But it’s a hall of fame nevertheless.

he best baseball players have Cooperstown, the best footballers have Canton, Tons and the best basketball players have Springfield, Massachusetts. So what do runners have—in particular, ultrarunners? They have cyberspace.

The American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame is located not as part of a museum nor inside a building nor even (as with the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana) near a college campus, but “out there” somewhere at http://www. americanultra.org/halloffame.html.

Ultrarunning is still, after all, a sport in which everyone with minimal clothing, basic shoes (or even bare feet), and a bib number can run on the same playing field as the best in the world for a comparatively small fee, generally much less than the cost of an outing at a major league ballpark, including transportation, parking, tickets, food, drink, and souvenirs; and there the best any amateur can hope to do is sit in the stands. Also, because ultrarunning is basically so low key to begin with, you wouldn’t expect its shrine for its best to be built of gilded minerals and tinted glass. No, the better expectation is that such a hall would not exist at all.

But it does—on the World Wide Web—courtesy of the American Ultrarunning Association, a very basic nonprofit organization (registered at Morristown, New Jersey) made up of some of the best in the world. Even a quick tour around the AUA website reveals board members and staff who, if you click on the “Stats & Records” tab, will also be found to be national record holders themselves, current president Roy Pirrung and former president Kevin Setnes among them. As the “Who We Are” web page states: “AUA works under the principle of minimalist governance and bureaucracy. AUA’s mission is to keep its focus on communication, development, and promotion of the sport, maximizing administrative efficiency.” And this: “AUA relies on donations and sponsorships to fund its operations and its programs.”

In other words, the group is low budget—or, more accurately, no budget. AUA’s executive director, Dan Brannen, was contacted and asked how much the AUA budgets annually for its various operations. “Zero,” he replied.

The whole enterprise might best be described as a labor of love. And as such, you aren’t much inclined to think in terms of large, overriding agencies of selfgovernance, with treasuries stuffed full of franchise fees, televising licenses, and profit percentages generated by all the big ballparks with their hot dogs, peanuts, and Cracker Jack, and of course their rates for parking all those cars. That might be Major League Baseball, but that isn’t major league ultrarunning.

Nor is it likely to change anytime soon. Executive Director Brannen informed further: “I don’t see AUA as growing or expanding. It is a ‘boutique’ service in the athletics community. One of the most rewarding things we do is respond to queries that come to our e-mail from journalists all over the country (sometimes sports, sometimes just general human interest) trying to find a source to explain what ultrarunning is all about, its history, how it fits in with the established running community, etc. I’ve seen some great articles on our sport published in general-interest publications for which the journalists got put on the right track by soliciting information from AUA.”

So there isn’t ever likely to be a huge, overseeing ownership organization requiring fees and licenses and memberships, or housing itself along with busts of its most famous inside a vast glass building. As Brannen put it, “There is no current planning for any such things. We find no need for them. The Hall of Fame is housed just fine right where it is, on our website.”

Roll call, Corbitt/Kiddy—first to be enshrined in 2004

According to that website, then-president Kevin Setnes announced on April 20, 2004, that the AUA would be formulating “The American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame.” He noted that “a national ultrarunning Hall of Fame is long overdue. The legends of our sport will now have a place to be honored for posterity.”

“Long overdue” may have been an understatement. Even if runners completely ignore the old pedestrian events of more than a hundred years ago and focus primarily on recent history, they would still need to note a man who has come to be known as “the father of ultrarunning”: Ted Corbitt, an exceptionally talented and driven runner who flourished in New York City, starting, it should be mentioned, in the 1940s. Corbitt was in fact a member of the 1952 United States Olympic Marathon team.

In instituting its Hall of Fame, the AUA paid him homage. “Although ultrarunning as a competitive sport has a rich and colorful history in America (going back into the mid-19th century and predating organized Track & Field), its practice was scattered and not uniformly coordinated throughout the country until the late 1950s,” reads the AUA’s web text. It continues, “Hence, the pool of Hall of Fame candidates will be restricted to what is known as the ‘modern era’ of the sport, which we date from the first known American ultramarathon organized since World

War II, the New York Road Runners Club 30 Mile race held on March 8, 1958.” The organizer of that first modern ultra was, of course, Ted Corbitt.

Hence, the AUA selected Corbitt as its first Hall of Fame inductee but also decided to be a tad more egalitarian and included another who might possibly be considered ultrarunning’s mom. Certainly Mrs. Fred Kiddy was the eldest woman to start winning ultradistance races after Ted began popularizing them. So, as the website states, “Achieving the distinction of being the first man and woman inducted into American Ultrarunning’s Hall of Fame are Ted Corbitt and Sandra Kiddy.”

And the policy also got posted, as follows: “The AUA Hall of Fame will reflect excellence at racing beyond the standard marathon distance, or other exceptional contributions to American ultrarunning. The inaugural class of inductees will include one man and one woman. Thereafter, only a single inductee per year will be selected.”

Ted, ultrarunning’s dad

Unfortunately, this article is being written entirely too late, for Ted Corbitt, after a long, well-traveled, eventful, professional, and thoroughly fulfilling life, has passed away. He died on December 12, 2007, about a month shy of his 89th birthday. This article may also be redundant, because Marathon & Beyond published a great tribute to Ted in its September/October 2008 issue, featuring him in a photo montage on the cover. we

One of the photos on that cover fea- Seaman) caer 100 + votene 18, howe 9 FUG 14.8 mn es tures Ted with his only child, Gary, who > is very much still here and willing and able to answer nosy reporters’ questions. He is into television research and news and currently works for a TV station in Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, and he also runs. And he is also computer savvy and has set up a Ted Corbitt fan page on Facebook. Those subscribing to that particular social network can search for the page on Facebook.

Gary reports that his dad was actu- oa 4

ally born the year prior to what most x New York, New Yorks . What a Rusht

Ted Corbitt: The Man, The Legend

Ted Corbitt was the “cover boy” for the
September/October 2008 issue of Marathon
& Beyond, several months after his passing.

Ted Corbitt, wearing his omnipresent
New York Pioneer Club singlet, walking
in an ultra to commemorate his 24-hour
record.

biographies say. Ted Corbitt was born on the very same day as Jackie Robinson—January 31, 1919. And although Ted never broke into Major League Baseball in 1947, he did emerge from World War II (and the U.S. Army) healthy enough to start running around not only the bases but Ebbetts Field, the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, their parking lots, and basically the whole City of New York—just for training!

But Ted did join something in 1947 and become, like Jackie, its star hitter. The New York Pioneer Club gave Ted Corbitt a real outlet for his talents. As previously reported in Marathon & Beyond, the NYPC “was just about the only place in town where blacks and Jews were welcome to join a running club.” The club provided not only an outlet but also a mission, a purpose, a life’s ambition, and a singlet. Ted wore that shirt almost every time he ran—even in the winter (as an outer layer, of course)—and he was buried in a NYPC sweatshirt, along with a 2007 NYC Marathon finisher’s medal that son Gary, who earned it, draped around his dad’s neck.

Ted Corbitt was a native of Dunbar, South Carolina. He grew up there, started running, and became a sprinter, inspired, Gary says, by the great Jesse Owens. Ted went to the University of Cincinnati where he ran track and earned a P.E. degree and then earned a masters degree in physical therapy at NYU. Then he went to war. After the war he married his lifelong soulmate, Ruth, and the following year he was released from the Army and took up residence in New York City. There he basically gave up sprinting due to hamstring problems and began running longer, soon to be running marathons. And he ran them very well! Gary reported that both the Boston and Yonkers marathons served as Olympic qualifiers at the time, and Ted qualified. In 1952 he went to Helsinki, Finland, and ran the Olympic Marathon for the USA. He finished 44th overall with a time of 2:51—‘“an off day,” Gary said. Ted tried again to qualify for the 1956 Olympics, but finished in fourth place, first alternate, and didn’t get a chance to run for the team.

Courtesy of New York Road Runners

But he started running just about everything else, including distances beyond the marathon, such as running around the entire perimeter of Manhattan! Gary reported that sometimes his dad would log 300-mile weeks. The perimeter of Manhattan is about 32 miles, and Ted would run two laps—three days in a row!— plus his other running, which often included 20 miles to work, a run at lunchtime, and then 20 miles back home. One reason why Gary’s mother Ruth was Ted’s lifelong soulmate? She let him do all this!

As the AUA Hall of Fame write-up indicates, Ted joined or helped to found other New York running organizations, notably the New York Road Runners Club (serving as its first president) and the Road Runners Club of America (becoming its third president). He helped organize what is now credited as the very first ultramarathon of the modern era—that New York 30-Mile Race on March 8, 1958—and won it.

“Ultramarathon.” That’s a Ted Corbitt invention right there. Ted coined the term! And that, as Gary revealed, was something Gary himself didn’t know until after his dad passed away.

“Andy Milroy was the one who told me this,” Gary said. When asked how that came about, Gary replied, “He was writing; he was the editor of the New York Road Runners Club newsletter, and he was the first editor for FootNotes, the RRCA publication. So he was doing a lot of writing. And there were a lot of different terms for ultras back then. So in time he came up with u/tramarathon.”

Some terms then in evidence were “superdistance” and “ultra-long distance,” among others. And evidence of Ted’s writing was kindly provided by Allan Kirik, another AUA Hall of Famer. In a photocopy of a Ted Corbitt column called “Ultramarathon Scene” (New York Running News, possibly for December 1978), Ted writes about Kirik, principally to praise him for winning “the Annual Met AAU and Open 50 Mile Championship . .. November 4, ’78, on the Central Park loop.” It was, Kirik said, his first 50-mile win.

Known for a lifetime of giving, Ted in his column showers praise upon Kirik, noting how “the onrushing Kirik” steadily overcame the initially hard-charging leader John Garlepp (himself then a masters record holder). “Kirik,” Ted wrote, “who has a good background for the marathon, unconsciously started to run faster from 20 miles on. At one point, past 40 miles, he ran with Fritz Mueller, who was training in the park. At some points Kirik was running under 6 minutes a mile. He went into the lead just past 40 miles, and he made a very impressive charge to the finish.”

Ted added, “Kirik might be a budding superstar. Time will tell. He appeared to be free of tension and fear and to be running effortlessly in the last two laps.”

Kirik himself noted how much, how often, and how well Ted wrote. He has nothing but praise for the father of ultrarunning. And he became disgusted with Ted’s old organization, the NYRR (formerly NYRRC), because it didn’t feature

Ted on the cover of its club magazine after he passed away. So Kirik quit his membership in protest.

Gary Corbitt, when asked about this, stated that Ted was on the cover but ina reduced image and sharing the space with somebody else. (Good thing Marathon & Beyond was able to fill the void, yes?) Kirik felt Ted deserved the whole cover.

Ultimately, Gary wanted to emphasize the several things for which his father is most deservedly famous: his lifelong work as a master physical therapist, his pioneering of accurately calibrating and standardizing race measurements (using bicycles, Jones counters, and surveying wheels), and his doubtlessly effective (though reluctant) career in organizational administration. Gary also pointed out that it wasn’t exactly injury that stopped Ted from running competitively in his 60s, but asthma. Gary surmised that running all those years in New York traffic and pollution didn’t help. It may have induced the ailment in the first place. Nevertheless, Ted could not be stopped, and he started walking instead of running—and walking competitively! In fact, he walked for six days in a bona fide ultra event and logged 303 miles—at the age of 82! That and his other achievement of 110 miles in 48 hours remain to this day as American age-group records.

Besides fathering ultrarunning and now serving in heaven as “head coach of God’s running team” (said of him at his funeral by Joe Perez, Ted’s one-time physical therapy patient), perhaps the very best accolade that might be given to Ted Corbitt is the opinion of his protégé Allan Kirik, who described Ted simply as “a really, really fine gentleman.”

“There’s just no better way to describe him,” Kirik said.

Sandy, still in high school at the time

Sandy Kiddy might have been one of the first Hall of Famers to be enshrined, but she was the very last to be located. This was partially due to her husband Fred’s passing away on June 10, 2006, and her subsequent relocation from desert California to Reading, Pennsylvania, not long afterward. She moved to be nearer to their son, Greg, and his wife, Elizabeth, whom, Sandy says, “everyone calls Betsy.” Since basically everything (house, phones, and her apartment above the garage behind the house) happens to be in Greg’s name, Sandy Kiddy was able to vanish.

Add to that her penchant for sailing around the world on months-long cruises, and it’s easy to see why no present or former-day ultrarunner even knew where she was. Not even the AUA knew where she was, nor, in fact, where she had been! Nevertheless, due to the blithe services of the U.S. Postal Service—which returns mail after a forwarding order has expired—its little yellow tape on the envelope revealed what that forwarding address had been, which was now worth another Forever stamp to resend the returned mail to Reading. That worked and, through Greg, contact was made.

Sandy Kiddy said she thought she might have seen or been made aware of her induction into the AUA Hall of Fame, but since her computer is something she “doesn’t use very much,” she never saw her write-up online. She was also surprised to learn that she was among the first two ultrarunners enshrined. Finally, she said that she had heard the name Ted Corbitt but doesn’t recall ever meeting him. When told how Corbitt’s prime running days were during the 1950s, she said, “I was a high schooler then. I didn’t know anything about running!”

The AUA hall’s web page gives fairly convincing evidence as to why Sandy Kiddy was such an obvious choice for induction. For one thing, she often set records for a new distance (for her) the first time she ran it. Her first 100K at the old AMBJAs in Chicago happened to set a national masters record at the time (7:59:59 on October 3, 1982, at age 45). Prior to that, her first 5OK set a then-world record (3:36:56), and her first 50-miler (6:24:19) set a national masters mark and 40-44 age-group record—which she then bested to 6:15:47 when she turned 45!

For another thing, in a famous running of the old Edmund Fitzgerald 100K along the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota on October 27, 1984, she beat all the men in the race (including Barney Klecker, another AUA Hall inductee, who more accurately DNF’d). And her time of 7:49:16 established yet another—world this time—masters women’s record for 100 kilometers. A famous photograph shows Kiddy at the finish line, with Harry Sloan (the male leader and Sandy’s junior by 11 years) fallen to his knees off the road less than 25 yards behind her. It was a famous first-female-overall victory, although Kiddy now says that she wasn’t the first, that women had beaten all the men in other ultras prior to her victory, and she took her fair share of good-natured ribbing for “running the good man down.”

The original write-up in the December 1984 issue of U/traRunning, headed “Sandra Kiddy Nabs Duluth Sheriff” (Sloan was a St. Louis County, Minnesota, sheriff), reported that Sloan’s “legs buckled and Kiddy glided past him… . Sloan then collapsed” but he was able to get back up and finish, thereby winning, yes, “the men’s division.” His time was 7:49:51.

Kiddy now says that she never saw him fall, but that “he fell and I went past him. I did not see him fall, no, but I was coming up behind him and he was already down.” And she adds, “Fred was already there, and he kept shouting at me—‘Keep going! Keep going!’—so I did!”

The entire event might have been all the sweeter had not Barney Klecker quit at mile 45. “He had pulled a hamstring muscle in a 5-mile race in Chicago a week before,” the UltraRunning writer Scott Schneider reported, “and the problem recurred, finally forcing him out.” The reason for the possible unique sweetness was that the Ed Fitz staged its usual two races that day, and Sandy’s spouse, Fred, won the 50K for the men and Barney’s spouse, Janis, won the 50K for the women. Sandy won the 100K for the women and Barney probably should have and could have won the 100K for the men. After all, before he bowed out, he

Sandy Kiddy finishes first overall at the
Ed Fitz 100K in 1984. The men’s leader,
Harry Sloan, can be seen on his knees in
the grass off the road well behind her.

was on pace to beat Bernd Heinrich’s current U.S.-record (then open, now masters) 100K time of 6:38:21.

It was suggested to Sandy that this might have been the first time that two married couples would both take first overall for each sex for each of the two ultras of the same event on the same day. “That would have been something,” she agreed.

This famous Kiddy victory had a huge impact on the ultrarunning world. Ray Krolewicz—who is still running ultras—wrote of it later, saying, “she outkicked the guy she had been gaining on all day. I think he might have even fallen as he propelled himself toward the finish line. I was not there, but the story was carried pillar to post.

“I was there at Tallahassee,” Krolewicz added, “when she ran just over 15 hours to almost win a 100-miler outright after reeling in the male leader for mile after mile—110 miles and she would have had him.” It was later determined that Ray was talking about himself. The results of that Tallahassee 100 happen to be currently available online. They show the following:

Tallahassee Ultra, Wakulla Springs, December 14, 1985

100 Mile Results Place First Name Last Name Time Age Sex Residence 1 Ray Krolewicz 14:57:26 30 M_ South Carolina

2 Sandra Kiddy 15:12:54 49 F California

By the way, that finishing time of 15 hours and change gave Sandy an open women’s world record for the hundred-mile distance that would stand for years until Ann Trason came along and broke it. But still to this day, that 100-mile mark by “Tallahassee Sandy” remains as the American women’s age-group record for 45-to-49-year olds, and she still holds many other age-group records as well.

unning, December 1984

Scott Schneider photo,

When asked about this little duel with Ray, Sandy (as most other ultrarunners always do good-naturedly) commented on his quirks.

“T ran in a few competitions with him. He used to slow down or speed up depending on which child he wanted to have at the end. He had two or three children, and he was somewhat of a funny guy! So he would stop and maybe—I don’t know just how it went—but his goal was to win or go through the end so that it [the time on the clock] would be—based on how old some of his children were.” [Assuming a finish time of 14:12:10, for example, might mean each unit of digits would match the age of each of three children.]

“He was just kind of a jolly old person,” she surmised.

Krolewicz himself, who was button-holed via e-mail for an overall comment on Mrs. Kiddy, managed to comply on his way out the door to show up in Raleigh, North Carolina, to run the 2011 Umstead 100-miler. He wrote of his admiration for her in his own inimitable way:

“Sandra,

Fast as shit.

Nice as apple pie.

Wonderful husband, almost as fast as her.

“At the 100 I went fast as I could, led by almost 90 minutes at 100K and she reeled me in to 15. I was scared.

“Ray K. (who is indeed off to Umstead, but did what you asked for first).”

Not only did Sandy Kiddy impress “Ray the K,” but she also made an incredible impression on a modern-day ultrarunner from Herndon, Virginia: Marina Brown, who ran her first 100-miler at age 19!

“T was in high school and in my first year of college when these races happened,” Marina writes. “I can’t tell you how excited I was over Sandra Kiddy’s performances. I still have the copies of U/traRunning in my mementos’ chest. I so wanted to be her!”

One final note about Sandy also includes Allan Kirik. As it happened, both Allan and Sandy journeyed to England and ran—and won!—its own famous age-old ultramarathon called London-to-Brighton. It’s the same race where Bruce Fordyce logged his fastest-ever-in-the-world (still to this day!) 50-mile time, which doesn’t—go figure—count as a world’s best. [See the article in the May/ June 2010 issue of Marathon & Beyond.] Kirik claimed to be the only American to have ever won the London-to-Brighton race, but no, Kiddy won it, too. He won in 1979, she in 1985. Women weren’t even allowed in that race officially until after Kirik’s victory, so it didn’t take Sandy long to go there and grab a win for the American women, did it?

She was asked what she remembers about that race and immediately responded with two shockers. One, after her race (at around 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday) she couldn’t enjoy her customary postrace beer “because all the pubs were [still] closed!” And two, “You were supposed to start at the /ast sound of the [Big Ben] clock,” she said, “‘and everybody went at the first sound!”

Apparently itchy-runners’ syndrome is alive and antsy in Jolly Olde England, too.

Marcy Schwam, “Tennis, no one?”—in 2005

The first female to run under six hours for the 50-mile distance did it, once again, by the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago during those famous old AMJA UItramarathons. It was a Sunday, October 3, 1982, and the hard-rockin’ runner on a mission was Marcy Schwam.

Her write-up in the AUA Hall of Fame gives her time as 5:59:26, but she says, “5:59:25 is what’s in the record books.” Unfortunately, that mark can’t easily be checked because it has since been bested by Ann Trason, whom, by the way, Schwam knows and holds in the highest regard.

It was Marcy nevertheless who most likely blazed the trail for Ann and for a lot of other women—maybe a// women! Sandy Kiddy, though older, didn’t really become competitive until 1979. Marcy got there earlier.

She recalls that when she got started running in 1968, most races weren’t open to women. In fact, even after Kathrine Switzer’s groundbreaking run of the Boston Marathon in 1967, women weren’t officially “allowed” (as she put it) into the race until 1972, and she was in that first official women’s division. “I did it on a dare,” she says. Also this: “There were only 12 of us in ’72.

“Even when I ran in ’72,” she said, “my number was F12 but they left the y off my name when they sent me my information. So when I showed up, they wouldn’t let me run because they said that I wasn’t who I was.

“You know,” she said, “they were so unused to women entering, I don’t think they really looked beyond the M-a-r-c and they just left the y off. Maybe it was intentional.”

But (possibly only because she “knew somebody there’’) the confusion got straightened out, and “Marc” was given a female bib number. She says her time for that marathon—her first—was over three hours. It took her a few more years to lower that time to her personal best of 2:47, which, by the way, qualified her to run in the first women’s Olympic Marathon Trials, participating in early ’84 along with the likes of Joan Benoit, whom Marcy knows very well and is friends with to this day. They’re practically neighbors, with Joan in Maine and Marcy in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

<4 Modern-day Marcy Schwam doubled at Pikes Peak in 2010, running the Ascent on Saturday and the marathon (shown here) the following day.

As the AUA hall’s web page points out, Marcy Schwam (a true athlete from the get-go) was supposed to be a professional tennis player. And that, too, all went down in 1972.

“That’s what I thought I was doing in life,” she said. “I thought I was going to play professional tennis.

“Thad achance to play on the satellite for the Virginia Slims,” she explained, “and I didn’t like the people. They were just like spoiled brat kids back then—I’m actually not even sure that that’s changed that much—and certainly when I thought about it, that these were the people that I was going to travel and spend time with and that that was going to be my life, I made a very conscious decision that it wasn’t going to be for me.

“T qualified for one tournament,” she said, “and then I didn’t want to go back. I was so disgusted by the type of people, Thad no interest after it. That was in °72—’72 was a game changer.”

Apparently so. Thereafter Marcy went on to new adventures and blazed new trails nearly all over the world. She has run nine Boston Marathons, many others as well, and a ton of ultramarathons, and in Europe she took up long-distance ice

© MarathonFoto

skating and then snowshoeing (she recently placed at a national competition in northern Wisconsin) and now trailrunning.

Her first ultra was a SOK in Central Park, NYC, in 1976—Allan Kirik’s stomping grounds—and her latest was the Miwok 100K in Northern California this past May. Unfortunately, an Achilles injury forced her to stop at mile 47.

!” She takes no prisoners. She’s a superaggressive “outta my way” kind of hard-charging rock ’n’ roller who, if she sees a pair of shorts in front of her, thinks they need to be passed.

Marcy was reminded that Dan Brannen of the AUA described Sandra Kiddy’s running style as symphonic, like Mozart, whereas Marcy’s was “pure rock ’n’ roll.”

Her mantra, she says, is and has always been: “On a mission

“T think it’s very descriptive for those that knew us both,” she said. But does she agree with it?

“Oh, I would agree with it, absolutely!” she said.

It’s a safe bet that all the runners Marcy has left in her dust over the years would, too.

Sue Ellen Trapp, with a still-held open world record—in 2006

Sue Ellen Trapp was easily located (with help) because she is still running, the same as Marcy is, perhaps neither one so competitively anymore, but tripping (Trapping?) the light fantastic just the same. Readers of U/traRunning can find her listed in the results for the Peanut Island Race of Palm Beach, Florida, where on December 31, 2010, she covered 91.316 miles in 24 hours at age 64. That, by the way, was good for female third place overall.

Running in circles for decade after decade has been the forte of Sue Ellen Trapp. She has done amazingly well, certainly in 24-hour and 48-hour events. To this day she remains the only AUA Hall of Famer who can claim a still-current open world record (not just masters or age group) and she did that—without recognizing it—for a 48-hour road ultra, not a track ultra. (This is plainly shown within the AUA website’s Stats & Records section.)

For years, Sue Ellen thought that the 48-hour mark she had set in France

without regard to track or road. She never split hairs like that. For Sue Ellen (and many champions like her) it’s all about the speed. Wherever someone runs the most or the fastest, that’s the record! But no. Her Surgeres’s was a track record, not a road record, and it held up worldwide only until a young Japanese gal came along to beat it. The AUA website shows only the latest record which, in this case, is

So it appears that Sue Ellen’s open track record stood for 13 years. But again, no. Sue Ellen said that this Japanese woman broke her own record in 2010, since she had already broken Sue Ellen’s record around three years prior. So it stood for 10 years. Nevertheless, Sue Ellen’s 1997 performance at Surgeres still stands as an American record, despite the fact that it was established in France.

But her still-valid, still-current open world record is for a road 48-hour, which was set in the USA nearly 20 years ago at the old Gibson Ranch Multiday Classic

tance covered in California was less than her distance covered in France (223.761 miles, to be exact). Never mind that USA national records can be established in France and that international records can be set in the United States. If readers are confused by this, they should take solace. Sue Ellen herself had been confused about it for nearly two decades!

Not only that, but there is a good case to be made that Sue Ellen wouldn’t have had any record at all in France were it not for her daughter, Kristina Hoing. After being contacted via e-mail, Kristina contributed yet another side to the story.

“I do have to add a little side note here,” she wrote. “I have been [so] very vocal now for close to 20 years that I feel as though I am the one responsible for her attaining the world record! You see, my dad was up most of the race, as I was in and out (sleeping and possibly partying with the fine French people, who enjoy their wine, on the inside of the track—I was 26 years old). But my dad finally broke and had to take a little catnap at about hour 38. I had been instructed to give my little Peanut Island ultrarunner certain drinks and foods and, most importantly, directions to run 3 laps and walk 1. Well, I didn’t do that! I made the executive decision at the time (because I was in charge) to tell my Energizer Bunny to keep moving! She was doing wonderful! I didn’t want her to get complacent and start expecting breaks like that all the time. So, she listened to her brilliant daughter and went on to win the world record! This is truly a true story!”

How can anything possibly be written to improve upon that story? Only this: Sue Ellen corroborated Kristina’s report and, in fact, does give her daughter all the credit. It’s just too bad it’s no longer “the world record!” For “track,” that is.

Nevertheless, were the AUA Stats & Records web pages to include world masters and age-group records, it’s a good bet that Sue Ellen would be shown as owning many. In 1997 at Surgeres, she was 51 years old! The AUA Hall of Fame write-up also points out another unique feat. Sue Ellen had set her first world record (two, actually—one for 24 hours and the other for 100K) at age 34. The cause de célébre here was that Sue Ellen Trapp in fact succeeded in setting world records 17 years apart! It’s “an accomplishment which makes her unique in all of athletics,” states the AUA.

Sue Ellen Trapp establishing her still-current world record for “road” 48-hour distance
at the Gibson Ranch in 1993.

Courtesy of Kristina and Devon Hoing

Although the Trapps reside in Fort Myers, Florida, it was a major surprise for this Chicago writer to learn that Sue Ellen grew up in Chicago, that her professional career has always been dentistry, and that she went to the University of Illinois Dental School at Chicago. “After dental school,” she says, “my husband and I followed my parents to Florida, and we’ve been here almost 40 years.”

While in Chicago she married Ron, also a dental student, and they subsequently parented Kristina, now a most entertaining writer (and ultrarunning coach) in her own right. Somewhere along the line, Sue Ellen Trapp, DDS, became interested in running very long distances for a very long time, and the rest, as they say, is history.

She was asked to explain her training secrets.

“T wasn’t very orthodox, I don’t think, because I ran home from work, which was 10 miles,” she said. But here her presumed unorthodoxy was, perhaps unconsciously, mimicking the Ted Corbitt method by which running to and from work was de rigueur. “It forced me to run home, and I did that most days,” she said. She also explained that she and her husband and another partner were in dental practice together, so Ron was always able to drive them to the clinic, and that allowed her to run home. So she would normally run 50 miles Monday through Friday and up to 25 miles “‘at the most,” she said, each weekend day. Usually her weekly total varied between 80 and 100 miles. Oh, and “no days off!”

“And then I would try to have two 120-mile weeks,” she said, before any upcoming big races, which she could do either by adding runs before work or by adding extra miles to her route going home. “Any more than that and I couldn’t function. I’d really be tired for work and everything. So as long as I had that— psychologically that I had my 120-mile weeks—I was fine.” She added, “That’s pretty simplified, but that’s it!

“My husband was big on speed work,” she said, “and I always resisted because I always felt that the more miles I get, the stronger and the faster I could go. And I know he was right, but I would always seem to get injured if I did any of his speed workouts.”

It’s those injuries that are of particular interest to this writer and presumably to others as well. The AUA website seems to indicate she has been plagued with them, but she tells a slightly more uplifting story. First, “none of my injuries are from running,” she says. “None of my big ones, anyway, like my back and ACL.” Her “torn knee ligament” (ACL injury) was caused by her two dogs chasing each other in her yard “about 11 years ago” and crashing into her. But then at age 55 she underwent surgery and got the torn ligament repaired. Normally, she said, surgeons won’t operate on knees of people of that age. But in her case, her excellent physical conditioning changed their minds, and they operated. That gave her new lease on life number one.

Sue Ellen has also had back trouble, the same condition from birth that has plagued this writer. The condition is called spondylolisthesis, and it basically

means the misalignment and shifting forward of a lower back vertebra (L5), which causes lifelong wear and tear on the associated discs and can eventually pinch nerves or even sever the spinal cord. Most doctors—to say nothing of the patients themselves!—are reluctant to operate on that malady. But again, this time at age 62 and despite any medical reluctance, Sue Ellen underwent spinal fusion surgery, and she has been a new woman ever since. This gave her new lease on life number two, to which her recent return to the 24-hour event at Peanut Island— her first race in over eight years—bears witness. She now looks forward to other distance-for-time ultras in the future, most notably the newly revived ATY (Across the Years) year-end event generally held in Phoenix, Arizona. Without a doubt, Sue Ellen Trapp is back.

Bernd Heinrich, with a bunch of still-held records—in 2007

In the present day, there are quite a few academicians (PhDs, professors, scientists, and those in the medical and dental professions) who run ultramarathons, but it is also possible that Dr. Bernd Heinrich, biology professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, may have been the first.

Certainly, today in conversation with him, one is struck by how much he loves science and animals and natural things and how little he cares about (or even remembers) his ultrarunning. But back in the day, this prof ran—ultraamazingly! In fact, what he did was not so much run as fly. Maybe that’s how he got so interested in birds (he is considered an expert on ravens, for example) and bees (they were the subject of his doctoral dissertation). This writer, though, considers his anthropological theories about prehistoric man to be his best work, because that relates to ultrarunning.

His book Racing the Antelope (since retitled to Why We Run: A Natural History) contains the marvelous theory that before human beings had weapons or tools, they hunted by running—chasing after prey not by outsprinting animals but by outlasting them. From the get-go, Dr. Heinrich believes, man had better endurance than animals. Hominids were literally able to run them down.

In discussing this recently, he said, “Yes, or else we probably started out kind of scavenging, maybe racing to the kill—because we didn’t have the teeth and we would have had a hard time killing an elephant or an impala or whatever; so probably we let the lions and the leopards do the killing—but then we would go and probably chase them off with rocks. We know we were pretty good at throwing rocks and throwing sticks and throwing spears, so pretty soon we’d get em by hunting them ourselves.”

By the way, since the Internet has just about everything, readers can watch such hunting actually taking place. It seems there are still primitive tribes (after all these millennia) that hunt by running. Computer users can simply Google

Bernd Heinrich is shown running
the track at the University of Maine in
1977. He set several still-standing age
group records there.

“persistence hunting,” and anumber of videos will pop up onscreen. One is narrated by David Attenborough, a famous filmmaker of natural history, and is worthy of viewing.

Maybe Bernd Heinrich remembers running down antelope in his beloved Maine woods (where he constructed a cabin, built by himself from scratch, while training for his truly magnificent 1981 run in Chicago), but he has forgotten a lot about his running during those days. That is another good argument for the AUA’s Hall of Fame, which, by the way, Dr. Heinrich hadn’t even seen. A recent reader of Racing the Antelope had to point out to him how, and why, to log on there. But he did say that when he was inducted in 2007, someone sent him a printout, so naturally there was no longer any reason to take the time to log on, right?

While building his cabin in the woods (near Farmington, Maine), Bernd says, he trained every day for his now-famous masterful 100K run at age 41 at the ’81 AMIBAs. It was a complete everyday running and cross-training workout. Without any power tools whatsoever, he and his then-wife built a brand-new cabin totally by hand. He would swing an ax most of the day, conduct his research on bees, and in the evening go running—at a six-minute-per-mile pace or better!

This total full-body training is why, no doubt, when he ran the AMJA on October 4 that year, he set so many national and international records all at once. For example, his 50-mile split (5:10:13—right behind Barney Klecker, by the way) set a road world masters record that stood for years and remains to this day an American masters 50-mile record. Then his 100K finish in 6:38:21 set the same records all over again for that distance. They still stand, except for the world masters record 100K, and his American open 100K record wasn’t beaten by a younger man until 14 years later! Both of these marks are still current American age-group records as well. And so perhaps to assure everyone that Bernd Heinrich

Courtesy of Bernd Heinrich

was no flash in the pan, he returned to ultrarunning 20 years later at age 61 and established in Brunswick, Maine, a new and still-current American age-group record for 50 miles with a time of 6:39:55!

All these records are for road races. But he also still owns, well, too many absolute, masters, and age-group American track records to count. He said that one of these—his 100-mile masters record achieved in Canada (12:27:00.7) on an Ottawa track—happened in the presence of Stu Mittleman, who, while Bernd was lapping him, kept singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary!” to try to slow Bernd down.

Nowadays, Bernd says, he teaches only one class at the University of Vermont— a wintertime biology course—in which the entire class of 10 (“12 at the most’’) stays with him at his cabin in Maine.

“TI try to teach them some natural history,” he says, “because a lot of people are so lab oriented, they don’t get to see what’s out there in the wild. So I try to give them some exposure to what’s out there in the woods in the wintertime— how they survive in the cold.”

So one suggestion for future college kids in Dr. Heinrich’s class might be: bring running shoes to class!

Stu Mittleman, aka Forrest Gump—in 2008

All these AUA Hall of Fame members were asked how they found out they were enshrined in this cybertronic hallowed hall in the first place. All had varying responses, but perhaps no one (except maybe Barney Klecker) found out about it in a more distinctive way than did Stuart Mittleman. He got it on Facebook!

Mittleman related the story this way:

“When I was living in New York City, I ran for the Central Park Track Club, and there was another fellow in the club who had done some ultras and he sent me a Facebook message saying, ‘Congratulations!’ I said, ‘Oh, really?’”

Stu remembered, “It was December 31, 2008.”

He was asked if the messaging fellow was Allan Kirik.

“No, no. Allan wouldn’t notify me. Allan was his own star. It was a fellow named Roger Yergeau.”

Stu continued: “The irony was that I had been invited to New York to celebrate, I think, the 1981 Central Park Track Club’s victory at the London-to-Brighton event, and Allan Kirik was part of that group: Allan Kirik, Fritz Mueller, Brian Flanagan, Gunter Erich, and myself. And Allan would be there and that was kind of the first public recognition of that Allan victory .. . and the Hall of Fame. Allan got in the year after.”

Actually it would have had to have been either the 1979 or 1980 event that was being celebrated. Kirik won the race in ’79, while this particularly identified

“Fitness guru” Stu Mittleman giving a lecture
in 2009.

five-member CPTC team competed in ’80. Since this celebration would have taken place after Stu received his Facebook message from Roger (12/31/08) and since Allan hadn’t yet been inducted, it seems likely that this celebration would have been designed to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Kirik’s London-to-Brighton win on September 30, 1979. Thus, it must have been sometime between January | and year’s end of 2009 when the AUA inducts new Hall of Famers—in that year, Allan Kirik.

Stu continued, “And Roger again [a year later] Facebook messaged me, saying that isn’t it ironic that there were four males in the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame and two of them were New Yorkers from the Central Park Track Club!”

It was difficult to hear Stu at times because he is very involved as director of fitness with the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. He was talking on a cell phone, and a major professional tennis tournament (the BNP Paribas Open) was going on during the interview.

Nevertheless, and despite not receiving anything tangible from the AUA itself, Stu’s appreciation for his write-up on the Hall of Fame web page was the most emotional and heartfelt of all the inductees who were contacted.

“Trophies and material things come and go,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you. The thing that touched me the most was the piece that Dan [Brannen, AUA’s executive director] wrote .. . was to me a very special piece and what Ted Corbitt said about me. You know, you couldn’t have given me a monetary value or a trophy big enough that would have matched the article Dan wrote and what Ted said. That was more than enough honor, and it was a wonderful thing, and I appreciated it very much.”

Then he added, concerning his own life’s experience with ultrarunning, “All it is, is an intriguing thing. I don’t know what anybody else is saying about it, but for me it was a lot of passion and love. It was just an expression of who I was. I didn’t start running and long-distance running because I thought I was going to win races and set records. It was something I just couldn’t live without.”

Dan Brannen’s write-up for Stu, then, speaks for itself. And it recalls how Mittleman’s running must have indeed been something he “just couldn’t live without” because he ran every day—he says he still runs every day, sometimes

= a °

upward of three hours a day!—so much so that he became his own star at 100-mile, multiday, six-day, 1,000-mile, and even longer races. The AUA and Stu himself give evidence that he ran across the entire United States twice, in 2000 and 2009! Also, on the AUA’s Stats & Records web page, Stu Mittleman is credited with having run the second-fastest 1,000-mile race in modern history—right behind Yiannis Kouros, who is right behind the much slower current world record holder, Georgs Jermolajevs. The apparent problem, according to official record keepers, is that neither Kouros’s nor Mittleman’s courses have been validated. So apparently, that must also mean Ted Corbitt never measured them.

In the movie Forrest Gump, the title character’s course wasn’t measured, either. But never mind that. Gump ran across the country twice—just like Stuart Mittleman!

Allan Kirik, a gem despite all the glitches—in 2009

The affinity between New Yorkers Ted Corbitt and Allan Kirik was undeniable and immediate. Kirik said that when he ran his first marathon, Corbitt was there, and the gravitational pull was unmistakable.

“T ran my first marathon in 1973,” he reported. “It was the old Earth Day Marathon out on Long Island. That’s when I first met Ted Corbitt and I was like, ‘Oh, my God! That’s Ted Corbitt over there!’ And Ted was, I’d say, maybe 50, and he was running this race with all these electronic gadgets attached to him— like electrodes to measure his heartbeat, and this and that—and I remember this so vividly!”

Over the years since then, throughout Kirik’s self-admitted rather short ultrarunning career and practically until the day he died, Ted Corbitt was Allan’s mentor and coach, and one of his dearest friends. As previously noted, Ted wrote about Allan, sponsored and coached him, and was one of the biggest reasons why Allan achieved what is perhaps his greatest achievement: He won the London-to-Brighton race in England in 1979 (running 55 miles, 460 yards in 5:32:37 which, as he wrote himself, was “a 6:02-per-mile pace”). In fact, Allan was the first American to do so, and Sandra Kiddy was the second. So far, evidence hasn’t been found that any other Americans have won London-to-Brighton since.

Allan reported that it was Ted who held fund-raisers with the NYRRC to help get Kirik to England, since as Kirik now says of himself, at the time he “had a lousy job and couldn’t afford it.” Luckily, with Ted’s sponsorship and friend Pete Mathieu’s TWA airline tickets for him and his wife at the time, Kirik was able to go. In ’79 Allan did his coach proud and won the race, something that Ted himself couldn’t quite ever do (though he tried five times, finishing second three times).

There is more to the story. Allan said that following his London victory in 1979, he was invited to go to South Africa and run the world-famous Comrades

Allan Kirik,
having just won
England’s Londonto-Brighton ultramarathon in 1979
(the first American
to do so), receives
congratulations
from the official
timekeeper (center)
and Lord Mayor of
Brighton Dennis
Hobden.

= ‘6 ze g €

Marathon (it’s actually an ultra of around 56 miles). “But I just couldn’t do it,” he said. Why? Because of the apartheid government of South Africa at the time, which did not allow black athletes to run in its most famous race.

“Tt would have been a total slap in the face to Ted Corbitt,” he said. “And I just couldn’t do that to a man who had been so good to me.”

Allan Kirik is nothing if not a complete raconteur. He has a thousand stories, hundreds of “special” circumstances that surrounded his racing, and not a few examples of just plain bad luck. Perhaps the bad luck might be summarized as follows:

° He received his draft notice on Christmas Eve in 1965.

¢ Instead of being drafted into the Army, he was, as he said, “abducted” into the Marine Corps.

¢ He served in Vietnam as a helicopter door gunner.

¢ He returned to New York, started running, won races, and had records taken away from him due to circumstances beyond his control (courses were short, not certified, poorly marked, he was directed the wrong way, etc.).

¢ The Runner magazine paid him $500 to write the story of his Londonto-Brighton victory, he used the money to buy jewelry for his wife at the time, and she divorced him.

* His last ultra—the AMJA 50-miler in Chicago in 1983—ended with his collapse (and DNF plus ambulance ride) at mile 47 due to heat stroke during that most unusual October day’s 94-degree heat.

The latest bad luck was delivered by the AUA itself, as follows: Pending review, Kirik’s write-up on the AUA Hall of Fame web page states that his first ultra (the 1977 AAU National Championship 50K in a time of 3:02:56) was an almost-record because Fritz Mueller beat him; but then Mueller’s citizenship was later challenged and his record rescinded, so Kirik was finally given the win because apparently Fritz was disqualified. None of which, Allan says, is true.

“He [Fritz] wasn’t even there!” Kirik exclaimed. He regretted how “they [the AUA] never got to speak to me, and they had one of my poor teammates having beaten me in my first ultramarathon that I ran, and he wasn’t even in the race—not any competition at all from Fritz Mueller, who was my friend and teammate.”

When contacted via e-mail about this, AUA Executive Director Dan Brannen replied: “Well, that’s news to me. My first reaction would be that it’s possible that any of the ultra national championship info prior to 1980 could be faulty, because the annals and archives from those years are so sparse. I did research it and that’s the info I found. I’ll look further into it and let you know what I find.”

In a subsequent e-mail exchange, Brannen said he would “investigate why my otherwise reliable sources may have made an error here, and I’ll do that eventually, and make any changes to the Hall of Fame Kirik write-up that may be necessary. The objective evidence has to be out there, and I’ll track it down.”

As of press time, however, the existing write-up hasn’t been changed.

One last story worthy of mention (they are all worthy, but space just doesn’t permit) that Allan Kirik likes to tell concerns his career work as a sales representative for Hot Sox, manufacturers of fashionable legwear and other products. He notes that his territory included most of New England, which included Portland, Maine, where there had been a retail business called Benoit’s Department Store. The owner, Andre, was concerned about his daughter who had broken her leg. Her father wanted her to take up skiing and abandon running after her leg was healed. He asked his Hot Sox sales rep for an opinion and advice, and Allan responded immediately that the daughter should abandon skiing and go back to running.

“And she obviously did,” says Allan. Because this was back in the late ’70s or early ’80s, the daughter’s name was Joan, and she became the very first women’s Olympic Marathon champion at the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984.

Asked what he thought of his AUA Hall of Fame write-up, Allan responded appreciatively and enthusiastically, “I was bowled over by it! I was, like, wow! Isn’t this great? This was so nice to be able to see while you’re still alive to appreciate it!”

Later he revealed a final kicker: He has been happily remarried for many years now to Judi, who, he says, sometimes unwittingly confuses her language. Once in conversation with her friends, in describing her husband, she meant to say, “He’s superhuman.”

“Instead,” says Allan, “what came out of her mouth was: ‘he’s subhuman!’”

Barney Klecker, pretty much his first ultra is pretty much a world record—in 2010

Speaking of superhuman, quite a bit has already been written about Minnesota’s most famous native son (never mind Hubert H. Humphrey or Jesse “The Body” Ventura) and especially his most famous 50-mile record-setting run along Chicago’s Lakefront during the 1980 AMJA Ultramarathons. [See two earlier issues of Marathon & Beyond: March/April 2001 and May/June 2010.]

Barney Klecker’s absolutely incredible still-current American road record for 50 miles (4:51:25) has stood longer than Bruce Fordyce’s 50-mile world record (4:50:51). The former was set in 1980, the latter in 1984, and both are still standing!

The AUA Hall of Fame write-up lauds Barney’s record-setting 50-mile ultra all the more because, as it states, that ultra “was his first one.” And it gushingly continues, “Never before or since has an American come out of the proverbial nowhere to rock the global ultra scene as Barney Klecker did in his inaugural ultra. So spectacular was it that it probably would have gained him induction into this Hall of Fame if he had never run another ultra after it.”

Barney was asked if this is true, if indeed that 1980 event was his first-ever ultra.

“T believe so,” he said. “Before that I had only run marathons and a couple of very long three-day snowshoe races (86 miles over three days).”

Imagine lacing up the shoes to run a superdistance race for the first time ever and finishing it in world-record time. So Dan Brannen and the AUA are spot on with this accolade.

Interestingly enough, according to the AUA’s own Stats & Records web page, Barney and Janis Klecker both hold other still-current open American records as well: Barney for 50K on the track (2:52:47.5) in Tucson, 1981, and Janis for 50K on the road (3:13:51) in Tallahassee, 1983. Brannen and the AUA might be spot on with their data, but they could use a little help with their spelling: Stats & Records shows Barney’s wife as “Janice Klecker.”

Barney Klecker is shown running an ultra early
in his career.

UltraRunning magazine

Barney commented via e-mail:

“Regarding the day that JANIS (not Janice) set the women’s world record in the 50K in Tallahassee, Florida; I too was on world-record pace through 28 miles before fading. Final time about 2:50-ish. In the course itself, which was a 2.5-mile loop, there was one 180-degree turn (each lap) and five 90-degree turns (each lap). It was 75 degrees with about 95 percent humidity (not ideal). We were both going for world records, because that’s what you do when you are on the top of your game! That’s a nice feeling to have . . . knowing a world best could come today with a little help from above and a great effort. God, however, likes to play jokes and see what his people can and will do if he chooses to change the playing field a little.”

When the spelling error on Janis’s first name was pointed out to Brannen, he promised to correct it. By press time, however, he apparently hadn’t yet gotten around to it. It is sti// misspelled on the stats page!

Otherwise, Barney said he was quite pleased with his write-up for the Hall of Fame, although, interestingly enough, he didn’t learn about his induction until he got a congratulatory e-mail from none other than Bruce Fordyce in South Africa telling him about it! Earlier, Dan Brannen informed that AUA’s policy is not to directly notify, contact, mail certificates to, or ship trophies to its newly enshrined inductees.

“As you can see,” Brannen wrote in an e-mail, “in some cases it might be impossible.” (Sandra Kiddy’s seeming disappearance would be an example.) He continued: “As knowledge spreads of the existence of the Hall of Fame, people will know where and how and when to find it each year. Also, each year the Hall of Fame inductee is highlighted in a press release on the Running USA Wire Service, which is disseminated broadly to media outlets throughout the country.”

Perhaps the Kleckers never got the wire.

But Barney is grateful and does appreciate being inducted. He also has suggestions: “I think it’s a great honor,” he e-mailed, “but I think the organization should expand to a ‘WORLD’ Hall of Fame, as it is leaving out many top world athletes! Place the organizational headquarters wherever someone puts up amounts of money that could maintain the headquarters and promote the sport worldwide. South Africa comes to mind!”

The AUA’s Hall of Fame write-up also states that 100K was the longest distance Klecker ever attempted, but Barney amends this by stating: “That’s actually not totally correct. I started Western States one year (might have been 1984—not sure). I was told it was impossible to get lost (my biggest concern). I did tell the organizers that, should I get lost, I would be extremely upset, as I wanted to give Jim King a run because he totally dominated the race to that point. I got lost at the top of the first climb! I ran for over 2 hours back and forth on trails and roads before I got back on the course at 32 miles (approximately). At that time I was in

72nd place (I was behind Jim King at the 5-mile marker). I was lost and was told that I was going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. By the time I righted myself, the race was over (as far as racing Jim was concerned) and I believe I would have been disqualified, as I was not on the course for almost two hours. My worst nightmare confirmed! As I told the race organizers, when a runner—especially one of the front-runners—gets lost, we have a race organization problem! That should never happen!”

Reminded now of 100Ks in general, Barney was asked what he remembers about the Edmund Fitzgerald ultramarathons, especially, for example, when he and Janis raced against Sandy and Fred Kiddy. He wrote back as follows:

“Ed Fitz . . . yes, I went there in 1983 (I believe) with the intent on breaking the 6-hour mark for the 100K. I figured I had to go through the 50-mile marker at just under 4:50 to have a great shot. On the day of the race, we had 25-milean-hour head winds! Nevertheless, I ran as planned and hit The Wall (on pace) at about 43 miles. I then had some smoked fish and drank Coke and finished the race in a slow 7-something—don’t remember the time. (I did win the race, however.) The next year was the year I think I dropped, as I believe I got hypothermic at 40 [miles].”

His account differs only slightly from U/traRunning magazine’s report of what happened, mentioned earlier, which both this writer and Sandy Kiddy thought would have really been something had only Barney not dropped but finished the 100K, beating all the men while Sandy beat all the women and while both their spouses beat all their respective sexes in the accompanying SOK race.

Such is life in the big world of ultras.

But there is one thing—for sure!—that Barney takes first place for among all the AUA Hall of Famers, and that is children. He and Janis are the proud parents of six soon-to-be all-comers in athletics and the business of setting new records. No other current hall inductee comes close in the childrearing department.

As the father of the next level of Klecker world-class runners writes, “Dad is slowly preparing (but more importantly planting seeds) and motivating the next generation of runners, using proven methods that made Mom a world-class runner and Olympian 20 years ago!”

Now who could possibly argue with that?

Criteria and qualifications: How to become enshrined—in 2011 and beyond

According to the AUA website, “To be considered for the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, candidates must be either retired from serious competition for 10

years, or have reached the age of 60.” This, of course, rules out quite a few wizened old stalwarts who are still out there running ultras, and some of these are certainly

<4 The Kleckers (with genetic gifts well embodied) on vacation in 2011 in Hawaii. Shown left to right are James (10), Mary (18), Janis, Barney, Sarah (16), John (18), Elizabeth “Bit” (13), and Joe (15). Mary and John are twins.

competitive—at least within their age groups, if nothing else. Such a candidate might easily be the earlier quoted Ray Krolewicz. Ray’s current legitimate claim to fame is having outright won more ultramarathons (certainly in America) than any other American ultrarunner.

However, opportunities for nominating runners like Krolewicz aren’t commonly accessible. The process at the moment lies only within the purview of the AUA itself. Its executive director explained it this way: “The Ultra Hall of Fame does not currently have a nomination process. AUA may get to the point of needing one, but so far it hasn’t been necessary because the Hall is still relatively early in its history, and the ‘giants’ of the sport’s history are well known to anyone who has studied it. Up until this point,” Brannen e-mailed, “it’s safe to say all of the inductees are no-brainers.”

He further explained: “The only potential issues of debate might have been the order in which they were inducted. The inductees are selected based on what we feel are obvious performance or ‘contribution to the sport’ standards. The criteria are based on those established many decades ago by Track & Field News Magazine for its annual global rankings. They include, in descending order: world records, world championship titles, national records, national championship titles, win/loss record, versatility, longevity, consistency, and major nonchampionship ultra-event victories.”

According to Brannen’s e-mail, “The list of potential inductees (you could loosely call this a list of ‘nominees’) is maintained and updated by myself, just selected from my own knowledge of the history of the sport (I’m generally regarded as one of the sport’s most knowledgeable historians), supplemented by ongoing historical research and by consultation with a small group of acknowledged expert observers. (Over the years, these have included Nick Marshall, Andy Milroy, Ed Dodd, Rich Innamorato, Trishul Cherns, and Kevin Setnes, among others.) In

cases where there may be a very close decision between someone who excelled in the sport at a high level in the 1990s and someone who excelled at about the same level in the 1980s, we will defer to the older performances. And the person who excelled in the 90s would then be on tap for primary consideration for the following year. Our philosophy is that the Hall of Fame serves secondarily as a kind of ongoing history lesson.”

The long and the short—or perhaps the ultradistance and the fast—of all this is that the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, if not the AUA itself, is still in its infancy. In fact, adult running (beyond interscholastic and Olympic-type competition) for either amateur or professional athletes is still in its relative infancy.

running right at 1970, the year that the New York City Marathon and a very few others were created. The then-three-oldest races in the country—Boston, Dipsea, and Bay to Breakers—had been started for men only. Women weren’t officially allowed to enter the Boston Marathon until 1972, and modern-era ultramarathons might not have begun at all had not Ted Corbitt invented them—certainly the first 30-miler in New York City in 1958. Because this history is so relatively recent, it seems the future is wide open and that the best years for running and ultrarunning are yet to come.

Who knows? Maybe the sport of ultrarunning will grow and prosper so much in the future that there truly will be arenas built that sell popcorn, peanuts, and Cracker Jack, charge admission, and pay fees to an overriding agency that governs all professional participation—and then at long last an Ultrarunning Hall of Fame can really be built (in Cleveland?) along the banks of the “burning river.” In the meantime, amateur ultrarunners are presently able to enter a 100-mile race that goes by that very name, and someone who wins that race 10 or 20 years in a row, for example, should probably hire a sculptor to carve his or her bust just to be ready. oa