna) and Bill Austin, both local standout runners. With my two jobs and Leah and studies and at least 2 hours of running every day, I didn't have time for much else.

I stopped visiting my mom and brother and sister very often. Even if I had wanted to, I wasn't willing to go there when my dad was home. I often talked to Mom on the phone. She told me that Dusty called there sometimes, too, and that she was always glad to hear from him, but that Dusty had a hard time understanding her. Her vocal cords were getting weak from the MS.

In the spring of 1995, my mom told me she was moving to a nursing home. She had decided it would be better that way.

As angry as I had been at my father, it was nothing compared to how I felt when she delivered that news. How could he let this happen? A nursing home! She was only forty-four. What if I had never left? Could I have prevented this? Again, I had questions for which there were no answers.

She told me it was for the best, that I shouldn't worry, that I should study hard, that everything would be okay.

So I studied hard and ran harder. Dusty noticed. I was tearing up ground. I was a.s.saulting hills and attacking animal trails, the more weed-choked the better.

I ran the game trails Dusty had shown me and across rivers. I ran through rain and snow and blistering heat. Now I was the one in front, and Dusty was right behind me. He kept saying the same thing, over and over: "Let the pain go out your ears, Jurker, let the pain out your ears."