Champ of what? Well, champion of what this magazine is all about, that’s what! Richard Laurence (“Larry”) Macon has undisputedly run more marathons (with some ultras) than any other American ever. Even more remarkably, he did this in a span of only 19 years.

Larry was born on December 31, 1944, in Dallas to a drugstore manager and a mother who was a legal secretary. A brilliant student, he went to Yale on a scholarship. (He was at Yale at the same time as Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom he knows.) After graduation from Yale, he went to the University of Texas law school and is now a partner in one of the most respected law firms in the United States. Larry and his wife, Jane, also a lawyer, have been married for 45 years.

Although he played football in high school, he says he did not excel. Larry’s coach at Yale wanted him to play football, too (perhaps because Ivy League teams are weak), but he didn’t play, not wanting to risk falling behind academically and perhaps losing his scholarship. So there is nothing really outstanding athletically in his background.

After moving to his present home in San Antonio in 1972, Larry took up bicycling and ran some shorter races like 5Ks and 10Ks. This went on for several years. In 1996, he was dared by some of his bicycling friends to run a marathon, so he ran San Antonio in 5:15.

But that was really just a fluke. He ran only 11 marathons in the next four years (and in one year no marathons at all), so this was the scorecard after five years: 1996 1 marathon 1997 2 marathons 1998 4 marathons

1999 0 marathons 2000 5 marathons Total 12 marathons It was only in 2001 that things picked up, with 23 marathons that year, then 26 in 2002, and 32 in 2003. However, when Larry joined the Marathon Maniacs

in 2004, things got really huge. (He has been “Maniac of the Year” every year but one since then.) His list since: 2004 59 marathons 2005 79 marathons 2006 80 marathons 2007 94 marathons 2008 105 marathons 2009 94 marathons 2010 106 marathons 2011 113 marathons 2012 157 marathons 2013 255 marathons (for various technical reasons only 239 counted for the Guiness Book of Records) 2014 147 marathons (so far) Grand total (as of November 6, 2014): 1,382

© Leanne Davis

Most readers will be curious about what Larry is really like. Well, he’s 5 feet, 11 inches tall and 155 pounds. I have run with Larry in many marathons, and I think I really know what he is all about. First of all he is very social, extroverted,

▲ Larry Macon running on November 30, 2013, his 233rd marathon of 2013.

and just plain friendly. He runs typically with many, many different people in every race. He has a most excellent sense of humor and you can hear his laugh about three blocks away. Larry is also a very good listener, who talks little about himself or his job (which he loves). But then he absolutely never talks about his legal practice. Most of his conversations are about running, recent races, travel, and common friends. And if you didn’t know that he was so really sharp, I don’t think you would guess that he was. In fact, Larry’s only fault that I can find is that he is a Democrat.

Once a race is over, he usually goes immediately to his hotel room to work on cases he is preparing for trial or rushes to catch a plane for the next race. I recently came in only five minutes behind him in Casper, Wyoming, and he had already flown from the scene.

What is Larry’s secret? I think it’s that at his usual pace, the distances take almost nothing out of him. In typical multiple-day marathons, he runs several of the initial miles just out of sheer high spirits and then walks a lot of the rest with spurts of running. But he is a very fast walker.

He doesn’t get stiff or sore from day after day of doing the 26.2 and rarely gets blisters, cramps, sunburns, or stomach upsets. Larry does occasionally get injured but recovers fast and soon he is back at it. He has the usual problems with doctors demanding that he take it easier, but he just sloughs off their demands like a lot of us do.

How fast does Larry actually run? Well, most of his times are between five hours and 6 1/2 hours. Thus he averages between 11-minute miles and 15-minute miles. (His fastest marathon time is 4:18.) Are these times fast? Well, he is substantially faster than all of the runners who are anything like his American competitors for numbers of marathons. And he can run faster if he needs to. There was the time at the NipMuck Trail Marathon (a particularly demanding race) in Connecticut where he missed the start by an hour (when his map and Garmin both failed due to a leaky bottle of Gatorade) and had to run really fast to make the three-hour cutoff at the halfway point. The race director didn’t want to let him start after looking him over, but Larry persuaded him to let him try. The race director’s attitude really made him mad, which might account for his performance that day. Frank Bartocci, who has done more than 600 marathons, tells me that on that occasion Larry passed him like he was sitting still. On that day, Mr. Macon ran between eight- and nine-minute miles for the whole race!

Because he runs so many races, sometimes he has been forced to run small, obscure, and carefully hidden marathons. Sometimes he has been lost in finding these races and sometimes lost in the races themselves. From my own experience, there is nothing worse than being lost in a small trail race when you haven’t seen another runner in the last hour. (Of course, you don’t know where you took the wrong turn.)

Then there was the time Larry was in such a rush to get to the start line that he left his rental car running throughout the whole marathon! He wondered why he couldn’t find his keys, only to find them locked in the car. (I can relate to that. Once I was in such a rush to catch the start that as I swung into a parking garage near the start of the Long Beach Marathon, I failed to notice what the parking garage looked like. After finishing, I had to hunt through five parking garages next to each other for my car. I was already dead tired before I started the hunt, and it took me an hour to find my car.)

Scheduling races is hard because there are so many. Usually Larry schedules one for Saturday and two for Sunday in case there are problems with flights, weather, or driving conditions. It certainly helps that he doesn’t mind driving long distances by himself.

Marathons are his specialty, but he has run many, many 50-kilometer races because marathons are not available every day. As far as I know, he has run few races longer than 50 kilometers. As of now, he has run races only in the United States.

Larry has also actually won a marathon! Many of you will know the Bear Lake Marathons on Saturday and Sunday in June. (Bear Lake is on the border of Utah and Idaho.) He and six of his friends persuaded the race director to put on another marathon on Friday before the double, and Larry beat everyone that year!

To give you a flavor of what his schedule looks like and so you can see if you have run some of the same races, here is Larry’s schedule of completions for the year 2011: No.

Date

Marathon or Ultra

Location

State

711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726

1/01/11 1/02/11 1/08/11 1/09/11 1/15/11 1/16/11 1/22/11 1/23/11 1/29/11 1/30/11 2/05/11 2/06/11 2/12/11 2/13/11 2/19/11 2/20/11

Texas Marathon Kingwood TX Kicking Off the New Year Marathon Long Beach CA Mississippi Blues Jackson MS First Light Mobile AL Charleston Charleston SC Rock ’n’ Roll Phoenix AZ Hilo to Volcano (50K) Hilo HI Maui Oceanfront Lahaina HI Desert Classic Surprise AZ Callaway Gardens Pine Mountain GA Icy-8 Hour Trail Lake Anna State Park VA Melbourne Beaches Melbourne FL Louisville Lovin’ the Hills (50K) Fairdale KY Rock ’n’ Roll Mardi Gras New Orleans LA Myrtle Beach Myrtle Beach SC Washington’s Birthday Greenbelt MD

No.

Date

Marathon or Ultra

Location

State

727 728 729 730 731 732 733 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 759 760 761 762 763 764 765

2/21/11 2/26/11 2/27/11 3/05/11 3/06/11 3/12/11 3/13/11 3/19/11 3/20/11 3/26/11 3/27/11 4/02/11 4/03/11 4/09/11 4/10/11 4/16/11 4/17/11 4/18/11 4/23/11 4/24/11 5/01/11 5/07/11 5/08/11 5/12/11 5/13/11 5/14/11 5/15/11 5/21/11 5/22/11 5/28/11 5/29/11 5/30/11 6/04/11 6/05/11 6/10/11 6/11/11 6/12/11 6/18/11 6/19/11

Presidents’ Day Post Oak Lodge (50K) Post Oak Lodge Marathon Touchstone (50K) Little Rock Land Between the Lakes Lower Potomac New Jersey Ultra Wilderness Park Trail Chicago Lakefront (50K) Bataan Memorial Death March Trailbreaker Athens Eisenhower Go Saint Louis Olathe Glass City Boston AAU Lake Waramaug (50K) Easter Cox Sports Shiprock Kalamazoo Three Days at the Fair Three Days at the Fair Three Days at the Fair Wilmington Fargo Dirty German Endurance Run for the Kids Vermont City Darkside Ridge Runner Casper Bear Lake Sand Hills Swan Lake Grandma’s Vancouver

Playa del Ray Tulsa Tulsa Laurel Little Rock Grand River Piney Point Long Valley Lincoln Chicago White Sands Waukesha Athens Abilene St. Louis Olathe Toledo Boston State Park Bronx Providence Shiprock Kalamazoo Augusta Augusta Augusta Wilmington Fargo Philadelphia Hoover Burlington Peachtree City Cairo Casper Fish Haven Valentine Viborg Duluth Vancouver

CA OK OK MS AR KY MD NJ NE IL NM WI OH KS MO KS OH MA CT NY RI NM MI NJ NJ NJ DE ND PA AL VT GA WV WY ID NE SD MN WA

No.

Date

Marathon or Ultra

766 767 768 769 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 779 780 781 782 783 784 785 786 787 788 789 790 791 792 793 794 795 796 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804

6/25/11 Wyoming 12 Hour 6/26/11 Ghost of Bellevue 7/02/11 Run 4 Troops 7/03/11 Freedom 7/09/11 Aspen Valley 7/27/11 Madison 7/30/11 Frank Maier 7/31/11 Bearfest 8/06/11 Grizzly 8/07/11 Blister in the Sun 8/13/11 Mount Sneffels 8/20/11 Park City 8/21/11 Drake Well 8/27/11 Eisenbahn 8/28/11 Timmy’s Challenge 9/03/11 Pocatello 9/04/11 Flatlanders 9/05/11 Turtle 9/10/11 Little Grand Canyon 9/11/11 Stumpy’s 9/17/11 Bismarck 9/18/11 Fox Cities 9/24/11 Akron 9/25/11 Vermont (50K) 10/01/11 New Hampshire 10/02/11 Maine 10/08/11 Prairie State 10/09/11 Steamtown 10/15/11 Hartford 10/16/11 Mount Desert Island 10/22/11 Mankato 10/23/11 On the Road for Education 10/29/11 Hoover Dam 10/30/11 Cape Cod 11/05/11 Monumental Indianapolis 11/06/11 Manchester 11/10/11 Marine Corps Birthday 11/11/11 11-11-11 Marathon of Sarasota 11/12/11 Louisiana Trails

Location

State

Laramie Bellevue Dyersville Gresham Aspen Ennis Juneau Wrangell Choteau Cookville Ouray Park City Titusville West Bend North Bend State Park Pocatello Fenton Roswell Huntington Newark Bismarck Appleton Akron Brownsville Bristol Portland Libertyville Scranton Hartford Bar Harbor Mankato Mason City Boulder City Falmouth Indianapolis Manchester Boone Sarasota Shreveport

WY WA IA OR CO MT AK AK MT TN CO UT PA WI WV ID MO NM UT NJ ND WI OH VT NH ME IL PA CT ME MN IA NV MA IN NH NC FL LA

No.

Date

Marathon or Ultra

805 806 807 808 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820 821 822 823

11/13/11 Rhode Island 6 Hour 11/18/11 Ultra Centric (32 Miles) 11/19/11 White River Marathon for Kenya 11/20/11 Flying Monkeys 11/24/11 Wattle Waddle 11/25/11 Wishbone Run (27.5 Miles) 11/26/11 Ghost of Seattle 11/27/11 Seattle 12/03/11 Baton Rouge Beach 12/04/11 Dallas White Rock 12/10/11 Rehoboth Beach 12/11/11 Tucson 12/24/11 Christmas Eve 12/26/11 Savage Seven Number One 12/27/11 Savage Seven Number Two 12/28/11 Savage Seven Number Three 12/29/11 Savage Seven Number Four 12/30/11 Savage Seven Number Five 12/31/11 New Year’s Eve

Location

State

Warwick Grapevine Cotter Nashville Seattle Gig Harbor Seattle Seattle Baton Rouge Dallas Rehoboth Beach Tucson Pensacola Pensacola Pensacola Pensacola Pensacola Pensacola Allen

RI TX AR TN WA WA WA WA LA TX DE AZ FL FL FL FL FL FL TX

Mr. Macon has been in the Guinness Book of Records several times and is in the current volume as running the most marathons in a single year (239 in 2013). He has also completed the 50 states more than anyone else (he routinely does it twice a year), so he was the first to do the states for the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th time.

There are now at least 900 different marathons (and hundreds of ultras) in this country. His record number of completions is possible only because there are multiple-day events such as the Manly Marathon Series of Clint Burleson. But this total will almost certainly never be equaled again because of rule changes (changed by the 50 States Marathon Club) that prohibit including races with fewer than 10 finishers and other restrictions. Remarkably, in 2013, Larry was sometimes running two marathons per day for multiple days! Of course, no one can be sure of this, but it may well be that no human being may ever run 255 marathons again in one year!

Do you think that it’s easy to get from one race to another? Once in South Dakota, he was swept off the road by a wave of water and his rental car became a submarine. Larry was at Boston when the race was bombed. He got stopped at 25.5 miles, waited for hours, yet still managed to get a plane out wearing only shorts

and singlet with no money, no credit cards, and no ticket. But of course he couldn’t count that race.

© Leanne Davis

The future The new rules will likely keep Larry from ever having a year quite like 2013, but will he stop? I certainly don’t think so. Like most of us who have run hundreds of races, we love the travel and

the adventure, seeing new cities and new landscapes, and talking with our fellow runners. And yet we can’t quite explain to others why we put up with irksome security lines and screenings, canceled flights, long drives,

muscle soreness, and the sheer expense of it. Ultimately, I believe, our obsession to do them is mysterious and ▲ By the end of 2014, Larry Macon had run 1,410 total just maybe unexplainable, marathons.

even to ourselves. But Larry Macon has only five runners ahead of his record on the World Megamarathon Ranking List (see www.worldmegamarathonranking.com). They are three German men, one German woman, and one Finnish man. The leader has

run 2,160 marathons or 742 more than Larry. They are not doing anything like the numbers every year that he does, plus they are all older than Larry except for the first-place man. So I am going to guess that he will pass them all about 2020.

Epilogue Right before this magazine went to press, I checked with Larry, and he had just finished his 1418th marathon. He is still running smoothly and effortlessly. I am very sure that he is good for many, many, many more marathons! Bon voyage, Larry Macon!