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Category: Ultrarunning History

My Path to Ultrarunning

The journey to becoming an ultrarunner has many varied paths. I personally never dreamed to be a runner of any kind and in fact most of my life, pretty much despised running. But along these unexpected paths, running somehow evolved. This story is mostly for me, to look back and understand where I came from, but it also may be of interest to others as they too become an ultrarunner.  Perhaps this is my runner memoirs.  It is an attempt to bring together many of my experiences and lessons learned over the years. In 2018 I finished my 100th 100-miler.

Full book, download PDF here: My Path to Ultrarunning  to read off-line. 276 pages, 19 meg. 25,000+ downloads to date.  

To be continued…

Additional Site and Podcast

I’ve created a second website: UltraRunningHistory.com to do a podcast and to collect my history-related posts together on one site. I’m enjoying uncovering more untold stories about ultrarunning history and wanted to preserve those separate from my blog, and hopefully gather history items from others.

UltraRunningHistory.com will be the home of my new podcast where I will tell more stories about ultrarunning history and interview some of the amazing legends of the past. The podcast can also be found in iTunes and is called “Ultrarunning History.”  Check it out, I’m trying to make it fun and not just telling facts.

In my introductory podcast episode, “What’s Up With This” I answer questions about my name, Davy Crockett.  What has life been like growing up with a name like Davy Crockett?  I also explain how I got into researching and writing about ultrarunning history and what the podcast will be like.

My personal blog (here) will continue to contain my personal running experiences. My running posts haven’t existed for the past five months because of an injury and surgery on my left knee. The doctor indicated that the surgery was mostly cleanup and smoothing, but after a setback I have not been about to train for about three month. Healing is very slow. There is probably something else going on such as a stress fracture which I know takes a very long time to heal on an old guy like me. I’m trying to be very patient and took up some long biking to help my sanity.  I’m still stuck on 97 100-mile finishes and hope to reach 100 some day.

Cheating in Ultrarunning

cheating

With recent public cases of ultrarunners being disqualified for cutting courses, there has been many shocked and angry discussions on social media about the topic. I’ve had deep feelings and thoughts on this topic, as I was directly impacted by one of these cases for nearly three years. I’m ready to share some of these thoughts. First, you must understand that cheating in our sport has been happening for decades. Many of us have just ignored it. Some race directors have very quietly disqualified runners caught cutting courses, letting them continue their practices at other races. A few courageous runners and race directors have refused to let these cheaters corrupt ultrarunning competition and have taken the hard road to confront the problem head on.

Cheating in the 1980s

cpCheating reared its ugly head in ultrarunning in the early 1980s. In 1980 an elite 100-mile runner was disqualified for cutting the Metropolitan 50 course in Central Park, in New York City. Allegations were raised by witnesses seeing him cut courses at other races. It was suspected that he had been cheating races for years by cutting courses, skipping loops at night but still getting them recorded, and by other means. This runner’s cheating ways were made public and three years later he took revenge on his primary accuser by assaulting him during another 50-mile race in Central Park. The enraged person came onto the course around mile 9, chased the runner, screaming verbal abuse, and tried to trip the runner multiple times. When that didn’t work he socked the runner hard in the collar bone. The runner went on to finish in 6:14.

Passing of ultrarunning legend Ken Young

ken3I’m very sad to hear that Ken Young passed away on Saturday.  I wrote the following summary of his running accomplishments in my online book Swift Endurance Legends.

Ken Young, of Petrolia California, was an accomplished runner. But he impacted running in America far more by collecting running results and creating running statistics. He grew up in Pasadena, California and attended high school in Phoenix, Arizona. As a youth he loved running and math. He ran a 10:10 two-mile in high school. In college he quit the cross-country team after one year because of his heavy course load. But in the late 1960s after reading an article about the benefits of running on health, complete with numbers and statistics, it struck a chord with him and he started to run while attending Arizona State University.

Nick Marshall – 2017 American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame Inductee

nick1

It was just announced that Nick Marshall is the 2017 inductee to the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame.  He was one of the elite 100-mile runners in the late 1970s and early 80s. Here is a chapter about Nick from my free online book, Swift Endurance Legends. Nick helped me extensively with this book to help preserve the history of 100-mile ultrarunning.

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Nick at Washington Monument, 3 minutes before his first ultra
Nick at Washington Monument, 3 minutes before his first ultra

Nick Marshall, of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania has finished 100-milers across a span of more than 38 years. In addition to his running achievements, he left a huge mark on early ultrarunning through his efforts as a historian and record keeper.

Nick started running marathons in 1973. He realized that the longer the race, the better he could compete. He said, “I was motivated by a simple curiosity over a basic question: How far can you go?” He set his marathon PR of 2:41:15 in 1975 at the Harrisburg Marathon.

Reaching for 100 100-mile Finishes

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When I attempted to run my first 100-miler at The Bear in 2004, I ran quite a few miles near the 100-mile legend, Hans-Dieter Weisshaar from Germany who was at that time 64 years old.  That race was Han’s 66th 100-mile finish.  Hans was indeed a legend.  That year in 2004, he finished 13 of them.  He started running 100s at the age of 58.  When I DNFed the race, and was given a ride to the finish line, I was able to watch Hans finish in 32:54 to a chorus of cheers. I was in awe.

I had failed to finish my first 100 mile race and believed that I was in way over my head at age 46.  Here was a man 20 years older than me, finishing 100-milers every month.   If I could only just finish one!  I did get that first finish, a few months later and was hooked on running 100-milers.

My Path to Ultrarunning – Part 13: Birth of the Pony Express Trail Runs

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The historic Pony Express trail crosses about three miles from my home.  I have a passion for US history and during the winter of 2004-05, I decided that it would be fun to try to run much of the historic trail in western Utah.  I had never even driven it before, so running it would be a great new adventure and a good way to run some long distances during the winter months.