Ultramarathon Man

by Dean Karnazes

  Chapter 16

  Team Dean

  Success seems to be largely a matter of

  hanging on after others have let go.

  —William Feather

  Santa Cruz Mountains Sunday morning, October 1, 2000

  Sunrise on Sunday morning, this second morning of running, lit the eastern horizon on fire. Bright-red cirrus clouds burned in the sky with blazing intensity as the sun crested the distant mountaintops. The beautiful display was clearly visible from our roadside vantage point midway to the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Silicon Valley lay somewhere below, underneath a blanket of fog. Had you not been familiar with the region, you never would have known that this center of technology and commerce even existed. We were miles above the clouds.

  Alexandria and Nicholas with Grandpa inside the Mother Ship

  The climb to the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains ascends a vertical 2,659 feet and is so steep at points that it’s astounding the pavement remains stuck to the ground. My progress up this harsh incline was arduously sluggish. I took short, small steps in a stiff shuffling movement, barely covering any distance per step. The rise I’d gotten when Gaylord first joined me had long since ebbed, and we now hardly exchanged a word.

  Then came footsteps behind us, and the first of the team runners approached. He was not moving much faster than we were—given the sharp incline, it was nearly impossible to move swiftly no matter how fresh you were. As he came up behind us, he muttered an unceremonious, “Keep it up.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” Gaylord replied. I just nodded, too exhausted to say much. As he passed, it was clear why the runner’s footsteps were audible from behind. The man was built like a refrigerator.

  After a few more minutes of drudgery, Gaylord said, “Hey, Karno, I’m going to ride up to the summit and bivouac. I’m falling asleep. I need a little power nap to recharge the batteries.”

  “Go for it,” I said. “I’ll see you at the top.”

  Before long, other team runners began passing me. They had names like “Dirty Dozen,” “Old Blues,” and, “Just Watering Your Flowers, Ma’am.” Sensing my state of fatigue, they offered words of encouragement. “You’re almost there,” one guy said. “Hang in there, it’s your last leg,” cheered a lanky female runner as she passed. “Less than a mile and you’re done.”

  Of course, it wasn’t my last leg: I still had six remaining. And I didn’t have less than a mile until I was done, I had something like 35 left. But there was no way for these other runners to know that. This was their third and final leg and then they’d be done. I still had a long way to go. To them I was just some struggling, exhausted neophyte trying to complete his final leg. Which was just as well, because that’s how I felt at the moment.

  Gaylord passed the big runner on his way to the summit.

  “Your friend’s having a tough go of it, eh?” the big guy asked Toph.

  “He’s hurting pretty good, all right,” Gaylord replied.

  “What team is he on? We didn’t know anyone was in front of us.”

  “Actually, he’s not on a team. He’s running solo.”

  “You’re shittin’ me. That’s insane. Who is he?”

  “His name is Dean.”

  Crew vehicles had begun to pull into the exchange area when Gaylord got to the top. They were colorfully decorated, some with team mascots or stuffed figures on their roofs. The big guy was a member of the Berkeley Rugby Team alumni; they were driving a full-sized school bus, purportedly with two kegs inside. A bumper sticker on the back declared GIVE BLOOD—PLAY RUGBY.

  As I crested the summit and wobbled around the corner, I encountered eleven of the gnarliest-looking thugs I’d ever seen. The big guy, the human refrigerator who’d passed me coming up the hill, was at their head. He had on a Viking helmet and a full-length fur coat with only a pair of running shorts underneath. In his hand was a pitcher of ale. It was 7:00 A.M.

  The rugby dudes started chanting as I slogged by. “Team Dean. Team Dean! TEAM DEAN!”

  It was an odd moment, but an inspirational one. And that is how my team earned its name. I say earned because you don’t get a squadron of bad-ass rugby players lining the road cheering by doing something marginally inspirational. There was a good measure of manly honor that came with that moniker “Team Dean.”

  Filled with testosterone, I ran down the back side of the summit with blazing speed. The pounding seemed a little less severe, and the effort running down the mountainside was far less taxing than the climb up. It would be a stretch to say I was experiencing a “runner’s high,” but it was a temporary absence of radiating pain, which, at this point, was about the best I could hope for.

  Jamming down the mountain’s back, Gaylord in tow, I was averaging better than seven-minute miles, which was absurdly fast after having run 170 miles. But it felt right, so I just went with it and didn’t ask questions.

  In relative terms, I’d covered five-sixths of the course. Santa Cruz was now just some 30 miles away. But in absolute terms, it may as well have been on the other side of the universe. My success was far from assured. Even in my revived state, 30 miles is no small distance, especially after having run 170.

  The Mother Ship came barreling along, emitting honks and cheers and unintelligible screams. Beautiful music to me. I waved and smiled and flashed a thumbs-up, and they sped off to the next exchange.

  Gaylord pedaled on as well. “Need anything ahead?” he asked.

  “Some Pedialyte would be great.”

  “Infant formula?”

  “Mother’s milk,” I replied. “Works wonders.”

  They were waiting for me at the exchange with Pedialyte and cheers.

  “Go, Team Dean,” Gaylord joked.

  “GO, TEAM DEAN!” my family chimed in.

  I grabbed the Pedialyte and ran on. The road forked, and I kept running straight. And I continued running, and running . . . and then realized after about half a mile that no one else was around. I stopped and looked back. No teams behind me, no crew vehicles. Had I entered the Twilight Zone?

  Then it occurred to me that in my glee perhaps I had gone the wrong way at the fork. I’d gone straight and was on Highway 236; the course route had bent left and was on Highway 9.

  Turning around, I asked myself, What’s one extra mile? But that mistake marked another swing in my disposition. The half-mile back to the junction was demoralizing. How could I make such a stupid mistake?

  By the time I reached the next exchange, I was in a terrible funk. My speech was slurred, and I was trembling badly from hypoglycemia.

  “What happened?” my dad asked. “Where did you go?”

  I could only shake my head in despair. They had set up a chair and I slumped into it, arms dangling. The kids were firing questions, but I was too despondent to reply. A small crowd of runners assembled around me.

  “Are you Team Dean?” someone asked.

  I couldn’t answer for a long, awkward moment. And then I said softly, “Yes, I am Team Dean.”

  It was the first time I’d said it. And despite my forlorn state, it felt good. It reminded me exactly why I was out here running for two days straight. I was doing it because I could; it was my place in the world.

  I wasn’t born with any innate talent. I’ve never been naturally gifted at anything; I always had to work at it. The only way I knew to succeed was to try harder than anyone else. Dogged persistence is what got me through life. But here was something I was half-decent at. Being able to run great distances was the one thing I could offer the world. Others might be faster, but I could go longer. My strongest quality is that I never give up. Running as far as possible was one activity where being stubborn as a bull was actually a good thing. It suited my personality.

  “Yep,” I said, more energetically. “Team Dean here!”

  “We think what you’re doing is incredible,” one runner said.

  “You mean the men in white suits aren’t coming to take me away?”

 
; My attempt at a joke broke the tension, and the crowd began to loosen up.

  “Hey, Team Dean,” another runner shouted, “what’s on the menu for breakfast, a box of nails?”

  The crowd laughed, and I did, too. Mine went on for a while, with good reason. It was one of those rare moments in life where everything is perfect.

  Everything, except for the 23.7 miles still left to cover.

  Exiting exchange 32, I knew that the next 23.7 miles would probably be both the most glorious and the most hideous of my life. It was going to be an epic struggle, an all-out battle to reach the finish. The game was getting good. I just hoped the ending would be happy.

  Within a mile of leaving the exchange, I found myself flagging again; the high of twelve minutes ago was replaced by a feeling of desolation. The cumulative miles were taking their toll, and I ran along to the best of my impaired ability, trying to suppress the overwhelming desire to stop and lie down.

  As you progress in a long race, your highs become higher and your lows lower, and the fluctuations come with escalating rapidity. It was like squeezing the emotional drama of a lifetime into two days. All I consciously thought about was getting to the finish line, and the mood swings came unexpectedly, without warning. There was no controlling the onset, no way of knowing when a funk would strike. It just happened.

  The Mother Ship zoomed by with muffled cheers and disappeared around a bend. Sweat was pouring down my unshaven face as I strained to wave.

  Then Gaylord rolled up beside me. “Karno, how’s it going?”

  “I’ve hit a new low, Toph.”

  “I can’t even imagine what it feels like to run this far.”

  I thought a moment. “Want a taste of it? Bail the bike and run with me.”

  “Now? But I’ve never really run before.”

  “It’s not very tricky. You’ll figure it out pretty quick.”

  We caught up with the Mother Ship around the bend, and before he could react I announced, “Gaylord’s going to run with me.” We stored the bike with them, refilled my bottles with ice-cold Pedialyte, and the two of us set out together.

  Gaylord handled the first half-dozen miles admirably but was pretty tooled by mile 7. If there’s one thing that can ease your own personal suffering, it’s the sight of someone else suffering even worse. Yet he kept pushing alongside me, not willing to drop back.

  “Do you want to slow down?”

  “You kidding?” he groaned. “I’m loving this.”

  After eight torturous miles, we caught up with the Mother Ship again, and it wasn’t hard to convince Gaylord to end his run there. He was exhausted, yet there was something in his voice that said running wasn’t entirely disagreeable, no matter how much it hurt. I had a funny feeling this might not be the last time he laced up a pair of running shoes.

  It was just as well he packed it in for now. Around the corner was a seriously stout climb that would challenge a seasoned runner even under ideal conditions. Gaylord had just run more miles in an hour than he had logged cumulatively in the past ten years. Scaling an 1,180-foot incline in temperatures now approaching 90 degrees would’ve been ill-advised. Not that I was any better equipped to deal with the hill than he was at this point.

  The kids squirted water at me with their sprayers as I sauntered by.

  “Darling, why don’t you stop and eat,” Mom offered.

  “Don’t slow him down,” Dad rebuffed her. “He’s looking strong.” Meanwhile I was about to keel over from lack of nourishment. .

  “Wait! Wait! . . .” I mumbled as they blasted off to the next exchange station, not hearing my feeble pleas.

  The climb out of Felton to Empire Grade has rightly been called “Killer.” At points the pitch is so severe that even walking it is a strain. My quadriceps and calves burned in agony. The arteries, veins, and even small capillaries in my arms and legs protruded under my glistening skin like exposed roots. All systems were being pushed beyond their functional limit.

  The human body is capable of extraordinary feats of endurance, but it has protective mechanisms to prevent total annihilation. Typically the system will shut down before physical destruction occurs. Blacking out is the body’s ultimate act of self-preservation. When you’re teetering on the edge of coherence—which running 185 miles can induce—stepping over the edge becomes a very real threat. One minute you’re running, the next you’re in the back of an ambulance heading for the ER.

  Marching up the hill in a catatonic stupor, I began to experience a peculiar floating sensation, as though my body had dissociated from my mind. All I could sense of my legs was a vague tingling sensation in my lower torso, and I floated along barely coherent. There was a pesky string of drool dangling off my chin, swinging from side to side with every forward lunge, and my pace slowed to a crawl. A complete meltdown was in progress; I was falling apart.

  And then a perky little voice cheered, “Way to go, Team Dean!”

  It was a stunning young TV reporter, leaning out of the side of a rolling van, and behind her a camera was trained on me.

  “You look great,” she said. “Are you feeling all right?”

  The dribble still hung from my chin, and I wondered if she’d understand what the kids and I called caveman language. We’d developed it while I did push-ups on the living room floor with both of them on my back. It was an extremely simple language: one grunt meant yes, two grunts no.

  I grunted twice.

  “Excuse me?” she replied.

  So much for caveman language. I struggled for words and came up with, “Still standing.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she chirped. “Can you give us some thoughts on how things have gone?”

  “Ah . . . so far, so good,” I puffed. “Check back with me in a few minutes, though. It might be a different story by then.”

  “Sounds like Team Dean is doing just fine,” she told the camera spiritedly. “We’ll check back with him shortly. Stay tuned.”

  With the camera off, she asked if there was anything they could get for me.

  “Have access to a jet pack?” I huffed. “It’d be kind of nice to levitate to Santa Cruz.”

  She gave me a quizzical look and they sped off up the hill to scout another location.

  “Where’s your next runner?” the exchange captain asked as I dragged myself up into the next, and next-to-last, relay point near the top of the climb. Winded and unable to lift my head, I muttered, “Don’t have one.”

  Brief reprieve with Alexandria at the Mother Ship, mile 188

  “Ohh . . . you must be Team Dean. We were wondering if you were still alive.”

  “That’s debatable,” I panted.

  “Yes, it’s Team Dean,” chimed in a voice I recognized as my father’s, “and he’s doing fine. Now, let’s get moving, son.”

  “I need a break.”

  “Our people are great runners,” he proclaimed to no one in particular. “We ran all day through the hills of Greece chasing mountain goats.”

  “Pops,” I reminded him, “we grew up in L.A.”

  Alexandria began misting me with her spray bottle. Nicholas, on the other hand, squirted a shocking jet of ice water into my ear. “Hey!” I hollered, chasing him around the relay station to the amazement of onlookers.

  By the time I wrestled it away from him I was soaking wet. “Where’s Gaylord?” I asked Julie.

  “He’s in the van getting some rest.”

  I saw his bare feet sticking out a window and began firing on them.

  “Leave me alone and keep running,” he yelped.

  “Get out here, Gaylord,” I commanded. “You’re coming with me.”

  Another blast of water entered my opposite ear. I turned to see Alexandria and Nicholas huddled together, giggling.

  “Does anybody need a couple extra crew members?” I addressed the crowd. “They’re usually well behaved.”

  “Dad!” Alexandria protested, and then she started squirting me in the ear again.

&n
bsp; “Get going, Karno,” Gaylord barked out the window.

  Man, I thought departing from the exchange, what does a guy need to do around here to get some respect? And I started back out onto the course.

  With 7 miles left to cover, the TV van pulled alongside me again. The reporter fired questions through the open side door. My training, my diet, my motivation.

  “It’s been an honor to play a small role in helping Libby Wood and her family,” I replied. “That’s one thing that’s keeping me going.”

  “Do you eat dirt?” the reporter asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Eat dirt.”

  “Excuse me for a moment,” I said, whacking the side of my head. The water in my ear from the kids’ attack shook itself out.

  “There we go. Now, what was that you asked?”

  She gave me her quizzical look again. “Do your feet hurt?”

  “Ohh. Yes, my feet hurt pretty bad, but not as bad as my legs. How’s that jet pack coming along?”

  “You don’t look like you need it. Would you mind if we do some creative film work as you run?”

  “Can you just focus on my legs down and not show my face? I don’t want to be recognized as the lunatic who tried to run himself into extinction.”

  They filmed me from every imaginable angle. I figured it would save the coroner a lot of time. Then she asked me one last question.

  “So, Team Dean—how do you do it?”

  “Hmm . . .” I pondered. “I ran the first hundred miles with my legs, the next ninety miles with my mind, and I guess I’m running this last part with my heart.”

  “That was great!” she said to the cameraman. “We’ll see you at the finish line.” And off they sped down the highway.

  Dozens of team runners began catching up and passing me on the narrow road to Santa Cruz. Few had any idea I’d been running for the past two days straight as they grunted encouragement while blowing by me. People of all walks of life passed me—young and old, experienced runners and new recruits. Periodically some hotshot speed demon, bent on turning in his fastest leg ever, would rocket by me without so much as a nod. A hundred miles ago, I might have been tempted to chase him. But after running the equivalent of seven consecutive marathons nonstop, my ego had been sufficiently tempered, and being passed wasn’t the least bit demoralizing.