Ultramarathon Runners

"Usually, home is associated with a physical space, whether that is a building, neighborhood, town, city, or country; sometimes all that comes to mind are the four walls of a room. Home is where, when you walk in the door, you recognize the smell of clean clothes, stir-fry, or the scent of a field of wheat. It's the light that shines through the window each night, casting familiar shadows. It's waking up in the morning and walking around without needing to turn on the light. For me, however, all of these feelings are scattered since my home is a collection of specific spaces that make me feel good when I'm in them. I walk around La Cerdanya and suddenly feel at home, but the illusion disappears in the blink of an eye. I go back to Chamonix and the smell of fall welcomes me — I feel at home, but the spell is soon broken. In Nepal, too, the relaxed feeling of home sometimes takes hold of me for a moment. I can often feel more like I'm in my own place in some unknown country than when I'm in the house I've paid for and made my own, where some days I feel like a total stranger."

"In federated sports, this performance is judged by rules and regulations. But in the mountains, these rules and regulations are meaningless. Mountains are (still) a space of freedom, where lawlessness reigns for the good of everyone."

"In the end, Above the Clouds is not about what I have achieved but about what I have experienced, about feeling at peace with my values when I do something and embracing the possibility of change and failure as a reward for my soul."

"I have always found serenity in solitude. For me, three is a crowd. As much with family as among friends, I have always felt like the person who has one foot in and one foot out. Like someone who feels at ease for a moment, every once in a while. In a world that is so connected and so social, I have never wanted to belong to any tribe."

"Perhaps I run because I need to feel creative. I need to know what is inside me and then see it realized somewhere outside me. We can explore our inner selves and know what we are capable of, but perhaps we also need to externalize that and separate it out from our bodies in order to view it as spectators, in order to evaluate it and see the defects so that we can do it again, better. It is a pleasure intrinsic to the creation of beauty."

"A race is like a work of art; it is a creation that requires not only technique and work but also inspiration to reach a satisfactory outcome. But, also, it is ephemeral, because like a Buddhist mandala, the enjoyment comes in the creating of it; at the moment of climax, at the point when it has reached its perfection, it disappears and will be impossible to create exactly ever again. There can be no repeats; we can relive similar emotions and experience familiar sensations, but they will never take the same shape, because inspiration leads us to explore different forms."

"I've been a vegetarian for 21 years and a vegan plant-based athlete for 5 years. … Nothing takes the place of real plant-based nutrition."

"Recall the story of Jason Lester, who could have allowed the devastating paralysis of his arm to send him into a spiral of depression, anger, and desire for vengeance. Indeed, he did feel some of these emotions; who wouldn't? But his sense of discipline, instilled by his father during years of athletic training, was stronger."

"Running became my way of solving this puzzle of what had happened to me. It was just me and the road."

"Rational assessments too often led to rational surrenders."

"We move forward, but we must stay in the present."

"The potential of the human body is immense. You can come out of some of the deepest, darkest holes if you keep pressing forward."

"We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward."

"We strive toward a goal, and whether we achieve it or not is important, but it's not what's most important. What matters is how we move toward that goal."

"Nature's arena has a way of humbling and energizing us."

"It's a hard, simple calculus: Run until you can't run anymore. Then run some more. Find a new source of energy and will. Then run even faster."

"That summer I was nominated to go to the Team Birkie ski camp for the best high school cross-country skiers in the state. … The camp served vegetable lasagna, all kinds of salads, and freshly baked whole wheat bread. … I didn't have any choice, so I ate it all. And I couldn't believe how good it tasted! What was even more amazing was how great I felt. I trained more, and more often, at that camp than I ever had before. And I had never felt better, stronger. I suspected that what I was eating had something to do with how I was feeling, but it wasn't until years later, when I began to study the connection between diet and exercise, nutrition and health, that I learned the importance of diet for everyone — not just athletes. I would learn that a plant-based diet meant more fiber, which sped food through the digestive tract, minimizing the impact of toxins. The same diet also meant more vitamins and minerals; more substances like lycopene, lutein, and beta carotene, which helps protect against chronic disease. And it would mean less refined carbohydrates and trans fats, both implicated in heart disease and other ailments."

"I worried that my vegan diet might fail me. I worried that I'd run out of energy. I worried that the heat might prove too much. True, I wasn't as sore as I had been before going to a plant-based diet, and my recovery time was faster than ever. True, I almost never got congested, and whenever a cold or flu swept through Seattle, sending a lot of other runners to bed, I stayed healthy. And of course, I had battled Mount Si and prevailed, if a man could be said to prevail. I had also gone to California a week earlier and trained every day in the 100-degree canyons. But if you can imagine running 100 miles, you can imagine almost anything."

"Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn't sure he can accomplish. It can be running a mile, or a 10K race, or 100 miles. It can be changing a career, losing 5 pounds, or telling someone you love her (or him)."

"The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life."

"Ultrarunners — even the fiercest competitors — grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise in self-sacrifice and pursuit of transcendence. Because that’s what we’re all chasing — that “zone” where we are performing at the peak of our abilities. That instant when we think we can’t go on but do go on. We all know the way that moment feels, how rarely it occurs, and the pain we have to endure to grab it back again. The longer an ultrarunner competes, I believe, the more he grows to love not only the sport, not only his fellow ultrarunners, but people in general. We all struggle to find meaning in a sometimes painful world. Ultrarunners do it in a very distilled version."

"I'm healthier and I can run longer and faster because I eat a plant-based diet. But I don't preach to my carnivorous friends or lambaste anyone who eats a baked potato slathered with butter and sour cream. Anyone who pays attention to what they eat and how it affects them will naturally move toward plants — and toward health."

"To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness. It was to see more clearly. As my yoga teacher would say, “Injuries are our best teachers.” I'm convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs. I don't mean to minimize the gifts of friendship, achievement, and closeness to nature that I've received in my running career. But the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind — a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus."