Ultramarathon Man by DEAN KARNAZES Page A

at it, and I could see she was wondering if and where she’d last seen it. I held my breath. Finally, with measured reluctance, she took the money and handed over the blessed sacks of treats.
    My driver was giggling delightedly as we pulled away. “You so crazy!” he kept saying. He pulled the car into a nearby parking lot and cut the engine. “We eat now?”
    Who was this guy? I wondered. How many nights had he eaten Mexican food alone in this empty parking lot? Did he have anywhere to go? Why was he so willing to pick up a stranger?
    But it was time for me to move on, and these questions would remain unanswered. “I can’t stay,” I told him as I got out. I came around to his window and he handed me my bag of tacos.
    â€œYou crazy,” he grinned. “How much I owe you?”
    â€œNothing,” I smiled back. “And you the crazy one. Thanks.”
    We shook hands and I started moving up the road, unwrapping a taco as I jogged off into the distance.
    It was tricky trying to eat while running. At one point I accidentally inhaled while chewing and sucked a piece of diced tomato into the back of my throat. For a moment I thought I would choke on it, but what surfaced instead was a sneeze. And with that sneeze came the chunk of tomato shooting out my nostril. A hardy layer of sour cream helped lubricate its passage, and it deposited a foul, acidic slime in my nasal canal upon exiting.
    My wounded toe was killing me. It’s funny how the pain would come and go in waves. At times the throbbing was so excruciating I could hardly put any weight on it. Yet during the lulls it was almost imperceptible. Eventually the entire front of my foot went numb.
    As I ran farther south along the San Francisco peninsula, the urban landscape slowly gave way to rolling coastal foothills. Traversing a ridge to the west of the bay, I saw the colored runway lights of SFO flickering off in the distance. Low over the horizon, the sparkling headlights of incoming planes were stacked in the sky. I crested the coastal ridge and began dropping down the west side of the divide toward the ocean. The lights of Silicon Valley were no longer visible, and it grew progressively darker. Although the area was mostly undeveloped, periodically I would pass small rows of houses that lined the silent back road. Occasionally there would be a light on inside, or the translucent blue glow of a TV set, but mostly the houses were dark, which was probably for the best. Imagine walking out of your house at 4:00 A.M. to see a man in his underwear running by, struggling as though each step were his last. “Asylum escapee” would be my first thought.
    The night air turned misty and damp the farther west I ran toward the coastline. Puddles formed along the road from condensation dripping off the trees above, and the pungent scents of pine and eucalyptus drifted in the air. A skunk meandered out of the bushes. He turned to look at me but didn’t seem particularly concerned by my presence. I, on the other hand, was more than a bit concerned by his. Luckily, our encounter was stench-free.
    After running up and down several peaks and valleys, I made my way down into one markedly deeper trough. It was cold and foggy in the pit of this gorge, and the climb up the other side was brutally steep. It seemed to go on forever. Just when the road appeared to be leveling off, there would be yet another uphill section. The fog was thick. After doing battle with this beast of a hill for as long as I could, it got the better of me. I stopped to regroup, and stood hunched over and panting on the side of the road, wondering how much more abuse my body could possibly take.
    After a brief reprieve, I lifted my head to notice slight breaks in the clouds. I’d nearly climbed above the fog line. I was conquering that hill, nearing the top, and I hadn’t even noticed it. Something about this realization lifted my spirits. Things were