CONTROL-ALT-DELETE: North by Scott & Jenny Jurek

Few people captivate me as Scott Jurek does. Few books hold my attention like his do. Six years ago, the year before I ran my first ultra, I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and then immediately moved on to Eat & Run by Scott Jurek.  While Christopher piqued my interest in the sport,  I planted my roots firmly in ultra trail soil with wisdom and inspiration from Scott "Jerker" Jurek. He is a running legend who is considered one of the greatest ultra runners of all time, winning many of the sport's most prestigious races multiple times, including winning the Western States 100 seven years in a row. It has been almost a decade since he retired from racing.

Sunday morning I woke well before dawn for my last long run before the Superior 50K.  I was feeling appropriately exhausted after a hard training block and needed a mental boost.  A quick search for a good book produced newly published, North.  I felt my pulse quicken, immediately hit download and tapped play as I headed out to the trail head.

North is a book written by Scott and Jenny Jurek about their successful FKT (fastest known time) attempt on the Appalachian Trail in 2015.  Scott completed the 2189 mile trail in 46 days, 8 hours and 7 min.  It was the first time someone snagged the FKT heading north.  This book is about finding direction when you've lost it - about trusting and following your internal compass even when it leads you to places you aren't sure you want to go. It is a book about coming face to face with your humanity for 46 days, about both suffering and finding peace and contentment, and just a little about midlife crisis.

I experienced this book in audio format, most fitting and convenient for a person who spends hours on the trails.  Although I have since downloaded the print version for reference, I truly believe hearing the voices of Scott and Jenny narrate their book makes it that much more poignant and meaningful.  I constantly have an audiobook or podcast on, and in doing so let a lot of people into my head.  In North, Scott immediately draws you deeply into his headspace with a crystalline sense of self-awareness that can only come after a 25 year running career such that he has had and 46 days of nearly constant running.  His introspective, honest description of his experience on the trail and the people whom he shared it with make you wonder if he should have pursued a degree in philosophy rather than physical therapy.

The only way to review a book this powerful is to share some of my favorite quotes.  As I ran my Sunday morning away, these are some of the parts of the book that burned themselves into my flowing mind.

On Luis Escobar:
"El Coyote had the ability to laugh when he wanted to cry, the secret to longevity in ultra running."

On a through hiker who criticized Scott's irreverent treatment of the trail by going too fast:
"Would he have understood if I had told him that, though man's soul finds solace in natural beauty, it is forged in the fire of pain?"

On pain after 7 days on the trail:
"...I was beginning to realize that there were two types of pain.  There was the kind that I'd known for decades: the catalyzing kind, the pain that's fierce and angry, that kicks you in the ribs as you're scrambling forward and slaps you across the face as you get to your feet. The kind that starts screaming at you as you approach the impossible - and makes you want to scream back. The pain that fills you up. It weighs on you.  It makes you big.

And then there's the pain that does the opposite.

This pain was taking from me.  It was emptying. I felt like I was leaving pieces of myself on the trail. I was disintegrating.  Very simply, I was failing, fast."

On his regret for neglecting to work on his why in preparation for the AT:

"You rarely ask why when you win. It's a word you can outrun and outperform. Applause makes it hard to hear yourself. But just because you ignore it, doesn't mean it's not there. And why doesn't get old and tired. It catches up, and it gets louder. It churns up thoughts that are best kept down in the dark."

Scott's mantras:
Sometimes you just do things.
This is what you came for.
I'm tough, I'm tough, I'm tough. ~ Lynn Jurek

David "Horty" Horton's motivational mantras:
This is who I am.  This is what I do.
It never always gets worse.
I love the fight, and when things are easy, I hate it. ~Ernest Shackleton

Over and over again Scott describes the people and the places he encounters along the Appalachian Trail with paradoxical adjectives that only serve to compliment rather than conflict.  Although it's possible, I don't believe he does this intentionally. His perspective is one that is unfiltered, intuitive, and in perfect harmony with other elemental concepts such as yin & yang,  and Newton's third law of physics (every action...)

If Born to Run and Eat & Run were for the young, energetic, the focused and the driven, then North is for those who have been at the peak and who have lost their direction.  It's for those who have found their why is catching up and getting louder.  It's about one man's journey to redefine himself, to reconnect with himself, to get to know himself as he is now.  It's about suffering and the uniquely crazy human need to suffer in order to become more...human?  And it's a beautiful love story about two people who are both complementary and contrasting, who summate to accomplish great things...each one sometimes the shadow and sometimes the light.  This book was their masterpiece.

You may not be an ultrarunner or an endurance athlete, but if you need a control-alt-delete and are not sure where to begin, start with reading North.  Then grab your inner compass, point it in the direction that your soul tells you to,  repeat

This is who I am.  This is what I do.

and start moving.  You'll figure it out on the way.