A World Gone Mad for Marathons: (as well as 5Ks, 10Ks, Ultras, trails, tris, cycling.....)

By Sam Korsmoe and Rich Holmes

A World Gone Mad for Marathons is a book about the incredible growth of organized marathons around the world as well as the growth of many other sporting events (i.e. ultras, trail races, triathlons, IRONMANs, duathlons, cycling races, 10Ks, and 5Ks).  This growth is occurring irrespective of gender, age, body shape or size

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sam Korsmoe
• Release date: Jul 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781646334742

Book preview

A World Gone Mad for Marathons

Early Reviews

’A World Gone Mad for Marathons’ is a must read for everyone even vaguely interested in running. To the seasoned runner or athlete, this book is a treasure trove of anecdotes, stories, and allusions to everything the runner has obsessed about his or her whole life. For the non-runner, this is probably the best way to understand that very obsession.

David Summerfield – Race Director

Bridger Ridge Run (1994-2019)

Stopped counting marathons completed at 80.

P.R. at Boston in 1985 (2:42:48)

Through bios of runners with extreme achievements, Sam paints a picture of a dramatic, world that all (with the right drive and much stamina) can enter and participate in. I was pleased by the variety of the marathoners described, which adds to the feeling that anyone can do it. An energetic, enthusiastic tone helps drive the book along.

Lois Berkowitz – President, Newsletter Editor

50 States Marathon Club

Newsletter Editor, Toledo Roadrunners Club Footprints

Completed 441 marathons and Ultras

Completed all 50 states four times (5 states left for 5th time)

The book is written in a style that keeps the reader hanging on for more as he jumps from one subject to the next and back again. By the end, all the strands of thoughts and observations, facts, compelling profiles of runners, and inspirational stories have been woven into a read that you won’t put down….. If you are searching for a way to turn the corner" in your life, the inspirational stories and runners profiles recounted in this book may be the reasons you challenge yourself to consider marathoning.

Robert Bishton (a.k.a. Cowboy Jeff) – Founding Member

International Marathon Globetrotters Club

Seven-continent finisher and marathons in 50 countries

Completed over 420 marathons and ultras

Completed all 50 states six times

It was interesting to read the personal experiences of marathoners. The connections between the author’s marathon experience and the other marathoners’ experiences kept the pace moving. It was fun to read the adventures of chronic marathoners that I am friends with. It makes me feel more normal."

Paula Boone – Co-Founder of the 50 States Marathon Club

Completed 350 marathons

Completed all 50 states four times

The stories of the ten profiled runners demonstrate that not all heroes wear capes. In fact, they come in all shapes, sizes, gender and age. They are survivors and fighters and fearless. I admired them greatly. Community, a prime focus of the book, is apparent.

Winnie Lok – Atlanta Track Club

Manager of Events

To be honest, I prefer running, rather than reading about it. But if you set yourself to reading a book about it, you could do a lot worse than Sam Korsmoe’s ‘A World Gone Mad for Marathons’ I had not expected that you could write so much about running, but he managed to keep me spellbound throughout the book with very recognizable running stories and personalities.

Sytze Jarigsma - Founder

Danang Hash House Harriers

An easy, short read that makes you think about why you personally run/race, rather than more advice on how to improve your running performance.

Kate Hill - Partner

Run China Tours

Highly Ranked Ultra Trail Runner

Sam Korsmoe brings global marathon madness to life. You’ll hear the crack of the starting gun and feel your pulse quicken as you go behind-the-scenes and onto the marathon courses fueling the boom. Lace up because this is a fast and fun course!

Greg Nance - GregRunsFar

Fastest Known Time record-holder for runs across Shanghai, LA, and Chicago. 

Sam Korsmoe

Sam Korsmoe is a Native Montanan. He is an educator, race director, entrepreneur, and writer who has lived and worked abroad for most of his adult life. He spent two and one-half years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, four years in Taiwan as an English teacher and writer, four years in Shanghai as a teacher and education consultant, and 12 years in Vietnam as a business journalist and entrepreneur. He has written extensively on business, education, culture, and sports for several publications. He has traveled to nearly every country in Asia and can speak Vietnamese, Chavacano, and some Mandarin Chinese. In 2006, he published Saigon Stories an oral history of five Vietnamese families.

A World Gone Mad for Marathons has its roots in a marathon that Sam launched in 2008 on top of the Gravelly Range Mountains in Southwest Montana. At the time, it was the highest road marathon in the world. The world apparently noticed so race directors in Colorado and Pakistan launched higher road marathons just a few years ago. He later added several new races to form the Greater Yellowstone Adventure Series which will be in its 12th year in 2019. He intends to export a core feature of the series – the Trifecta which is a combination of a duathlon, triathlon, and marathon – abroad. There are races planned for Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Europe as well as other American destinations over the next few years.

A World Gone Mad

for Marathons

by

Sam Korsmoe

Foreword by Rich Holmes, Lieutenant Colonel US Army (retired)

Running credentials include

World Rank: 1st – Five times marathon completions in all 13 provinces and territories of Canada

World Rank: 2nd – Five times marathon completions on all seven continents of the world

World Rank: 3rd – Completed at least one marathon in 124 countries

Founder, Marathon Globetrotters

Marathon Maniacs Hall of Fame 2014

Published by Ingram Sparks

Copyright © Sam Korsmoe 2019

All rights reserved.

Author: Sam Korsmoe

ISBN: 978-1-64633-474-2

Essays and themes that appear in this book have been previously published in the Greater Yellowstone Adventure Series (GYAS) newsletter. The GYAS is a multi-race series based in the mountains of Southwest Montana and is next door to Yellowstone National Park.

Book orders and reviews are available online at www.themadisonmarathon.com

This book is available in traditional print, ebook and audio book formats.

Contact

11 Fan Mountain Court

PO Box 1110

Ennis, MT 59729 USA

Email: [e-mail]

Community High Fives

This book project has been, appropriately so, a marathon. Like with any marathon, there were many people who helped make it happen.

I am very grateful to the 10 wonderful souls who agreed to share their stories of running, athletic pursuits, and challenges in their life. In the runner profiles, they each told me their ‘why’ and I hope I captured the imagination and beauty of their stories and their lives. Thank you for letting me in.

I am thankful for the community of runners of the Greater Yellowstone Adventure Series. They have always been along for the ride. The Town of Ennis has also played a major role. Willies Distillery, the Gravel Bar, and My Home in Montana as well as many other businesses and organizations have always stepped up for the races to show the world what a beautiful community we have along the Madison River in Southwest Montana.

I have a special place in my heart for Rich Holmes for writing the Foreword for this book. Rich has run the Madison Marathon and the Big Sky marathon a few times and befriended my parents. I am privileged that he took the time to write the Foreword amid his every busy chronic marathoner schedule. There’s another spot in my heart for Pat Nixon, a retired English teacher who lives in Washington, who reached out early on in the writing process to ask to be an editor, reviewer, and confidant as this book took shape. She made it a better book. Thanks, too, to all the reviewers who agreed to read the manuscript and provide their input prior to its publication. Nick Gevock and Eunice Habib provided excellent feedback.

In life as in marathons, the journey is made sweeter by family. I have two incredibly generous parents who consistently volunteer at GYAS races and numerous other community events. I also have a beautiful and gifted son who helped to produce this book (print, ebook, and audio book). He makes me burst with pride every day. He is my ‘why.’

To Colter

You are my PR in this marathon called life.

Contents

Decide

One-Armed Pullup – A Runner’s Profile: Eduardo Garcia

Go

The Gauntlet – A Runner’s Profile: Larry Macon

Tough

Girls Rule – A Runner’s Profile: Lynda Andros Clay

Why

Running Towards Something – A Runner’s Profile: Nikki Kimball

DNA

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy……. – A Runner’s Profile: Jon Goodman

Walls

Epiphany – A Runner’s Profile: Jenny Whitaker

Pace

The Cure – A Runner’s Profile: Richard Burrage

Community

A Cappella Globetrotter – A Runner’s Profile: Jim Diego

Finish

The Trailblazer – One Step At A Time – A Runner’s Profile: Bill Whipp

Next

One Million Runners – A Runner’s Profile: Tu Hoang

A Foreword by Rich Holmes

Rich Holmes on the Madison Marathon route in 2010

A World Gone Mad for Marathons

It seems that another runner produces a book on his or her running almost continually – this is not such a book! Although it is true that Sam runs a marathon as part of his preparation to write this well, this is a book about people and events and good things, and how the value of the sport has been recognized and explodes across the globe.

When Sam asked me to write this foreword, I was more than willing (because he is a great, caring, enthusiastic, philanthropic soul) but nonplussed – there are a gazillion runners out there, and most have a lot more talent and aptitude for the sport than do I. In fact, in each of the book’s chapters, a runner is profiled who generally has experienced more profound and emotional running experiences than have I. Perhaps I can help bridge the gap between those readers who excel and win numerous athletic awards, and those like me who train continually in hopes of achieving mediocrity!

I met Sam and his parents almost a decade ago, and my life has been richer since. I had recently finished my second try at the Bataan Memorial Death March (see Chapter 3), priding myself as a retired Army colonel in his 60s able to finish as a heavy (carrying a ruck backpack) when I’d felt humiliated years earlier when I’d run the same race as a light (normal running attire) while being surrounded by hundreds of fellow troops of both sexes wearing their full gear. But after meeting Sam’s mother, Elena, who let me read the diary kept by her cousin during the actual death march in the Philippines (this was a capital crime if he had been discovered), my feeble efforts were put in place in comparison to the ordeals of Pepe and Juan Baldonado (described fully in Chapter 3). And so, I met Sam’s father (Sam senior) and Elena and learned where their son got his gusto for life, hard work, and his caring and uncomplaining nature.

Which is not to say that he is meek – that is not part of living in Montana! Sam attacks his subject matter, always intertwining running, its history, his awareness of the drivers of the sport and its boom, world geography, and human nature, shown through runner profiles and news stories. His homespun Montana prose, sprinkled with salty humor and wry outlook, captures the hardiness of that state and then transfers it into such diverse settings as the Philippines, China, and Vietnam. His creation of the highest road marathon, then growing it into both a double-marathon event and as part of a bigger series that now spans the Yellowstone area (and perhaps moves next to the world), gives him the perspective of the seasoned race director who has seen the highs and lows of many races, many runners, and the battle between a hard course and the determined conquerors of it.

The first time I ran the Madison Marathon, I clearly recall cresting a hill and seeing a vista spread into the distance – alpine flowers blooming nearest me and then range after range of mountains to the horizon, each being bluer than the one before it. (I could not help it, and I know it dates me, but it was so like the opening scene of the movie The Sound of Music that I literally broke into the opening song, although I was not of the caliber that Julie Andrews sang it.) Sam has shared this race, and all that came from it after a dozen years of runners, and shares it with you in this book. More than that, he features very memorable runners who will add to the richness of your experience and your running.

Throughout this book, Sam returns to an overarching theme of how runners can be incredibly diverse, and yet also so very much alike in so many ways. This makes it a challenge to cast each of the 10 chapters in a way that is specific and precise, and yet blossoms to fit a much wider audience than the persons identified in each chapter. While I’m not a fan of self-description or promotion, perhaps I can illustrate by noting how each chapter intersects with my own life and experience:

Chapter One – Decide

The decision to become a runner, or even a marathoner, can arise from a thousand causes. For me, it was being the oldest and slowest soldier in my 200-man basic training company, in my 250-man officer candidate school company three years later, and then being dropped from Airborne school after repeatedly falling out of the runs in formation. I began running on my own daily, the following week after that humiliation, and have continued for 41 years. (Later, I went back to the school and proudly became an Airborne soldier.)

Chapter Two – Go

Most of this chapter is about starting a race, but I actually find it harder to start a training run. (I still train daily, and have averaged about 10 miles per day for the last decade.) At the race, there is the community of fellow runners (see Chapter 8), a giant adrenaline spike (from fear, at least while one is new to the sport), and impatience. But on a cold, windy, wet, dark morning when there is no one to know or care whether I get out the front door. . . that is when starting is hardest. But I’ve always found that once fully clothed, equipped, and the first running step has occurred, all that resistance dissipates and it is easier to run than to quit and go back inside!

Chapter Three – Tough

This is as true as it gets, and Sam sums it up with Tough is Always Relative! Addicted runners seek out the toughest races they can handle (or maybe can’t), even though there is enormous variation among us on what we can do. For me, with virtually no athletic talent or speed, tough means hard conditions, hard terrain, and long hours. It is the toughest races that create the most pride or sense of accomplishment – for me, that includes the Bataan Memorial with its weighted pack and deep sand at altitude, but also the Inca Trail in Peru, Sunrise-to-Sunset in Mongolia, and an Iowa blizzard where only 2 of our 175 starters were able to finish! But those are tough for me – I know runners and multi-sport athletes who do things that I cannot remotely fathom, and I think a novice facing their first marathon is probably taking on something as tough for them as anything I’ve ever done is for me.

Chapter Four – Why

Why do people run, especially marathons? Sam details in this chapter how Nikki Kimball, the profiled runner for this chapter, can use endurance running to escape mental anguish, and that is certainly one of its benefits for me – a really hard race is marvelous at creating distance between me and whatever I was worrying over. But my personal reason for lifetime running is my children. The males of my family are short-lived, dying usually of heart or circulatory issues in their 40s or 50s, and I have always viewed endurance running as a way to condition my body to live long, and have been rewarded by watching my daughters grow up, marry, have grandchildren for me, and let the music play on!

Chapter Five – DNA

Or, as I would word it, Genes! We share an enormous percentage of our DNA with chimps and even more so with Neanderthals, but we are close to carbon copies of each other, which means we link up to our peers in what is probably our oldest historical pastime, running. Clearly everyone has limits, including our species’ collective limit on speed, but we all play the cards we were dealt. I often say that I don’t have an athletic gene in my body (and this is demonstrated by my wife, the phys ed major, demolishing me in running and most every other sport), but apparently I got extra DNA for obstinacy, which is helpful for endurance running. But everyone out there, ahead of me or behind me, is also doing the best he/she can with their DNA!

Chapter Six – Walls

This chapter is metaphorical – it is both about the walls runners may know well, and also about walls that constrain people and behaviors. Certainly I’ve not dealt with any constraint as severe as Jenny Whitaker, the profiled runner for this chapter, does when she deals with cancer in this chapter. On a much lesser scale, when I would hit a wall in a marathon, usually between the 21st and 24th mile, it signaled to me that I had screwed up in one or more of hydration, salt intake, calories, or burn rate. Now that I am so much slower, my burn rate is never high enough to exhaust my glycogen so I am free from hitting the runners’ wall!

Chapter Seven – Pace

Sam emphasizes pace as a way to achieve time goals, which it certainly is. Thirty years ago when PRs (personal records) for me were still possible, I would watch the time for every mile for that reason. Now, pace is a method I can use to distract me in a race – being a math nerd, I do all kinds of calculations (no Garmin for me!) on how fast I have averaged, how fast I need to average for the remainder, and many more esoteric numbers so that a new mile marker appears before I’ve finished my arithmetic with the last one! But also as an aging mega-marathoner, pace is about how far into the running year I am and how many races I have accomplished since my goals evolved over time from PRs into other accomplishments. (See Chapter 10, Next.)

Chapter Eight – Community

Runners share a community (or multiple communities), and Sam describes several of the major ones in this chapter. I’ve always viewed my life as overlapping spheres, where close friends and family might occupy one or more of those spheres with me (like family, Army, academia, healthcare operations [my field], political party, etc.) But running is immensely social, and runners have their own overlapping spheres according to which niches of the sport they choose. Many of my friends are in only one of my spheres but I still see them often at races that match that sphere – these include US marathon road-racing (the Marathon Maniacs and 50 States are described in the chapter), but also trail-racing, ultra-marathoning, mega-marathoning (high counts that begin at 100 marathons), continent collecting, Canadian province-collecting, country-collecting (I trail the world leader by more than 50 countries!), and island-collecting, where marathons are run in each sphere according to its rules. And there are different dynamics in each sphere – competitiveness, social support, sharing advice and supplies and medications, and even laid back mentalities in many trail venues.

Chapter Nine – Finish

This chapter struggles with the runner to the finish of that sought for race! While that aspect is never completely gone for any runner – even my fastest and most prolific friends still push to exhaustion at the finish – with many finishes completed, it loses some of its luster. For me, there is almost a predictable mindset that occurs at the finish of a race: (a) OK, done, I can rest! (b) Now I’ve done xxx of the darn Y category (c) pause. . .then, amnesia removes the most painful parts of the race that is now maybe 60 minutes after completion and I don’t think about that part again and then…. (d) OK, what is next! (See Chapter 10).

Chapter 10 –