Running America

After hassling with more than an hour of Houston rush hour traffic to cover 13 miles to the theater, I settled in with a few hundred others in one of the Alamo Drafthouse's larger auditoriums for last night's Houston premiere of Running America.

This documentary follows ultrarunners Charlie Engle (Running The Sahara) and Marshall Ulrich in the fall of 2008 as they attempt to break a time record for crossing the United States on foot from San Francisco to New York City. Their adventure coincides almost too neatly with the fall presidential campaign. Remember back when we thought that terrorism and the wars on foreign soil would be the dominant issues of the campaign? Well, as Ulrich and Engle started their trek in California and Nevada, the financial crisis story takes center stage instead as the political fight ignites over the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout. The filmmakers spent a lot of time interviewing random folks they met in America's heartland about where they think the country is heading.

I found myself with mixed emotions about this movie by its end. On one hand, the actual running portion of the story was great. And outside of the closeup blister-popping scenes, this is a beautiful one to watch, with many great views of America from the road. But I did feel emotionally manipulated as the words of Barack Obama's acceptance speech overlaid scenes of Ulrich arriving triumphantly in Manhattan on Election Day. (Engel found himself sidelined with plantar fascitis earlier in the attempt and couldn't complete the mission.)

After the film, Marshall Ulrich and his wife Heather took the stage for a Q&A period. I had some fun while livetweeting some of their responses via my still relatively new Backflip:

• Ulrich lost only a net four pounds during the entire trip. He was eating 10,000 calories a day -- the same as his entire four-person crew.
• Colorado was Ulrich's favorite state to run in, because he's from there and does like hilly terrain.
• Ulrich used 32 pairs of Pearl Izumi shoes, not because of outside wear, but because the inners were breaking down.
• Charlie Engel is working on a future run across Cuba, after Badwater.
• Ulrich has a book coming out in 2011 about his experiences on this run.
• The best way for a marathoner to transition into ultras is to run a lot! (Duh!)
• Heather Ulrich accompanied her husband during Running America as part of the support crew. She admitted that she was yelling "quit" in her head numerous times, but managed to keep her mouth shut.
• Ulrich has "circumnavigating Death Valley" as a future goal. I'm not sure what this means exactly, but he said it's something that hasn't been done yet.

After the show, I bought one of the DVDs and got it autographed.

Cool: Going home with an autographed DVD
Not Cool: Discovering that it won't play in any player in my living room (three so far).

I have Ulrich's business card, so I'll be sending him an email to describe my problem. Let's hope his organization can make this right.