The question is : How ?
Two adventure racers from Little Rock, Greg Eason, 35, and Steve Kirk, 45, ran the 223-mile Ouachita National Recreation Trail this month in one relentless effort spanning 76 hours, 33 minutes and 1 second. By sunlight, moonlight, bike light. On leaf-obscured, rocky paths. Cold, sleep-deprived, footsore, on they plunged until — surrounded by very happy friends — they finished. They started running at Talimena State Park in Oklahoma at 5 : 05 a. m. Dec. 14, a Wednesday morning, and stopped at 9 : 38 a. m. three days later near the Visitors Center of Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Along the way, they barely slept. They laid their bodies down three times for little more than 1 3 1 / 2 to 1 / 4 hours worth of dozing. But wait, there’s more : Both of them showed up at their jobs the next Monday morning and did some work. Everyone who hears about this asks “why ?” But why do athletes do anything athletes do ? A more productive question is “how ?” How did they do it ? “It began gradually,” said Eason’s mother, Wanda. “I have friends that ask me, ‘How do you stand to see him do this ?’ But it didn’t start like this. It started in ninth grade, really, when he started running track and cross country. And then he started doing some bicycle races and longer road races. “ It started gradually, and we’ve watched him do it from the beginning.” Along the way, his family grew more capable, more accepting and more generous — which is not at all beside the point. As ultrarunner Lou Peyton explained it, “You can’t do this without a great family.” Peyton has also run the length of the trail. As the closing days of 1991 became the first days of 1992, she ran it with Jim Schuler of Morrilton. But they slept at night. “This is a different challenge, going straight through,” Peyton said early in the morning of Dec. 17 as she stood among supporters waiting for “the guys” to pass near Spillway Road near Roland. “They’re doing it their way. “ And all these people love them. Everybody loves them. They’re great people,” she said, eyes liquid. How they did it, she said, has a lot to do with why their families and friends helped them.
EYES OPEN Although Greg Eason’s mother said he liked his naps in childhood and was often hard to wake in the morning, somewhere during the past 35 years, he discovered his gift for endurance and started pushing to see how far it went. “Ah, he’s addicted to it. He is absolutely addicted to it,” said Eason’s father, Joe. “I think it’s good. He’s been that way since he’s been a little boy. Run run run, stay in shape.” Doesn’t he want to stop his son when he’s pushing toward certain pain ?
“He’s 35 now, I can’t boss him anymore,” the elder Eason said. “I’m very proud of him, but I do worry about him. It’s hard on your body to do that. The training is wonderful for your body ; the race is hard on your body.”
Greg Eason is a physical therapist at Beebe Retirement Center, where he helps elderly people recover from injuries. He understands what he’s doing physically.
He has experienced many sleepless expedition races as part of a national champion adventure-racing crew, Team Traveler. That was several years back ; lately he has concentrated on ultrarunning.
In July he succeeded in his second attempt at the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon, running nonstop from Death Valley to Mount Whitney. Also this year, he paddled with very little sleep through the 260-mile Texas Water Safari with four pals.
Kirk is an engineering project manager, which is partly a desk job, for Tim Tyler Surveying in Conway.
His wife, Liz, and their 10-year-old daughter, Courtney, and dog, Sid, joined the support caravan Friday.
Her husband is “amazing,” Liz Kirk said. “He just loves it. He loves being out in the woods. That’s really the only answer I ever get out of him of why he wants to do it.”
But she does understand that he has to throw himself into everything he tries. “He’s always pushed himself to the edge,” she said. “He rock climbs, he sky-dives, and everything is always to the umpteenth degree. And he’s usually good at everything else he does.” Kirk smashed his left leg 12 years ago in a sky-diving accident. He has a plate in his tibia and a rod in his femur. “The doctor was like, ‘You won’t ever run.’ Well, tell Steve that,” she says, “and he’s going to turn 180 degrees and say, ‘I’m going to do it tomorrow.’” He began doing duathlons, biking-and-running races. He wound up representing the United States in world championships held in Switzerland. Then, his wife said, he was done with duathlons. He was all about running. In March 2004, he and Eason ran 165 miles nonstop together on the Ozark Highlands Trail. In October he placed second in the Arkansas Traveler 100, a 100-mile footrace.
INFORMED SUPPORT From the first step of the Ouachita Trail run, Eason’s wife, Heather, and his mother preceded the men across the state. Billy Simpson of Memphis, Charley and Lou Peyton of Little Rock and other friends took turns helping.
They met the runners where the trail, which is blazed in several shades of blue, intersects roads and parks They offered hot food, coffee, Ensure, new shoes and backup batteries. They also helped other runners connect with the two to jog along for a while, like human guide dogs.
These pacers included Tom Brennan, Craig Zediker, Jenny Foster, Darin Hoover, Magdalena Font, Tamara Zagustin and Nate Siria.
In their final miles, the runners needed more than one pacer to prevent blue-blazeenraptured wandering. But by then they had about five pacers apiece, and also Zediker’s dog Paolo (or possibly Pal-o : The dog won’t spell it for his master ).
Supporters stayed awake to fret about the guys’ digestive problems, their swollen feet, possible blisters, definite exhaustion. But they were also willing to let the men decide whether to sleep. Willing to watch them crash asleep, hear them snoring and then, reluctantly, to wake them.
Sometimes the crew got lost. Once they were locked out of a meeting point.
Once they were in three cars driving about 2 mph along Arkansas 113 in the dark, shining flashlights into the woods because they couldn’t find the trail. A patrol car stopped them, blue lights flashing.
“Liz Kirk and I pull over in our respective vehicles, turned on our overhead lights and put our hands on the steering wheels as one is supposed to do,” Heather Eason said. “The policeman gets out of his car, and Wanda jumps out of her truck. The policeman yells in a loud voice, ‘What is going on ? Is everything all right ?’ To which Wanda replies, ‘No, it is not all right.’
“ The two of them have a quick conversation and before we know it, the officer is shining his spotlight in the woods too, looking for the trail crossing with lights still flashing. We find it about the time the runners and pacers appear out of the woods.” Where there was cell-phone service, Wanda Eason passed updates to ultrarunner Bob Marston, who relayed the news to a spammer-size roster of supporters via e-mail (until his Internet provider decided he was a spammer and cut him off. After eight hours, he convinced Comcast he was OK, and the updates resumed ). “I am really beginning to feel very foggy,” Wanda Eason said as the unseen sun lightened chilly gray clouds over Lake Maumelle on the final morning.
FEET After the run, Kirk sat down on a sidewalk and pulled off his Montrail Masai trail shoes and Three Days of Syllamo race-logo socks. Then he gingerly peeled off several layers of tape. He had no blisters, which witnesses said was “amazing,” considering the fact that his feet got wet the first day from rain puddled among leaves. Kirk credited taping done by Heather Eason, who learned her technique from French doctors when Team Traveler competed in the Raid Gauloises in Vietnam. Before a race begins, she preps the ball and heel of each foot with tincture of benzoin, then applies MeFix tape and trims any rough edges. Over that she applies Elasticon elastic tape. “And then usually we put benzoin tincture on the edges again, trying to get the edges to stay,” she said. Eason finished the traverse wearing Montrails one size larger than usual. He has learned to wear five or more numbered pairs of shoes in runs longer than 100 miles, swapping them out about every 25 miles. He wears Injinji toe socks, which are like foot gloves, with each toe separated by fabric. CLOTHING “You know it’s cold when the dog’s shivering,” Joe Eason joked, as the support crew stood around keeping warm with hot tea, humor and five layers of clothing.
Runners must dress as though the temperature is 20 degrees warmer, and their skimpy, sweaty fabrics don’t protect them if they stand still.
With highs in the mid-40 s to mid-50 s and lows well below freezing, the guys needed versatile outfits, and none of those outfits could chafe.
In 1999, Greg Eason had to drop out of the Traveler because his pants chafed his thighs to the point that he wasn’t even able to run butt-naked (which he briefly tried ). So this time, Heather Eason said, he lubed his skin with Hydropel and a little Desitin ointment. Over that he wore spandex running tights.
When it’s “really cold,” she said, “he wears Activist fleece tights.”
The men wore moisturewicking tops and various lightweight nylon and fleece jackets, tobogans and gloves.
If they had to spend more than a few minutes at an aid stop, they sat inside the warm cars.
LIGHT Although a fat-faced moon illuminated their first nights, leaves obscured the trail. How did they see the blue blazes that define it ? Each of them wore headlamps and carried LED flashlights, and their pacers also wore headlamps and carried super-bright Light & Motion bicycle lamps borrowed “from all their friends,” Heather Eason said. “Steve had it hooked up where we can charge batteries out of his truck.” Many such small strategies, learned through failure and networking, meshed with loving support to make their self-imposed goal possible. And then on top of all of that, they simply put one foot in front of the other.
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