Ultramarathons: Running 100 miles may seem crazy, but there are several locals who have caught the ultra bug

The night before the father died, the son sat vigil.

His body wracked with a cancer that wouldn’t relent, John R. Correiro — who was fond of saying “I’m living with cancer, not dying of cancer” — wanted his last days to be spent in his home.

He woke up that fitful night, uncomfortable as ever, and called out to his son.

“Jack! Jack!”

His son, full name John Correiro, slowly helped him sit up and turn, so his legs hung off the side of the bed. He pulled a chair close.

Without saying a word, the father let his heavy head rest on his son’s shoulder, their ears touching. The son feeling his father’s coarse stubble scratch across his face as they sat together silently.

Seconds turned into minutes, turned into an hour. Their long, deep breaths slowly syncing until they fell into a matching rhythm.

Breathe in.

RUNNING FOR A CAUSE

John Correiro, who ran his first marathon to benefit hospice outreach, will be running the Boston Marathon for the first time on April 18 while raising funds for the Herren Project, a non-profit headed by Chris Herren that assists individuals and families embarking on the path of treatment and recovery from addiction. The Herren Project also carries out a variety of educational initiatives aimed at raising awareness and providing mentoring opportunities to youngsters.

To donate to Correiro’s run, visit www.crowdrise.com/HerrenProjectBoston2016/fundraiser/johncorreiro. To learn more about the Herren Project, visit www.theherrenproject.org.

Breathe out.

Around them, the world dissolved. The son cried.

They sat, sharing this space and time and energy, for hours. There was no he and I. Just love, in singularity.

In the morning, John R. Correiro, longtime Superintendent of the Fall River School District, died.

In the days and weeks that followed, his son often thought back on that moment of non-duality, of its unexpected clarity and clairvoyance.

He’d experienced that tranquility before, that oneness with his own breathing. It was akin to a runner’s high.

“That seed he planted there, in his last hour, it was unsettling, but it was comforting,” says John Correiro, now a math interventionist at Westport Junior High. “That seed had been germinating for a long time.”

*****

Larry Finnerty was the first New Bedford area runner to finish a 100-mile race, circling a quarter-mile track 400 times in 1981, according to our running columnist Bob Hanna. Fifteen years later, Paul and Carol-Ann Days-Merrill of Fairhaven ran the Vermont 100 Endurance Run in Woodstock. Paul won it.

But the father of ultra running (any race longer than marathon distance) in the SouthCoast is Kenny Rogers, who grew up in Acushnet, graduated from GNB Voc-Tech and now lives in Fairhaven while working at Titleist. He ran a 50-kilometer race, his first ultra, in 2001.

“I was very nervous,” he says. “My goal was to break 10 hours. I didn’t wear a watch that day, and I ran 9:26. I was floored. You’re running and you’re trying to gauge, ‘Have I been out here 10 hours?’”

The next year, he attempted his first 100-miler, at that same Vermont 100, but he pulled out 44 miles in when his quads cramped up.

“I couldn’t even walk,” he says.

It took him four more years to return to Woodstock and finish that 100, which he finally did in 2006.

“I just enjoy the longer distance,” he says. “I like being out there and running at a slower pace and you’re able to hold a conversation. It’s not like racing a 5K.”

*****

One hundred miles, run consecutively, with only sporadic 10-15 minute breaks to eat, drink and rest?

Crazy, right?

Running for more than 24 consecutive hours? Running through the night, on rough trails over roots and rocks, only the beam of a headlamp to illuminate the woods?

Rooted, in part, from the popularity of Christopher McDougall’s book “Born to Run,” ultramarathoning has become a legitimate phenomenon in the United States. According to Ultrarunning.com, there were 2,890 ultramarathon finishers in the U.S. in 1980; 15,500 in 1998; 36,106 in 2009; and 69,573 in 2013. There are more than 300 ultras held each year in the U.S., according to Ultrarunning.com. Among ultra runners, 51.5 percent run 50Ks, 23.1 percent run 50 miles and a minuscule 8.6 percent run 100 milers.

The SouthCoast is not immune to this phenomenon.

“Since ‘Born to Run’ came out, it’s exploded,” says New Bedford ultra runner Steven Taylor. “There’s so many races. I’d say it’s exploded by 100 percent. You can’t even get into the bigger races anymore.”

“It’s grown exponentially over the last couple of years,” adds Wendy Cordeiro, who ran her first ultra in Vermont in 2012. “People are attracted to the culture of ultra running. It’s hard to explain. They’re competitive runners, but they’re laid-back and kind-hearted and calm people. People go to it because it’s a completely different way of looking at life and living your life.”

This is where, to many, things get bizarre.

The transcendence that John Correiro felt at his father’s bedside was the type of inner peace and enlightenment that many ultra runners say they find during those endless hours spent inside their own heads as a 24-hour-plus race unfolds.

“It’s a struggle,” says Kevin Mullen, a 58-year-old house painter from Fairhaven who ran his first 100-miler in 2013. “Ultrarunning is a struggle of the body, the mind and the emotions. That’s what it is. You’re attempting to balance all three of these aspects of yourself.”

The races are so strenuous on the body that runners often hallucinate.

“After my third 100, I was able to see hallucination for what it is,” Mullen says. “I was able to say, ‘No, I know that’s not a snake.’ The mental energy you can develop from these practices increases. You have to learn to control the fluctuations of the mind.”

*****

John Correiro was a surfer and a biker, never a runner. He still claims he’s not a runner, but that’s more about not defining himself, considering he ran two 100-milers less than a month apart last fall.

After graduating from Durfee High, where he played basketball, in 1986, he attended the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where he played rugby. While serving in the Merchant Marines as an engineer, he would spend his lunch breaks running loops around the deck of an oil tanker, often anchored off exotic locales in South America, or the Caribbean.

After the Mechant Marines, he started working as a manufacturing manager at a startup in Taunton. He got married, had kids. He still ran at lunch, to relieve stress.

“I was still chasing someone else’s idea of success,” he says.

Then, in the span of one year, he lost his job, went through a divorce and watched his father die of cancer.

One day, while biking from Fall River to Tenney Mountain in New Hampshire with his close friend, Norm Dumont, he came to a realization.

“I’m not going to sit at the bar and chase girls,” he said.

So he got back into surfing off Little Compton in Rhode Island, started riding more. Then, on Feb. 6, 2006, he signed up for the inaugural Sedona Marathon, which he ran to raise funds for hospice outreach, which had allowed his dad to die comfortably in his own home.

At age 36, it was his first marathon. At the halfway mark, he inexplicably found himself in 10th place.

“I had no idea the shape I was in or my conditioning,” he says, noting he finished 28th. “I was just going through a challenging time and doing a lot of running and got myself in pretty good shape.”

At the 10-mile mark, a voice entered Correiro’s head. “This voice was like, ‘If I could eat and drink, I could probably do this for a long time. I wonder how long I could do it for?’”

He pulled up alongside another runner, who ended up finishing fourth, and they started chatting. The other runner was training for a 100-miler.

“I can’t believe you’re doing that,” an astonished Correiro blurted out. “I can’t even get my head around that.”

“Dude,” the man answered, “you’re doing it right now. All you have to do is slow down and keep going.

“Just slow down and keep going.”

*****

It’s hard to talk to any experienced ultra runner in the area without Steven Taylor’s name coming up.

The New Bedford police detective grew up in New Bedford, but was never one for sports. He started going for trail runs in the Freetown State Forest and Destruction Brook Woods in Dartmouth about eight years ago.

“I hadn’t even heard of ultra running,” he says. “I didn’t do a lot of races, I liked running on the trails. I found a love for the trails.”

In 2009, the son of Taylor’s friends, Heather and Andy Simmons, died at 18 months old of spinal muscular atrophy, the No. 1 genetic killer of infants. In his name, Taylor helped start Team Owen, a group now synonymous with running in the SouthCoast.

“I watched a program on TV called ‘Running the Sahara’ about four guys who ran across the desert, and I never knew a human being could do something like that,” he says. “At the same time, I found out Owen was sick with this disease. I figured anyone could run a marathon. Oprah ran a marathon. I wanted to accomplish something crazy.”

So in 2009 he signed up for the Northface Endurance Challenge, a 50-mile trek across Washington, D.C.

“It was hard, but when I finished, I was hooked,” he says. “I was really hooked.”

In the seven years since, Taylor estimates he’s run 20-25 ultras. His favorite distance is 100 miles.

He’s even run the granddaddy of American ultras: Western States, in Squaw Valley, California. What Boston is to marathons, Western States is to ultras. Only seven percent of lottery applicants are selected to run. Taylor was selected in 2010 and 2011.

“It was a life-changing experience,” he says. “It was phenomenal. Breath-taking trails. Tough. Hot. Snow. Everything. It’s about 100 degrees in the canyons, but you start in snow at the top of the mountains.”

*****

Ultras aren’t for everyone. Especially the 100 milers. A 50K is only nine miles longer than a marathon, and can be accomplished with similar training and preparation. You start in the morning, you’re done by the afternoon.

For a 100, the training alone is beyond the scope of what many casual runners can even imagine. Long runs that take up half a day. Food preparation. You need to plan for pacers to help you along the course and many runners have a team that drives a van filled with supplies to meet them at checkpoints.

Then there’s the difficulty of actually, you know, running 100 miles consecutively.

Yet none of that means every ultra runner is a superlative athlete.

Wendy Cordeiro ran her first ultra in 2011 and her first 100 in October. But her first job came in 2008, when, after raising two kids and going to school full-time, she decided to lose weight.

She joined her neighbor for one lap around Buttonwood Park.

“It was pretty miserable,” she says now, with a laugh. “I remember being told that if I stuck with it for three months, it would get easier. I told myself I’d torture myself for three months and see how it goes. After three months, I was feeling good.”

Her first ultra was the StoneCat 50 miler in 2011, followed by an attempt at the Vermont 100 in 2012, but a torn calf muscle at mile 35 forced her out of the race — wait for it — 60 miles later at the 95-mile mark.

Finally, in October 2015, she ran the Ghost Train in Milford, New Hampshire, a 100-miler that’s comprised of 13 circuits around a 7.5-mile loop. Her most difficult challenge was finding food her body could keep down while being jostled on the trails. She settled for clear broth and gels.

“I enjoyed it,” she says. “It was hard, but an incredible experience. It’s all about the ability to adapt. You never know what’s going to happen. You have to just take what the day is giving you.”

Another unusual ultra runner — assuming there’s such a thing as a “usual ultra runner” — is Dartmouth’s Nicole Ponte.

She’s only 17.

Ponte started running less than two years ago, when her mom, Susanna, was getting back into marathons. They began training on area trails together, then, with a max run of only 13 miles under Ponte’s belt, they ran the Stone Cat Marathon in Ipswich together in November 2014.

Through her mom, Ponte met Rogers and Taylor and the rest of the area’s ultra crew, which serves as an extension off the Greater New Bedford Track Club, the center of the spoke for many local runners.

In June 2015, Ponte ran the Vegan Power 50K to support a vegan charity she is involved with. In November 2015 she ran her first 50 miler, and now she’s signed up for her first 100, the Cascade Crest in Washington State, in August, just a couple of months after she graduates high school.

“My friends think I’m nuts,” she chuckles. “My mom is really good about it. My dad, at first, he said, ‘You’re seriously going to do that?’”

Ponte runs regularly with the track club and the Team Owen training group. She’ll spend her weekend days piling up 20-25 miles.

“I’m usually the baby of the group,” she says. “I don’t mind it. At first I was surprised, I thought a lot of younger people were doing it, but I find it’s more older people. It’s a big social event. I feel like the trail running community is nice to be with. I like being outside in nature. I like the feeling when I’m done that I just accomplished something.”

While many ultra runners start talking existentially about what they think about during a race, Ponte is a little more grounded.

“I remember I was doing the 50 on a Saturday and I knew on Monday I had a test on anatomy and I was thinking about the scalpel system,“she says. “It’s really random when I’m on my own and sometimes I’ll finish and not know what I was thinking about.”

*****

When it comes to bizarre theories on the intersection of ultra running, the body, the mind and the consciousness, few are as fervent as Kevin Mullen, who ran his first marathon in 1980 and is famous locally for running the New Bedford Half Marathon barefoot several times (he’s also run a 50K barefoot).

Mullen never ran longer than a marathon until he turned 50, when Kenny Rogers introduced him to the Gil’s Athletic Club (GAC) 50 miler.

Mullen’s philosophy on running can sound unabashedly kooky, but among non-ultra runners it’s ordinary. Who is anyone else to say what mind-altering moments can come when your body has been running for 20 hours?

“It’s a zen approach,” he starts. “I’m a big believer in zen myself. You can’t intellectually control all this. When you immerse yourself in the woods in nature like this, you come to understand the universal language prior to the word of man was the song of the bird. During the struggle, part of your soul is awakened. When this happens it’s a transformation.

“Ultra is a struggle. It’s about trying to find out who the real you is. You come to realize the ego really is temporary. It’s not real. These labels melt out there. You get in touch with nature and connect so deeply sometimes only by depriving yourself of sleep out there, 20-30 hours. I’ve also described this experience as living outside of time as we know it. Which is a little too deep, a little too far out there for most people.”

Mullen’s self-awareness that his all-as-one talk makes others dubious also makes it easier to believe his personal experiences. He’s far from the only one to talk this way about finding enlightenment on the trails.

During an hour-long chat with Correiro, who is planning to run three 100s this year, he often starts to sound like he’s streaming song lyrics, or reading off bumper stickers: “Running is awareness, it’s really a shortcut to self-liberation, you get to understand the nature of the mind”; “We’re looking outside for something that can only be found within”; “Success for you can only be defined by you”; “You can never be who you think you are, being and thinking are two different states.”

But he’s so unnervingly sincere, it’s hard not to sit back and consider. Maybe they’re on to something. Maybe these 70,000 people dragging their bodies across mountaintops and along ridgelines, through thick forests and across open plains have found a higher level of understanding that evades us plodders.

“When we unhook from our thinking lives and allow ourselves to rest in that space? Things change,” Correiro says, staring intently over a hot cup of tea. “It’s a different consciousness.

“I had this mantra, don’t think, just breathe. It would bring me to my breath and calm things down. I realized it’s not ‘Don’t think.’ You can never not think. But concentrate on the breathe.”

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

That’s how you make the world dissolve.