Running From Tragedy

By Michael Salsbury

In his emotionally gripping and intensely personal memoir - Running from Tragedy, M

• Language: English
• Publisher: GENESIS PUBLISHING HOUSE
• Release date: Jun 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989614226

Book preview

PART ONE

Elks Rodeo Grounds, Santa Maria, California 2019

ONE

Back on the Ranch

Daddy, i have the feeling I’m going to do something special tomorrow.

The fact was, we really had no idea what to expect. Still, I managed to smile as I turned to my thirteen-year old son Sebastian with an acknowledging wink, and quietly admired his youthful air of confidence.

It was late October 2019. As we meandered north, driving up the California 101 Freeway from our home in Santa Barbara, we cut a winding path through wine country vineyards and generations’ old working cattle ranches, arriving just as the voice on the intercom announced with an enthusiastic cowboy twang—and out of gate two! followed by the audible sound of pounding hooves and snorting horses, as the afternoon sun was setting at the Santa Maria Elks Rodeo Grounds.

Daddy, are we going to be running in the same place as cows and horses? questioned Sebastian.

I’m not exactly sure. My answer carried with it an unmistakable tone of uncertainty, and it was a good question.

We had arrived in Santa Maria, California, an agricultural town on the south-central coast, for the 2nd annual Back on the Ranch Trail Run. People who know of or are part of the tight-knit community of human beings that revel in exploring and experiencing the limits of human endurance, those who welcome frequent visits to the pain cave yet, seemingly, are always one step behind in perfecting the art of suffering better in the name of sport. These are ultrarunners. Regardless of age, gender, or ability, it is a special kind of human being that desires to run one hundred miles. Anyone involved in this crazed and amazing sport to any degree will tell you that they seldom meet a fellow ultrarunner that is not, at the very least, a kind, decent, loving person. Not many sports can make that claim.

On this sunny autumn afternoon, we arrive to the greeting of hugs and smiles from friends and familiar faces from far and wide. Doctors, lawyers, heroes, real-life train-hopping hobos, and every description in between. You name it. Individuals as different and diverse as grains of sand. Each with their own unique stories as varied as their personalities. Tales of how they arrived and were embraced by this extraordinary community. Like-minded souls, some blessed with a smooth ride through life, some with painful, tortured pasts. All are drawn to the sport of ultrarunning by the common pull of curiosity.

Over the past few decades, the human feat of running a marathon has gone from being outright superhuman to being almost pedestrian today. At the same time, it’s gone from an introspective journey of self-transcendence irrespective of time, to a Strava-fueled segment race, urged on by a small round computer attached to our wrist.

Like many extreme sports, the marathon began as the result of an accident. The not so humble origins of the distance dates back to 490 BC, when the Greek soldier and messenger Phidippides, the father of the modern marathon, ran forty-two kilometers (26.2 miles) from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of victory over the Persian Military forces, promptly proceeded to collapse to the ground gasping we’ve won, and died.

About 2500 years later, the New York City Marathon was first held in 1970, thankfully with no deaths, with 127 runners registered and 55, less than half, officially completing the race. Compared to a recent year, with 48,762 starters, and 47,839 finishers, nearly everyone completed the race. Is it still classified as a challenge when anyone can do it? I’m the last person to throw shade on any running endeavor, but it makes you wonder. After all, it took me a couple dozen marathons to realize I was never going to get faster against the clock, so the only logical answer was to go farther against myself.

Unlike track or cross-country running, primarily reserved for the young and swift, ultrarunners, on the contrary, come in every age, size, gender and speed and happily compete with each other and cheer for each other. It is not at all uncommon to see a race winner who has just completed fifty, one hundred, or more miles, and many hours, sometimes days before the final finishers, return to the finish line to cheer on fellow runners who, albeit, at very different speeds and different experiences, nonetheless shared the same journey.

I believe no stronger friendships are formed than those where people go to the well and truly suffer together. Unlike marathons that end within several hours, ultrarunners gleefully tell tales of vivid hallucinations of all varieties that are common during longer events, typically one hundred miles or more. Stories abound of glorious vomit filled miles, certain the finish line is beyond their grasp, only to recoup and revitalize themselves by sheer strength of mind, (and food and hydration), and cross the finish line, vowing never again, yet, soon enough, ready to embark on the next adventure of mind, body, and soul.

No acid or mushrooms needed here, just copious amounts of LSD, or in ultra parlance, long slow distance. In ultrarunning the tread-worn description of the runners high is elevated from a mere feeling to a state of mind. There is a certain euphoria that often accompanies total physical and mental exhaustion. There is a morbid amusement in shared suffering and believe me you don’t travel one hundred miles on foot without suffering – and having a sense of humor. I know this all too well.

Ultrarunning is a unique type of bravery where your neurological reward is an addictive cocktail of dopamine, released as a result of fear, suggesting the whole thing scared the shit out of you and may not have been a good idea in the first place, and endorphins, released once you realized you survived the harrowing experience and aren’t going to perish. The combination delivers a primeval surge of euphoria and exaltation that pulls people back again and again.

At the epicenter of the Back on the Ranch distance running get-together where we had arrived is a man named Luis Escobar. Luis has traveled the world running photographing, and directing trail races, but on this weekend, he was home. Luis is a California central coast native and grew up in Old Orcutt, California. He was one of the main characters in author Christopher McDougall’s best-selling book Born to Run – A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, And the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, and he has remained involved in the world of ultrarunning for decades.

Traveling long distances on foot is nothing new. The Tarahumara, documented in vivid detail in Born to Run, who have been discreetly perfecting the art of distance running, as a central part of their culture for the last 700 years or so that we know of, and most likely for thousands of years before, are a reclusive tribe of indigenous people who inhabit the high sierras and deep canyons of northern Mexico’s Copper Canyons. They are a peaceful and reclusive culture known worldwide for their distance running prowess. Deeper than the Grand Canyon in some areas, the Copper Canyons were an ideal place to escape the Spanish conquistadors back in the 1500s, who found it futile to attempt to capture or corral the swift and reclusive tribe. The Spanish referred to them as Tarahumara. They are self-described as Raramuri, The Running People, or Those with light feet.

The Raramuri are believed to be descended from a prehistoric culture known as the Mogollon, whose origins remain a topic of debate. Still, we know it dates back at least to the Pleistocene period that ended over eleven thousand years ago. The Mogollon inhabited what are today large areas of southern Arizona and New Mexico, as well as most of the Sonora and Chihuahua regions of northern Mexico.

Traveling hundreds of miles between villages or on subsistence hunts were, and are to this day, a common everyday element of the Raramuri customs and culture. With all due respect to the fame and notoriety Phidippides has received throughout history for dropping dead after twenty-six miles, any comparison to the Raramuri is laughable. As for Back on the Ranch, Sebastian had come to the Santa Maria Rodeo Grounds for the 12-hour run. He was thirteen years old.

This story goes back to the spring of 2014, several years before, and there were more than a few stares and curious questions when Sebastian first showed up at the Born to Run ranch, a beautiful 8,000-acre family-owned working cattle ranch with rolling oak-covered hills located deep in the Santa Ynez wine country. Luis, who would become Sebastian’s single most important supporter in the sport, initially needed some convincing on this day.

Even though I had been immediately welcomed into the ultrarunning community the year before, I was, in all aspects, a newbie at trail running, and now I’m showing up with a young and very energetic sidekick in tow. Back then, there were virtually no kids involved in trail running, much less ultrarunning.

On this day, we had come to the ranch for a pre-Born to Run training run. A rare chance to get to see the ranch in all its tranquility without the crowds of runners who would descend upon the ranch the following month.

Luis immediately trained his eyes on me and questioned, Michael, how old’s the kid?

Before I could answer, Sebastian walked up to Luis and extended his hand.

Hi, I’m Sebastian. I’m eight!

Luis tilted his head downward, like an annoyed, aging professor, peering over the top of his glasses without getting up from his lawn chair. Never altering his direct eye contact with Sebastian, examining his towering three feet, two-inch, fifty-pound frame. His expression was a mixture of skepticism and admiration. Eventually, a smile made its way to his face. Luis broke the ice, commenting—

I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep up with this kid today.

Then, turning back to Sebastian—you ready to run with us, kid?

Yup, answered Sebastian.

The sport of ultrarunning is an activity practiced on the far periphery of athletics, looked upon by outsiders with a combination of awe and suspicion. It is also one of the world’s fastest growing sports. It is a complex endeavor involving body and mind best undertaken simplistically. Trying to get overly complicated usually just screws things up. Physical gifts or a genetic predisposition for running great distances are not required. Mental fortitude, on the other hand, usually proves invaluable. In modern society it is fascinating to behold the infinite variety of ways humans can conjure up to quit. To give up. Mental toughness is vastly easier in theory than in practice. It is undeniably the single most important trait possessed by those who delve into this secret world.

Dad, I’m going to go check out the rodeo, Sebastian shouted over his shoulder as he jogged away, just as the rodeo arena lights snapped on, signaling the start of the evening’s action.

Be back in twenty minutes so we can go check out the course before dark, I yelled.

The Rodeo grounds in Santa Maria are surrounded on three sides by rolling hills with low-lying green fields accented with red as far as the eye can see. Just as people’s moods are influenced by the weather, with warm sun and cool ocean breezes, this perfect weather combination is also ideally suited to strawberries. Nearly every strawberry consumed in the United States, about one billion pounds of fruit and over two billion dollars in revenue, or about twenty-one tons per acre of land, originated where we had come to run.

Daddy, do those people ever get to rest? Sebastian asked in a somber tone as we began walking the course through the rodeo grounds, looking in the direction of the pickers in bright green fields that stretched as far as the eye could see, still hard at work.

I’m pretty sure they do, but I’m not sure how much, I answered.

The unmistakably hushed tone in my voice further triggered Sebastian’s curiosity.

That must be so bad for their backs, Sebastian lamented. Do they bend over like that all day?

As we both stared out over a sea of green and red, dotted with men and women of all ages, bent over at agonizing 90-degree angles, an affirmative nod of my head in Sebastian’s direction was all I could muster at that moment. As we simultaneously looked back toward the field, a man carrying two boxes referred to as clamshells on his shoulders, crested over the green fields running in a full sprint down a lone pathway in full stride headed for the truck already being loaded.

Wow! Daddy, look at how fast that guy is running! No sooner had the worker delivered two large boxes of strawberries onto the conveyor belt attached to the truck, he about-faced, broke into a noticeably shorter stride and slower pace, and headed back up the hill jogging, disappearing over the horizon. No time wasted. We would later find out from Luis that runners, the pickers who possess sufficient speed and endurance, get the opportunity to work el contrato, by contract, the super-fast paid by the clamshells of strawberries picked method where workers can easily earn twice as much in half the time.

In contrast, the majority of the workers, the pickers, work hourly, at or close to minimum wage. Regardless, picking strawberries is tough, demanding work done by necessity rather than choice. For both of us, there was a tiny bit of solace in the fact that, although different, we would also be working on foot, all day. Nonetheless, we both had new-found respect and admiration for these workers. We turned in early to get a good night’s sleep before the 6:00 a.m. start.

PART TWO

TWO

Let The Running Begin

I began running of my own volition in 1978, in the late fall, while attending Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, a high-altitude ranching town in the southwestern part of the state. The area is neatly tucked between the majestic peaks of the West Elk Mountains and the Sawatch Range, with the final direction west leading to the Black Canyon National Park of the Gunnison River and Blue Mesa Reservoir. Recalling those days, I wish I could say I was one of the millions swept up in the running boom of the late 1970s. I was not.

It was around Halloween, and temperatures were now dropping into the single digits at night with some frequency in Gunnison. In my life previous to this, I had only run by necessity, almost exclusively for baseball. I had no running shoes, no gear, no perspiration-wicking tech garments, base layers, or adequate protection of any kind. I wore a pair of old Puma basketball shoes, some baggy sweats, and a holdover high school sweatshirt because I would not receive my college-issued baseball team warm-ups until March spring training. A few old pairs of sweat-socks and underwear, and that was it.

And so I began one evening. I closed my dorm room door and stepped into the hallway, immediately comforted by the reliable hissing sound and warmth of the steam radiators keeping all under our roof alive inside, as temperatures will soon drop so low, it becomes difficult to sustain life outside. Under the cloak of darkness, too embarrassed to run in the daylight, masking my self-consciousness in my new but necessary endeavor, I push open the west exit door of Chipeta Hall, my new home, known at Western State College in those days as the most meager and least desirable freshman dormitory accommodations.

As I exited the door, I was instantly welcomed by an arctic blast of air that at once tingled and burned my exposed face. In extreme cold, blood vessels contract and immediately restrict blood flow to less meaningful areas like my face and extremities in an involuntary bodily reaction to the frigid air. As tears well up in my eyes from the dry cold air and instantly freeze on my cheekbones, I lay my gloved hands over my face, all but my eyes, to shield my face from the cold and to melt my iced tears.

Gunnison, Colorado, in winter. Only people who live there or have experienced living there could possibly know. I’ve tried over the years to explain it only to be answered by blank stares of disbelief. During extreme cold spells, all forms of wildlife can be seen, drawn into town due to the cold, searching for food, particularly black bears, which we could frequently spot rummaging in dumpsters, oblivious to humans.

The coldest recorded temperature ever recorded in Gunnison, Colorado, occurred like the gift nobody wanted on Christmas Day 1924. That holiday night, the temperature dropped to minus forty-seven degrees below zero. As close to being incompatible with human life as one can get. Santa lucked out that year—it was only minus twenty-nine the night before on Christmas Eve. Frostbite can occur in less than five minutes. And that’s the least of your Christmas worries. At this temperature, your body is instantly working hard to keep your brain and internal organs warm. Hypothermia happens when your body temperature drops faster than you can warm it. With continued exposure, the brain works slower, the heart beats slower, and you become confused.

Some experience a strange phenomenon called paradoxical undressing in the later stages of hypothermia. Neurological deterioration, nerve damage, and mental confusion cause people to feel as though they are burning up rather than freezing to death and, in a crazed frenzy, begin ripping their clothes off. Finally, you go into a coma, your blood pressure drops, and you die. In extreme cases, this can spiral out of control in under 45 minutes. My run should take about an hour.

The plan is two laps. I felt warmed up enough to attempt a second lap. I made it. Barely. On sheer stubbornness and willpower. Little did I know at the time, but those would become valuable traits as I became more interested in running longer distances. It was both a huge challenge and an accomplishment for me at the time. By springtime, I was up to six laps around campus, and was hooked on the simple act of running for life. The feeling of energy and confidence that came from being in excellent physical condition was addictive. The excitement is hard to describe. I had just emerged from the arctic winter in Gunnison. I had somehow, against all odds, kept at running almost daily, and now with the arrival of sunshine and springtime temperatures, I was running in the neighborhood at least fifty miles each week.

As luck would have it, one of my dormitory hall mates, Cary Wheeland, had also contracted the running bug about the same time as me. Cary had begun working as a student manager at the campus cafeteria, and his boss, who had also taken up running, had hired a few guys from the cross-country team. Cary, being heavily outnumbered, was easily swept up into the world of running. However, unlike our talented cross-country pals, neither Cary nor I possessed speed, skill, or endurance. We made up for all the preceding running shortfalls with an endless supply of enthusiasm. Like two excited puppies, we would accompany the highly rated Western State cross-country team on training runs on the rural county dirt roads around Gunnison, trailing far behind the team but loving every moment.

Within a year, with my ever-growing proficiency at mixing running and partying, I made the overconfident decision to run my first marathon. I chose the Denver Marathon, primarily because it was the only marathon in Colorado at the time, and it gave me a reason to go to Denver and see my mom and brother. But there was one sentimental reason. Washington Park.

Wash Park, as it’s known to Denver locals, was the center of my childhood growing up. The park was a stone’s throw away from my house and I was thrilled that the course ran through my neighborhood. My initial elation, however, at running this section of my first marathon was short-lived. I entered the north entrance of the park at mile nineteen and smiled as I gave high-fives to the spectators cheering runners, basking in the epic day I was having. I had not taken more than mere steps into the park entrance, and my world began to unravel with brutal and merciless speed.

Immediately, running had ceased to be a thing as I downshifted into an involuntary shuffle, my brain telling my body something was very wrong. My triumphant return to run my way around my childhood playground became a pitiful death march. Not at all how I had envisioned so many times leading up to the race. This beautiful park that held so many cherished memories was, inch by inch, step by step, tearing me apart.

As I reached the south-eastern corner of the park, my alma mater, South High School, where I had graduated in 1976, where my mom worked, almost seemed to welcome me. I looked up at the beautiful school clock tower and held back the tears of emotion and pain. It was unadulterated agony. My legs felt like they had been tenderized with a ball peen hammer. It was unusually warm for early May in Denver, and I was severely dehydrated, dizzy, and felt like I was going to throw up. At this moment, I was having serious doubts if I could remain conscious, much less complete the race. As I exited the park at mile twenty-one and headed back downtown, as suddenly as I thought I was going to die, I started to feel much better. I had just had my very first experience hitting the wall, and it was a head-on collision. The near-death experience I had read about and so many of my experienced runner friends had told me about was much worse, in my opinion, than they depicted.

Me near the finish of the 1980 Denver Marathon

I finished. But I could barely walk. I foolishly underestimated the distance of a marathon, and I paid dearly for my lack of respect. The final six miles were all-encompassing torture. The final mile didn’t even resemble running. I couldn’t walk for days afterwards and it took weeks before I could run properly again. Perhaps most difficult was the ongoing argument with the voice in my mind begging me to stop. I had no concept of how mentally grueling it would be. But I never stopped. And I learned a little bit each time. And I never gave up, and I always came back for more. Little did I know when I started running back in 1978 that for all of the widely known health benefits that running has bestowed upon me, it would be the mental benefits of running that would ultimately save my life.

THREE

College Life

Western state has always enjoyed a reputation as a very respectable liberal arts college despite its contrary reputation. During my particular era, the school was affectionately known as Wasted State due to students’ predisposition to prioritize partying and skiing over academic endeavors. It was common lore among the student body that the two liquor store owners in Gunnison were rich. With the proximity to Crested Butte ski resort just up