Scott Jurek running through Central Park. Jurek says he
can break the American road record for a 24-hour period, 162 miles,
held by Mark Godale.
Scott Jurek, an accomplished ultramarathoner, displayed
knife skills and good culinary judgment while preparing a meal.
That’s an easy day for Jurek, 36, an accomplished ultramarathoner.
But one might say he has been in a slump: he has not won a major
race since the 2008
Spartathlon. On the other hand, he set a personal record there,
it was his third consecutive victory on the 153-mile course between
Athens and Sparta, and he holds the fifth-, sixth- and
eighth-fastest times in race history.
If last year was a wash, this year he is fit and psyched for the
24-Hour Run world championship in Brive-la-Gaillarde, France, on
Thursday and Friday. It is a grueling race to determine how many
miles runners can complete on a 1.4-kilometer road loop (about
nine-tenths of a mile) in a 24-hour period.
Jurek says he can break the American record, 162 miles, held by
Mark Godale. (The world record, 178 miles, and just about every
ultramarathoning record from 100 to 1,000 miles, and from 24 hours
to 10 days, are, Jurek said, “unassailably” held by Yiannis Kouros
of Greece, who no longer competes.)
To win Brive, Jurek said, he must: “Get on it, crank around it, and
get it done. It’s all in a day’s work.”
It’s a long day, and one that
raises a particular aspect of Jurek’s training that makes him an
especially interesting athlete: he is
a vegan,
consuming no animal products.
There are other
professional athletes who do not eat meat: Milwaukee
Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder, a vegetarian, may be the
best known, and the hockey player Georges Laraque is also a vegan.
But it is difficult for some to comprehend how this lifestyle is
compatible with training weeks of 140 miles and more, “easy” runs
of 40 miles and interval training that includes uphill three-mile
repeats, all culminating in races that are often 100 miles or more,
sometimes through deserts or frozen wastelands or up and down
mountains.
Jurek certainly looks healthy enough. He is tall, dwarfing most
competitive marathoners, not rail thin, with a quick smile and
boundless energy. A few hours after our morning run, he showed up
at my house and began pulling things out of the refrigerator and
pantry with abandon: vegetables, greens, herbs,
miso, tofu, olives, shallots, lemons, nut
butter and more.
He displayed knife skills and good culinary judgment, preparing a
meal for me and his girlfriend, Jenny Uehisa, a designer for
Patagonia (he is sponsored by Brooks Sports). We ate a
Greek salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, loads of olives and seaweed;
a stir-fry of vegetables with tofu and a miso and cashew sauce; and
a mound of quinoa.
Where did he learn to cook this way? And more to the point, how
does he survive? After all, I said to him, none of my running
buddies, a group of nonelite but defiantly dedicated marathoners
who train in Central Park, maintain as rigorous a schedule as his,
and many claim to have trouble consuming enough calories even while
being omnivorous.
“The whole issue,” he said, “is exactly that: getting enough
calories. The first thing to worry about isn’t so much what you
eat, but how much you eat. You have to take the time to sit at the
table and make sure your calorie count is high enough. And when
you’re a vegan, to increase your calories as you increase training
you need more food. This isn’t an elimination diet but an inclusion
diet.”
Jurek grew up in Proctor, Minn., eating cookie dough, canned
vegetables and his share of fast food. When his mother, Lynn,
developed multiple sclerosis (she died this spring), he and his
siblings began cooking, but the food was, he said, “very Midwest —
meat and potatoes.” In college, his diet began to improve, and as
he “saw how much disease is lifestyle related,” he began eating
“real food, eating the way people have been eating for thousands of
years.”
He made the transition to less meat and more fish, then eventually
knocked out dairy and other animal products entirely.
“It’s really a mental barrier,” he said, and he obviously has
experience overcoming those. He said he needed 5,000 to 8,000
calories a day, “and I get that all from plant sources. It’s not
hard, either. I like to eat, and I don’t have to worry about weight
management. All I need is a high-carbohydrate diet with enough
protein and fat.”
He said he spent a great deal of time shopping, preparing and
cooking food — and chewing. He is among the slowest and most
deliberate eaters I know, and there is something about his
determination at the table that is reminiscent of his determination
on the road: he just doesn’t stop.
He focuses on three main meals. Breakfast is key: it might be a
1,000-calorie smoothie, with oil, almonds, bananas, blueberries,
salt, vanilla, dried coconut, a few dates and maybe brown rice
protein powder. Unless he is doing a long run, which for him is
seven hours, or about 50 miles, he eats after his first workout.
Lunch and dinner are huge salads, whole grains, potatoes and sweet
potatoes, and usually beans of some sort or a tempeh-tofu
combination.
Scott Jurek ate cookie dough, canned vegetables and fast
food as a youngster, but in college his diet began to improve.
Eventually, he dropped dairy and other animal products
entirely.
“None of this is weird,” he said. “If you go back 300 or 400 years,
meat was reserved for special occasions, and those people were
working hard. Remember, almost every long-distance runner turns
into a vegan while they’re racing, anyway — you can’t digest fat or
protein very well.”
Jurek said he hated running when he was in high school, enduring it
only to stay in shape for skiing. But when he was 20, a friend
persuaded him to try a marathon. He finished in less than three
hours, good for second place and astonishing for a novice. By 1999,
he ran his first Western States 100. Formally called the Western
States Endurance Run, this is an up-and-down course in the Sierra
Nevada with a cutoff time of 30 hours. He set the course record in
2004, 15 hours 36 minutes; won the race seven consecutive times;
and in 2005, two weeks after finishing, ran and won
the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race that begins in
Death Valley and ends halfway up Mount Whitney.
Looking back, he wondered, “Where was my mind?”
Which brings us to an obvious question: What is Scott Jurek trying
to prove? Of the few thousand Americans who consider themselves
ultramarathoners, most would be happy just qualifying for Western
States, and most of those would be ecstatic to finish before the
cutoff.
Jurek, having proved himself in dozens of off-road races, is
focused on the 24-hour record and looking forward to the flat race,
“an environment where it’s just me and the clock and the road under
my feet.”
After that, he would like to run — and win — the Ultra-Trail du
Mont-Blanc, an ultramarathon in the Alps at a distance of just over
100 miles; the record is a little more than 20 hours. His best
finish was 18th, and he dropped out twice, so it’s a serious
challenge.
“I haven’t had a great race there,” he said. “But though I want to
win, the running is a vehicle for self-discovery. I’ve been racing
for 15 years, but I feel like I’m still at my peak.”
Evidently, it isn’t his diet that’s slowing him down.
Mark Bittman, who is a vegan until 6 p.m. and a runner at various
hours, writes The Minimalist column for The Times, and can be found
at markbittman.com.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: May 17, 2010
An article on Thursday about Scott Jurek, a vegan who runs
ultramarathons, included an outdated reference to another athlete
who consumes no animal products. The athlete, Georges Laraque, was
released by the Montreal Canadiens in January; he does not play for
the N.H.L. team.