SIXTY AND UP: AGING ATHLETE KEEPS CLIMBING
“Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” H. L. Mencken declared. It’s especially true the way Marshall Ulrich does it.
This July, to celebrate his 60th birthday, Ulrich will climb two deadly mountains in the same week — right after he finishes running 146 miles across the hottest place on earth.
During the climbs, he and his fellow mountaineers will be roped in, but the best insurances against plummeting off Mount Eiger (13,025 feet) and the Matterhorn (14,692 feet) are strength and experience, both of which Ulrich has in legendary measure. He’ll need them: the Eiger has earned the nicknames “the Ogre” and Mordwand (German: “death wall”) because more than 60 people have perished while trying to scale the north face since 1935. The Matterhorn has claimed even more lives: 500 since it was first climbed in 1865. This fact just makes Ulrich all the more eager to conquer them.
But this is not the first time he has thumbed his nose at advancing age:
• In 2008, when he was 57 years old, Ulrich ran 3,063 miles (the equivalent of 117 back-
to-back marathons) across the United States, breaking records set by men more than 15
years his junior.
• Four years earlier, he had ascended Mount Everest.
• To mark his 50th birthday in 2001, he had run across Death Valley four times in a row for a total of nearly 600 miles, crossing the scorching desert and going up and down Mount
Whitney in order to raise money for orphans.
This time he will run the Death Valley route just once as his warm-up to the Alps climbs. The infamous Badwater Ultramarathon, dubbed by National Geographic as the toughest footrace in the world, accounts for the first 135 miles but then Ulrich, a 4-time winner and 16-time finisher in this race, never stops at the finish line. He always runs up Mount Whitney and back to make it 146 miles, just because … well, just because.
Earlier this year, Ulrich debuted his memoir, Running On Empty: An Ultramarathoner’s Story of Love, Loss, and a Record-Setting Run Across America (Avery; $26). He is frequently asked why he waited so long to write it because his athletic accomplishments warranted examination sooner than this, readers say. Ulrich responds that he is glad he waited, as this book is richer and more reflective than one he might have written as a younger man. “Before, I didn’t feel qualified to speak with authority,” he admits, though most would argue the point. “Finally, I felt comfortable to write about something more than sport, to communicate some valuable lessons I’ve learned about living.”
It is also because an important element in the book is a recounting of how Ulrich met his wife late in life and how she taught him to love again after great personal tragedy. He credits her not only with helping him to become a better man but also with being essential to his completing this epic, record-setting transcontinental run.
Ulrich has been competing in extreme endurance sports for nearly three decades, but he didn’t start his athletic career in high school as did most peak performers. It wasn’t until his thirties that Ulrich discovered his formidable talent for ultrarunning and set records on some of the world’s toughest courses. In his forties, he became an innovator in the sport, finishing feats of endurance no one had accomplished before and many of which no one will ever attempt to beat. And then he diversified into adventure racing, taking on multi-day team events requiring a combination of such skills as long-distance trail running, ocean paddling, mountain biking, and (on occasion) camel riding.
As he entered his fifties, he was hailed by Trail Runner magazine as one of the legends of the trail; Outside crowned him “Endurance King,” and Adventure Sports highlighted him as an athlete “Over Fifty and Kicking Your Butt.” That’s when he started climbing and went to the top of the highest mountains on every continent, reaching all seven summits on his first attempts.
So Running On Empty is both a love story and a thrilling look into the life of someone who has accomplished more than most people can comprehend–and who continues to take on new challenges to show that the human body and the will to endure are miraculous indeed. For Ulrich, there are no such things as “too old,” “too far,” or “too difficult.”
For a closer look at the life of this extraordinary man, please visit his website at: www.MarshallUlrich.com.
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TIP SHEET:
Dean Karnazes, acclaimed endurance athlete and bestselling author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner: “Marshall is The Man. Definitively. His run across America at the age of 57 sealed that distinction forever. He’s living proof that endurance never sleeps, never gets old, never tires. Nothing can stop him, and that gives us all hope, gives us resolve to keep trying.”
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Aron Ralston, author of Between a Rock and a Hard Place and subject of 127 Hours: “Usually, graceful would be applied to a runner’s form. With Marshall Ulrich, it’s even more apt a descriptor of his spirit, his soul, which he generously shares with us in Running on Empty. Tempting as it might also be to describe him as superhuman, Marshall has fallen and struggled and risen and struggled some more. His story, therefore, is ours, and whatever one might admire in him is also, therefore, in each of us.”
Mark Burnett, Emmy-award winning producer of Survivor, Eco-Challenge, The Apprentice, and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? “Marshall and I go way back to the first Eco-Challenge in 1995. An athlete of astonishing grit both then and now, he never fails to push the limits of his sport, no matter what extreme endurance event he’s chosen. Running on Empty tells the story of Marshall’s greatest test: reading it, you get a sense of how tough this man is, but there’s also a bit of Everyman in Marsh. He’s an inspiration to all of us.”
