age 40. I have run the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) in Chicago and been third place there a few times. I have done the Empire State Building four times, which is recognized as the World Championships in 2011. I was the top American and I was fourth overall at 42.”
WHAT IS SO APPEALING TO YOU ABOUT STAIRCLIMBING?
“For me it’s a great opportunity to find out who you are. It’s an opportunity to build my character. In stair running you come face to face with your deepest enemy very early on and you have nine to 15 minutes of absolute suffering to go through. And every voice of quit or doubt and every insecurity will come to the surface. Every part of you that you don’t like they are all screaming as loud as they can in that stairwell. There is no cheering. It’s a concrete dirty, dusty stairwell. Your legs feel like they can’t move another inch. Your arms are grabbing onto the railings because your legs won’t work anymore. Then you get out into life and you realize that you have been through much worse. Some of my best friends are my competitors. You are on the ground for five or ten minutes. You can’t move. There are people rolling on the floor embracing each other. It’s a baptism by fire. You know that if they went through that they are an extraordinary person.”
HOW MANY MILES ARE YOU RUNNING A WEEK? “Initially I thought I could get away with 30-40 miles a week.
I have since changed my running form significantly. By changing some things it has allowed me to get up to miles to 100 miles in a week. I will go up to a few 120 mile weeks before the 50 km Championships. It took a few years to build up to that mileage.”
HOW MANY RUNNERS YOUR AGE WILL PUT IN THOSE TYPES OF MILES?
“Not many. It’s a small community and you really get to know who the players are. Fortunately two of the top masters runners are friends of mine and live close by. The whole Central Mass Striders team I have four teammates within 150 miles. A lot of them are doing 90-100 miles per week. Being a masters runner is mostly about injury management. Fortunately I have gone well over a year and a half now without an injury.”
TAKE US THROUGH A TYPICAL DAY FOR YOURSELF
“I can’t give you a typical day without taking you through what I eat because that is one thing people are always curious with. I started pretty much every day with a big green smoothie. There are about 700 calories in there. That gets me through my morning run and gets me to lunch. The last few days my morning run has been 10 to 15 miles. My run the other day was 15 miles and took close to three hours with 3,500 feet of elevation gain. When I hit 100 miles per week it’s not your typical 12 hours. It’s taking me sometimes 18 or 19 hours to hit that distance. I have put in several weeks over 20 hours. To continue
the day I will nibble on fruit then do another run later in the afternoon or evening. That will be a three to five mile run. Then dinner is a big salad. That dinner salad bowl is going to be the biggest salad that you have ever seen. I usually do two runs a day and sometimes even triple depending on if I get up early enough in the morning. I have found my body doesn’t know the difference between a 20 mile single run and two 10 mile runs. I don’t do intervals and I don’t do track work. I did some track work in preparation for the USATF Masters Championships. I had a lot of mileage but not much speed work.”
YOU STARTED THE RUNNING RAW PROJECT, ADVOCATING A RAW DIET. WILL YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR EFFORTS?
“Running Raw has been a huge evolution for me. I was living in Los Angeles and started eating a vegan diet in 1998. I was an actor and about to turn 30. I thought nobody is going to want me so I better do everything I can to stay young. I opted to go with a vegan diet. But after seven years my health started failing. I won’t blame it on the diet, but that I was under a great deal of stress at the time. My health plummeted and I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I had dealt with depression for a good chunk of my life. I found myself about to be homeless. I didn’t have a lot of friends out there or family. I had to leave my job. I didn’t see much of a future for myself. I had bumped into a lot of people who had eaten a raw diet. I thought that is great for them, but there is no way I could do that. It’s too strict. But within a week I felt better. After a month I felt like a kid again. I made a commitment to eating this way for the rest of my life. The future I saw was being homeless and dead on the streets of LA. I created the Running Raw Project to see what was possible. Six years later I am still doing it. My biggest goal is to see people happy and healthy.”