Finding Ultra

by Rich Roll

  And sure enough, it did. Only a week later I found myself at Jamba Juice, awaiting a large carrot-and-orange concoction after a morning run, when I casually picked up a copy of Competitor magazine lying on the countertop. One of those free multisport-focused periodicals with race schedules and obligatory running-shoe reviews found in most large cities, a piece in the magazine featured a picture of a large and impossibly muscled African-American man running shirtless in Hawaii. Entranced, I began reading the amazing story of a Navy SEAL known as David Goggins.

  A former football player and power lifter who once tipped the scales at 290 pounds, Goggins decided to honor the tragic death of several of his fellow SEALs and raise funds for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation by competing in some of the most difficult endurance challenges in the world. “When I joined the military, I couldn’t run to the mailbox,” he once famously said. Yet in 2006, he nonetheless completed an event I’d never heard of called Badwater—a 135-mile jaunt through Death Valley in heat so intense that it melts the rubber right off your running shoes.

  And three months after Badwater, he participated in a mysterious event called the Ultraman World Championships. A three-day stage race circumnavigating the entire Big Island of Hawaii, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, the event entailed swimming 6.2 miles, cycling 260 miles, and, on the third day, running 52.4 miles. More than twice the distance of an Ironman! And despite having never before competed in a single triathlon or cycling event, and riding much of the course on a borrowed bicycle in his running shoes, Goggins finished second overall. Unbelievable.

  “I’m nobody special,” he often repeats. And his mantra isn’t false humility. He believes it. Yet his story struck a major chord with me. The farthest thing from a born runner or triathlete, I identified.

  But what really captured my imagination was Goggins’s vivid description of Ultraman. No prize money. No closed roads and entirely self-supported (by your own crew). Nary a shred of media coverage, let alone television time. More spiritual quest, it seemed, than spectacle race.

  Ultraman. No question about it, I’d found my goal.

  I must be mentally ill was my next thought, a waterfall of self-doubt working overtime to douse my fragile flame of inspiration. The idea of completing an Ironman was lunacy enough given my current state of endurance acumen. But Ultraman? Even considering it was over the top. Yet for the next week, I could think of nothing else. What most worried me was the implausibility of someone with my utter lack of credentials ever securing entry. Limited to just thirty-five carefully vetted international competitors each year, Ultraman was, and to this day remains, invitation-only.

  Nonetheless, against all logic and reason, I knew with utter conviction that somehow, someway, I’d be lining up to participate in the event come November—then just six short months away. The first step was picking up the phone. I called Jane Bockus, Ultraman’s grande dame and chief gatekeeper.

  After I introduced myself and explained my fascination with the race, I received the predictable inquiry: “So what have you done?” Jane asked.

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t lie. “But if you can find it in your heart to let me in, I’ll be ready. I promise.”

  There is earnestness. And then there is idiocy. My words fell somewhere in between. Jane made no promises, but she didn’t say no, either. It was all I needed. By hook or by crook, I’d find my way into the race.

  First, though, there would be the distressing business of breaking this secret news. Julie’s response was predictably optimistic. “I think it sounds awesome!” But that didn’t mean she knew anything about undertaking a challenge of this magnitude.

  Then came the terrifying call to Chris. “I found my race,” I began, my voice trembling in expectation of the inevitable reality check. “Ultraman.”

  “Whoa!” he responded with a gleeful chuckle, followed by an interminable silence. I braced myself for the stern rebuke. You are way out of your league.… It will never happen.… But to his great credit, Chris swallowed what had to be prodigious doubt and left me with one simple comment: “Okay, let’s do it!”

  Now a man possessed, I continued to pester Jane over the next several weeks, making sure she understood just how serious I was. Later, Chris even e-mailed her in support, letting her know he’d have me ready. And finally, she relented.

  I was in.

  THE ROAD TO ULTRAMAN

  So it began. With fewer than six months to steel my body, mind, and soul for this seemingly insurmountable adventure, I had absolutely zero room for error.

  Chris and I began by building my training volume slowly to ensure against injury, no small possibility given my body’s previous dormant decades. At first, it was around ten hours a week. A couple one-hour swims. Two or three Z2 runs of only an hour to ninety minutes maximum. A longer bike ride on Saturday morning, anywhere from three to four steady hours. And a longer run on Sunday, generally about 90 to 110 minutes in length.

  In a perfect world, I would have supplemented my rotation of swimming, cycling, and running with a wide variety of cross-training and rehabilitative pursuits: a modicum of weight lifting to improve overall strength, which wanes with age, particularly past forty; weekly massage and use of foam rollers to remove scar-tissue buildup and enhance blood flow to aid in muscle recovery and further ensure against injury; yoga for flexibility; core workouts to improve body stability and enhance my swim, bike, and run form; and spinal adjustments to correct body alignment. These are all things I now incorporate into my regime. But there are only twenty-four hours in a day. And back in 2008, I simply didn’t have the time. With that six-month clock ticking, I was compelled to devote all available training hours to one of the three specific race disciplines. And I almost never missed a workout. Not because I sought Chris’s approval. But because I was terrified.

  By mid-summer, my body was beginning to acclimate to the volume, and the hours increased—up to fifteen hours on average, with the occasional eighteen- to twenty-hour week, always followed by a light rest week of easy workouts and reduced volume. It wasn’t until September that the volume escalated to a ceiling of twenty-five hours. But the approach always remained the same—a prescription of steady Z2 medicine. The midweek rides and swims just got a bit longer. I never ran two days in a row—a key reason I was able to avoid a run-related injury—but Tuesdays turned into double-run days. That Saturday ride just got longer and longer. And the same for the Sunday run.

  True to Chris’s word, unwavering adherence to the plan began to pay significant dividends. I found myself able to run quicker without my heart rate escalating. What started at a 10:15-minute-per-mile run pace at 145 beats per minute was soon a 9:30 pace. Before long, an 8:30 pace morphed to 8:00—all within the sacrosanct Z2 range. But the bulk of my training was spent on the bike. Because the body can ride many more hours than it can run or swim, it’s the optimal and most time-efficient way to build endurance fitness without risking leg and shoulder injuries.

  And by sticking to the ethos of Z2, I was surprised to never experience the debilitating fatigue I’d grown accustomed to as a collegiate swimmer. Escalating volume very incrementally gave my body time to adapt without suffering exhaustion, the idea being that aerobic zone training allows the body to train day in and day out without heading into that black hole of fatigue that can bury an athlete for weeks, sometimes months, and destroy a season.

  Then there was this bizarre training approach called periodization. It stipulated that a block of heavy training weeks should always be followed by a rest week. Further, it declared that every week should include at least one rest day in which I did absolutely no training. The objective was for my body to repair itself in between heavy loads. Seen another way, all my improvement was slated to take place in those periods between workouts. Fail to properly recover, and I’d limit my overall potential. But set periods throughout the season when my body could heal—absorb the training—and I’d lay the groundwork for maximum performance gains. The
concept seems self-evident, and, in fact, it’s the current operating system for most endurance, track, cycling, swimming, and triathletes today.

  But to me, these ideas were anathema. Go slow to go fast? Rest to improve? What is this craziness? I can’t spare the time to rest! During the heyday of my swimming career in the 1980s, conventional wisdom called for pushing oneself to one’s absolute limit for up to eight months straight. Aerobic zone? What’s that? Before I hooked up with Chris, I’d never heard of a rest week, let alone anything resembling active recovery.

  But armed with these insights, I soon became a geek for performance technology and data. For example, I grew to love my Garmin bike computer, a device latched to my bike’s handlebars that received important data points wirelessly and via satellite—everything from heart rate to pedal cadence, location, speed, elevation, grade, and more. Perhaps the most important contraption I acquired told me what level of power I was generating—or, more specifically, the force exerted by my legs with each and every stroke of the pedals. By contrasting my legs’ watt and kilojoule output with my heartbeats, the road incline, the air temperature and elevation, and the miles per hour I was traveling, I was able to set what was for me an optimum training intensity.

  I grew to love the numbers. After every workout, I looked forward to uploading the data accumulated from my various training devices to the analytical software on my laptop. Eventually, I utilized Web-based services like Strava to keep track of my progression on local climbs and share my rides with friends. And I began to rely on programs like TrainingPeaks, WorkoutLog, and Golden Cheetah, which lend meaning to the numbers by producing a dizzying array of graphs and metrics. Always, I scanned the data for insight into how I could improve, which I’m sure has contributed greatly to my ability to enhance my performance with each successive year.

  RUNNING SHOES AND INJURY

  Only as I began to understand how to train optimally did I realize how little I knew—and how much there remained to learn. This was particularly evident when it came to running, something I enjoy but that has never come easy. I am the farthest thing from a natural-born runner. In fact, I don’t really consider myself a runner at all. Any success I’ve achieved on foot is more a matter of fitness and discipline than innate ability. And in 2008, the only subject I knew less about than cycling was running. I was downright clueless—particularly when it came to shoes. Utterly naive and susceptible to bad advice, I haplessly went through a dozen pairs of running shoes trying to find a model that would suit my maladroit stride, keep me erect, and prevent my knees from buckling under the stress of my impending double-marathon attempt. But nothing seemed to fit quite right. Seeking counsel at my local running-shoe chain retailer, I had my gait videotaped on a treadmill. Then it was “analyzed” by an “expert,” who informed me that I required a shoe with a big foamy raised aft section and very firm custom-molded insole inserts to further raise my heel and arch. This predated the minimalist running craze ignited by Christopher McDougall’s bestselling book Born to Run, and I was in no position to argue. Thus, through the remainder of 2008, I found myself clodhopping in shoes that were seemingly more suitable for snow skiing than running.

  But in the years that followed, I took it upon myself to quest more aggressively after the perfect running shoe. Influenced by Born to Run, in 2010 I steered away from the big-heeled shoes that were quickly falling out of favor and sought out the new, less supportive, flatter-soled varieties that were suddenly all the rage. The idea was to gain a better feeling of connection with the ground, and to foster a more natural stride in which my forefoot—and not my heel—would strike the ground first. According to McDougall and others, the cause of many injuries is the nefarious heel strike promoted by the typical big-heeled running shoe. At one point, I even went to the minimal extreme, trail running in Vibram FiveFingers—essentially, covered sandals with individual toe sleeves. I still wear them, albeit sparingly, but prefer a bit more support for longer efforts. The search continues, since I’ve yet to find the ultimate shoe.

  It was not until 2011—long after that early Ultraman training—that I suffered my first running injury ever, preparing for the Boston Marathon. It was during a training period in which I was running far more often and intensely than ever before. A sharp pain in my lower left calf began to develop that simply wouldn’t quit. I figured nothing much could be done other than to hang up the shoes for a spell and rest. That, and maybe some ice and a compression sock to reduce inflammation. Two months went by without running, yet the pain persisted. It was suggested that I explore some proactive therapy options, but such therapies seemed like a false promise. I just need more time off, I told myself. But my friend Greg Anzalone insisted I see Dr. Shay Shani, a chiropractor in Westlake Village, near my home, who was known for working miracles. I was very reluctant to allow anyone to touch my spine. I’d never suffered back pain, and the idea of someone twisting my neck and back until it cracked just seemed like a bad idea. Besides, why would someone go to a chiropractor for a calf injury?

  Ultimately, though, I yielded to Greg’s urging. And X-rays of my spine proved immediately revealing. A close look at my pelvic area showed why every time I suffered any kind of pain, ache, throb, or injury—be it passing, mild, or severe—it always appeared on the left side of my body. Due to scar-tissue buildup, a mild spinal displacement known as spondylolisthesis, and slight muscular asymmetry, my left leg was actually four millimeters longer than my right. This disparity in length, compounded by years of pounding and countless hours running, was the underlying cause of the calf injury. It also helped to explain why my left hand always went numb after hours on my bike, despite an endless array of professional bike-fit adjustments undertaken to resolve the dilemma. In other words, the calf injury was merely a symptom of a more congenital infirmity. Most orthopedic or podiatry specialists would have gone no further than prescribing an insole for the right foot to even out the length differential. But that’s like treating erectile dysfunction with Viagra. It may resolve the symptom, but it ignores the root cause.

  Within a week after having my spine adjusted—and the scar-tissue buildup around the calf injury dispersed by laser therapy, active release therapy (“ART”), and massage—I was astonished to be running again pain-free. By maintaining this treatment protocol on a periodic basis, I got the injury to all but disappear. And with my muscle tightness alleviated and my problematic connective tissue subtly altered, my legs were once again even in length. In other words, Dr. Shani treated my injury the same way I treat my body—with preventive medicine. Having learned my lesson the hard way, I now make time for what I formerly overlooked in my training: massage and electrical stimulation (to improve blood flow and expedite the repair of small muscle tears), ART (to continually correct my imbalanced musculature), chiropractic adjustments and core exercises (to maintain spinal alignment and strengthen body stability), and laser treatments combined with the consistent use of foam rollers (to break up the accumulation of scar tissue in worn muscles, which can lead to injury).

  NUTRITION EVOLUTION: BEYOND WELLNESS TO PERFORMANCE

  Throughout 2008 and beyond I continued to deepen my plant-based nutrition knowledge, experimenting with new foods and paying close attention to their impact on my training and recovery. I discovered, for example, that a raw vegetable and fruit–based Vitamix blend pre-workout seemed to give me more energy for my training than a traditional grain-based breakfast of cereal, oatmeal, or toast. Performance increased further when I began adding endurance-boosting foods like beets, maca powder, and chia seeds.

  I also noticed that the more quickly I replenished myself with certain whole foods post-workout, the more rapidly I could rebound for the next session. For example, I added apple cider vinegar to my water to quickly alkalize my system, and I also drank coconut juice, which is high in electrolyte trace minerals lost in perspiration. To replenish glycogen, I made sure to eat plenty of complex carbohydrates in the form of sweet potatoes or brown rice. T
hat seemed to work far better than nutrient-poor sources of carbohydrates such as pasta or bread. (Even the gluten-free varieties are processed and leave me feeling heavy and lethargic.)

  Prior to more fully understanding the finer points of subsisting on plants, I was worried about not getting enough protein in my diet to meet the rigors of training. And so large canisters of hemp, soy, brown rice, and pea protein powders began to proliferate in our pantry—along with an array of other muscle development supplements such as L-glutamine, creatine, and branch chain amino acids (BCAAs), countless scoops of which would find their way into my post-workout Vitamix blends. But over time—and as I furthered my study of the specific protein content of plant-based foods as well as the unique protein needs of the endurance athlete—I began to consider the possibility that I might be overdoing it. I didn’t like ingesting so many processed items, many of which are laced with chemical-based coloring and artificial flavoring. And realizing that nutrients in whole foods are always better and more easily absorbed by the body than nutrients in supplement form, I began upping my intake of plant-based whole foods high in protein until I eliminated the majority of these supplements from my diet altogether. I began eating things like quinoa, beans, lentils, peas, and tofu, a product I ultimately swapped for its more nutritious fermented soy-based cousin, tempeh. I also ate a lot of raw almonds, walnuts, cashews, and Brazil nuts, the latter a natural testosterone booster due to its high selenium content. Also on my dietary plate: spirulina, a blue-green algae that is 60 percent protein, complete with all essential amino acids, the highest per-weight protein content of any food. In taking in all these whole foods, I discovered absolutely no protein-related impediment to my recovery or to building lean muscle mass. In fact, I continue to improve.