Scott Jurek: 'Being uncomfortable brings us back to our roots'

You’re a famed ultramarathoner. How come you’re running the Boston marathon? I’m a lover of all distances and I love to jump into marathons. Boston is such a special race, the energy, the people, the history [Boston is the world’s oldest annual marathon]. I usually run guiding a blind runner or helping a friend. It’s my chance to give back. This time I’m running with my wife, Jenny, and the founder of Clif Bar, Gary Erickson.

So this isn’t your first Boston marathon? No, it’s my third. The first time I guided a blind runner, Tom Panek, the CEO of the charity Guiding Eyes. It was a special way to experience Boston, seeing it for two people, not only thinking about myself, such as at the hydration stations, but helping someone else. It was an amazing experience.

I guess as an ultramarathon runner, completing a marathon is just a short training run, right? Well, I don’t want to say it’s just like brushing my teeth, but to run around in 3hr 30min ... I mean, I want to respect the distance, but it feels comfortable. Almost like a warm-up.

I take it you enjoy road races, not just trail races? All events have their own energy and experiences. In many ways I’d rather be running in the mountains, but I love to experience all aspects of running.

I notice you haven’t run many competitive ultra races recently. Are your ultrarunning days behind you? Right now I’m not entering as many formal races. I’m more intrigued by exploring my limits. In 2015, I broke the record for the Appalachian trail [a mere 2,189 miles] and I’m lining up something else for later this year. These adventure runs and trail records are what I find most alluring now, at the end of my career. The Appalachian trail record [it took him 46 days, eight hours and seven minutes] was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You’re tapping into primal instincts of survival. Running in mountains and woods for that long, you have to be adaptable, almost animalistic. Being uncomfortable like that brings us back to our roots of who we are as humans.

You’re famously a vegan. When and why did you become one? In 1999. It wasn’t for performance benefits, but for long-term health. I was reading a lot about what makes a healthy body and I was working in hospitals, seeing what people were eating, and I just decided that that was the best option for me. I was eating a lot of junk food at the time, so I needed to do something radical.

Is veganism good for ultrarunning? Being vegan keeps me on track. If I just tried to eat healthy food, but kept eating meat, I don’t think I’d be as focused. Am I faster than another guy because of my diet? Probably not, but it forced me to eat foods I had never eaten, or even heard of before. I was a meat and potatoes guy ...

What sort of foods are we talking about? Simple foods, such as brown rice – I hadn’t eaten that before. Quinoa, lentils and beans, these are staples in many parts of the world. It’s not flashy, but by combining grains and legumes you have a perfect protein. Then there’s tempeh, that’s one of my favourite foods. It’s like tofu but has a great nutty flavour, and it’s a dense protein. I’m a big fan of avocados, olive oil, coconut oil; they all form a big part of my diet. You don’t have to be vegan to eat all this stuff, of course.

During a race, what do you eat? For a race like Boston, carbs are the most important thing. For a marathon, I tend to stick to sports food – drinks, gels, bars. They’re quick and portable. I remember when gels were a new thing, but now there are all sorts of things, such as Clif Bloks, which are a chewy carbohydrate. And I’ve been working with Clif to come up with what we call Organic Energy Food, which is like real food in a form easy to transport and use during a race. We have a sweet potato flavour, a pizza flavour, things like that. On longer races, people want something that is closer to real food. Over the years, I did a lot of experimenting with what to eat while running, so I’m putting all that experience to good use.

What do you think about that other popular dietary trend in ultrarunning, the paleo diet? It’s not a diet for long-term health. People can get results initially, because they’re cutting out sugar and processed foods, but studies have shown that eating meat in those quantities is not good in the long-term. We’re not the same as we were in the paleolithic era, when people only lived to 30 or 35 years of age. Carbs are not the enemy. Even people who follow the paleo diet will use carbs on race day, because that’s what we need. The brain needs glucose to survive.

You’ve done some pretty epic races over the years. Which was your toughest? The 24-hour world championships. It was a one-mile loop that you ran around and around for 24 hours. That was the toughest, both mentally and physically.

You’ve run the Badwater [135 miles through Death Valley, in July, in temperatures of 54C] and Hardrock 100 [which he won in 2007]. But this was the toughest? Yes, without a doubt. OK, those other races look tougher on paper, in fact they’re two of the hardest races out there, but the 24-hour race was a different challenge. I call it the PhD of running – no change in scenery, no running from A to B, no finish line. Mentally, it’s a killer. Trail running is mostly walking and running, but this is different. And I was pretty proud of the result – I broke the US record [running 165.7 miles].

Where is your favourite place in the world to run? The Himalayas is probably the most incredible place I’ve ever run. The scale of the mountains there is just mind-boggling.

Do you remember your first race? Yes, I was a fourth grader in middle school and I somehow got picked to run a cross-country race for the school. I placed second. I didn’t really like running then, but the excitement and energy was pretty captivating.

Do you listen to music when you run? I do when I’m running on the roads, and if I go super-long, such as on the Appalachian trail, then I do at times. But I also love to hear the sounds around me and tap into that, especially if I’m in the mountains.

Do you have a favourite gadget? Well, a watch is pretty essential. I never thought I’d say this but on the Appalachian trail, my iPhone was invaluable, for taking pictures, getting in contact with people. I used a mapping app, too. I also love my Ultimate Direction running vest. It has pockets, a hydration pack – it’s like a second skin at times.

You featured a lot in Chris McDougall’s bestselling book Born to Run. Did he convince you to take up barefoot running? The funny thing is I already did barefoot running in the infield and I was already using minimal shoes. This stuff was already around before the book, and I was always a fan of lighter shoes with less support. So, I’m a believer in barefoot and minimal running, yes, but as a tool for building foot strength and honing form. I wouldn’t run a race barefoot. It wouldn’t be efficient on rocky trails.

Finally, who is your running hero? Yiannis Kouros has always been a hero of mine. When you look at the scope of his world records, it’s pretty incredible. In more conventional road and track running, I guess my heroes are probably Steve Prefontaine and Emil Zátopek.