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money, and since then Steve and Lonna had bought into the business and were working in Greeley while I took care of things in Fort Morgan, so they each had a vested interest and strong opinions. I’d married and divorced Danette, then done it all over again with another woman, and I considered all three of my marriages failures—I was alone, wasn’t I? My relationship with Danette was tense, and my children (now eleven, eighteen, and twenty-three), resented all the time I’d spent away from them.
    So, sure, I’d raced at all the major events, won some, and broken records. In my thirties, I’d discovered my talent for ultrarunning; in my forties, I’d taken it to another level with my creative extremes, and diversified with adventure racing; now, as I entered my fifties, I was something of a celebrity among endurance athletes. Trail Runner magazine would call me one of the legends of the trail, Outside would crown me “Endurance King,” and Adventure Sports would highlight me as an athlete “Over Fifty and Kicking Your Butt.”
    Good for me. I was a badass.
    At least my exploits had taught me ways to get myself through tough spots like the one I was experiencing on Towne’s Pass, such as using my athletic pursuits to raise money for a charity I cared about, a religious order of sisters serving women and children. On that day, I pushed through the pain by reminding myself that I wasn’t doing it only for me. My suffering had a purpose. Anyone who’s walked or run a few miles to benefit a cause knows how motivating this can be. Just when you start to feel as if you have nothing left to give, you remember how difficult someone else’s life is, and you can keep going. Perspective does wonders. (I love this sign, spotted at a marathon to benefit cancer research: “Blisters don’t require chemo.”) So I strapped a bag of ice onto each shin and slogged it out for the final 232 miles, my legs the center of my universe, tormenting me for the next five days, all the way to the finish.
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    Badwater Quad, check. Now just a couple of goals nagged at me still, like some kind of extreme bucket list. Before I departed this earth, I wanted to climb Mount Everest and realize my boyhood dream. And I had this other ambition to run across the United States, something I considered the ultimate ultra: more than three thousand miles from shore to shore, across all kinds of terrain. It would be the run of a lifetime, the most extreme challenge I’d ever attempted. In the same way I’d thrilled to the early stories of the Everest mountaineers, I found the travails of those who’d managed to cross our country on foot completely riveting. I wanted to experience all of that for myself, firsthand.
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    The month after my Badwater Quad, I was still so burnt from it that I couldn’t compete in that year’s Leadville Trail 100, so I was happy to help a friend get the job done. When I first started ultrarunning, there were no coaches, no experts, no manuals, no playbooks. Sometimes, there wasn’t even a marked course—you just had to get yourself from point A to point B, from starting line to finish line, however you saw fit to go. Forget frequent water stations and cheering onlookers. Ultrarunning is all about going it alone—or, if you’re smart, you might draft a friend or two to pace you by running alongside you, or to “crew” you by providing first aid or any other assistance you might need, from blister care to icing you down. When you’re out in the middle of nowhere, with runners miles apart and covering extreme distances on trails few other folks ever get the chance to see, it’s an advantage to have someone else with you, ideally someone with endurance and experience.
    Although by 2001 the Leadville race had become more organized, Theresa Daus-Weber had asked me to crew and then pace her back over Sugar Loaf Pass because of