WHAT? MORE SCENERY?

Sylvan Lake is at the trailhead for Harney Peak, highest point between the Rockies and the Appalachians. The Needles Highway is very scenic but can be quite slow going at times, as a lot of people on it are driving while scenery watching and there aren’t a lot of places to pull off.

The Pigtail Highway was designed to give the driver a view of Mount Rushmore while going through tunnels. Each tunnel lines up with the faces, so you gradually get a close look at them as if they were a picture framed by rock. This is one of the top 10 scenic drives not located in Wyoming.

By the time the end of the trip was in sight, we began to feel a bit let down, not wanting it to end. That was our mood as we left Rapid City after noon and drove home to Rio, Wisconsin, arriving about 1:00 a.m.

Of course, to top off our adventure, we were entered in the 5K race at Sauk City. It’s called the Cow Chip Classic. It has become an annual event for us since we met there 16 years ago. This went together thematically with the race the week before where we were forced to dodge cow pies on the marathon road. Now we got to throw them as part of the fun after the 5K race! We decided to forgo the cow-pie tossing and merely run the race. We both took first in our age group. What a swell way to finish off a marathon adventure and sightseeing extravaganza. a

A Boom of Her Own

Boonsom Hartman Got Into Running and Then Ran a Little More and More Until the Country Was Hers.

he Star, Sunday, December 28, 2003—It was arguably the biggest newspaper

story ever to hit the far south suburbs. Right there, that day: a big spread covering two full pages of newsprint without one single ad on either page. Gigantic! This thing was huge! So, what was it, you ask? Here’s the headline: “Marathon runner earns glory from coast to coast.” Oh my God, it’s Boonsom!

So this was the write-up our Chicago suburban Star newspaper gave my pal Boonsom Hartman upon completion of her dozen-year quest to finish a marathon in all 50 states of the good ole US A—and the District of Columbia for good measure. Fifty-one marathons in all, and there, entirely covering two interior newspaper pages and attempting to show proof of every race, were 50 published black-andwhite photographs. (Apparently no pic was available from the Charleston, West Virginia, marathon.)

Oh my glory, she did it!

In all the years that I’ve lived here—out here in the far-out, far-flung corncrib *burbs, out where the temporary end of urbanity meets with long-established furrows of farmland and both fight for whatever’s left of the prairie—I had never seen two full Star pages devoted entirely to any one subject at all! (And I used to work for The Star, so I ought to know.)

Nope! There wasn’t that much local coverage when successive mayors of our neighboring towns all went to jail or when the shopping mall where they made The Blues Brothers movie was finally boarded up or even when “Walkin’ Dan Walker” walked right through our village and onward to become governor of Illinois—and after that went to prison. Nosiree, Bob! The south *burbs of ChiTown have never witnessed such hoopla as when my running “buddy” Boonsom finally completed a marathon in every single state of the Union. Oh, and in the Union’s capital, too.

Lordy, what a story! But truth is, there wasn’t much of a story printed on those two newspaper pages. There wasn’t room. Too many pictures!

Which, of course, is precisely where I fit in. I get to tell you the story.

“YOU CAN DO IT, RIT!”

Boonsom, you see, comes from Thailand. She can’t pronounce my name’s “ch.” So, for the past dozen years or so (as long as I’ve known her) every time we would meet, on the running path or elsewhere, she has called me “Rit.”

And just so I won’t forget, I’ve even gotacustom-made leather belt with that word carved on it. But that’s a whole *nother story. … Anyway, this is a good topic to begin with because it reflects what I consider to be Boonsom’s best trait: she is always and forever positive. She says this to everybody (not just to me): “You can do it!” And she says that, I think, primarily because she herself has come to believe that she can do it! Hell, she’s done it! Over 50 times! Way over 50 times. She has run lots of marathons twice, three times, or more. That big one in Chicago, in fact, she has run just about yearly since she started. It was her very first one. And that happened in 1992. I know this because I helped her train for it.

Back then I remember feeling all proud of myself because, well, I had just completed my first marathon in Chicago in 1991. I remember the experience didn’t totally terrify or scar me for life, so I resolved the following summer to let it be known among my fellow and feline members of the Park Forest Running & Pancake Club that I would be welcoming other bodies to run with each weekend leading right up to the October 25 marathon. I thought, on the one hand, that maybe my vastly impressive (but only to me) experience there the year before would somehow qualify me to help others run their first marathon. But really, on the other hand, I was trolling for fish. What I had most importantly learned my previous year of lonely inadequate training was that misery loves company.

So I put a notice in the club newsletter, and a couple of folks responded. We met the next Saturday in the forest preserve. (That’s what Cook County, Illinois, has decided to call undeveloped city blocks where the sheriff still allows weeds to grow, or, more accurately, where safe havens can be provided for drunks, addicts, and drug dealers who are otherwise hampered from earning a dishonest living on the streets. Oh sure, we’ve seen our share of lovers, muggers, and thieves there

A Boonsom running in the Bendistillery Marathon in Bend, Oregon.

Penrose Photography, Keiser, OR

too.) The nicely cracked asphalt bike path in the Park Forest forest preserve is what everybody in our club usually ran on anyway—usually in small groups for protection—so my wanting to train with a small group of marathoner wannabes was a no-brainer.

But that left Boonsom out because she has a brain. I never saw her at all running that summer in the Park Forest forest preserve. Later, of course, I learned she was running closer to her home—in the Oak Forest forest preserve. If you live around here, you automatically know that Oak Forest is safer than Park Forest. I, of course, live closer to Park Forest. More than once I personally have been “approached” in those woods, twice by homosexuals—one was a teenager!—once by a prostitute, and a couple of more times by dudes asking whether I had a match. (“Just a moment, sir. I think I might be carrying a carton of Kools and a Bic lighter here in my microfiber running shorts.”)

Needless to say, I never met Boonsom until some Pancake Club race or other function near the end of that summer, at which event our little group decided to plan on driving into the Loop and doing a long run along Chicago’s magnificent lakefront. Very excitedly, Boonsom chimed in that she would like to run with us, and boom.

A Boonsom running with Bill Hare along Chicago’s park-like shoreline during the

THE REST IS HISTORY; NO, WAIT! IT’S “HER” STORY!

But first, the basics: Boonsom was born on the last day of August 1957 in a village near Bangkok called Khorat, or also (apparently) Nakhon Ratchasima (and there’s that pesky “ch” again). I’m wondering now whether Boonsom may be the only native of Thailand who can’t say my name. It doesn’t matter, of course. It’s part of her charm.

Believe this or not, Boonsom has 19 brothers and sisters. She is number 20. Wow! And of course we’ve talked about this for years during our long runs. She says her father died just three days after she was born. So now you know the joke we all invented as to why he died. And why he died so happy! I asked her what the name “Boonsom” means, which is the name her dad wanted her to have. It means, she says, “wish for something good.” I told her that I think her father got his wish.

You can imagine, though, that life for a young girl can be kind of tough in Thailand, especially around Bangkok and especially for someone with a little more ambition than just dancing on tabletops in red-light saloons—although, of course, Boonsom has joked with us about that, too. In our early runs together, we all called her the original party girl. And she is still always a lot of fun at group socials. One night, after running what we called a “moon run,” we all adjourned to a Mexican restaurant and—to our shock and horror—witnessed Boonsom drink, yes, drink three whole bowls of the hottest salsa sauce in the joint. This stuff was green, they had to get it special from the back of the kitchen, it totally raised the dining room temperature, and it almost melted all the bowls. I’m telling you, that feat all by itself should stand as a claim to fame.

Anyway, to make “herstory” shorter, Boonsom told us she married a U.S. Air Force guy when she was just 16, but that didn’t last long. Another marriage to a US. citizen (which lasted just long enough to produce three children) brought her island hopping across the Pacific to San Francisco and then eventually to Chicago, where she got another divorce and ended up at some party or other where Scott Hartman asked her to dance. And, sure, the rest is “history.”

Scott and the discovery of marathoning have been the best things (not forgetting the children, of course) that ever happened to her, and she’ll tell you that herself.

So, OK, when you go into Scott, Boonsom, and Nick’s (he is child number four, their son together) house, first you must remove your shoes—a time-honored Thai tradition—and then they’ Il show you the family room and what all is hanging on the walls. Can you say “trophies” in English? I’ll bet you can! There are over 90 (at this writing, 92) marathon finishers’ medals alone. There would be 96, but four of the races did not give medals. They gave mugs or shirts and things. One of them (the Scotty Hanton, 1995, her least-favorite ever) gave her nothing. In

fact, she said, there wasn’t even enough water to last four hours, and if you didn’t finish in four hours, they closed down the finishers’ area and all water stations entirely. She had to run her last 48 minutes with Scott on his bicycle handing her a water bottle. She will never go back, she says.

Anyway, Scott has custom-built for her this neat medal-hanging bookshelf unit that hangs on a wall in their family room. It’s really a nice piece of furniture, although, of course, it’s already full to capacity. I remember from our early training runs joking with Boonsom about how much we want to keep our medals. We don’t want to give them to anyone or make them a part of our wills or donate them to the Field Museum. We’ve worked so hard to get them that we want ’em all draped around our necks while lying in our caskets—and then to be buried with them. Now, however, we may need to rethink our plans. When Boonsom’s time comes, for example, I’m not sure there will be six pallbearers strong enough to lift all this!

One more thing to note about the (now recently structurally reinforced) walls in the Hartman house: man, you should see all the needlepoint! There are all these cutesy needlepoint artworks hanging in frames just about everyplace where a running trophy is not. In the beginning, the Hartmans’ dinner guests wondered about all these stitched Hummel-looking things hanging all over their house. As Boonsom tells it, in the beginning of her adult life B.R. (before running), she had this passion for needlepoint. She did it every spare minute, every free hour, every single day. (OK, there’s a big hint to help you understand what kind of clock ticks inside this woman.) But now, guess what? As of approximately 1992, there has not been one single new needlepoint piece of artwork framed and hung on their walls.

Which brings me right back to the late summer of 1992 when, as I said, our little Pancake Club marathoner wannabe training

» Boonsom and her running buddy Roger Novak enter the lowa town

of Marathon at the finish of the

1996 marathon there. Here she’s still looking good, but later she would collapse from heatstroke, dehydration, and hypoglycemia. This was the marathon that very nearly stopped her permanently from doing any more marathons.

Scott Hartman

team went to the lakefront to run 20 miles. We met up with other runners whom I already knew in Chicago, and they all ran with us, too. When it was done and we were all mostly hanging out at the Gatorade jug, exhausted and crippled, one of my Chi-Town buddies (who happens to be diabetic) was fumbling around trying to open some candy to help restore his blood sugar. And he dropped a piece. Bingo! Quicker than you could pick up a tip off a Bangkok table, Boonsom was down there retrieving his candy for him—just that fast!—after, what, a long tiring run of 20-plus miles? I said to her, “Boonsom, if you can bend like that after 20 miles, then you can easily run a marathon.”

If I might say so myself, truer words were never spoken. And she has just about monthly for the past 12 years reminded me that I said that. It has been for her, I think, one of those mantras you hear about that gives folks confidence that “You can do it, Boon!”

By the way, another theme over the years with us is this wish-list desire we have to someday run the Bangkok Marathon. Can “Rit” do it? I don’t know. I’ve just checked my latest tax returns. Hey, Rit has a long way to go before he can get there!

LIPSTICK? AT MILE 25 OF A MARATHON?

Perhaps the only semi-uninteresting thing about all this his- or herstory is that, well, I suppose I’m trying to take some credit for helping this lovely and determined young marathoner get started—whereas, of course, the truth of the matter is rather different. Hey, folks, this chick did all this on her own!

There are a few reasons for that. First—and I’d like you all to remember this because there will be a quiz at the end of this article—you should know that I used to be faster than I am now. (“Huh? Who cares?”) Which means, then, that any pre-first-marathon training that Boonsom did in earnest was always done with a different pace group. So that meant I wasn’t actually “coaching her” as she moved along; I could do it only after we had stopped. Like, at the Gatorade jug. Second, she herself had to figure out things like shoe fit, breathing, gait, arm swing, proper hydration, chafing prevention, haircut, and what to wear. For sure, she’s always ignored everybody’s advice on the last two. Hence, her hair-big-asshe-is and her wild, loud-colored fashions are her own unique contributions to marathoning lore. Just like this third thing in my list of how I never coached her: lipstick. The girl wears lipstick in marathons!

Somewhere along the line, somebody (it was probably some other chick in her early pace group) must have told Boonsom about the pictures they take of you during and at the end of a marathon. Certainly some company or other has done this at Chicago for as long as I can remember. (The guy that got me started, for example, told me they send you these tiny little photos as souvenirs. “Nobody ever

buys the enlargements,” he said. Uh-huh.) So you can imagine what this photo souvenir news does to someone with a perpetual suntan; beautiful, long, flowing, curly hair; and electrified neon-orange running shorts.

As she put it herself, “During my first marathon in Chicago, I wore lipstick but found out at the end that most of it had been washed away by Gatorade. After that, I always carry my lipstick with me so I can touch up for the finish.” We now have photographic proof of this statement. By her second or third Chicago Marathon, we had Pancake Clubbers armed with cameras.

The genius idea behind Chicago’s main running attraction was to enlist all the neighborhood and suburban running clubs to be the volunteers that manned all the water stops. Every volunteer gets a spiffy jacket and cap, and hey, these things are in big demand! And it works perfectly. All the running-club runners get their spouses, significant others, and children to man the water stations—and afterward pay big money to these significant others to get their jackets! It’s a win-win for everybody. So, also, for as long as I can remember, our Park Forest Running & Pancake Club has manned the very last water stop on the course. Bingo! Cars with side-view mirrors and a friendly place to apply your makeup just one mile before the finish! We’ve got pictures of Boonsom doing just that.

Are we beginning to understand why the editors of our suburban newspaper had no problem publishing 50 of her finishers’ photos?

SO WHAT ABOUT THIS 50 STATES AND D.C. THING?

If you’re a marathoner, or perhaps more significantly, the significant other of a marathoner, then you automatically realize there is some kind of difference between slogging through one of these things versus wanting to repeat it over 50 times! I’m thinking a lot of folks are like me with needlepoint: If I’ve actually succeeded in doing it once, that’s enough.

Ah, remember whom we’re talking about now. On October 25 of her very first year of running, Boonsom crossed that Chicago finish line amid the cheers and hoopla and, yes, photographers, and more noise and congratulations than I’m guessing she had ever heard in her life. The marathon gave her a medal, and Scott presented her with a dozen roses. “I was hooked,” she says. And by then, of course, so was I.

So next thing you knew, her family and mine were teaming up on marathon road trips. We went to Milwaukee, St. Louis, met in Indiana for the Sunburst, then went to Houston, Rocket City (Huntsville, Alabama), and later a big group of Pancakers went with us to run the Desert Classic in Scottsdale, Arizona. She and a couple of girlfriends also flew to California and ran Big Sur, which to this very day she says is her favorite. “It was very scenic,” she told me, “with the ocean and mountain views from Highway 1. Plus, Margaret ran it with me.” If I

A Boonsom poised at the start of the (first-ever) 1995 Hoosier Marathon in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was at this race’s pre-race expo where she first got the bug to run a marathon in every state and D.C.

were a perceptive man, I might interpret this to mean: “Thank God for Margaret. You’ve never run a whole marathon with me in your life, Rit!” Good thing ’’m Neanderthal.

But a lot of our group also attended the very first Walt Disney World Marathon, which happens to rank as one of my most “fave” ever. I remember it best because of the prerace pasta dinner. (All the waiters served us while wearing white gloves!) Boonsom remembers all the Mickey Mouse paraphernalia, especially the jackets and gym bags—she’s a great shopper. She not only has photos from every marathon she has ever run but a cap or a jacket or a duffel bag, too. And yes, there’s a picture of the two of us standing in front of the gigantic EPCOT golf ball, where we each happen to be wearing the only Disney finishers’ medal without ears. (Would-be heirs and antique treasure brokers of the future: don’t even ask. We’re taking these medals with us!)

It was while expo shopping at the first Hoosier Marathon (1995) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that Boonsom picked out something she really wanted. Some runners were wearing some pretty nifty T-shirts that said “50 States and DC Marathoner” on them. So Boonsom asked, “Can you tell me please, where I can buy this shirt?”

“Oh,” they said, “you can’t buy this shirt. You have to earn it!”

Well, you cannot simply say stuff like that to Boonsom Hartman. She just does not take “no” or “can’t” for answers. Boonsom, as I recall, was the injured

marathoner with the bandaged knee in Madison, Wisconsin, who ran that city’s marathon precisely because her doctor had told her on Friday that for the next few days she must not walk. (There’s a picture of Scott carrying her afterward so she wouldn’t have to.) Boonsom also started running in the first place, as she told me, because she had to have surgery, after which the medical people told her to refrain from all physical exertion. Are you getting the picture here? If you ever make the mistake of telling Boonsom “You can’t have this shirt,” for example, “until you’ve run a full marathon everywhere,” look out! Boonsom will get that shirt.

And so, with that chance encounter before her Hoosier Marathon, suddenly she says, “I had a goal.” She sent for the 50 States & DC Marathon Group USA membership materials just as soon as she got home. In those days (all of nine years ago), you had to contact this group by phone or mail, but now of course it has a Web site (www. 50anddcmarathongroupusa.com) that sets forth its “North American Rules” and other exotica. At that time, all you needed was a completed marathon in 20 states and then you send in your fee and (naturally) your photo and you could join. (Nowadays they’ II take you in with only 10 states under your belt.) Well, that started it. With Scott keeping the records and booking the flights, the two of them set off on a path that would cover every inch of certain 26.2-mile parts of all parts of the country.

At this point in the narrative, I need to introduce one or more players in this cast of “50 Pancakers and me.” Boonsom and I have a mutual friend who happens to be a doctor of, among other certifications, sports medicine. He is Mark E. McKeigue, D.O., and he helps athletes all over the place to run and compete all over the place. Not only is he very well known and respected around our suburbs, but he runs one of the medical tents each year at the Chicago Marathon and also has national ties with runners of the class of Bill Rodgers or, when he was alive, Dr. George Sheehan, whom I think Mark resembles. And so, I suppose when the time comes, we might similarly connect his name with runners of the class of Boonsom Hartman. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The most important thing to note here is that, yes, Doc McKeigue is a marathoner.

So, when every other physician she had gone to told Boonsom she must rest, slow down, stay off her feet, and not even walk, she goes to see Mark and he tells her to get running! She had undergone major surgery, she (still) has hypoglycemia, she had suffered trauma and had a history of fainting spells and other maladies, and Mark was the first doc to tell her, “Get moving!” So, since one good turn deserves another, Boonsom recruited Mark for the 50 States & DC Group, and he then grabbed his protégé Jordan Ross, D.O., all of whom are friends with the psychiatrist Andy Lovy, D.O., who runs ultramarathons. Well, there you probably have it: proof that none of us is nuts.

You might possibly get a different response from Boonsom’s mother-in-law, though. Boonsom tells how she almost died after collecting Iowa in 1996. She

says she felt hungry but wanted to “look good and smell good” before joining the family for dinner, so she took advantage of the race’s hospitality locker rooms in anearby high school. It was in the girls’ facility where Boonsom’s mother-in-law found her collapsed in the shower. She was rushed by ambulance to a hospital. After recovering from heatstroke, dehydration, and hypoglycemia (again), Boonsom listened patiently while her mother-in-law begged: “Boonsom, if you love us, please don’t do this anymore.”

I’m thinking that by now, eight years and 70 or so marathons later, Scott’s mother has probably stopped asking this favor.

EIGHTH FINISHER FROM ILLINOIS

Boonsom’s big adventure has taken her far and wide and allowed her some rare opportunities to look very closely at various 26.2-mile tracts of not-often-visited territory. Mostly, of course, these were road tracts, but at least once, particularly in Delaware, they were single-track muddy tracts, as in densely wooded trails. Collecting Delaware took some doing. She says she was in creeks and rivers and mud in some kind of forest and never hardly did see a street. It was her toughest and slowest marathon ever, and contrary to what you would expect in such far outskirts of town, it was crowded! The reason? There hadn’t been a marathon run in Delaware in years, so everybody in the 50 States & DC Group who needed that state showed up.

Although there’s no connection (to the crowds or mud or anything), it was at Delaware where Boonsom decided to join yet another all-states type marathon group. You see, now there are not just one but two of these organizations, and the reasons (which we don’t want to get into) are political. But suffice it to say, the second group, the 50 States Marathon Club (www.50statesmarathonclub.com) doesn’t require a marathon in the District of Columbia. In most things else, the two organizations are about the same—including the membership, which is why Boonsom was persuaded to join. Almost all of her newfound, far-flung marathon friends are members of both groups.

One thing the 50 States Marathon Club provides on its Web site is a distinction between those who claim to have run all 50 states and those who can prove it. In other words, your 50 states’ completion can be “certified” if you submit proof (finisher’s postcards, published results, copies of your times listed in results booklets, and so forth) that you ran and finished all your marathons. Scott and Boonsom kept careful records and submitted such proof. As a result Boonsom’s addition to the 50 States’ finishers’ list shows that her results have been certified. Surprisingly, there aren’t many others that are.

And she finished all this—I hate to use the word “finished” about anything regarding Boonsom—when she crossed the finish line on December 14, 2003, in

» Boonsom and the author proving they finished Madison, Wisconsin’s first-ever Mad City Marathon on the Sunday before Memorial Day in 1994. The shirt says: “| Ran It.”

Honolulu, Hawaii—whereupon immediately she was medaled and leied. (Forgive me. Hawaii is the only one of the 50 states and D.C. where I can get away with a comment like that!) Oh, and this happened just about one mile after she had put on her lipstick—courtesy of one rather bemused motorcycle cop and his rearview mirror.

And after that, the very next day, the media frenzy exploded. First to appear was a story about her and her quest and her makeup in The Honolulu Advertiser. (You can read it today at http://the.honolulua dvertiser.com/article/2003/Dec/ 15/sp/sp26a.html.)

Next came her big splash in our suburban newspaper. Then there have been similar expressions of cosmetic amazement in an international running magazine. And now this!

Lately, of course, everybody (including me) has asked her, “What’s next?” And she says, “One hundred marathons!” (Which she is bound to already have by the time you read this.) But to be more complete in this research, you need to log back onto that 50 States & DC Marathon Group USA Web site. There you will notice a “Finishers” link, and once you click on that, you see curiously “1st Time,” “2nd Time,” “3rd Time,” and so on right up through “8th Time.” Holy smokes! Does this suggest there are runners out there who have completed an entire circuit of finished marathons in all states and Washington, D.C., eight times over?

Indeed it does, and indeed there are. Not so many in the later reaches, however, but we look anyway. Boonsom, I notice, is the 195th person ever to finish this entire circuit once. Additionally, and interestingly, she is the eighth person ever