Ulrich - Running on empty: an ultramarathoners story of love, loss, and a record-setting run across america

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Table of Contents

Praise for Running on Empty

Marshall is The Man. Definitively. His run across America at the age of fifty-seven sealed that distinction forever. Hes living proof that endurance never sleeps, never gets old, never tires. Nothing can stop him, and that gives us all hope, gives us resolve to keep trying.

DEAN KARNAZES, acclaimed endurance athlete and bestselling author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

Marshall and I go way back to the first Eco-Challenge in 1995. An athlete of astonishing grit both then and now, he never fails to push the limits of his sport, no matter what extreme endurance event hes chosen. Running on Empty tells the story of Marshalls greatest test: reading it, you get a sense of how tough this man is, but theres also a bit of Everyman in Marsh. Hes an inspiration to all of us.

MARK BURNETT, Emmy Awardwinning producer of Survivor, Eco-Challenge,
The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and other programs

Rivetingthe man has endured more, experienced more, accomplished more than you can imagine. You have to read it to believe it.

AMBY BURFOOT, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and editor at large, Runners World

You can learn from every race, even the ones you read about instead of run yourself. Marshall is a master of mental toughness, an endurance legend, and exactly the kind of example our country needs right now.

KARA GOUCHER, American middle- and long-distance runner, Olympian and World Championships medalist

Im always secretly envious of guys like Marshall, who run for adventure and cover extreme distances. What goes on inside their heads? How do they keep going, on and on, into the night, for days on end? What do they experience that the rest of us dont? Running on Empty tells it all, giving a rare glimpse into the world of ultrarunning and into the life of a man who epitomizes his sports doctrine of never say quit.

RYAN HALL, first U.S. runner to finish the half-marathon in under an hour and current U.S. record holder

To Mom, who let me dream

Dad, who taught me discipline

Rory, my biggest fan

and Heather, who held me up

Foreword

Marsh, honey, youre running in your sleep again. Rest, sweetheart.

Heather Ulrich, late one night during Marshalls dramatic race across America

The problem with the best Marshall Ulrich stories is that you never seem to hear them from Marshall Ulrich. Hes one of Americas greatest living adventurers and an expert without peer in human endurance, yet most Ulrich lore is passed along only by spoken word, making him a hero in other peoples Greatest Hits collections and a figure who comes across less like a real human and more like a mythological creature who ferries drowning men to shore before vanishing back into the sea. Travel around the Rocky Mountains or Death Valley at the right time of yearthe right time, of course, being 4:00 a.m. in a hailstorm or high noon on a 120-degree dayand youll find endurance daredevils testing themselves against tales like these:

You know the Pikes Peak Marathon? Thirteen miles straight up the side of a 14,000-foot mountain and thirteen miles back down again. You cant do Pikes and the Leadville Trail 100 in the same year when theyre both on the same weekend, because youd never be able to complete the hundred and then get to Colorado Springs in time, much less do the marathon. Then one summer, just as theyre counting down for the start at Pikes, a Datsun comes roaring up and screeches to a stop. This guy comes tumbling out, all caked in trail dust and grime. He jumps into the race just as the gun booms. Marshall had finished the hundred-mile Leadville race in under twenty-four hours, then floored the three-hour drive to Colorado Springs because the race director was a buddy of his. No one else has ever done it. I dont think anyone else has even tried.

Know how Marsh spent his fiftieth birthday? Raising money for orphans by running across Death Valleyfour times in a row. Thats nearly six hundred miles, back and forth across the hottest place on earth and up and down Mount Whitney. He challenged the course, both the desert and the mountain, another time by stuffing his gear and water in a hot dog cart so he could run across Death Valley alone.

My favorite is one I heard from Frank McKinney, a Florida real estate developer with heavy-metal hair and an ocean-view treehouse for an office. McKinney wasnt a runnerhe preferred tennis, if anythingand he knew nothing about mountains or desert heat. But he found out about the Badwater Ultramarathon and got the idea that running 135 miles in awful desert heat would be kind of a kick. Somehow he got in, so off he set on race day, trotting through the salt flats in his head-to-toe sun whites. By mile seventy-five or so, McKinney had gotten the fun smacked out of him; head spinning, muscles knotting, he was a panting mess by the side of the road. He lay in the shade of his support teams van, mustering the strength to get inside and head the hell home. He wasnt just exhausted and overheatedhe was scared. People die in Death Valley all the time, their brains slowly convection-cooking inside their skulls.

And thats when a shadow blocked out the sun. A man stood over him, then squatted down. His voice was calm, quiet, lighthearted. He wasnt trying to buck McKinney up so much as talk the race down. Not a big deal, he told McKinney; get some water down your throat, maybe some tapioca pudding, and then look around. Isnt this place awesome? How many other people get a chance to see this? Were a couple of lucky guys, you and I.... Did you finish that pudding? Good, try a banana....

The year before, Marshall had come straight to Badwater after reaching the top of Mount Everest. Marshall had always wanted to make the climb, and the only window had opened before Badwater. Rather than choose between the challenges of a lifetime for anyone else, hed once again decided to just live a little harder than anyone else. He knew the consequences: No matter who you are, youre half the man you were by the time you get down from Everest. Youve lost at least one-third of your muscle mass, and count yourself lucky if youre not dehydrated, frostbitten, malnourished, and snow-blind. Somehow, Marshall had managed to hustle his muscle-depleted self off the Himalayas, and then, for good measure, he headed to Russia to reach the summit of Mount Elbrus before returning halfway around the globe to complete Badwater.

The year he met Frank McKinney was mild by Marshalls standards; all hed done was complete the Seven Summits, including climbing Mount Vinson in Antarctica, before coming here to squat on 200-degree asphalt with some guy who really wished hed go away.

Marshall chatted with McKinney for an hour. A full hour, in the middle of a race that hed won four times and exactly at a time when he should have been worrying about title number five instead of teaching Badwater 101 to an inexperienced freshman. But it worked; bit by bit, McKinney began to feel better. He got to his feet and tested his legs. Not totally like wet newspaper. He began to shuffle, then jog, then runand he kept going until he crossed the finish line more than a day later.

When I finally got the chance to ask Marshall about it, I had one question: Why? Every second you spend under the Death Valley sun increases your risk of ending up in the hospital with an emergency IV in your arm, and no one knew that better than Marshall. Once, hed watched Lisa Smith-Batchen, the supertalented desert specialist and a former winner of a six-day race across the Sahara, get pulled from Badwater and rushed to the ER. So why was he risking his racepotentially, his

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