Free Ultramarathon Man by DEAN KARNAZES

vegetables. What I really missed at first were sweets. I craved candy and ice cream. But I began feeling so much better after eliminating sugars from my diet that eventually I hardly missed them.
    After half a year of rigorous preparation, I found myself capable of running a full marathon on any given day. And I was strong on the hills, San Francisco providing ample training grounds. Sometimes I would run a marathon on Saturday, before breakfast, and then another marathon on Sunday. One of my favorite routes took me up the Hyde Street hill, where I’d often race the cable cars to the cheers and jeers of the passengers. My legs grew powerful and my body became taut and lean.
    Training so intensely required sacrifices in other areas of my life. A good athlete might be able to fake his way through a 10K, or perhaps even a marathon, but there’s no running fifty miles without having paid your dues. I would get up well before dawn to run before work. Anywhere I traveled, either for work or pleasure, my running shoes came along. If there was a break in my day, even for forty-five minutes, I was out the door for a “quick pop,” followed by a speedy sponge bath in the men’s room, and then back into my suit for the next meeting.
    I loved running, especially across the Golden Gate Bridge into the hills of Marin. Though some of my friends thought my antics were becoming a little overzealous, I hardly noticed that I’d progressed from a casual jogger into something more. Distances that I’d previously thought impossible were now covered without much notice. The good folks at the Fleet Feet running store kept my credit-card information on file, since I was in every few weeks to purchase new running shoes.
    After months of preparation, I felt ready to take on the fifty-miler. The qualifying run was on a course set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, just outside Sacramento. It started at 5:00 A.M. and was a couple hours’ drive from San Francisco, so I left my house at two in the morning.
    The drive was luxurious. As a perk for my job performance, the company had given me a new Lexus LS 400 luxury sedan. I’m not much of a car guy, but it sure was a nice ride. The one thing that really struck me was how quiet it was inside. The seals on the doors were so efficient that the interior seemed almost soundproof.
    When I got to the race, I was startled to discover that it was near-freezing outside—twenty degrees cooler than when I’d left the house. I sat in my new Lexus, with its heated leather seats, until just before the start.
    Coincidentally, among the few dozen runners milling about the starting line were the pair who’d passed me on Lovers’ Lane. I said hello. One of them raised his eyebrows at me, while the other didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. Ah, such gentlemen. We all jammed into the small starting area, and with a few yelps and hoots the race began.
    Within 3 miles of the start, I found myself running alone. There were only about forty racers, and the pack thinned quickly. The course meandered through the countryside, fairly flat and well groomed, with some sparse vegetation lining the trail. Periodically I would spot other runners ahead of me and behind me, but a reasonable distance separated the fleet. Aside from the aid stations along the route, I ran solo for the entire race.
    It was a journey into uncharted waters, and I had no one to consult for directions. So I did as Benner had instructed years ago, and ran with my heart. It was all that I knew to do.
    There was only modest elevation change as we followed the well-traveled dirt path. As the race wore on, however, a freezing wind developed, and the path became a little less orderly. It was all very exciting to me. Even though I ran alone, I was far from lonely because my mind was totally engaged in the experience.
    Although I could easily run a marathon a day for two days in a row, running the equivalent of