Running on Empty (6 page)

Now, there was just one item remaining unchecked on my extreme to-do list: the transcontinental run. At almost sixty years old, if I didn't get moving soon, would I ever do it?

Like my dream of climbing Mount Everest, I'd been thinking about this for a long time, always intrigued by the pioneers who'd made their way across the United States in covered wagons. Stories of the western expansion, with its hardships and the people's perseverance, had riveted me since childhood. Captains Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and others: legends, every one, but real men, just the same. In imaginary play as a boy, my brother and I had become them, wearing faux coonskin caps and firing cork rifles through the bushes and around the corners of our house. Some part of the frontier character cried out for expression in my adulthood, too. Back in my early forties, I'd signed up to do the “Trans Am '92,” an organized race that would follow a historic route and pit me against a few other acclaimed ultrarunners, but in the end, I'd decided not to go, because of family and work obligations. At the time, my kids were too young for me to take off for two months, plus I was in the process of getting my first divorce and still actively building my business.

By 2006, though, I'd resigned from managing Fort Morgan Pet Foods, my youngest, Ali, was nearly driving age, and I had Heather by my side. The timing just might be perfect.

Besides, I was gripped by my recent conversations with Ted Corbitt, my mentor and a modern pioneer, one of the founders and architects of ultrarunning. He'd described in depth a transcontinental race held in 1928, nicknamed the Bunion Derby—the very race that had inspired the Trans Am from which I'd had to bow out. Among the Bunion Derby's 199 starters were sons of clergy and sons of former slaves, men who were known for their prowess as runners and men who'd never run much at all, guys of all ages, ones who came with financial backing and ones who came only with the clothes on their backs.

As an African-American born in 1919 in South Carolina, and a child when the bunioneers made their cross-country trek, Ted was especially impressed by how egalitarian that footrace had been—no one was excluded. Growing up and becoming an elite athlete, he'd experienced plenty of racism and been banned from a few competitions because of his skin color. Although Ted recalled his own trials with humor and grace, he didn't discount how significant it was that the field of runners in 1928 was composed of people from all walks of life. The Bunion Derby, with its diverse competitors, had sparked something in him, an ideal that kept him going when he faced obstacles of his own.

Like me, Ted had started running on his family farm. As an adult, he'd competed in the 1952 Olympics, helped found the New York Road Runners Club, set standards for course measurements, organized a thirty-miler in the five boroughs that was the precursor to the New York City Marathon, held distance records throughout his running career, and even coined the term
ultrarunning
. He achieved idol status in the admittedly small world of ultramarathons, especially for his athletic achievements after age forty, when he was competing in the masters' category. At age eighty-three, he walked 303 miles in a six-day running race, covering just over fifty miles a day. His accomplishments earned him the titles “father of ultrarunning” and “spiritual elder of the modern running clan.”

Ted was in his late eighties when we met, and he told me that he'd long dreamed of running across America himself, although he was never in a position to make an attempt. Finances and work had kept him from it, but the extreme distance and the athleticism required to pull off a record-setting finish fascinated him. We talked about this, and about how those guys in 1928 had run across a still-segregated country mostly on dirt and gravel, wearing leather-soled shoes and street clothes. One wore flannel underwear.

Of course, there were others who came before and after. Walkers, runners, people who crossed east or west in pursuit of, well, a different objective for each of them, I suppose. Like Ted, I wanted to retrace these people's steps, too. In places where the land remained unchanged, I wanted to see what they'd seen. Where modernization had won out, I wanted to marvel at our inventions and consider whether so-called progress had, indeed, moved us forward. I wanted to meet people as I ran, get a sense of the American character, if there really was such a thing. I was itching to get out there on our nation's roads and test myself against the elements that had battered my forerunners, and I wanted to prevail. I wanted to set a new world record.

At the beginning of 2007, I clicked through the Guinness World Records site to receive information about qualifying for an attempt to break the transcontinental record. I knew I wanted to do it, but I hadn't figured out the particulars yet. Who would finance it? I doubted I could foot the bill all by myself for the route detailing, support team/crew, food, lodging, vehicles, gas, medical care, and whatever else we'd need.

 

That winter, it was as if someone fired a start gun when I heard that Charlie Engle (my Denali climbing teammate, with whom I'd also adventure raced in Fiji and Vietnam) was running across the Sahara Desert with another friend, Ray Zahab, as well as Kevin Lin. Their 4,500-mile journey was being underwritten by a documentary of their experience, which would be titled, simply,
Running the Sahara
. Narrated by Matt Damon, it would capture the spirit of the three runners, the desert environment, and the obstacles they'd face, and it would bring awareness to the water crisis in that area.
Running the Sahara
would be in the tradition of other great extreme sports films—as could be a film about my own transcontinental run, I imagined. It would be like the 2005 BBC documentary I'd watched fairly recently, about a group of men who re-created Robert F. Scott and Roald Amundsen's treks to the South Pole, racing each other and using Greenland as a backdrop. Or like Jon Muir's tale, made into the film
Alone Across Australia: A Story About a Man Who Takes His Dog for a Walk.
(Don't let the title fool you, as this is an amazing adventure, a 2,500-mile, self-sufficient crossing of the Australian outback—even the dog dies!) There'd been a few films about ultrarunning, such as
The Distance of Truth
and
Running on the Sun,
both about the Badwater 135
.
But I envisioned something on an epic scale that would be about more than running.

Extreme sports documentaries were becoming more and more popular, and I knew a transcontinental run could make a great addition to the genre. My theory was that people would love to see a film about unadorned athleticism that would also be positive and motivational, and this one would reveal the many faces of America, its landmarks and landscape, some running history, and even a bit of what our pioneers experienced in their push westward. What better way to do all that than to film a run nearly straight across the whole damn U.S. of A.?

Because Ray was more accessible by e-mail than Charlie while they were in the Sahara, I sent a message through him to ask Charlie if he'd be interested in brokering a deal with any of his film or corporate contacts so that I could gain media interest, financing, or product support for a run across America. I suspected that this idea of a transcon—and of me doing it at my “advanced age”—might catch Charlie's eye; he respected me, I believed, plus he had a reputation of being a smooth operator, someone who could sell ice to an Inuit, exactly the kind of guy I wanted on my team if I was going to get the cross-country ultrarun under way
now.

I laid it all on the line. At the end of my e-mail, I revealed my thoughts about challenging the record:

Calling a transcontinental run a “huge effort” wasn't hyperbole. If anything, I was underplaying it. This would be the biggest thing I'd ever done, the hardest, the longest, with the most potential for both injury and enlightenment, my magnum opus. At the time I wrote that note, I didn't fully grasp the impending transformation, the personal revelations that would turn something I'd believed for my whole life upside down. How it would completely alter my sense of reality and relationships, my definitions of independence and self-reliance. How the distance would chastise my body and the experience would scald my soul.

But I wouldn't fully understand that until later, during the run. What I did understand, even just contemplating this, was the intense effort it had taken Frank Giannino, who'd set the record with his second attempt in 1980 at the age of twenty-eight.

When I'd contacted Frank, some months before I wrote to Ray and Charlie, and asked his advice about challenging his record, he had been encouraging and told me to go for it. He'd also admitted how difficult it was, during his first crossing in '79 (coincidentally, the same year I started running), to start out with a friend, have that friend falter and drop out, and watch his crew disintegrate. It ruined the friendship, and he wasn't satisfied with his finishing time.

The next year, he'd come back with his mother, father, and brother to crew, run alone, and set the record on his own, completing the course in a little more than forty-six days. Frank counseled me to get into a routine as soon as possible, as I'd need to have small, consistent things to look forward to as I ran. He never said anything about how physically demanding the run would be. That was understood, a basic fact, an undeniable reality of what would come.

I also understood there'd be no second chance for me: Unlike Frank, I didn't have the youth, the money, or the heart to put my family through this ordeal twice. As with Everest, I was going to succeed, or fail, in one try.

 

It took Ray a while to get back to me. He and Charlie were busy putting in forty-mile days across the largest desert in the world. But when I heard from him, Ray's news was positive. Yes, Charlie was interested. In fact, Charlie decided later that he'd like to attempt the run with me, to take his own crack at the transcon record set in 1980.

Would I like some company on the road?

Sure, I said. Let's do this thing.

We'd have to map out a course, sticking to legal pedestrian roads, per the Guinness World Record guidelines, choosing the most direct, legal route. We'd both need to recruit our own crews, two separate groups of people who'd take care of us on the way. We'd have to secure some vehicles, product sponsors, and financial backing. We'd have to train. Hard.

 

It was all coming together: Charlie was on board and would pitch my idea to his movie contacts, plus he thought that a documentary would help attract sponsors. A race director and close friend of mine had offered to underwrite the run, so we just had to go and meet with her to see how she felt about a two-man attempt on the record and get her blessing to proceed.

One hitch: After the three of us met in New York, she told me that although she was still willing to finance the run, and she could see great reasons to do a two-man race, she didn't like my choice of running mate. To be blunt, she couldn't stand Charlie, didn't trust him, and didn't think much of his résumé.