Ultimate Crew Wife: Jenny Jurek Ultimate Crew Wife: Jenny Jurek

NOVEMBER 2024

An issue of POSSESSED dedicated to Scott Jurek would not be complete without a conversation with his better half—Jenny Jurek.

Jenny Jurek was a climber before she got into ultrarunning, and she got ultrarunning before she and Scott began dating (she was also vegetarian before Scott; just sayin’). This is an important point because Jenny crewed Scott when he set out to break the Appalachian Trail speed record in 2015, so she was very familiar with what it takes to cover enormous distances on foot. That said, nothing could’ve prepared her or her husband for what those 2,189 miles had in store, and you can read about that gnarly 46-day, 8-hour, and 7-minute mission in the book they co-authored: North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail. POSSESSED gave Jenny a call to talk about that endurance challenge and how it nearly tore them apart, and to also discuss the massive, frizzy ponytail that nearly prevented getting together in the first place.

When we called, Jenny and the Jurek clan had just gotten back from harvesting a friend’s vegetable patch before a cold front moved in. Boulder stuff.

Photos courtesy of Ben Ward and the Jurek archives

Did you get the tomatoes in?

Yeah, we got tomatoes, and we got tons of peppers, eggplant, and basil. There’s actually still a bunch left, so we may have to go back this weekend if it doesn’t all freeze.

So, you’ve got dirt under your fingernails right now.

Yeah. And the kids and everybody smells like basil.

[laughter]

I was thinking today about your name, Jenny Jurek. It’s a fun name. It kinda bounces. But your maiden name, Uehisa, I hope I’m saying that right—

Yeah, Uehisa.

So, that means ‘Always Up’ in Japanese, which is really cool. But what does Jurek mean?

Actually, Uehisa means ‘Perpetually Rising’.

That’s even better!

I know! But unfortunately, nobody told me that—I’m fourth generation—so I didn’t know about that until after I’d changed my name to Jurek, which means ‘George’.

It means what?

‘George’.

‘He was definitely “Scott Jurek”. But back then, it was like, “What’s Western States?” It wasn’t a big deal. To the people who knew what ultrarunning was, though, it was like, oh yeah, Scott Jurek, but to me, he was just this guy selling shoes.’

It means ‘George’?

Yeah. I changed from ‘Perpetually Rising’ to ‘George’.

[laughter]

I’m so sorry.

Yeah, it’s a real bummer. But growing up, no one could ever pronounce Uehisa, so I was stoked to become Jenny Jurek.

Yeah, Jenny Jurek is a great name.

Yeah, but in my heart of hearts, I’m still ‘Perpetually Rising’.

Always Up is the name of the maternity hiking gear brand you started, right?

Yeah, it’s just a passion project. I basically just made what I wanted.

I saw on your website you have special belts for running when you’re pregnant?

Yeah, that’s a running support belt for pregnant ladies so they can keep running through their pregnancy. It takes the pressure off the bladder, and there’s also places to keep your gels and stuff, you know.

Very cool.

Thanks!

Okay, how did you and Scott meet? Was it through Brooks when you were a product designer?

No, we met in Seattle. Scott was working at a running shoe store; he was coaching and doing physical therapy and selling running shoes at the store—

Was he ‘Scott Jurek’ at that time, or was he just Scott Jurek?

He was definitely ‘Scott Jurek’. But back then, it was like, ‘What’s Western States?’ It wasn’t a big deal. To the people who knew what ultrarunning was, though, it was like, oh yeah, Scott Jurek, but to me, he was just this guy selling shoes.

Right, right.

I remember I had just started running, and he helped me with some shoes, and he was so nice; he treated me like I was a winner. I was like, ‘Oh, I just ran my first half-marathon!’ And he was like, ‘Oh my gosh! How’d it go?’ Like, he was genuinely interested and treated everybody with the feeling that what they did was important and meaningful. But it never really occurred to me that he was—

A living legend?

Yeah, or at the top of his craft. He was just a really nice, normal guy.

When he helped you with shoes, did he just pop open a box and hand you one, or did he get down on his knees and gently fit the shoes to your feet?

[laughter]

No, no. But I always tease him because I’d also been to see him for an ankle injury, and I’m like, ‘Dude, you were always checking me out.’

[laughter]

So good.

But when I met Scott, he had a long-ass, frizzy ponytail and—

[laughter]

Sorry, go on.

You need to see this thing, it was like a fox tail connected to his head, and he was always wearing jorts and Birkenstocks. He was ahead of his time. But for me, in my twenties, he looked like, you know, the eclectic, vegan, outlier dude. I couldn’t really appreciate it.

What’s it like living with him? I heard a rumor that you’re mostly in it for the food.

Oh, yeah. Well, the thing is, we were friends for, like, ten years because he was married, and I only dated rock climbers because climbing was my thing. So, we were always just friends; he was always in the friend zone. And then he got a divorce at the same time I broke up with my long-term boyfriend, and some friends of ours tried to set us up by staging a dinner. I thought the whole gang—the whole running community—was going, but then it was just me and Scott!

‘You need to see this thing, it was like a fox tail connected to his head, and he was always wearing jorts and Birkenstocks... he looked like, you know, the eclectic, vegan, outlier dude. I couldn’t really appreciate it.’

What?

Yeah! And I was like, ‘This is sorta weird, but it’s okay because we’re all friends,’ you know?

Right.

And then I moved right after, down to Ventura to work for Patagonia. And then he was coming down to speak at a running store in Santa Barbara, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, you can stay with me, and I’ll set you up with one of my girlfriends—there’s so many hot girls who work at Patagonia.’

Oh.

And then he got there, and he was staying with me, and he was making me meals, like, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

That’s sweet.

Yeah, he was packing me my lunch before work, and he was going on these runs in Southern California, and he would come back with all this produce—

He’d go foraging?

Yeah, he’d be like, ‘Oh, your neighbor had some oranges,’ or ‘There’s some figs down the way,’ and he’d come back carrying all this fresh fruit that he’d foraged in the alleys.

Hot tip for any guys trying to woo a woman: forage for her.

Yes. And I was a total bachelor. I mean, my fridge had a bottle of ketchup and a box of soy milk. I was like a junk food vegetarian. I’d get breakfast and lunch at Patagonia, but then I’d eat cereal or toast for dinner. And he was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and he started cooking all this amazing food.

And were you thinking, ‘Actually, maybe I won’t set him up with any of the girls at Patagonia’?

Exactly. The first day he came and met me at the office, the mail room guy was like, ‘Oh my god! Scott Jurek is here!’ He was freaking out, but I’d always known Scott as the guy from the running store, so that was my first ‘Ohhh’ moment. And then there was this really cute graphic designer at work, and she was like, ‘Oh, who’s that? Who’s your friend?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s just my friend from Seattle.’ And she was like, ‘Are you dating that?’ And I was like, ‘Uh-uh,’ and she’s like, ‘Well, somebody’s gonna date that—’

[laughter]

‘That’! This is hilarious. Please continue.

And then I was like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I will.’ I started seeing him in this different light. And the thing was, he’d got a haircut. So, he’d gotten divorced, he’d got a haircut, he bought new clothes, got Mac instead of the P.C. he had, and he—

[laughter]

He was making moves, and when he came to stay, he just seemed slightly cooler, like—

[laughter]

I’m dying.

It was like, Okay, he’s datable.

I getcha.

But before he’d come down to visit me, he’d just won the Spartathalon in Greece for the third time in a row, and he was this bronzed Adonis. He had this sun-kissed, Greek tan going on, and he just looked totally different. Oh! And I took him to a yoga class in Ventura, and the yoga teacher was totally hitting on him! And I was like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, back off.’

So, when did you officially start dating?

It was, like, November 2008.

And you guys wrote North together, which is the story of Scott’s Appalachian Trail speed attempt.

Yes.

And, spoiler alert, he broke the record.

Yeah, yeah.

‘The A.T. is revered, and I definitely did not have the respect for it that it deserved. I should have done more homework for it. So, he was like, “I wanna do it,” and I was like, “Okay, I guess.”’

When he told you his plan, did you have any idea how intense it was going to be?

I had no idea. I don’t know how much you know about the A.T. and the subcultures of through hikers, but I grew up on the West Coast, and the P.C.T. (Pacific Crest Trail) was like the Golden Trail. Scott and I were actually backpacking on P.C.T., and he was like, ‘I wanna do the A.T.,’ and I remember stopping and saying, ‘Why?’ I didn’t understand why he’d want to do that.

Right.

I’d never stepped foot on it, and I had no idea how massive it is. If you’re from there, or you’re one of the people who live by the A.T., it’s like this sacred community. The A.T. is revered, and I definitely did not have the respect for it that it deserved. I should have done more homework for it. So, he was like, ‘I wanna do it,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess.’ The thing is, it’s not scenic like the P.C.T., where you have the John Muir trail and you go through Yosemite and stuff. With the A.T., they call it the Green Tunnel because you don’t really get the views until the very end. You’re just socked in with all these trees, and it’s wet and rainy, but by my third day there, I was like, ‘Oh, I get it.’ It’s this amazing thread; it’s like this seam that runs through some of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, and I finally understood the magical mystique around it and why I needed to have more respect for it.

I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, but it was a very intense experience for both of you, right?

Yes.

It was 50 miles per day for seven weeks. 2,189 miles total.

Yes.

Unimaginably difficult, but not just for Scott, for both of you.

Yeah, and especially because this was ten years ago, deep in the mountains where there’s no cell service. This was, like, before Starlink, and before Garmin inReach. We had a very, very early version of what is the Garmin inReach now, but it was owned by a different company.

What was it?

It was a DeLorme, and that thing was like a brick, and it was impossible to type messages; you could only track it if you logged on to their website, and I never had service where I was. But people would show up at these remote trailheads, and I would know he was coming, he was close.

How?

Well, they’d be at home tracking him on their computers, and they’d see he was coming, so they’d drive to the trailhead and be, like, ‘Oh, he’s a mile out,’ and then I would know.

You’re kidding.

No, no. And I only had paper maps and atlases because we didn’t have GPS in the van, for some reason. Do you know the climbing term to ‘onsight’ something?

No, what does that mean?

When you onsight a route or a boulder problem, it means you walk up to it, you look at it, and then you do it on your first try. You send it. You don’t try it out a couple of times. Most people who’ve done the A.T. have thru-hiked it before and have been to the meeting points and seen the towns—we never saw any of it. We just went blind and did it.

Wow.

Like, his friend, Karl (Meltzer), had done it twice before, but he didn’t call him up to say, ‘Hey, give me the beta,’ he didn’t ask David Horton or any of his friends who’d done it already. He was just like, ‘No, I wanna go and just do it my way and have the experience for myself.’

That’s cool.

Yeah, but at the same time, we were so ill-prepared for what was in store.

Would you recommend that other couples reading this give the Appalachian Trail Speed Record a go?

[laughter]

I’ll say this: it’s not for the faint of heart. Anyone who has ever crewed for their partner in a race, 50 milers or 100 milers, you’re basically done in a day, your car is trashed, and you’re exhausted. But what Scott did was like that for 46 days.

It just sounds so gnarly.

It’s a lot, yeah. And I was alone for most of it. But he and I were at a point in our lives where we just needed to go into the woods and check out for a while.

‘You have onboard all that you need to go and train, but people look for supplements and equipment that will give them an advantage; they’ll look for all these ancillary things that can help them when, really, it’s just about getting out the door on a regular basis...’

Did the experience bring you closer together?

Oh, yeah. If we can survive that, we can survive anything. And I mean, he went to the graveyard. By the end, he was a shell of himself. He had these weird tics, his hands were shaking, his whole body was breaking down. He smelled weird, like compost, and he had all these rashes on his face because it’s so hard with the weather, the humidity, and the mud, and we didn’t shower the whole time. I think I, personally, took four showers the whole time.

Oh my god.

You just forget about all these creature comforts; he would nap on rocks and his nails were black with dirt, and my friend was like, ‘If I throw seeds on him, they will sprout.’

Wow.

He just became the trail. And he gave so much, and to see him put himself in such a hole was scary because it’s hard to see your partner do that. But at the same time, I was just in awe of him.

Okay, last question: What would you say to someone considering starting a life with a world-famous, legendary ultra-athlete?

Oh, god.

Did you just say, ‘Oh, god’?

[laughter]

I mean, first of all, I appreciate that you guys think he’s a legend, and he is ‘n stuff. But I always just knew him as...

Scott with the ponytail?

Yeah, that weird hippy with the ponytail carrying around a half-gallon container of reverse osmosis water, you know? It’s not like I started this relationship with a world-famous runner because I never saw him like that.

He was just a guy.

Yeah, just a guy. But it is great. He always says that running has given him all of his most cherished gifts. It’s allowed him to travel the world, and he’s so grateful for all the things that it has provided in his life.

Including you?

Yeah, I think me included.