Episode 420: Davy Crockett - Ultramarathon History

Davy Crockett is an ultramarathon runner, and hosts Ultrarunning History. His podcast and books dive deeper than any other ultramarathon history resource. Davy also is the director of the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction to the Human Performance Outliers Podcast

00:05:18 Origins of Pedestrianism in the 1700s

00:11:57 The Origins of Ultramarathons

00:18:45 Evolution of Six-Day Races in the 1890s

00:24:57 The Heyday of Six-Day Races and Their Impact

00:31:02 The Unbroken American Records of the 1800s

00:37:06 Spectator Tensions and Policing at Historic Races

00:43:28 Resurgence of Six-Day Races

00:50:06 Skepticism in 19th Century Ultra Running

00:55:19 Career Paths of Historic Runners

01:01:18 Bizarre Stories from the Book "Strength Range of Running Tales"

01:06:34 Mental Toughness in Ultra Running

01:12:03 The Remarkable Journey of 100-Mile Runners

01:18:01 Evolution of Ultramarathon Records

01:23:57 Legendary Park Barner and His Consistent Pace

01:29:30 Misunderstood Ultra Running Experience

01:35:32 End of Episode and Promo Code

Episode Transcript:

Actually, I have a funny story. I was in the dome for six days this year in June, doing a hundred miles there. And, I was talking to Bill Schultz as one would at six days in the dome, and he as soon as I came in to sign up, he handed me one of your books. Well, that's right, he got them. Yeah, yeah, he gave me the first thing I saw when I, when I, when he gave me it, I was like, oh well this is part one of the history of the Hundred Mile. So then I knew when the media was like, this is a Davy Crockett exploration, because only one person that I can think of would have so much information on any one discipline within ultrarunning to have parts to each distance, not just one book. Yeah. So I ran six days in the dome when you set your world record. Oh. Right on. Yeah, yeah, I was on the track as you were zooming around me. Yeah, yeah, that's such a cool event. I'm excited that they kind of have kept bringing that one back, to that facility and sort of broken it out into being, just a kind of an ultra festival or a timed event, at least. Festival for ultrarunning. Yeah, well, so I kind of want to kick things off by just sharing with the listeners your podcast. So like, your podcast is, in my opinion, one of the best libraries we have of just like really cool ultrarunning history and storytelling. So it's like because when I first saw it and by its title, you think, okay, maybe this is just kind of like nuts and bolts deep diving into the specifics of where these events came from and things like that. But you get into like so much of the like, kind of fun, like personalities that have kind of made up some of these events that I think probably date back and a lot of times further than most people even realize that ultrarunning has been around. So my advice to listeners here is if you find this episode motivating at all, go check out Davey's podcast for your next long run or bike ride, or whatever happens you are doing and you'll be entertained. And just like the format of it all is too is just like, it's like the perfect distraction away from, from whatever you're trying to avoid when you're out there for long hours. The pain. The pain? Yeah. The pain. We'll just get right to it. Right? yeah. And then on top of that, I think, like you're. How many books do you have now in that, in your, like, alternate history series? 11. Now I'm trying to finish my 12th. Probably be available in a month. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you're reading or you're listening, you can kind of get into some of the stuff from both ends. But, since you have so much content available, it's like, you know, one of the hardest things prepping for this interview was thinking, okay, well, what should I talk to? Wish I talked to Davey about it, because for one, it's like we could go on forever about one topic, probably within the context of some of the stuff you've done. and I think just, I kind of like glossing over a lot of it is maybe not the best move because they can just go check your stuff out if they really want to see that stuff in in better detail than what we'd be able to cover here. So I thought maybe it'd be kind of fun just to talk about some of like the the origin of the sport and then maybe some of the origin of specific events in there, because I find it really interesting what we gravitate towards, like with, with ultrarunning in general, where like if you have someone new to the sport now, it's very possible that they just think, and I was sort of like this when I did my first ultramarathon. You think? I think, oh, this is a sport that's done on the trails or this is a relatively modern sport, but in reality this thing goes back quite, quite far. So did you know off hand what the first organized ultramarathon was? You know, it's kind of. It just depends on what you call it. But if you call it like a race between two people, as an ultramarathon, because most of the really early things were just solo events, you know, people would try to go between certain towns and certain times. So, like the father, what they call the father of pedestrians is now back then they called running pedestrian ism. Some people get confused. They think, oh, that was walking. No, it was really anything on your feet, that the British called it pedestrian ism. And so, one of the very early ones was back in the 17, late 1700s, was a man named Foster Powell Foster Powell, and he was from Great Britain. And he wanted to see if he could walk between a town called Box to London and back in, which is about 400 miles. He wanted to try to do it in six days, and he was successful. And it's, it's. And so then then, you know, people tried to copy him. Of course, you know, if you get your name in the paper and they become famous, then they want other people to try to do it faster or further. And, and so that's what kind of got it started in the late 1700s into the 1800s. And then there's a man called Robert Berkeley Allderdice, or he was called Captain Barclay. in Barclay. That's a great name, huh? Yeah. Right. Yeah. But what he did is really the earliest version of the backyard ultra. he he instituted the idea to run a mile every hour until he reached 1000 miles. So you're going for more than a month, every hour. And it usually does it on, like, out and back, in a field. I mean, so all this was outdoors on, we would call them trails, flat flat trail or road and, so half a mile, he'd do it back and forth. And a lot of times these crazy attempts. And he wasn't the only one that did it. So hundreds succeeded in doing this crazy Barclay challenge back in the 1800s. And where they would do it a lot of times is in, in front of, pubs, salons that would sponsor it. And so thousands of people would come out into, you know, into the country to watch these guys just go back and forth for hours and hours and hours. And, it became really a sleep deprivation deal. I mean. I mean, not a mile an hour. You know, we could all probably do that. But once you hit sleep time, that becomes difficult. but then they started making it even more difficult, you know, because people always want to do better than what? The other one. They want to break records. And so. So picture this. I mean, so again, you said that, you know, a lot of people think ultrarunning is such a modern thing that somehow we invented it in our modern days. No, I mean, people were trying to do extreme distances for, for centuries before. So one of the really wild versions of this is you'd have to do a quarter mile every ten minutes for a thousand miles, if you can picture that. I mean, yeah, picture Lars ringing his bell every, you know, every ten minutes to have the people go out and do that. and they were successful and women were very successful in this, too. It wasn't just the men. So it was that things really kind of started in the 1800s. But, then races, you know, races started between two people. I'd say try to find those, you know, a hundred mile race, I think, in the 18. 60s, or I think I found 1 in 18 30s between two people, where they were trying to see who could do 100 miles. And of course, the Tarahumara in Mexico were doing this probably for centuries before. And there's one documented race where they did it in 1869. I mean, there was an American reporter that was down there that the railroad sponsored the event. They were putting in a railroad near their towns, and they sponsored the event. And so they had quite a number of Tarahumara who ran a race over 100 miles, and did it in, well, well below 24 hours. So, these races were, were going on for, for quite a while in the, you know, early 1800s. It's interesting that it seems like the sport sort of had its origins, perhaps kind of pop up in different spots, not necessarily being influenced by one another, because it's like hard to imagine a scenario where the Tarahumara were influenced by, you know, folks in London doing their pedestrian ism and vice versa. Exactly, exactly right. And same with America and Great Britain. I'd say England really was the hot hotbed of it that that did or at least that recorded, recorded the events. You know, in other countries they were probably doing the same things, but they didn't hit the newspapers. So we don't have any evidence or things that are going on. There were a lot of traditions, though, from the American, Native Americans in the different tribes, the Hopi and others, that they were also also going very long distances, and having races. So it was going on. But, you know, for America, it really got started in the 18 1870s. And, the really the father of American pedestrianism was a man named Edward Payson Weston, from, the northeast, I think Maine. But then he made his home in Connecticut and where he got, real a lot of attention as he took, took a bet on whether he could walk a camera, no matter how many hundred miles it was to Abraham Lincoln's inauguration. And so he had to reach there before the inauguration. And unfortunately, he missed it by just a couple of hours. But that hit the papers all over the place. And so there became just a fascination with the ability to walk hundreds of miles, that somebody could actually do that. Yeah. It seems like as you kind of go further back, you find these events where it's almost like if you didn't know any better, you'd think like Gary Cottrell had an ancient relative that was out there, like putting these things together. And when you recognize obviously that that wasn't the case, you think, oh, okay. So some of the stuff that he's doing nowadays actually is more of a kind of a callback to some of the original ultramarathon structures, whereas the whole like, okay, we're going to start here and do this loop around a mountain or we're going to, you know, run on this particular route for exactly 50 miles or whatever happens to be that's kind of a little bit more of a modern version of the sport. All right. So it really started outdoors. and you know where people say, oh, but they weren't doing trails. You have to remember that before World War Two, almost everything was trails, I mean, roads anywhere. So all these hundreds and hundreds of races that they had were actually what we would call trails. So they were there on the red dirt roads and doing in terrible weather and, and being out there. But, it was in the late 1870s that it all came indoors. And, the brilliance behind that is, it is believed or not, P.T. Barnum, the, Yeah, if you can believe it, he was Edward Payson West and what he was trying to do, he wanted to reach 500 miles in six days. And he kept trying and trying in different places, outdoors and indoors. And finally, Edward Payson Weston had this giant called Hippodrome, a giant tent, in downtown New York City. And he had the brilliant idea, said, well, why don't we bring Weston and others indoors? And that way I'll have an attraction for six days, 24 hours a day, where people will come in and pay a quarter or whatever to watch these crazy people go. And, so it was a success. In fact, P.T. Barnum organized the first six day race in history in his hippodrome. And the importance of that hippodrome is when he vacated it. It was then used for other things, but it became the first original Madison Square Garden and a very historic place for all to run. Is, in downtown. Now that Madison Square Garden got demolished, was it around 1890 and replaced by a new one and then later that one got replaced. So today there's a giant building and modern building in place where this happened. But these six day races, six day races, were the premier event for ultrarunning for about 40 years. Is that right? No, about 30, about 30 years. And they were held mostly indoors in arenas like Madison Square Garden and attended a single six day race that could be attended by, you know, 50,000 spectators during the week paying their money. And, So. Well, why? Well, how it happened. And the motivation behind all this wasn't just some guys trying to get fame, but that was part of it. It was all about wagering. It was a legalized gambling. and so, so picture, instead of betting on the horses, they would bet on these runners and they would have all, all kinds of prop bets to, you know, whether this runner would be this runner or whether this runner on the first day would reach this number of miles. And so you had all these, bookmakers who would actually come into the arena, set up tables and have have charts and things like that where people would come in and, and bet and so that, that motivate so millions of dollars would change hands in these, in these races and these, these runners back then and they were good. They would win in single events. More than what is equivalent to US $500,000. I mean, they became incredibly wealthy, these runners. So there are a lot of people who want to be ultra runners and do this now. They know there's some confusion about this because they called this era the pedestrian era. And, they always called these events walking matches. And so people think, oh, they were just walking back then they weren't really running. But that isn't true. they did Edward Payson Weston and in P.T. Barnum's Hippodrome. Hippodrome? Yes. They did primarily walk at first until 18 until 1878. A man named John Astley. in Great Britain, the Brits. What happened is Weston came over to England and nobody could beat him. And it really, really frustrated the Brits because they thought they were the best, best walkers and runners in the world. And even though they went long distances, especially six days, they could not compete. And so Ashley had this brilliant idea of let's change the rules, instead of having these walking matches where people would complain that people were cheating and actually running instead of walking, they changed the rules to be what they called go as you please. And so that really started ultra running, where you could run or walk or crawl whatever you want to do, just like today. And so, I have found over 500 of these six day races that were held during this era. And, and I'd say 80% of them were these go as you please running races. where they became very fast, and didn't go very long. And, I think they could compete with many of us. I don't know if they could compete with you, but they were very good for the sixth day. They sure could. Well, they had different formats of, of six day races after a while. And I want, I want to get your impression on so here's, here's a format. So they usually are all night you know, go as you please. You just 140. They actually have 142 hours instead of 144. That way they could close it down before Sunday. It's six days because they had laws that you couldn't have sporting events on Sunday. So. So 142 hours was the norm. Then they started doing races that were 12 hours a day for six days. And this past week I was researching and found, in the late 1890s, they started doing these races that were four hours per day for six races for six days. And I got thinking, I said, I wonder how that could do if you think about this if you. So they'd start the race at 6 p. m. and go to 10 p.m. so it'd be held in some indoor arena. Unfortunately, most of them were like small ones where b 14 laps to a mile, something like that. a lot, a lot of corners. but in front of, you know, a good audience and a band going to have some music to motivate you along the way. So I was wondering, I knew what the world record was for this format back then. So I was wondering, what do you think you could do four hours a day, six days straight? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. Oof! Well, Let's see, I bet. Maybe if my math is right on this, I'm thinking like 35 miles a day would be doable. So would be 71, 42, ten. Yeah. That's great. So a lot of people think these guys were pretty slow back then. They just have no conception that they were fast, you know, because they had leather shoes and they didn't have hammer gel or any of the great things we did. You know, they ate a beef mutton along the way and, and a lot of beef t and that's what they feed on. So the world record back then, now they'd only didn't hold a lot of races and they didn't have the best runners in the world in these four hours a day. But the best I found was 188.8. So that's just over 50 K a day for you know, so they do a four hour 50 K a day basically. so yeah I thought and so I think if they would have held more of these and got really the fastest in the world there, I think they would have broken 200 miles or come very close to it. So that's how good they did. But yeah, I think you could. I think you could beat them. But that's how good they are. They were, you know, you would call them probably, you know, country elite or maybe world elite. some of these guys, if we compared them to what we have today. Yeah. It's just really interesting hearing you talk about some of the structure around it and the payouts and all that stuff, because it's like when you think of it right now, ultrarunning feels big relative to how like any other point in my life, certainly. And it's just it's hard to imagine a sport like this being like actually probably much bigger, you know, 100, over 100 years ago. Like, yeah, no race is paying half $1 million out to its winners. This at this point. And, it's growing fast. But it's probably got a long way to go before you see half $1 million payouts and ultra running. But if ever, who knows. But that's pretty incredible. And it sounds like a lot of it's based around just like the amount of entertainment they were able to build around it. And then maybe to some degree, the lack of other opportunities to where, you know, now we have so many recreational and distractions that you can kind of engage your intention towards. Whereas back then, you know, you hear about a bunch of guys and gals getting into what eventually became Madison Square Garden, and you get all the flair of, betting and watching these little prop bets and things like that. You can understand why that got kind of some energy behind it. Yeah. And they tried to make them really the really successful ones. Where they really drew in tens of thousands of people is they'd have all these sideshows going on to, if you can, if you can picture in the, you know, the middle of the loop. Yeah. So Madison Square Garden had a track that was eight, eight laps to a mile. And so then inside that a lot of times they would have other things going on. They'd have shooting galleries. Yeah, they would have. I mean, just all kinds of these kinds of circus things going on. And of course, drinking was just huge. They would have these bars with like 60 bartenders, just under the grandstands that, you know, everybody would get their beers and, and have a great time. And, some of the spectators would even spend all night the whole week. They would sleep in the chairs. They would call them the loafers. And then. And then the kids who didn't have, you know, $0.50 to come in, they would try and try to break into Madison Square Garden. They'd find all these ways to crawl up into the windows. They would break a window and crawl in and be able to watch their favorite pedestrian. Because they became very famous. They even had trading cards like baseball cards. and we preserved a lot of those that are really interesting to see. But yeah, it became the number one spectator sport in America in, I'd say around 1880, that 1878 to about 1882. It was the heyday and it by far was the biggest if other sports to compete with were like, boxing, baseball was starting. but you're right, these other sports weren't distractions, the other distractions for them and the people that. Really hated these six day races. Were the theaters? Because the theaters were big. That's where people would go in the evenings to see plays and musicals and all that. And these six day races were taking their customers away. And, so, yeah, so eventually there became a, you know, lots of people who wanted to shut these things down, but they were big. They were really big. I, I, you know, I've, I, across the years, you know, later this month, we'll have a six day race. The six day races are coming back. they came back in 80 in 1980 was when they started and, but just in recent years they've started to be a thing. And the world records are, are, starting to be broken again that these guys set back almost a hundred years ago. Yeah. It's funny to me because like I think of, like just when I did my first ultra marathon in 2010 to today, there's sort of like this, like a moving narrative of like, okay, the 100 mile. Is that kind of the premier distance for ultrarunning? It's one where a lot of people kind of attract their attention. It's one where and some of it might just be because like if you want, similar to these guys and gals in the 1800s, like, if you want to make a name for yourself, you go and you do well at Western States or Utmb, which are kind of like loosely known as 100 mile races and. Then. Then you get this conversation around these 200 milers that are starting to pop up more now, too. It's like, oh, the sport's transitioning to where now like the two hundreds of the new hundred. And when you think about it like in reality, it's like you go, you just got to go back further and like we're not actually progressing towards like we're maybe working our way back to where the origins were. If anything, that's a good thought. Yeah, that is interesting because we're not as crazy as you think. No. But what's great is they, they kept split times and so I've so the, the, the four books that I've most recently have written is as the history of the six day Race. And it's such a fascinating area. Nobody has ever written about them in story form, in great detail like this before. And nobody knew there were 500 or more of these races going on. Most of the historians, you know, they talk about a couple dozen, and the big ones in Madison Square Garden, but they were held all they were not all over the world, but they were held in America, Canada, Great Britain and Australia, primarily. and what's nice is they kept split times. And so I've very carefully gone back and tried to collect, you know, the world records in American records that these guys were setting along the way. so, for example, the 100 mile record back then where people thought they were slow. Well, get this, the hundred mile record was 13 hours and 26 minutes, set back in 1882. And that was, held by Charles royal rule of Great Britain. And he was, he was one of the fastest runners back then. other things, the 24 hours, the, the record was 156 miles, set in 1888. let's see, 12 hours. 89.8 miles. The 50 miler was 555 back then. So, really impressive what they could do. And of course, the six day record is just 623.7 miles, in 1888, by George Littlewood of Of England, and that stood until Janice Chorus finally beat that in the 1980s. And when he beat it, he really didn't believe that there was such a record back there in the 1800s. And, I think he got convinced once he did it himself. but that number of miles just, you know, there's only been a, you know, a few handfuls of people who've gone past 600 miles in, in six days. So these guys were really impressive. Really great. Yeah, yeah. And I was going to actually bring that up because is it the sixth day? If you look at just like the evolution of the six day world record there's been on, I think the men's and women's side, someone who's held it for over a hundred years because of that, like kind of. So that gives you kind of the if I had to sum up kind of this whole scenario with like one description, that would be it. Like you just don't have people holding records for that duration of time if it isn't something where like it was really, really popular at one point and then you have a lull and then you have like a small kind of like crawling back towards, towards relevance. but yeah, I mean imagine that like you, your world record gets held for, for for your lifetime and then the majority of your children's lifetime. Well, and there's still some American records that are still held that have never been broken, that they did back in the 1800s, such as the six day, six day American record has not been broken. 621.7 miles Doe just came close to it. But yeah, nobody has broken that one. And this he, James Albert was his name. He settled in Atlantic City. In fact, he was one of the great developers of the Atlantic City boardwalk. He won, you know, the equivalent of several millions of dollars in his races. And while most of the ultra runners back then just blew all their money, I mean, they lived posh lives in hotels and gambled and, won one, had multi million dollars in, in just one. A few weeks later, he lost half of his fortune betting on the horses in Paris and England. But this James Albert, he, instead used his money to develop Atlantic City. And so he's the American record holder of a lot of the, the really long, like for five days and, and some of these other, other records that nobody's broken yet. So really impressive what these guys have done. Yeah. Well, when you think of all the kind of what you were alluding to earlier to is just like, you go back to that timeline and you just think of the equipment and the nutrition difference between now and then, and it's like, yeah, I can't imagine their footwear and their nutrition was was anywhere near what we have access today. and when you, when you're digging into that, how much information do they share about stuff like because I imagine really like a blog post of an alternate nowadays they're going to tell you what kind of shoes they were wearing, what kind of gels they were taking, and everything else in between. Were there stuff like that, write ups about that? There are, yeah. So I've tried to pull that, pull those in my book every now and then. I'll find a quote in the newspaper that because the reporters were, you know, just like you're interested in it, the reporters were interested in it, too. So they would do comparisons of what the different runners were eating. I mean, ginger ale was very, very popular, but they used a lot of stimulants, I mean, champagne and and some would get too drunk on the track. but then, you know, some even cocaine and other other things that were going around back then. So, you know, they did everything they could do to keep these guys on the track and awake because when you think about it, they were backed, they had what they're called backers or sponsors, who would probably pay their race fee. Now. Their race fee was very expensive, 100, $100 back then, which was probably. Oh, it's about $3000 or $4000. our money. And so these backers would sponsor them, and they would a lot of times be what they call their trainers now. When you see somebody being their trainer, we would call them the crew, the crew chief. So they were the handlers and the crew, and they would wager huge amounts of money on their runners. So they had a great stake in having their runners perform very well. So when these runners would get tired, what would the trainer do? Well, he would do everything he could do to keep this guy going. I mean, one notorious guy would even pull a gun on his runner and threaten. Another would pull a knife. Another would use an electric. Shocking to, you know, wake the guys up, whips all sorts of cruelty that was going on to keep these runners going. Sometimes I think I, you know, when I'd run some of my 48 hour races, I kind of wish my son would have used some tactics to at least a nice shock probe or something like that. Yeah, I won, I won one back in 2010. but I, if I would have had a better crew, I think I would have gone over 200 miles. I would have rather done that. But, so yeah, it was, it was a wild time back then and these guys were very competitive with each other. And so, so picture. Picture hockey and ultrarunning coming together. the fights on the track, there were many. And, because what really, really annoyed these runners back then is because again, you're going around in loops, you know, Madison Square Garden. The track width wasn't all that great. Probably a lot like you ran at the Pettit Center there in Milwaukee. so, you know, you have to pass runners, but they're in close contact with everybody. And what would do is, once a runner would, like, get ten miles ahead of somebody. the tactic that was who's their greatest threat to catch them. And then what they would do is called dogging the heels of the runner. So since you're going in loops, you'd find you're the second place runner and just stick with them and go behind them. Keep your lead. and when that guy rests, you go rest, and when he comes out, you go out. And so that's the way they could keep. They lead for multiple days by dogging the hill, but sometimes they would get a little too close and clipped the heels and or to really annoy the guy in front because he can't catch. He can't catch the first place guy because he's always stalking his heels. So a lot of times they would just turn around and sock the guy right in the face. What were the ramifications for that? Or was it just like, get up and keep going? Oh, they would go. There were a lot of times not, you know, so a lot of times there were a lot of policemen that were in these things, sometimes like 100 policemen in Madison Square Garden, kind of keeping the order because of all these drunk people, too. And so sometimes the policemen would jump in or they would have referees for these races and judges. And so sometimes they'd go complain to the judge and, and do things. But, one guy in particular, he would get really annoyed by the spectators. So the spectators were probably even worse. I mean, they would heckle. They would heckle you. I mean, so picture this, you're running around the Pettit Center and these guys are leaning over the rail, heckling you and saying, exactly. You're quitting. You're so bad, you know, and so, one runner in particular, when somebody would do that, he would jump the rail and just sock a person and then jump right back on the track and just keep going. I mean, that's what it was. I mean, because you didn't get arrested for that kind of stuff back then, right? In fact, when somebody got out of line, the policeman, they would use their Billy clubs and just knock people over the heads. And, there was no problem with that. That was so common going on. Natural consequences. Yeah. I did want to mention the women. Now, you mentioned the women. So the women did it too. I mean, so a lot of people think, oh, back in the 70s, you know, they couldn't wear clothes, they couldn't run marathons. And that's true during the 1900s, there was this concept that women shouldn't run long distances. But back in the 1800s, there was no such thing going on. These women were doing six day races, too, and I counted them up. But there's, you know, probably 80 or 90 of these women, six day races. And now they couldn't go as far as the men. But there's kind of a reason for that. Most of them stuck to mostly walking. but many of them ran. but they also. Had to wear these heavy skirts. Okay. Interesting. Or they. Or they chose to. because part of the draw was to look really attractive. And all these men would come and watch them, watch them go around. And so the mileage that they acquired was quite a bit less than what the men did. But the world record back then, was, it was, 400, I think around 410 miles, by this lady. and She was the best in the world. She, in fact, was undefeated. and she was only about, she started when she was 18, and so. But I think when she reached 22 or 23, she died in childbirth. And so the greatest ultrarunner of the whole era of women, ultrarunning era had just a short career. But she was a really good, really good runner. So, they continued on the women now the British, the British thought having women do six day races was brutal and inappropriate. And so the British had very few of these women races. But the Americans, I guess we just, you know, didn't care. And. Yeah. It's odd, but they were very, very good. Yeah, yeah. It's odd that we got to a point where, where, where it was even a conversation around women not being able to do the marathon, given the history of this, is that just something where it was suppressed so far into the past at that point or it was. Yeah. Oh, you know, so what happened is these six day races petered out in the early 1900s, and the reason they did is finally the major cities passed ordinances that they were illegal. again sponsored probably by a theater owner. The clergy hated them too, because the spectators wouldn't show up in their churches the next day because they were too drunk. Drunk? Yeah. So they would lose alumni. So there were a lot of them and they were brutal. And the wagering has caused a lot of corruption. So after a while, a lot of these six day races, what would happen is these bookmakers, you know, they'd know, okay, you know, everybody's betting on Zac. And so, if Zac wins, we're actually going to the bookmakers and are going to make a lot of money. and so but then what would happen is if another runner looked like they were going to, to beat you, what the bookmakers would do is come and, Because then that somebody would make a killing on some bet. And so the bookmakers would go to bribe either their trainers or the runner themselves and say, here, we're going to give you, we're going to give you $1,000 to just quit and, and not race. That's far more than you can make if you're going to win. Because they were really trying to control how much the bookmakers made and so corruption came in bad and eventually most of the big city of New York City disallowed the wagering after a while until the 1890s, on these races. But then towards the 1900s, New York and Philadelphia passed ordinances that said, you can't do a race for more than 12 hours a day, because there were also bicycle races that were doing these six day races too. And so they thought they were just corrupt. And the lowlifes would come and watch them. You know, it just was not good for the city. So in the early 1900s, these races went away. And, then you have periods of World War One, you have the Great Depression, you have World War Two, you know, so you have this long period where ultrarunning kind of, I mean, it still existed in pockets, but the six day race was gone. And so it took, it took some very good people, in fact, Americans who started reading old newspapers and they discovered in, in the 1980s, around 1980, about these six day races and, Editor Dodd, published a book about them, and he and, postman in San Francisco, Don Choi, created the first six day races in 1980 and brought it all back. And, so, I mean, there were already ultra running races of different kinds, after World War Two, 50 milers and hundred miles or so we're going on. There's comrades in South Africa that have been going since the 1920s and other races. but the six day race, it took a while to, you know, have that one come back. It makes you wonder, like where the records would be at today if it had just continued on the trajectory it had, and they were able to kind of maintain the entertainment aspect of it with like a lot of additional inputs inside of the actual running and walking itself. So, I mean, who knows, what would we be looking at for the six day world record if it had, you know, they believed that it could be 700 miles. Yeah. And so the best in the world though. So the picture is the best in the world. You won the equivalent of $1 million. you go back home, you know, like people keep challenging them, saying, I will challenge you $1,000 if you'll grace me. And after a while, the best in the world said, heck with this. I'm. Yeah, I'm. I'm rich. I'm doing well. I'm getting older. no, I won't do this. And then, after a while, these races lost their interest. I guess you'd say so. They wouldn't bring in as many spectators. So there wasn't the huge money surrounding them. So the motivation again, to draw in the best athletes in the world didn't happen. So they went to the best athletes in the world. Other sports, whether it was bicycling or boxing or baseball, these other things. But you're right. If it would have continued on the best in the world, you know, it was 1888 that the really the best records were set, but then the sport continued on for another almost two decades. But it's because the best in the world weren't running anymore. they were elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. I, I wanted to kind of go back a little bit because I was going to ask you a question about some of the stuff when you were talking about the sabotage, what they were like poisoning each other too, weren't they? In some of these races, they weren't. So. So I was just reading a race this week that I'm putting in my book. They were the trainers who would actually taste test the food before they gave them to a runner. So they would have to wait an hour before a runner was given, like some beef tea, you know, one of the handlers would drink it to make sure that it wasn't poisoned. and in one case, the handler within 15 minutes got violently sick. So, yeah, they use all sorts of tricks. To try to, poison other runners, or the bookmakers would do it to try to get certain runners out of the races or. Or even the spectators, who had bets on individual runners. So one funny one was some, flowers were a big deal in these races. So they would have big, big flower stands where you could buy these. The spectators could buy these giant bouquets and then give them to their favorite runner, who would then run around the track holding up really this big bouquet and being very proud of it. And then they would decorate their little huts, their handling huts with all these bouquets. So what one guy did was he sprinkled all these flowers with chloroform. And so he would hand the bouquet over to this particular runner, who would take deep breaths of his chloroform and become a little sleepy. I would say, yeah, no kidding. Wow, man, that's incredible to think that our sport had. Yeah, well, it's actually funny because it's like when you think of ultrarunning, like the community in ultrarunning, it's such a kind of like welcoming, non-confrontational, for the most part, group of people and almost like a self-policing to a large degree to whereas it was almost the exact opposite back then. Yeah. I mean, there are good people. So I've highlighted some of the naughty stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. but there were some, some, some really good people that were involved. And so most of them went on to have very honorable careers after running. But some of them, some of them didn't, some of them, took their monies and put it into brothels and just, corruption and, and thievery and even murders. So some of these guys were pretty bad, but others were very good. Like this, James Albert who developed Atlantic City was a really well respected individual after he retired from ultrarunning. It's like one of those things it's like the more we advance, the more we stay the same to some degree where it's like the stories you're going to remember. So like if we would lose track of like some of our record keepers, something for 100 years, then people would also unearth like it'd be like, oh, they'd find all these like controversial tweets and Facebook posts and stuff, and they'd be like, that would be what they gravitate towards, probably versus like the, the philanthropist, like, you know, donating a bunch of money to some cause that would get laid, buried or lower in the in the list of things that they got the modern day people got interested in. So, yeah, maybe there is a little bit of that where the stories that survive are the ones that have the most, kind of flair to him. And then then a lot of yeah, I run into skeptics, you know. Of course, I mean, because people, you know, they say, okay, no, running's modern. There's no way people back in the 1800s could run that far. So one of the things they're very skeptical about is, oh, they didn't. Their tracks were poorly measured. And some of them were, some of them were. But you know, the picture of Madison Square Garden, millions of dollars changing hands. Are you going to have prop bets on a certain amount of miles? Are you going to have a track that is poorly measured? And if they didn't, they would hire the best engineers and would measure it over and over again to and and sometimes, sometimes they would find that it was off by a few feet and, and then have to adjust to certain things. But that was pretty rare. So they were really paying a lot of attention to measuring. But every now and then there was some guy who, you know, it's like one guy claimed he broke the 100 mile world record and then they found out. No, he, the track was measured poorly or or sometimes a six day race would be held. And, what they would do is have all the spectators leave for the night. Well, what did the runners do during the night? Well, they slept, but their scores kept going. So there was some of that corruption going on that people a lot of times people figured out because some people have loose lips and then they tell, you know, they tell a reporter, oh, here's what really happened to so so the public after a while got kind of skeptical about these races. Are they real or are they fake? Are they people being bribed to do poorly or you know what, what's going on there? So it became kind of a difficult sport after a while to really believe in it. But I'm convinced, you know, especially the, the most elite runners were truly reaching those, those miles in, in impressive amounts of time. Yeah. And I mean, when you think about it too, when you have a scenario where you get these bigger events too, like the ones that Madison Square Garden, like you're going to have eyeballs on people the whole time. It might not be the same set of eyeballs, but yeah. So it's like it's hard to kind of mean, it's just like today you're not going to have as much cheating at, like, you know, a football game or something like that because everyone's watching it. And then when you do have a ref that makes a mistake, it's like he's the story. So like, yeah, like you have. Well, and that was true back then. That was true back then. There was a guy named John Hughes from New York City. You know, he held the six day world record at one point. And he was illiterate, couldn't read or write, just a day laborer. But he became a very good athlete. But he was really hotheaded. He was a hothead of the sport. I don't know who that is today, but this guy was. And so, he always did not trust the scores that were cheating the amount of laps. And, it never failed. I'd read these newspapers about the race that he was in, and sure enough. Certainly on the first days he was always stopping at the scores to stand and threatening and yelling at the poor amateur scorers who were hired to, you know, they didn't have the electronic timing that we do today. So they would have to have like multiple people for each runner trying to keep their laps and their times as they went. And so this guy would continue. Sometimes he would jump on the score stand and actually, actually soccer scores or, or the referees or the race directors, he just had such a hot head. I just wondered why they kept letting this guy back into the races. But he did. He had a very, very long career. And, a lot of people didn't like him. He had a lot of racist attitudes. One of the greatest runners of the whole era was Frank Hart, who I wrote a book on who was a black ultrarunner, and John Hughes just couldn't stand having him on the same track with him. And so they would get into some great fist fights, both training and in races. And so, you know, there's some pretty, pretty interesting characters. Yeah. Yeah, that is an interesting thought process too, is just like, you know, when you mention things like costing $3,000 to just get into one of these events and obviously like when you get a lot of money in it, then you get the sponsorships and the support. So that maybe opens it up to like talent without money, I guess is maybe the way to say it. But was there a specific type of occupation or career path that kind of drew or that were getting into these things in the first place? that, that we can document anyway? Like, what were these people doing before or outside of the running? That's a good question because if I looked deeper, I probably have collected that. but I mean, one was even an alderman from Queens, so a political figure, Trying to think of. So, you know, the greatest pioneer, Daniel O'Leary. What was he doing? He was a clerk. but most of them probably weren't making that much money before this. So this was kind of their way to get out of poverty. Sure. and they saw that. So they had these dreams that they could do it. and so, so the really good ones had had, had become, had caused, had become a named runner. I mean, they had run one mile races, two mile races, and those were going on too. And so they made a name for themselves in those. And so, then somebody who had money would encourage them to do these really big time races and would sponsor them back then to do them. So some of it was just finding the talent also, both in England and in the United States. That would explain some of the like, mismanagement of their prize winnings to then because it's like if you don't have any formal education or any upbringing of like how to actually manage large sums of money, it's like, yeah, I mean, you see that today even with like, you know, when someone gets rich really quick, it's like, well, they didn't they weren't really taught any skill sets around managing that. And then it's just a lot easier to lose it in that scenario. Yeah. And they went after a while they would, they would really accuse these they call them, race managers. We could think of them as a race director, but the race manager would take all the risk. I mean, he'd have to rent Mount Madison Square Garden. He'd have to hire the bar keepers, he'd have to hire the scores, and so he'd have to himself put in like $50,000 or more to do it and then hopefully get back all this money from all these spectators coming in that would bring in. But then the way it evolved into the way the winnings worked is that the runners would, would, be awarded the, the gate receipts, half of the gate receipts, you know, for Madison Square Garden. So let's say $20,000 came in through tickets. then $10,000 would be divided between the best runners. And a lot of times they'd say, you have to run at least 500 miles to be eligible for it, and then they'd have graded so the person who won would get the most percentage and so forth. But they would have all these financial fights where they think that the managers were cheating them out. And almost in a way, they almost formed a union. So b b before the race, the runners would all get together and hold the meeting and agree on the percentages and agree to hire somebody who would look after the box offices to make sure they weren't skimming off the top and hiding, hiding money away for the race directors, things like that were were going on. So, you know, just lots of money. It was very important for these guys. And after a while, you know, the money dried up. I mean, they would have races that were just total financial failures, or they would have a race director who would just skip town with all the money and yeah, run anything. And so they had those controversies going on too. Yeah, it's probably a little easier to slide off into nowhere back then than the. Jamil tried doing that nowadays. Would we find them? No they would, they would disappear. But what's funny is then they would reappear and you think, well, why didn't somebody sue? But sometimes, sometimes memories would be there. And so they would legally when a, when a runner would, would win a race and earn money, but somebody he owed somebody else money, they would force the winnings to go to whoever they owed money to. So some of that was going on, but most of it, you're right. I mean, it just skipped town and went to different places. Head to California. Yeah. Yeah. Pick a different spot and then set up shop I guess. It is mostly newspapers that you're finding a lot of the, the, the details on these things in. Is that kind of the primary source I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That's the primary source by far. So I, I just, before I retired, I, I, I was a product manager for search for a company and so I got very good and being able to search technology and so, what I do is I search, search old newspapers online. there's good collections now and use certain terms and, and find all these articles and then try to piece the stories together. And so that's what I do. I do it instead of trying to find other books that do it. Because in fact, when I do find a few other books, they've, they've missed so much and they've had wrong assumptions and done things. So I've been very careful about this. I want to preserve this history that really nobody's preserved really well in the past. But it's fascinating for me reading these old, old newspapers. It's like sitting down with a good book. It's just. Yeah, I've just. I just can't believe all the crazy stories that come out. So one of my books is even I've collected all the craziest things I've found. And so it's called Strange Running Tales and, just all these weird things, everything from murders that went on and, and, all the just this, I mean, because. Yeah, 1 in 1 race, this husband, this lady was running, and the husband came in. A jealous husband came in and then just just shot her to death right in the middle of a race, you know? And there were a couple other shootings during races. So just bizarre things that happen I've collected in that book. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That's incredible. Just to think, yeah. Thinking as a sport back then versus now. One of the things I was going to ask you about was like, it seems like when, when you describe, like the six day events and kind of everything that's going into it and I kind of learned this same scenario to some degree over the pandemic. When I did the 100 mile treadmill that I live streamed, my first thought was like, okay, I'm just going to live stream myself on a treadmill. So it's like people can watch. Then I was like, once I started telling some of my sponsors and just like people who are interested, that I was planning on doing it, basically just because the race I was going to do got canceled. So I was like 4/5 of the way through the training block and or training cycle and it's like, well, what am I going to do with this when there's no races on the schedule to do? And people started kind of giving me or giving me pointers as to what to maybe do, and it ended up just being like this, this thing where it's like, yeah, I was there on the treadmill trying to run 100 miles, but there was so much other stuff coming on. I think we had like 30 different people come through and tell stories like get interviewed and stuff like that and, and just kind of create content more or less. So like when people were there, they're kind of passively paying attention to like, oh, where's Zach at from a distance standpoint? But they were also paying attention to whoever the guest speaker was in there, because it seems like six days now. Like with the growth we have, it seems like there's a lot of opportunity still though, because like a lot of these events, yeah, they probably have other distances going on inside of there. But like we really don't do any entertaining outside of that. Like we don't have I guess maybe with the live streams, we do like the YouTube live streams and stuff like that. They'll have guests coming. They're getting better. Yeah, they're getting way better. But I wonder, like, there seems like there's a very high ceiling in terms of just ways to get actually, because even like a race like Desert Solstice or I mean, I haven't been to across the years in person, I'm not sure like how much is going on there outside of the runners themselves and their crew members. But they do. They do fireworks at New Year's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you think there's a lot of opportunity there to bring people in to kind of hang out and engage with other stuff that, that they can, they can do to, to, to draw crowds. Good. I just, I just wonder if people would have I don't know, our lives are so distracted now. True. Yeah. So many, so many other things to do. You know, I think I've had it across the years. I'm, I'm tempted to, to try to get my race done this year and then go to the festival, you know, so there's, there's. And I am going to try to run 100 miles on the treadmill on Monday. Are you right? Yeah, I've done it. I've done it four times. Okay. In the past I haven't done it for many years, but nothing like your time. My best time was 17 hours. 15 minutes, I think. Oh, that's moving nice. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. The treadmill is an interesting one to me. It's like, the way I describe it, because, like, when I did it, that was the first treadmill ultra of any kind that I had done. And I thought in my mind I thought like, okay, well, this can't be that much different than a 400 meter track. It's, you know, the same kind of monotony, the same sort of mechanics for the most part. It's very. Yeah, it is, it is. You know, what I found to be the most different that I thought was it's more of a psychological thing than anything was like, when you're, when I'm on a track, it's like, yeah, you're it's very uniform. It's very one dimensional, it's very monotonous. But you are making these micro like these kind of just intuitive, like behind the kind of just like cruise control, like adjustments and pace. That kind of makes you give you this sense of control, I think, whereas as we're nearing the treadmill, you're just responding. So like that, having to respond, you hit that button, you hit that button and say, I need to increase my pace. Hit the button. Yeah. I describe it as, because when I, when I did 17 hours, probably the I mean, I was age 61, I mean, so wow, I, I couldn't do that at a, you know, across the years or on the road or track. So I probably did the best I could have done at age 61, it probably was about a 22 hour 100. so, the boost you get is pretty incredible. And I kind of compare it to having a, you know, having a tailwind, just pushing you along, you know, the entire way. so there's a great advantage to, you know, having that crazy treadmill, you know, push it along the way. Yeah. Yeah. There's some advantages for sure. Awesome. But it is, it's, it's I, I would do it for I guess I call it mental toughness. I mean I figured if I, if I could do 100 miles on a treadmill, then I could do well in a 24 hour race or a 48 hour race around, you know, a one mile track, which it takes a lot of mental toughness to. And a lot of the mental toughness for ultrarunning is not quitting. so, so many, you know, I've had a bunch of DNFs and I categorize most of those DNFs. A mental weakness. I get to a point at about 80 miles into 100 miles, where I start losing interest or saying, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. Why am I doing this? And I forget. I forget about all the training and all the money I've, you know, invested and all the time I've invested and just quit some of these races. So sometimes these mental toughness exercises, such as long distance on a treadmill, I've, I've tried to, I can't remember what my time is for 50 K on a treadmill, but I went crazy and, you know, had a really good time on that too. So doing that sometimes if you can do that, you can do almost anything during. Yeah I think yeah, it's all perspective I think to some degree. And I remember when I first got into ultrarunning, I had only been doing 50 milers at the time, but then I went on this bike trip where we were biking for one day. It was like 14 hours and we were going really slow. We were carrying a bunch of camping gear and stuff, so it wasn't. That's fun. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of fun, but it was. It was just like you had to stay focused for 14 hours. Like you couldn't really just like, kind of stop thinking about it. And I remember the next 50 miler I did after that, I was just like, wow, that went by so fast because my perception of just being on one task for longer periods of time, had gotten skewed, at least in the short term because of that. So I think you're onto something with that. And I think that may actually be one of the better arguments for doing some more ultra specific type stuff. Leading into kind of your goal race is kind of just sharpening up that sort of mental, that mental toughness side of things. Yeah, I think it's important. So I've finished over 100, 100 milers. I'm stuck on 108 now. but what I was really proud of during a lot of those times, I think I had a streak of 37 without a DNF. Oh, wow. where, you know, I kind of had it all figured out. but then, you know, weakness comes in. I had then I had some injuries, you know, I had a stress fracture. And now I've replaced my knees. I replaced my knees last year, a brand new knee. And so I've had a long time off. And so I'm trying to get back into it and see what I can do. But much slower. Much slower now. How many people? Seven. Yeah I mean yeah you've got. That's incredible. Like have. How many people do we know of that have gone over 100 hundred miles? I know I've seen a few stories out there, people hitting that mark, but it can't be gotten any, so. So I collected them. it's part of my history, and I think it's. I think it's 30. okay. Wow. So yeah, I have a long article. 100, 100 milers on ultrarunning history.com. and so usually it's, it's well known enough that people are getting close kind of let me know. And then I try to validate their list of races the best I can through the databases and, and and try a lot of times I provide the list to them and and see, okay, you're at 95. And then we try to celebrate when they get to 100. So this next year, I know there's at least three people that are getting awfully close to the goal to to reach it. And so I think it's kind of a cool thing when I was the 15th person, but when I, when I did it, I, we didn't have the list. So I researched it deeply and I found over the years the ones who have done it, they're very impressive people and the commonality behind them all are, mental toughness. I mean, they are just really mentally tough. I mean, some of them don't. I think the one who did the last I think one had no DNFs or just one, I mean, so some of them just, and most of them never had this goal to do all this. So they just piled up these hundreds just because they like doing hundreds. And, and that was my case. I mean, I just like doing hundreds. And then when I hit, I think when they hit 80, I go, hey, yeah, I wonder if I can reach 100 as one would. Right? Yeah. So then I start piling on. My last couple of years, I think I did 12 a year or 12 to 14 a year. And so I was piling on them up until I reached them. So it's great to know there's only been a few that have been really elite runners like Pam Reed. I don't know if you know who she is. Yeah, she's in the Hall of Fame, so I'm also the director of the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame. And, so Pam, Pam's, she was in her 90s for hundreds and, and, so she was very determined to reach 100 and, but she was one of the best women ultra runners. And so there's been a couple very elite, but most of them are. I would call them mid mid-pack runners and some even back of the pack runners that are just determined and just keep doing it and piling them up. And I don't know if you know who Ed the Jester is. I was going to ask you about Ed because he's got to have a thousand. He's the best in the world now. For years he thought he did, but he didn't. The one who hit 100, 101st is Sandra Brown in, in, in England. And she is primarily a walker. And, there's a lot of events that are walking races over there that do 100 miles and she, she, I would say the, the, the best ultra distance walker in the world, even among the men. She's in her 70s now, but she has over 200 100 milers and is still doing it in her 70s. But Ed finally passed her and so I can't remember what his number is like is around 230 or something like that. When you just put that most effectively, like how many a year you have to be doing because like, well, and you can't get and you can't get injured and somehow you have to stay away from injury too. Yeah. So, I just saw it out at Fat Ox this year, and I.F. Someone was telling me he was trying to do like 100 miler every week this year or something like that. Or if he was on that train again, because I know he's tried that in the past too. He has. I kind of warned him, you know, he's a little younger than me and I remember I think I finally warned him, hey, when I hit 58, the wheels came out, came off, I tell you. But one thing he does, he I would do the mountain races primarily, and he, he mostly does the, you know, very flat stuff. So I think he's been able to preserve, preserve that to the right. But doing it you know so many during a year I else I said oh it's a lot different when you get in your 60s. Yeah. Yeah. No, I bet. Yeah. Yeah I mean it is one of those things where I sort of make sense, I guess, where you get some of these kind of middle or back of the pack individuals stacking that many because, you know, they're there for a different reason than, say, someone like me or someone who's like trying to podium or something at a race. So like if you're someone who's just looking to compete, that day is going to end at some point, and it's likely going to happen before you hit 100, 100 milers, which is I mean, the interesting, the fascinating thing about Pam Reed, I suppose, is she was like highly competitive for most of her career. And yeah, so it's like, what are you drawing that motivation from? So you have to actually like it in order to find yourself probably at 100 miles or 100, 100 miles at some point. Yeah. And what and what's interesting is what got me going with ultrarunning history is I had a question in my mind. It's kind of related to just what you said. I said, okay, I know, I know, there were early hundred mile runners. I didn't realize I, you know, back then I first started, oh, it started with Western states. And then I immediately found, oh, no, they were 100 milers away before that. In fact, I found over 1000 people have run a hundred miles in under 24 hours before Western states even existed. So there's a ton out there. But I was wondering what happened to the elite hundred mile runners from the 70s, 80s and 90s that were not quite as fast as you. But you know, we're the best in the world. And so I spent months researching the top 100 mile runners. and maybe the question I had in my mind was because I was piling up a lot. Hundreds. I said, well, what happened to them? Did they get injured? Did they lose interest? How many did they do? And so I thought it would be a blog post at first, but it turned out to actually have kind of an online book now that has collected all that information. And so I, you know, I found all these great guys and, and learned about them. I was stunned to know that I've shared courses with some of them, and I didn't even know I did. Wow. I didn't know who they were. Ray Kollwitz. Yeah. Ray, back in the 70s or in the 80s was one of the greatest. and he would win all these races, and he held the American 48 hour record for a while. And, but he would pile them up, so I so he, he's a case of, well, he never quit. He's still doing it. Yeah. But others, others who were very elite. Once they couldn't win anymore, they would quit. They would quit the sport. and so some of them didn't pile up, you know, dozens and dozens of hundreds, some of them kind of reached their peak, no longer could win and then went off and did other things and had careers. A lot of them were. It's amazing how many of them back then had PhDs. How many of them were doctors? Yeah, they were very professional guys. And so, they actually had another life that they could turn to, to do. So they, you know, were no professional alternatives back then, right? Yeah. In the 70s, 80s and 90s that could do that. There were some self promoters that would claim records, but they weren't really true. I would try to get the attention and the money. But most of it, they're just motivated to be the best at what they could do and set course records on crazy courses, Western states and all the minions and all these other great trail races. And that's what got my interest and eventually led into where now I'm that was given to be the director of the Hall of Fame, which is a great honor. Yeah, well, you're the person for it in my opinion. So I think that's a that's really cool. But yeah, I mean, one of the things that I found really interesting when I first started digging into kind of records in the past of the sport, like earlier on in my ultrarunning career, was just like, yeah, a lot of these records and a lot of the popular racing in like kind of the 80s, it was I mean, that's the difference between now and today, right? Where like, he's flat, runnable, 50 milers, 100 K's and hundred miles. They're still very much kind of in the back seat compared to kings of the bigger iconic events like the trail races and things like that, from where the majority of the talent's going. But in the 80s, that wasn't the case. That was, you know, when you had fast running and ultra running, it was people trying to break five hours in a 50 mile or, you know, something similar to that. I mean, they would. They would put on in the 70s and 80s, some pretty great. They would hold them even in Shea Stadium. the, the national champion, a national championship for 100 miles. And they would they would get some good media attention and sometimes, get some networks coming out to do it. and sometimes the runners would go on some of the late night shows. but so for a while. But that didn't last awful long. But there were some people that, you know, became pretty famous. I mean, I look, I recently put together the 100 mile, world record progression. that, you know, the earliest I could find is 1762. A guy who did it just under 24 hours. And so there's a long list of, people who held the hundred mile record, 22 of them. And I looked down and got the exact bidder on there in 2019. You're on the list forever. But what's interesting is the people before you, I mean, before you was a Russian who said it in 2002. 11, 28 years was 1119. If I got that right. Yeah. And then you go back to the great runner Don Ritchie. Yeah. from Scotland, who back in 1970, 1977 in the Crystal Palace, I think he did 1130. And I mean, that's and that's the record that seemed to stand for, you know, decades. And then there's a few others in the 70s, you know, from, from, you know, back to the 1950s, you got some people from South Africa. But then there's a leap from 1937 back to 1882, back to these six day races, where they were setting the world record back, you know, 1326 so it's kind of interesting to look at the progression of that over the years, for sure. You made me think of something when you mentioned Don Ritchie too, which is kind of like pacing strategy with these, because my understanding is, Don Ritchie was kind of. He'd get out pretty fast for his first half and then kind of hold on where, if I'm not mistaken, his hundred mild best was pretty skewed by like over an hour from the first and second half. Yeah. was that something that was like, debated upon and like tested when like, especially with, like the sixth day, I would imagine there were like a lot of different strategies. And with the competitive pressure they had back then, I wonder if there was something that they all arrived upon as being like, this is the way to go about this versus nowadays. I look at some of these records and it's hard to kind of really see a signal in there as to like, is it best to even split the way, like I did my 100 mile per hour, or the way Nick Curry did his 24 hour American record? Or you better off going about it, like maybe more like Camille or Sorokin when they've had some of their big numbers, where I think Sorokin split 1110 through 100 miles when he went 198 for 24 hours. So he had a pretty healthy, positive split on that. I'm wondering about how the pacing strategies went over the years in the past, or if there's really any good data on that back in the 1800s. Yeah, and I've paid a little attention to that. But, back to 16 races. Six day races in the 1800s. By far the strategy was to go out fast and hard. I mean, their first their first miles would always typically be about six minute miles. Okay. and and and but after a while, what they would do is the race directors because again, you want to excite the spectators. I mean, if you're going at just a solid slow pace the whole time, it's not very exciting. Nothing exciting about that. Yeah. They would motivate these guys to say if you reach like 100 and 30 miles on the first day, you'll get this bonus or, or everybody gets a $10 bonus and $10 again for them would be like $300 or so for us. get a bonus if you reach 100 miles the first day. and then they had some, some races where if you didn't reach 100 miles the first day you were kicked out of the race. Oh, wow. So yeah, they beat them out. So by far it was to go out fast and get a lead and hang on. but there were a few that did some, you know, even negative splits. I mean, they would when the newspapers noticed that somebody could do like 110 miles on the fourth day, that was a big deal. And they would make a lot of press about that. But I think that over the years, you know, even the ones, even the 100 milers in the 70s and 80s, it really still was, you know, Ray Kollwitz was out fast. I mean, you just go crazy. But then there was a park. Barner was probably one of the best. He's in the Hall of Fame. From Pennsylvania he was known as the human metronome. because and that's a great description. He would just have this constant pace. And so he was one of the ones who would probably do better about keeping a solid pace, but nobody's done what Nick Curry does, you know. Yeah. That's just incredible to watch. And so I've also created the 24 hour for Americans. I haven't published that yet, but, but to have Nick break that record that was held for so long was pretty incredible. Yeah. Yeah it's exciting stuff. It'll be really interesting to see kind of what happens in the next decade or so, because I suspect these records are going to continue to go down and to see, see where we can, where we can get with all of it. And for six day races. Really? If you want to go far. It's all about overcoming sleep deprivation. And so that's that's that. That's why they evolved a lot of these races into six day races in only 12 hours a day. So they let the runners, you know, go off track for 12 hours and come back the next day and they go again. And that was more exciting for the spectators because the runners were, were, were really hauling, you know, all the days. But one of the attractions of these six day races, why so many people would come, was that they actually wanted to see train wrecks. They hoped that they would see these runners go. They called it cranky. they reached the cranky stage around day 4 or 5, or actually, their minds would go to mush. without sleep, they would start having these crazy hallucinations and start seeing things that aren't there, and start talking to people that aren't there and doing all these crazy things that the spectators just would howl and laughter over. so, so part of this and they, they even just liked seeing runners pass out and they would faint, they would pass out on the track, and have to be hauled off and recovered and, and so, so yeah, go fast and hard and, and stay out as long as you can. That was it. But I think if somebody would do it today, you know, steady. you know, probably like, like Camille has done is, you know, take it steady and, try to do it without sleep as much as you can. Yeah. Yeah. The sleep deprivation side of things. Interesting. When you get into those longer, longer events, I think, like, you wonder if the sport gets as a sport gets more popular in that event, especially like the six day starts getting more attention if it'll start selecting for people that just tend to do better with that, since that's such a big variable. Yeah it is. It's huge. Yeah. Now you don't have to worry about that. You get, you get your hundreds done before sundown. Yeah. The question is how is that fifth and sixth one looking for me. I mean that always kills me. I just remember one race, I hit 80 miles before sundown and I thought, oh, this is the greatest. Yeah, I wish I could do that. Yeah. Because for most of us, most of us, we got to go all 24 hours or more and we hit right before dawn. I tell you, fall asleep. I don't know how many times. I used to. I used to just lay down on the trail and try to take a cat nap. And, once I remember, I think it was a race in Washington. I could hear people going by. Should we check his pulse? You know. Wondering if I'd passed out or not. Did you hear John Kelly's story from Barclays this last year? I think it was this last year's race. Where? Oh. Let's see. Go ahead. Yeah. So his watch, you know, those cheap little watches they give you that are basically just an alarm clock? Yeah. His alarm didn't work on him, so he didn't have, like, anything to wake him up from a nap. So he would sleep in weird spots, just like so he'd get woken up before not too long. And at one point, yeah, he'd hope that somebody's coming for a book, maybe would wake him up. Yeah. And at one point he got really tired and it was kind of the heat of the day. And he found a spot like in this old tire rutted out tire track, where he laid down to take a quick nap and he, like, vaguely remembered a high school friend in there. His family, his wife and kids walk by and say, like. And then as they walked by, like his friend said, hey, look, it's John Kelly. And they just kept on. And then he wakes up from his nap. I think it's like maybe like 15, 20 minutes thinking like, did I do that happen or did I dream that it was a hallucination? So I mean, at that point he's just like, oh, whatever. He kind of got dismissed and he's in the middle of Barclays after all. But then after the race, he kind of recalled that scenario and he was having a hard time recollecting whether he actually saw that or not. So he reached out to him and asked, "Did you happen to be out on the course and see me taking a nap? And he's like, oh yeah, yeah. We went by and saw you sleeping there. Oh no. And I don't think he had talked. He had spoken with the guy for quite a while. So it was kind of just super weird, like kind of crossing a path, so to speak. Yeah. Well, once I was, I was kind of off the trail trying to take a nap. And this morning comes by with this really young pacer. she was probably, I don't know, 18, 19, probably the first time she'd ever seen an ultra. And she saw me there and she started yelling at me and said, get up, get up. She was so concerned that I, you know, I'd collapsed and was in terrible trouble. And I kept telling her, I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm just trying to sleep. And she went, leave, until I would get up. And I kept saying, fine, I don't know. Finally, we almost had an argument. Say, leave me alone. I'm doing fine. And so finally, finally, she went on. And, but of course, she had totally woken me up at that point. So. So I hopped up and I had all this energy, and I tell you, she was pretty shocked when I came, blazing down the trail and passing her runner. So what good will those two fires be? Yeah, yeah. After a while, I learned if I want to take a nap during, these hundred milers go way off trail. So I would go away into the woods and try to and not not see all these people passing me. Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. Awesome. Well, Davey, it's been a lot of fun chatting with you about some of the history and some of your experiences with the sport too. But I do want to make sure that listeners kind of have a good idea of where they can find you books, podcasts, websites, all that stuff. So when they want to dig up some tidbit to share with their friends and family on their next long run, they have access to all the info. Yeah. So the main place on the website is Alta running History. com. so you can find all my articles and even the podcast episodes. but the podcast episodes are really wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple, Spotify. So it's called Alta Running History. So I have 167 of those episodes now. They take a lot of effort to do. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think I spend about 30 hours researching, writing, recording, editing, doing all the things. so I'm actually taking a break. Oh, I bet after six, six and a half years now. I just, I gotta take a break. I'm gonna spend the winter skiing and running and hiking, you know, whatever. I can do that. My knees are now kind of fixed, and, But. Yeah. Ultrarunning history and also the Hall of Fame. The American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame is also on ultrarunning. History.com. You'll find a tab to go do that. I think we have 20, 26 members now. just, last week inducted Mike Morton. Oh, excellent. is in the Hall of Fame. Who used to win the world championship of the 24 hour race back. And I think it was 1990. 90, I think so a lot. So now a lot of people there, probably people would know, but a lot of people everybody's forgotten about. So it's great to learn who all these people are. Yeah, absolutely. That's probably the best. I'm on Facebook. I have an ultrarunning history Facebook page, has about 40,000 followers, and a Facebook group that has a lot of members. So we have conversations and you can learn about things there. Yeah. Excellent. Well, I'll link to all of that stuff in the show notes so the listeners can head over there and check some of that stuff out. But Davey, thanks so much for coming on and spending some time chatting, chatting about the history of the sport. That's great and great. Great memories of you blazing around me and that, that crazy dome. I don't know how you did that track was so hard for me. yeah, I know you've been there several times, but it was an honor to watch you break that world record, because I knew how historic that was. And I knew I knew people who had held it before you. So it's an amazing accomplishment that you did. Well, I really appreciate it. It was, you know, obviously, it was a lot of fun to do it. And it's definitely a day that I look back fondly on.