Ultrarunning Gets Younger – and Faster

Their subject arrives right on time, having run twelve miles from his apartment in Colorado Springs, picking up 2,000 feet in elevation gain along the way. He isn't even breathing hard. He pauses, smiles for the camera — and is soon on his way back down the mountain.

Lately he's been thinking a lot about balance, about the need to get a better handle on the highs and lows of his obsession. The last year or so has been a stomach-churning roller-coaster ride, and he's trying to make sure the track ahead is a little smoother.

Low: Being dogged by a gimpy knee that seriously cut into his training plans for Leadville. Fortunately, after weeks of misery, a sports-therapy clinic was able to figure out the problem — inflamed meniscus — and massage it back into place.

High: Springing back from injury to cram a thousand miles of tasty summer runs into five weeks in Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California — the odyssey depicted in Indulgence — and then smoking the field at Leadville.

Low: Arriving in Bozeman at the end of August to start graduate studies in geology at Montana State University and picking up a stress fracture almost immediately, the result of one wrong step on a little rock. He was in a boot and on crutches and didn't run again until Thanksgiving.

"It was the most depressed I've ever been in my life," says Krupicka. Hobbling around campus, he eventually decided to drop out of MSU and pursue another area of study, possibly environmental science.

Jenks, Krupicka's longtime girlfriend, says it's difficult sometimes to deal with the black funk that surrounds an injured Krupicka, but that's part of the whole package. "When he was in Montana and injured and I was here, I felt pretty helpless," she says. "But there's really an element of admiration you have to have for someone who has that much passion about something. It goes beyond dedication. So few people find something in their lives that they want as much as Tony wants to run. You have to be careful that it doesn't possess you, but it's really beautiful to have that experience."

High: Returning to Colorado Springs, spending downtime with Jenks, getting healthy again and retooling his training. Although he still does longer runs on the weekends, Krupicka has cut back on his daily regimen in recent months, typically running three hours instead of four or five, and feels better for it. "The difference in an hour a day is huge," he says. "It gives your body a chance to recover."

Low: Not getting selected in the lottery for the 2008 Western States Endurance Run.

Krupicka has unleashed more than one tirade on his blog about the rash of red tape, hefty fees and obtuse rules that are strangling his sport. Many 100-mile races cross public lands, whose stewards impose a strict cap on the size of the field — but the same events are becoming so popular that even elite runners are having a hard time getting into them. At the same time, the number of ultra races is proliferating, allowing some runners to cherrypick events where they're unlikely to face strong competition. The result is that head-to-head battles among the most serious athletes are uncommon, and inflated reputations abound.

Not that Krupicka has anything but admiration for the likes of Jurek or Carpenter. But most people have never heard of either one; they're more likely to have encountered the publicity machine of Dean Karnazes, author of the best-selling Ultramarathon Man and darling of the mainstream media (#27 in a Time list of the world's most influential people). Karnazes ran the Leadville 100 in 2006, but Krupicka didn't have much opportunity to get his autograph.

"Everyone asks me if I've ever heard of Dean Karnazes," Krupicka sighs. "I tell them, 'Yeah, and the one time I raced him, I beat him by seven hours.' I'd showered and was asleep by the time he finished."

Getting shut out of the Western States lottery forced Krupicka to seek another means of entry: the American River 50-Mile Endurance Run, from Sacramento to Auburn, California. The top three finishers in the AR50 qualify for Western States. The first 26 miles of the course is pavement, not exactly Krupicka's preferred terrain, but he has built more speed workouts on flat ground into his training to compensate.