Book Review: 'Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei,' by John Stevens

Straw Sandals

Among the many evocative black-and-white photographs that grace this wonderfully strange, if not entirely satisfying, book is the image of a row of straw sandals, hanging illuminated in the darkness.  They look unpromising as protection for the feet, less like shoes than elongated birds' nests held together by bits of string.  Yet these are the sandals worn by the gyoja, the so-called "marathon monks" of Japan, as they run the rocky and frequently rain-slicked paths on the five peaks that make up the mountain complex of Mt. Hiei.

One pair of sandals suffices, under ideal conditions, for perhaps a single day of running.  Conditions are frequently not ideal in this part of Japan.  And the gyoja will run far more than a single day at a stretch.

In heavy rain, the straw sandals disintegrate in a matter of hours.  So something seems seriously amiss with the figure of 80 pairs of sandals that Stevens tells us is allotted to each monk per 100-day "marathon"--an ordeal that entails running up to 52 miles a day, every day, without a break for the entire 100-day cycle.   Leaving aside every other aspect of running so mind-bogglingly far, the battering their feet must endure is difficult to imagine.

1000 days of running

Although Stevens does not dwell on the details (he has little to say about the actual experiences of the gyoja while running) similar hardships surely abound for the gyoja.  They run through the night on mountain trails without illumination, except what the stars and moon might provide.  They scitter along on their flimsy straw sandals across sharp rocks and nests of leaves that may or may not contain vipers, making innumerable mandatory stops at shrines and other stations whose location must be memorized.  It makes a modern, organized, supported 100-mile ultra look cushy.

Before each 100-day cycle of running, the gyoja observe a period of preparatory maegyo, which involves a careful settling of one's affairs and a severe restriction of diet.  For members of one sect, this means subsisting on a diet of nuts, buckwheat paste, potatoes, and pine needles.  Food intake during the 100-day run is hardly more robust, apparently amounting to fewer than 2000 calories a day.

Like the 80 pairs of straw sandals, there is something screwy with this figure.  It seems wholly inadequate for the effort of running 50 miles a day for 100 days.  It seems scarcely adequate for 100 days of lying around at home on the sofa.

Ten 100-day cycles completed over a period of 7 years make up the sennishi kaihogyo, the grand 1000-day cycle of running.   Each year ups the ante, with the longest sustained runs occuring in the 6th and 7th years.  Yet the 5th year ends with what to me seems the most harrowing and terrifying test of all.

"The heart of emptiness is not forgotten"

The doiri, or "entry to the hallway," is not a run.  In doiri, completed at the end of the 5th year in the 7-year cycle of sennichi kaiyogo, the monk endures 9 days without food, without water, without sleep.  During this time, he must remain standing, keeping his head erect.  It is symbolically, and sometimes literally, an encounter with death (apparently the doiri was originally 10 days, but too many monks died).  Those who pass through this ordeal emerge as something new, living Buddhas.

In several centuries worth of sennishi kaihogyo, scarcely more than a few handfuls of monks have completed the entire 1000-day 7-year cycle.  The monk Saicho, whose image appears on the cover of the book, has completed it twice.  More remarkably, his training as a gyoja did not begin until the atypcially advanced age of 40.  Saicho's unusual life story, from unpromising youth and troubled adulthood to mid-life conversion, is told in this book, along with accounts of other well-known gyoja.

Stories of individual monks like Saicho are the most engaging sections of Stevens' book.  When it comes to the inner experience and sensory impressions of the runs themselves, however, he has little to say.  So what was it like?  He doesn't appear to have asked the question.  Stevens speaks only of externals--sandals and hats, mileage and calorie counts.   Calmly or blandly, depending on your perspective, he reports the bare facts of this most unusual chapter in the history of human consciousness.

Perhaps the lack of affect is deliberate, yet I had moments of sympathy with the Goodreads poster who commented that, despite the inherent fascination of the topic, The Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei "read like a field guide to fungus."

Taken on its own merits, though, the book is rewarding, and there appears to be nothing else on the subject quite like it.  The first half is devoted to a brief history of Tendai Buddhism and the development of the monastery on Mt. Hiei.  This structure mirrors the preparation of the gyoja: before they are permitted to undertake the sennichi kaihogyo, monks must undertake years of study and meditation.  They learn calmness, how to "stop the waves of confused thinking from churning"; the goal is to perceive the emptiness of the world, but not be separated from connnection with others, to be "engaged in a thousand affairs yet not be ruled by emotion beause the heart of emptiness is not forgotten."

This sounds like an effective mental state for running immense distances, or just navigating an average day in the modern world.

Ribbon of Asphalt and Sand: 2013 Graveyard 100 Race Report

"The sea was angry that day, my friend; like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli" -- George Costanza

Friday evening before race day, I pulled up to the pier house behind the Hilton in Kitty Hawk to turn over my drop bags and catch the mandatory prerace briefing.   The sky had been clear on the drive over and the weather forecast for the weekend looked promising.  So it was a bit of a shock to step out on to the beach into the full force of the wind.   A chaotic surf pounded away at the pier.  Whitecaps were visible miles from the shore.   Gathered with other runners inside the pier house, I could feel the wooden framework rocking and swaying underfoot like a tethered boat about to snap free.

Although the weather system behind all this activity had struck far to the north, its back-end produced coastal surges that flooded and reshaped roads along the 100-mile route.  Race Director Brandon Wilson informed us that there was about a 50/50 chance that instead of running straight to Hatteras Lighthouse supported by a tailwind all the way, we would be turning back before the bridge to face 50 miles of headwinds.

In any case, we wouldn't have an answer, one way or the other, until about 9AM--4 hours into the race.

With this sobering uncertainty, I headed back to my hotel in Corolla for more last minute fussing with my gear, half an hour of "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" on the Food Network (food porn for a vegan non-cable-subscriber like myself), and a few fitful hours of sleep.

Cold Morning and Bright Stars: Currituck Heritage Park to Kitty Hawk

Out of my room in time to catch the 3:30 AM shuttle out to the park, I grabbed a few of the bagged breakfasts-to-go the Hampton Inn had prepared for race participants.  This wouldn't be the last instance of Outer Banks hospitality I was to experience.  Although the 2013 race was just its second annual iteration, the Gravestone 100 seems to have been adopted by residents as their own.  I see a mid-Atlantic ultramarathon tradition in the making.

Among the folks with whom I shared my early shuttle ride was a West Point Cadet who had come into town late the previous evening.  Not only was he running uncrewed, but had brought no drop bags.  Everything he needed had been meticulously placed into a tightly fitted Solomon pack.  "Keep it simple," he said.   I didn't mention my own five overly stuffed drop bags.  Later that day, I would come to appreciate the wisdom of his approach.

The start was typical ultra low key stuff.  We sang the national anthem (some of us more in key than others) then ambled off into the dark morning.  The Currituck Lighthouse sent a few long slow flashes through the trees before we hit the road and headed south under a sky of stars which, for someone who lives ten minutes from the DC beltway, were jaw-droppingly bright.  Not since my 2007 trip to Australia had I seen the dramatic shape of Scorpius so clearly and completely, undimmed by the perpetual glow on our southern horizon here in the Maryland suburbs of DC.

Corolla went by quickly in the cool dark moring.  When the sun came up, I took off my jacket, stowed the headlamp, donned my sunglasses.   Setting a pattern for most of the rest of the day, I was alternately too hot or too cold--and sometimes both at the same time.

As always, this was the chattiest portion of the race.  There seemed to be a surprising number of "first timers" at this race, more than I have met in other hundred milers.  Among them was Drew Coombes, one of a contingent of runners from Wilmington.  A little further on, I ran for a bit with Jordan Dornan, a triathalete from Colorado, who was also running his first hundred, along with his father, an experienced ultramarathoner, and his brother.   (Checking the results a little later, I saw that Jordan and his father finished together!)

AS 1 to AS2: Kitty Hawk to Nags Head

Check the route of the Graveyard 100 on Google or Mapquest, and the fat highlighted line of road makes it look as if you're running across the sea.   As in truth you are.  Despite the illusion of mainland normality created by touristy shops, hotels, restaurants, and endless beachhouses, the Outer Banks has many ways to remind those who live here that they are surrounded by sea.  Runners were appraised of this fact soon after leaving Aid Station 1.

Parts of the road through Kitty Hawk had become essentially a sand dune, interspersed with small ponds and an occasional runnable stretch of pavement.  The photo gives you some sense of what we faced.  Sucking dark sand lay thickly around the edges of the water.  I found myself at one point crawling desperately up the side of a sandbar to get to a more runnable surface at the top.

In the end, I found the best strategy was to accept getting wet and run straight through the little road lakes.   I could deal with blisters or wet clothes later.

Although the road cleared up in Nags Head, these conditions did not auger well for our continuing on to Hatteras.   So I was not surprised when somewhere around mid-morning, another runner informed me (with what sounded like grim satisfaction, I thought) that we would be turning around before the Hatteras Bridge.  It was to be headwinds, then, and the "alternate course"--whatever that meant--on the second half.

Into the Wind: Nags Head to Bodie and Back Again

After spending an inordinately long time dawdling about in Aid Station 3 (it was very hard not to linger, since the stations in this race are so few and far apart), I got on the road again.  With its wind-swept dunes, this inaugural section of the Hatteras National Seashore was my favorite part of the course.  I was sorry to have to miss most of this section.   We ran to within sight of Hatteras Bridge, but no further.

Among the runners I'd been running off and on with during this first half of the race was Kelly Wells, from South Carolina.   I'd always know when I was coming up on her, because like me she had the Ultraspire Revolution Pack (unlike me, however, she has mastered the leaky top on their oddly shaped water bottle).  Kelly reached the turnaround at 47 miles, several minutes before me, and was taking off just as I arrived.  That would be the last time I saw her.  Although I was no slouch on the second half, her second fifty was incredible.  Kelly finished under 19 hours and second among women--and most likely would have been first, too, had she not managed to talk the amazing Connie Gardner (American record-holder for most miles run in 24 hours) to enter the race.

Turning back into the wind was every bit as hard as I expected.  The thought of battling these headwinds for more than 50 miles was a tad demoralizing.  Oddly enough though, the enforced slowness soon made me feel a bit a better, and seemed to settle my stomach, which had gone a bit queasy between 30 to 40 miles.

After several miles of head-down running through the wind tunnel, we detoured for the first of two Brandon's two "extras" on this alternate course.    The side trip out to Bodie Island Lighthouse was a pleasant respite, sheltered most of the way by pine forest.   During this quite stretch of road, I fell in with Andrei Nana of Florida.  Andrei seemed to know everyone.  He chatted away about having dinner with Mike Morton, and various other elite or sub-elite runners I probably ought to know, but don't.  He also entertained me with details about the tradition and formality of the Spartathalon, an annual race of over 150 miles from Athens to Sparta.

Aid Stations 3 to 4: Luck of the Idiot

After spending distressingly long periods of time rummaging through my overstuffed drop bag, changing shoes, and fueling up, I was off for part 3 of this adventure.  Brandon had warned us the passage from AS3 to 4 would be the toughest.  It was, although not entirely for the same reasons as 2012.   Rather than running the the windswept lonely stretches of Hatteras Island, we would make our way back through Nags Head and Kitty Hawk--right back into the sand-bogs we passed through earlier in the day.

Now, however, the high tide had rendered these roads worse than ever, and in many places impassable.   And now it was dark, and now we were tired, having run more than 60 miles.  Large sand- (rather than snow-) ploughs patrolled the beachside road, rerouting cars, and runners, to side roads or, for portions, the side of the highway.

I wasn't thrilled about running against traffic in the dark, but fortunately the busiest road had a wide grassy shoulder.  I followed what urban planners call "desire lines"--paths of convenience formed by walkers--snaking along the road from shop to shop and gas station to gas station.   In this ultra on the asphalt, I got in some trail running after all, albeit strewn with cigarette butts and trash rather than rocks and tree roots.   The trail goes everywhere, I guess.

As a consequence of running off track, however, I missed more than one water stop, and at around 75 miles (by my best guess) found myself drinking the last of my water.  I didn't know how far off AS4 was, and was afraid I might miss it.   As I stared stupidly at my empty bottle, I heard a gruff voice from overhead asking whether I wanted water.  God??  I looked up and saw a couple on their deck, watching the runners tottering by down below.  Their daughter brought out some water and filled my bottle.   Once again I was impressed with Outer Banks hospitality.

Perhaps a half a mile on, I pulled into a gas station and met some race volunteers, who pointed me in the right direction.  They also told me to look out for the stoplight that marked the Fire Station; because I ended up approaching along a different road than I had come, I surely would have missed AS4 without this vital clue.

Magic Night...and Magical Thinking: Mile 78.5 to 95 miles

At AS4, we learned we were at 78.5 miles.  Heading out, I experienced one of those mysteries of the ultra.  I felt better at 80 miles, somehow, than I had at 30.  Although my watch does nothing fancier than tell the time of day, I feel sure that my pace through this stretch of the course--the town of Duck at night--was faster than it had been the previous morning.  One guy I passed asked if I was in the 100K; I thought he seemed just a little dismayed when I said no, I was running the 100 miler.

It was then the magical thinking took hold.

As so often seems to happen, the good periods contain the seeds of their own unravelling.   Unable or unwilling to do the math, I put out of my mind an obvious fact: simply running to Currituck Park would not get me to 100 miles.  Almost certainly, Brandon was hiding some sort of "extra" run up his sleeve.  But I didn't want to think about that.

I was like a drunk convinced he has superhuman powers.  I persuaded myself that I had now run beyond the ordinary need for food or water.   I could just cruise through to the end, feeling as good as I did that moment.  My gut conspired with these addled thoughts: the very idea of solid food--or even worse, gels--had become nauseating.

Endgame and Aftermath

Reality returned in the form of a gaggle of lights and voices, an idling car motor, and a makeshift finish chute of cones set up along the side of the road near the entrance to Currituck Park.  Brandon came out to deliver the news.  This was the finish, but not for me, not just yet.  I still had to run "about 2 miles" up to the beachhead, around a cone, then back.

None of this should have been surprising, but I felt utterly and suddenly deflated.  The way out went well enough, although I had to walk a bit up the hill, but on the way back, I starting coming apart.  Although going downhill, and with the finish a mere mile away, and with the 20-hour barrier within reach...I walked.  I was done, spent, didn't care.  I staggered in at about 1 minute past the 20 hour mark.

You are treated really well at the end, especially as an uncrewed runner.  There was a warm room, a bed to lie down and--if I had been in any condition to condition to take it--food and drink.  Heather Wilson, Brandon's wife and the Assistant Director for this event, took wonderful care of us, particularly those like myself who were running uncrewed.

I shared my "hospital room" with Rrick Karampatsos, at 68 the oldest runner in the race--and like many others that day, attempting his first 100 miler.  Terrible muscle cramps had caused Rrick to drop out, and as we runners tend to do, he was beating himself up over this.  But he certainly wasn't alone.  In the end, something like a third of the runners dropped.  The Graveyard 100 *might* be a good race for the first-time 100-miler, but as we were duly warned, "anything can happen" in early March on the Outer Banks.

A Sickly Sweet Odor

Back in the hotel, I noticed a strange smell coming from my tights, shirt, sweatshirt--from seemingly anything I had touched at the end of race.  This was not the usual funky running smell, but something more like rotting fruit, perhaps with a trace of fishiness.  And it seemed to be inside me, in my breath as well.   Really, really not good.

I had a hunch what it might be, though, and after some Internet searching for similar experiences on turned up my answer.  I was smelling the unmistakable result of ketosis--in the words of Karl King, a metabolic state of fat-burning associated with "profoundly low carbohydrate availability."

By way of antidote, I spent Sunday devouring a 16" large pizza (from Pizza Pizazz in Duck: highly recommended), two enormous pieces of key lime pie, several candy bars, and a variety of high-calorie snacks.  After this binge, and a couple of showers, the smell was gone (from me, although not from my clothes, which required a heavy wash when I got home).

What Worked:

• Switching off to the Hoka Evo Stinstons at 57 miles.  As a minimalist runner, I've been skeptical of the Hokas, but have to admit: they were amazing.  If I knew how much they would help on the endless road miles, I would have switched into them at the first aid station.
• Steady electrolytes and steady (but not excessive) water throughout the race.  I did very well managing fluids and elecrolytes.  I can't say there were no periods of queasy stomach or nausea, but these were far more manageable and minor than I've experienced in the last several ultras.

What Didn't:

• My overstuffed, overwrought, overthought drop bags.  If I do this race again, it will be with a little larger pack, a little more self-sufficient, rather than relying on overfull drop bags.
   
• My nutrition strategy for the last 20 miles.  Trying to just "cruise it in" on fat stores for the last 20 was not smart (and turned out to be rather smelly).  Solid food just seemed out of the question, and gels left me wretching, however.  Since I have more luck with liquid calories, for my next ultra, I'm planning to try the "Tailwind" product (noted in the commentary on AJW's Irunfar column on "Dreaded Stomach Issues").

A Cold Day at the Office: the 2013 ICY-8 Trail Run

One of the reasons some of us have taken our running permanently offroad is the spirit of shared athletic adventure to be found in trail races, ultras in particular.  Competition can be had, of course, if you want that sort of thing, but there are times competition with others, or even with oneself, feels almost beside the point.  You are just out there, alone and with others, part of a shared festival of running, a figure moving through a landscape.

This at least is what I'm seeking, and nowhere have I felt the sense of shared endeavor and adventure more strongly than in the 12- and 8-hour trail races--held in September and February, respectively--that are part of an annual cycle of well-organized DC-area events put on by Alex Papadopolous and the folks at Athletic Equation.  (There is a 24-hour version, as well, which I have not run.)

Billed as a "paradigm shift," these races allow you to run as much or as little as you like for a set period of time.   The caveat is that only complete loops of the course are counted, so there's a fun sort of mental puzzle involved that tends to get a little more puzzling as the hours roll on and the mind gets fuzzier and the flesh a little less willing.

Last Saturday's "Icy-8" trail adventure run, held on the pine and hardwood forest trails of Lake Anna, Virginia, gave this mental and physical game an additional interesting twist.  We could choose to run either short loops of 4.7 miles, or long loops of 8.0 miles, in any order, and in any direction.   Having nothing resembling a strategy, and running in something of a stupor (more on that below), I quickly lost any sense of where I stood in the pecking order.  I found myself alone for most of the race, passing people from behind and crossing paths with runners going in the opposite direction.  As the hours went by, I would see the same individual runners or groups of runners, smiling faces and grim, all of them "old friends" by the end of the day.  

It was cold, though not so very icy.  The temperature hovered in the upper teens at the start, at least according to the Suburu.  A pale orange sun warmed us, a little, as we made our way around the first loop together.  Even though it inched up to the low 30s by the end of the day, the air felt colder, somehow, as the morning sun gave way to a dim gray overcast afternoon.  The moment you stopped moving, or even walked a bit, the cold would begin to seep through the cracks.  Race volunteers (who were wonderful) surely suffered more than runners.  It can't have been easy to stand outside all day.

My personal source of misery came not so much from outside conditions though as from the mean-spirited head cold that ambushed me a few days earlier.  I almost bailed on the race.  When I awoke Saturday morning, my head was in a vice, my throat raw, my stomach sour.  The non-traditional race format is a forgiving one, however, and I figured if things went badly, well, the car would be there at the start of each loop.  I could run, say, 8 miles then retire for the day to a warm car.

The first loop or two were not the most comfortable.  My breathing, however, was clear and my legs felt fine.   From the neck down, all was well.  Perhaps the biggest challenge was a sort of persistent mental fog.  Whether from cold medication or the flashing of the sunlight through bare tree branches, I felt disoriented.  Forest paths looked surreal, oddly humped and twisted, blurred about the edges.  On this easy, relatively flat, mostly non-technical trail, I fell hard.  Several times.  I have other weaknesses as a trail runner (getting lost, most notably), but falling has not generally been one of them.

Around 16 miles, a funny thing happened.  I began to feel a good deal stronger, and for the next few loops, began picking up the pace.  Inadvisedly so.  Somewhere in the low 20s, I got a little carried away, barrelling down hills as if I were running a 10k.  One of those hard falls sobered me up quickly, and reminded me that there were still several hours to go.

With around 3 hours left, I calculated I had an outside shot at going over 50 miles--but only if I could maintain my earlier, unrealistic pace, which by then I could not.  I scaled the ambitions back a little, and settled in for 3 more short loops.    Over the final 2 of these, I was joined by my brother-in-law, Mike, which gave me a terrific boost over what might have been a somewhat grim slog.  My sister, Anna, and nephew, Daniel, were there as well to cheer us both on.  We covered the ground at a modest, but for me respectable, pace.   In the end, I finished at 47 miles--3 long, followed by 5 short loops--with 20 minutes or so (I scarcely noticed) left on the clock.

Oddly enough, the day after the race, my legs were a bit sore, but my nasty cold was mostly gone.   (I've been recommending this "cure" at work--I suspect it will not catch on.)

What Worked:

• Altra Lone Peak trail shoes.  Most comfortable trail shoe I've worn.  Zero drop, but not minimalist.  The rock-plate, hidden between layers of midsole cushioning, does its work without announcing its presence.  The big roomy toebox looks a bit clownish, and may have contributed to my falls, but keeps the feet very happy.  The outsole grips very well on mud and icy ground (I have yet to test out on rocks, but have high hopes).
• Dry-max socks.  Flawless, as always.
• Low-carbohydrate or no-carbohydrate training.   Since November, I've been running medium length (2 hour) AM runs on no calories, and longer (5 or 6 hour) runs on fat and protein calories.  For this raace, I ate mostly low carb foods before and during the first part of the race, then gradually introduced more carbs--finishing the last loop on a handful of candy.  It seemed to work.  No nausea, no GI issues (and I am painfully prone to both).  No "bonking," no wild ups and downs, just a steady level of energy.  

What did not work:

• Stuffing everything I might need into a random "drop bag" and figuring I could just rummage about when I came by the start line after each loop.  I don't want to think about how much time this likely wasted.  Also, I never did find my sodium tabs, relying instead on a few handfuls of salty peanuts. 

Book Review: 'Indian Running' by Peter Nabokov

A Review of Peter Nabokov,  Indian Running, Native American History & Tradition.  Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1981.

For better or worse, Chris McDougall’s Born To Run has ensured that the Tarahumara will never again enjoy the status of a “secret” tribe of running prodigies hidden in the canyons of Mexico.   Some twenty-five years before McDougall’s bestseller, Peter Nabokov also wrote about the Tarahumara’s running prowess. He presents them not as freakish extremes, but as part of a continuum, one expression of a long tradition of Indian running that extended across two continents.

Nabokov invites us to imagine North and South America before the arrival of Europeans as a New World of runners.  From the Arctic to what is now Argentina, the landscape is networked by countless thousands of trails, paths, and roads.  The network extends through the deciduous forests of the Northeast, across the great plains of North America, through the mountains and deserts of the Southwest, through the jungles of Central America and Brazil, and up and down the Pacific coasts of both continents.  Travelling over this landscape, sometimes for journeys of days and many hundreds of miles, are not horses, but light-stepping, supremely fit human runners.   They run as couriers, connecting tribes separated by vast distances, facilitating trade or carrying vital intelligence in times of war.  They run to hunt, tracking deer or antelope for hours until the exhausted animal can be smothered by bare hands.  Men run, women run, children and the old all run.  They run at set times during the year, to mark the movement of seasons, to celebrate and give thanks.  They run for competition and sport, to ensure a good hunt or a good harvest,  to ensure good health, to access altered states of consciousness, to be connected with the sources of power in nature--sun, moon, gods, animals, wind, river, sky.    

What we know of these traditions has for the most part survived only in fragments, reports, stories. Hernan Cortes wrote that within 24 hours of his landfall, a coordinated system of runners had relayed the news to Montezuma, 260 miles away.  In 1690, a mysterious millenarian leader named Po’pay organized a group of runners to fan out from the Taos Pueblo to villages across what is now New Mexico and Arizona. Carrying knotted cords to mark time, the runners triggered a simultaneous uprising across hundreds of miles, banishing the Spanish, temporarily, from the region.  In 1903, 60 runners approached the Zuni Pueblo carrying bundles of sacred reads and holding live tortoises; they had reportedly been involved in this ritual run for four days and for some 120 miles. Surviving into the twentieth century were running competitions such as the kick-stick races of the Southwest, the “world around” races of Plains Indians, and the astonishing log-carrying races in the Brazilian jungle.  

Nabokov is interested not so much in times and distances, the outward manifestations of running, as he is in the inner experience it represents, the “record of human consciousness.”  He quotes the advice of a blind elder: “Keep your gaze fixed on that mountain, and you will feel the miles melt beneath your feet.  Do this, and in time you will feel as if you can leap over bushes, trees, and even the river.”  He describes the work of anthropologist Thomas Buckley with the Yurok of northern California.   Among the Yurok, select groups of runners would live in a sort of monk-like retreat, where they learned esoteric techniques for gaining power over themselves and nature.  Yurok runners followed a specialized diet, and underwent grueling training, for example carrying the equivalent of “small boulders” up 3000 foot ascents.  

Mental training for Yurok runners was, if anything, even more challenging.  A runner would learn to “cultivate an extra sensory relationship with the trail, through singing to it, addressing it.  He was taught to make room for it, to receive the trail as a being, letting it dictate the run.  It was as though the trail was running out behind him and under him by itself.” To reach this state, he would practice running with closed eyes, letting the trail guide him.  (I tried this morning to emulate the exercise during my run on a flat straight asphalt trail--and panicked after about 5 seconds of running with closed eyes.  To do this on a rocky or woodland trail is unimaginable.)

A fascinating yet melancholy coda to Nabokov’s book is provided by a final chapter about Indian participation in the world of white athletics.   There is the account of Tom Longboat, an Onondaga Indian who on an unseasonably cold day won--and smashed the record--at the 1907 Boston Marathon.   There is the story of Louis Tewanima, a Hopi, who won a “half-marathon” in 1911 in New York City, as well as the 1925 Bunion Derby.  Longboat and Tewanina did not flourish in their lives after running, and this sad decline seemed to be a pattern for many of the athletes described in this chapter.  

A persistent theme throughout the final chapter and the book as a whole is the mismatch between Indian reasons for running and the narrower imperatives of Western-style competition. “Observers are surprised when the Tarahumara who wins a two-day race for his team walks away virtually ignored” (83).  A race is a sort of banquet.  All participate, and no special award goes to the person who happens to eat the most.  Explanations are “almost beside the point.”  It makes one deeply skeptical about the supposedly “universal” values of the International Olympiad.

For all the fascination of its contents, this is not a compulsively page-turning book.  There are times when Nabokov’s almost willful refusal to offer analysis or explanation, or to construct a narrative, can be utterly maddening.  He provides a very loose narrative scaffolding around an account of the 375 mile Tricentennial Run held by the Pueblos of New Mexico in August, 1980, to celebrate Po’pay’s 1680 uprising.  But this story is told inconsistently and in fragments.  A welter of details--sometimes introduced utterly without any sort of transition--overwhelms any sense of narrative progression.  Nor is this book, Nabokov asserts, meant to be scholarly treatise.  Sensitive to a history of Western impositions of meaning on Indian culture, he shies away from pursuing any thesis about why and how North and South America became continents of runners.   

Readers hoping for anything like McDougall’s entertaining hyperbole and chummy brand of gonzo journalism will probably be disappointed by Nabokov’s account (confession: I’ve read Born to Run twice).   But Indian Running in the end provides something far more substantial, lasting and deeply satisfying.  Among my favorite passages is an explanation of why people run offered by a young Pueblo girl.  We run, she says, because we are inspired by the wind, grass, and trees.  “We like to run toward the hills, and sit down near the grass and the bushes; the wind excites them; they sing, and so do we.”

Running the MoCo Watershed

This mid-section of the mid-Atlantic state in which I live serves as a vast drainage area, sloping from the Blue Ridge and Appalacian areas in the west to the flat coastal plains in the east.  A map of the MoCo (Montgomery County) watershed looks like the capillarized cross-section of some vital organ.  As I suppose it is.

Today's planned 6-hour run begins in a dense early morning fog at the small parking area in front the ruins of Black Rock Mill.  I am here, not the trailhead at Riley's Lock, where Seneca Creek flows into the Potomac, because with the soggy past week we've had and warm, almost spring-like January day, parts of the lower lying portion of the Seneca Greenway Trail will likely have turned to bog.  

For the first half hour, I move slowly, warming up the legs and picking my way carefully along the muddy track.  River and forest are wreathed in fog.  The air is damp, cool but not cold--not a typical day for January.  Along the riverbank there is new, almost springlike green growth in places.  Fog and high winter quiet give the riverscape an oneiric quality.    

The path, even the river itself, appear to have been rerouted, shifted by storm and flood.  With the leaves gone, I can see the ravine walls and outcroppings of rocks that are invisible in the summer.  Fallen trees litter the hillside.  I feel curiously exposed.  I think of Sir Gawain, travelling the winter-paths in reverse pilgrimage to his mid-winter appointment with the Green Knight.  

For the first two hours of my run, I see no one.  As the fog burns off and as I near Clopper Lake, I spot a bow hunter trudging noisily across a field into the woods.  His brown camouflage hunting clothes stand out in stark relief against the pale dead winter grass.  

I am always astonished how, in the heart of a county with a million residents, I can be moving through a landscape for hours without seeing anyone.   Vital as it may be, the river feels detached from the lived world of shops, roads, and houses.  Our congested roads no longer need to follow the logic of the old water-paths.  Drivers are scarcely aware of the existence of these streams and creeks--except when they flood, or someone drowns.  To run the trails of MoCo is to retrace the old paths and relearn the logic of rivers and streams.

I do a few loops around the root-studded, muddy lakeshore trail, dodging gnawed-off ends of trees and branches that beavers have rather wastefully (it seems to me) left scattered about.   I am no longer alone on this trail, sharing it with a handful of other runners and a few lone walkers.   Stopping briefly at a picnic table, I eat one of the guacamole wraps that are my sole source of calories for this run.  The lake is gray in its midwinter ordinariness, but even at its drabbest, the combination of water and forest trail and motion inspire a strange excitement and anticipation in me.  It is a sort of continuous low-level aesthetic buzz, providing nourishment for ultra-distance running as vital as food.  

Four hours into the run, I have looped back to the car, where I switch off my minimalist Vivo Barefoot Breatho trail shoes for the somewhat less minimalist Inov-8 XT Talons.  Both are ideal for the day's sloppy exigencies, but the cushionless Vivos have left my feet feeling just a tad raw.   I may be recovering still from last week's Phunt 50k.  By comparison, the hardly supportive Inov-8's feel cushy.  

I head up the steeply graded road, then turn onto the beehive of Schaeffer Farm trails.   I am quickly onto a path following the contours of a field.  The path is red-orange--the utisol or red clay soil found from Alabama to Maryland, up and down the Piedmont, although less common in our area than in the South.  Again I have the sensation of running not forwards but backwards into the past, into a vanished elsewhere.

  

Winter opens a landscape that for most of the year is hidden. The topography of Schaeffer Farms, half a mile from the Seneca Creek riverbed, comprises a complexly folded, corrugated area of 2000 acres.  Designed for mountain bikers, the trails here can rollercoaster in a matter of minutes from muddy stream bottom to pine forest ridge line.   Steep hills rise where hard igneous stone has weathered more slowly than the softer layers of sedimentary rocks below. One moment I am peering down a wooded declivity, minutes later I am wetting my feet in the creek at ravine's bottom.   

Five and one-half hours--almost done.  The sun is high and temperatures have risen into the fifties.  I have stripped down to shorts and a t-shirt now, for the first time in months.  Feeling rejuvenated, and glad to be near the end, I run out the clock with one more circuit of the white-blazed trail, then head back down the hill to Black Rock Mill.  

2013 PHUNT 50K, Fair Hill, MD

This low-key trail race takes place early every January in the northeast corner of Maryland, just miles from the border with Delaware and Pennsylvania.  It meant an early start and a 1 and 1/2 hour drive from Silver Spring.  Not so bad.  Since the race begins at a leisurely 9AM, I had time to eat and digest a good breakfast, get a quick shot up an unusually empty 95 North, and enjoy the sunrise while crossing the Susquehanna.   I was one of the first to arrive.  I dropped off my canned goods for the food drive, handed over my contribution for the aid tables, and did a little early exploring of the trails.

Elkton and Fair Hill NMRA sit at the head of the upper eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but the terrain in this area is not part of the flat sandy coastal plains area of Maryland.  The twisty, hilly, stream-crossed forests and fields of Fair Hill NMRA are part of the same Piedmont Plateau region that includes the trails in my own backyard--Seneca Creek, Rachel Carson, Little Bennet.  None of the climbs or descents are all that long; there's just a lot of them in a small space.  

Most challenging, perhaps, were the open field sections.  These looked pleasant enough on the map, but the poor footing and exposure to the wind made some of these climbs fairly wearying.  Again, none of these stretches are all that long.  This is not a particularly technical race (few rocks), but it's an honest trail race that will challenge you with a little bit of everything.  I'd recommend it as an introduction to trail ultramarathons.

It looks to me as if the organizers tinker with the course each year, but I'm not sure.  For 2013, at least, the 25 KM course consists of two connecteed loops, run counter-clockwise and together forming a sort of figure 8.   You do the figure 8 twice.  Aid stations come at the start/finish area, and the 5/10 mile mark (in the middle of the figure eight), meaning you have 5 aid stations over the course of the race.  These are well-stocked stations, managed by plenty of wonderful, helpful volunteers.  Not bad for a FatAss race with no entry fee.  This is one of those events with real spirit and heart.  
(Photo courtesy of Stacy Runs and Eats)

Yes, people do get lost--myself included, twice--but I have no one but myself to blame, since the trail is astonishingly well-marked.  Astonishing, that is, given the absence of an entry fee, and despite the understated demurral on the race website that they "might mark some of the course if they have time."  The challenge of finding your way on this twisty, serpentine, up-and-down, only-slightly-devious course is that Fair Hill NRMA has some 80 miles (so they say) of trails in not an extremely large area, which means trails cross and recross each other constantly.

The winter landscape of dead leaves strewn everywhere means some trails just plain disappear from sight.  There are some sharp turns that come upon you suddenly and are easy to blow by if, say, the sun is in your eyes.  A "bushwacking" section has you leave the trail for a brief mini-Barkleys adventure.  It isn't long, but is easy to miss. You have to stay alert.

We had fantastic conditions.  About 28 degrees at the start, relatively little wind, and sunny the whole day.  Yes, very good--it is January, after all, and could be a whole lot worse.  I fretted a bit in the final minutes before the start over whether to wear my grippy Inov-8 XT Talons or more supportive Saucony Peregrines, and ultimately went with the latter.  It was a trade-off.  Good for the first half of the course, when the ground was mostly frozen and hard as rocks, but not so good in the latter stages, when the mud became more of a problem.  The Saucony Peregrines do pick up mud and I sometimes felt as if I were running in boots.  Particularly challenging was the mud that hid unseen below a layer of dead leaves; I'd hit this and go into a skid.

I had a decent race, for the first effort since October's Grindstone 100, with steady energy levels the whole way.  Thanks to my penchant for taking the scenic route (getting lost on the second loop for about 10 or so minutes), I just missed my goal of coming in under 5 hours, so had to settle for 5 hours and 3 minutes.   

I came away from the experience with a firm decision, however, never to take in any sugar--fructose, glucose, maltodextrin, whatever--during a race.  This 47-year-old stomach just won't take it.  I'm going with "real food" only--I like Jurek's practice of pita with hummus--even if I have to pack it all with me.    

Other race reports on the PHUNT 50K

2010 Report from Matt Frazier, No Meat Athlete 

2010 Report from Maria Simone, Running, A Life

2012 Report from Stacy Runs and Eats

Running the C & O

With March's Graveyard 100 casting a lengthy backwards shadow over my winter training, I've been seeking out extended flat runs to ready myself for this test along the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Dead-level running hour after repetitive hour poses special challenges, mental and physical.  I am fortunate to live close to the perfect venue for this sort of exercise: the C & O Canal Towpath, 184 magnificent miles along the Potomac, from Georgetown to Cumberland, MD.

Last Saturday's plan was to sample 36 of those miles, starting at the Dickerson Conservation Park, a little north of my usual starting point at Riley's Lock or Carderock.  My hope was to keep above the snow/sleet line that tends to snake unpredictably across the middle of our state, and so avoid any hypothermia-inducing cold rain.   There was also the excitement of a running a portion of the path I haven't seen before.

Pulling out of Dickerson, I am slapped first by a hissing sleet.  It's 34 degrees now, so things could go either way.  I'm not dressed for a heavy wet cold downpour that lasts for 6 hours.  Thankfully, the precipitation quickly downshifts to slow-drifting, fat snowflakes.   My mind begins to relax, gradually slipping into that long-run, I-have-six-hours-to-go-so-take-it-easy mode.

Ultra time.  It seems to come more naturally here.  Landscape dictates consciousness, shaping our experience of time as well as space.  The endless flat miles of the towpath require--and make possible--a different kind of mental discipline than the rocky trails that are my preferred terrain.  The kind of hyper-alert attention to moment-by-moment changes we need to avoid planting our faces on the trail or poking out an eye will not do here.   Here, our attention turns inward--and then outward, as the path expands and stretches, melting into the gray and black of winter trees, the swirl of snow over the silvery Potomac.  

For years, I have avoided the C&O as monotonous, even soul-killing.  It truly is not.  Any dullness is in us, not the path.  Change simply unfolds on a different, longer timescale.  To run the C & O is to run into the past.  A few miles on from Dickerson, I come to that remarkable piece of engineering, the Monacacy Aqueduct.  Nineteenth-century critical infrastructure, once carefully guarded by Union troops, now a monument to outdated technology.

Another 6 miles roll by.  The snow is at it heaviest as I pull into Point of Rocks, a dramatic cross-section of the Catoctin Mountains.  Layers of metamorphosed limestone almost 600 million years old have been pushed up slant-wise, the rock face jutting out toward the river like the prow of an immense ship.   In the first half of the 19th century, this narrow pass between river and cliff was the focus of a bitter court battle between the canal company and the upstart railroad.

At the 11 or 12 mile mark, I fall in with another runner, just starting his 16-miler at the Cactoctin Aqueduct.  In training for his first Boston Marathon at age 60, Don Frisbee kept me company for the next 6 or 7 miles.  About 10 minutes into our run, we were slowed by the sight of a fox, acting curiously unconcerned by our presence, weaving slowly and suspiciously about in the middle of the path.  Most unfoxlike--and therefore possibly rabid.  We slow to a stop.  Suddenly aware of us, the fox takes off in a flash down the path.  That is more like it.

At Weverton Cliffs, Don and I part ways.  He has a few miles further north to go, and for me, at the 3 hour mark, it is time to turn back for home.  As I make my way back past the town of Brunswick, which seems to have been slowly dying for a century, the air begins to warm, snow shifting to a light rain.  The path sprouts patches of fresh mud and slush.  My feet are soon soaked, chilled, heavy.

With 10 miles to go, I eat the last of my low-carb almond-flour pancakes.  Don regarded me rather dubiously when I tried to explain why I had deliberately avoided significant carbohydrates for the past 24 hours before the run.  For the past 6 weeks, I have been experimenting with carb-depleted running.  The goal is to turn on the body's innate but reluctant ability to burn fat rather than glucose.  My version of this metabolic retraining is a hybrid, inspired variously by Phil Maffetone, Stu Mittleman, Meb Keflezighi, and Tim Olsen.   

Twice a week, I've been doing an early morning run of 2 to 3 hours on an empty stomach, preceded by a day or so of a reduced carb, higher fat diet (not an easy feat for a vegan); and on the weekends, a long run of 5 to 6 hours, fueled mostly by nuts and a low-carb breakfast.  The first week of this regimen was frankly unpleasant.  Then, something clicked.  What seemed inconceivable becomes natural.  No more bonking.  Even, steady energy on every run.   Nonetheless, today's 36 miler would constitute a bit of a test: the longest I've gone without gels, bars, and other carbo-crutches.

I'm still feeling good, if a bit damp and cool, over the last few miles.  Anticipating a warm car and food, I start looking at my watch, tallying the mile markers that divide the towpath.  I am not fatigued, but mental equanimity and patience are now rather shattered as ordinary time reasserts itself, and I begin to fret about tasks and obligations for the afternoon.  Right on cue, the sun comes out, drying the trail and sparkling across the Potomac as I ease into the Dickerson Conservation Area.  I walk the last few yards over the little bridge over the canal to parking area.

Next week, it's up to Elkton, MD, for the PHUNT 50 K--my first-ever FatAss event.