When is five miles uphill an endspurt?

When Scott Jurek was at the base of Mt Katahdin, Maine, nearing the end of his 2015 successful attempt at the supported FKT (fastest known time) record to traverse the Appalachian Trail (AT) end to end.

Mt Katahdin, AT's northern terminus. (Licensing info)

Jurek had begun from the AT's southern terminus on Springer Mountain in Georgia some 46 days and almost 2,200 miles earlier. As a percent of the total distance, five miles is ~0.2%. In comparison, endspurts (of typical runners, not elites) in marathons range from a mile (?) to the last quarter mile, even for those who hit the wall and were death marching it to the finish. If one waits until that last lap, the endspurt would still be almost one percent. But, of course, a one-percent endspurt of a marathon is very different from a one-percent spurt at the end of an AT FKT attempt. Jurek fought the AT (terrain, weather, bears, ...), and the AT won. He was, in his own words, broken and obliterated, with nothing left. Or at least he thought he'd dug as deep into himself as possible and come up empty. Yet, with the end in sight, five miles uphill, somehow, somewhere, he was able to tap into a reserve that he must have thought didn't exist. A reserve just beyond the limit set by the Central Governor; a reserve located just a bit closer to death.

View near the southern end of Roaring Brook Road, 2-3 miles east of Abol Bridge, where Jurek began his final leg of his FKT record, 10 miles to the base of, and then five miles up to, Mt. Katahdin (in background). (Licensing info)

Day after day, of Jurek's 46 plus days on the AT, I followed along, enthralled by the story of his journey, as chronicled in his recently published memoir, North. His wife, Jenny Jurek, the only support crew person who accompanied him through the entire distance (coordinated rendezvous at road-trail crossings), contributed a really interesting and informative aspect of the story from the crewing perspective. There was also a host of others from the ultramarathon community who came out to help (El Coyote, Horty, Ralsty, Speedgoat, ...!), over various parts of the AT. It's that kind of community. My vicarious journey was made a bit more real, thanks to Google Maps and Street View (or is it Trail View on the AT?). My journey also extended just a bit to Jurek's digging deep into himself. I could relate, albeit at a different level.

Digging deeper to run faster--what is that, exactly? In response to his wife, who's an ultrarunner herself and who'd asked why she couldn't run fast, Jurek said, "You can, but you don't like to hurt." Which is a topic that Alex Hutchinson also delved into in his new book, "Endure," a story of the physiology and psychology of athletes and the as yet unsolved mysteries of endurance and the mind-body relationship. Hutchinson defines endurance as "the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop." In either story, the mental aspect of running--or any endurance activity--is a dominant theme. In a slight twist to this familiar statement, Jurek wrote, in chapter 12 of his book (Day 35), "I've heard said that ultramarathons are 90 percent mental. And the other 10 percent? That's mental too. I was in the thick of that other 10 percent." He was discussing motivation--how badly does one want it.

For the first several chapters, I was reading both books simultaneously, alternating chapters, which was kind of interesting. North is a monumental case study of Endure. But, eventually, North won out. Not quite a fair competition, because North is a more naturally gripping story. I wanted to find out what happened the next day on the AT.

In yesterday's morning long run (16 miles; week 7 of 16), over the last few miles, I thought about Jurek's FKT and digging deeper. I like to think that that's what helped me to speed up towards home.

Above 30-40 miles per week

In the early weeks after restarting training, following a layoff due to injury or other reasons, the body feels out of sorts, as if its various parts are just slightly misaligned, not quite fitting in with each other. It's been more than 15 weeks since that injury to my left hamstring-glutes area, sustained during the last long run before taper for the early April B&A Trail Marathon. That race turned out to be my first DNS. My usual modified 16-week training program has a 3- instead of a 2-week taper. B&A preceded May's Pocono Marathon (also a DNS), by six weeks. This nine-week period, consisting of mostly test runs and couple of test races (previously scheduled), easily has been the longest period that I've had to mostly stayed off the roads. In the six weeks plus since Pocono, I've been able to ease myself back into normal training, currently in week 7 of the 16-week cycle for the early September Potomac Marathon. Still, my recovery from the injury has been at a frustratingly glacial pace.

What's interesting, however, was once I got back above 30-40 miles per week, all those misaligned body parts seemed to just shift into their proper places. They all fit. Running felt delightfully familiar again, with that certain rhythm. This threshold of familiarity probably varies for different people, depending on the level of training. For elites, e.g., it may be 60-70 miles per week.

The human body is fascinating.