A Day With Marshall Ulrich

Somewhere in mid-America.

organize a 3,100-mile run from San Francisco to New York. Their goals

were to strongly support the United Way, and to make the beauty and strength of the United States of America more visible to the rest of the world. An enormous physical and mental challenge was also involved, of course. The entire

would be captured on film and made into a documentary.

By the time he reached Utah, Charlie had been derailed from further running by excruciating injuries. He carried on as part of the team by riding a mountain bike the rest of the way. Marshall and his wife, Heather, became good friends of ours through visiting Houston on a speaking engagement and organizing our trip to Tanzania earlier in 2008. As soon as we learned of Marshall’s incredible goal, we wanted to be part of it, even if only in some small way.

M arshall Ulrich and Charlie Engle had taken the better part of a year to

Sunday

My wife, Barb, my brother-in-law Larry and I picked the weekend of October 17-19 to join Marshall since, according to Marshall’s plan, he would be running through Ohio then. Our original plan was to fly to Cincinnati on Friday afternoon, find Marshall on the road somewhere in Ohio on Saturday morning, run Saturday and Sunday with him, and fly out later on Sunday. However, Marshall discovered fairly early on that his original plan of 68-mile days did not leave enough time for sleep and recovery, so he revised his daily target to 60-mile days. Saturday was day 36 of Running America, and Marshall was around 400 miles behind his original plan. So, we delayed our departure until Sunday and started driving west—through western Ohio, Indiana, and eastern Illinois—to meet up with the expedition.

After six hours of driving, we found ourselves westbound on Illinois Highway 116 just west of Peoria when we passed two large RVs heading east, which we took as a very good sign. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later Barb announced “There he is!” and in traditional style, we pulled over, rolled down the window, and announced “Looking good! Almost there!’”—the usual trash-talking silliness.

Marshall was indeed looking good and was very happy to see us. We pulled over by the RVs, and I changed quickly into running clothes and prepared to take off in pursuit. “Not so fast!” called Heather as she came over with waivers for us to complete and official Running America bibs. We took care of legal business, and I took off running.

From the Running America Web site, we had estimated that Marshall would have run about 25 miles by then, which he confirmed when I caught up with him. He was cheerful but also tired from the day’s effort and ready for his daily ritual of a one-hour nap after mile 26. So my run lasted only about 10 minutes. I had expected a lot of walking and maybe a little jogging, but Marshall was motoring right along at nine-minute miles. We exchanged pleasantries and I told him about our big drive to meet up with him. His response was unexpected: “Well, I don’t want to disappoint you, but mostly I need to run alone so I can get in a zone and get through the miles.” Soon thereafter, he slipped into his RV for his nap.

Wow, that was a blow! We had been planning this for most of the year and had invested a fair amount of time, effort, and expense. Still, in no way was this about us; it was all about the man running 3,100 miles across America.

After a while, Heather popped out of the RV looking like somebody working a dozen or so tasks simultaneously. I added a 13th: “How much running will we be doing, and how do we find out Marshall’s preferences?” She responded that Marshall hates to say no, but running with others tires him out. She had been teaching him to say no, however, and he was getting

Marshall Ulrich (left), Barb, and Larry. Anyone up for 60 miles?

& z & g