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The mindset to keep going
Marshall Ulrich started running in the 1980’s when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. The stress caused high blood pressure. It was, for him, a choice between running or medication, and he didn’t want to take medication.
He discovered he was pretty good at running so he began increasing his distance. Soon he was running 5 and 10K races which led to running marathons. He stuck to marathon running for several years and then discovered ultramarathons. Most of the ultramarathons were held on roads, but a few were trail races. He liked trails better, and still prefers them.
There were not the abundance of 100 mile ultramarathons in the 1980s like there are now. But there were 4 they called the Grand Slam: Western States, Leadville, Wasatch, Angeles Crest. They were space about 3 weeks apart, and running all of them back-to-back was a challenge Marshall took on in 1987. He finished in the top 10 in all of them. He was one of the elite runners.
In 1989 he ran all of the 100 mile ultramarathons in the US: there were only six. In addition to the four already mentioned, there were Vermont and Old Dominion. There was a lottery for Western States, and he was fortunate enough to get in for six years in a row. The seventh year he didn’t get in, so he ran Leadville instead. There were only two or three hundred runners in Leadville, and it was very low-key. Ultra runners were looked at as kind of weird, even more so than we are now.
During the 1990s, Marshall wanted to do a transcontinental race, but he was busy with his business and raising kids. He finally did a transcontinental solo run across the United States in 2008 (18 years later) when he was 57 years old. It took him 52 days. He ran an average of 60 miles a day for 52 days straight.
Marshall has honed his mindset skills for ultramarathon running. In his first book, he describes a process called “time compression.” It’s a mindset practice that compresses your perception of time into a shorter space. He says you can run for 10 hours and your mind can be convinced that only 3 hours have passed.
When running Marshall goes into a meditative state. He says, ”You go down the road, and you don’t think about anything in particular, and you just let your mind go from one thing to another, so it’s more of your awareness, it’s not as conscious as if you were focused on the real world, so it’s kind of an escape. I guess that’s the best way to describe it.”
Running ultramarathons was great, but Marshall decided to look for even more adventures. He was part of an adventure racing team that formed for the very first Eco Challenge adventure race. And his team, Stray Dogs, has competed in every Eco Challenge adventure race since. Adventure racing covered a variety of skills, running, mountain biking, paddling, hiking, horseback riding, and one time they had to ride camels. Their latest event was a few years ago in Fiji. There is a docu-series about the race on Amazon.
Marshall ran the Badwater 135 when the entry fee was only $12 and runners were on the honor system while on the course. They started at the bottom of Death Valley and ran all the way to the top of Mt. Whitney. There were no checkpoints or cutoff times. And it was low-key enough that the runners went on up the trail to the top, making the race 145 miles or so. Marshall set the course record for Badwater for 2 years in a row.
Marshall also did a Death Valley circumnavigation, self-supported. His good friend Dave Heckman pestered him for 2 or 3 years to do it. They buried food, supplies, and over 450 gallons of water in caches spaced about 12 miles apart around the rim of Death Valley. They did their trek in July, the hottest month, and completed it with a distance of 425 miles. Marshall almost died, because they didn’t find a couple of the caches of water they had buried.
Marshall is a firm believer that we all have a purpose in our lives. He has been involved in fundraising and awareness for charities and non-profit organizations. Currently, he is planning to
ite a bit of money for the Filippini religious teachers that they help and right now the most current thing is the Alzheimer’s association, his wife and he are going to go out and do a portion of Route 66 that is still intact, which is about 159 miles.
For him you have to Make Life Meaningful, which is more than running, it’s more than the adventure of racing, it’s connecting with humanity and doing something good for other people.
He is 70 years old and says that to stay mentally healthy it helps to be active. You can keep doing things for many years longer than most of us think.
Bridge Questions
The weirdest thing he has seen while out on the trails were birds like an emu but smaller. They were aggressive and could kill you by throwing themselves at you and impaling their feet in your chest.
The food that should be at every aid station is some kind of greasy hamburger and a Coke.
His philosophy of life is to do more than you can think you can do.
Links:
https://www.instagram.com/marshall.ulrich/
https://twitter.com/marshallulrich
https://www.facebook.com/marshallulrich/
Books on Amazon:
https://amzn.to/3Ht4Tud
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