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Any baseball fans out there will know of a baseball player called Lou Gehrig whose life was tragically cut short by als or as it is commonly called Lou Gehrig disease. What has this to do with ultra marathon running I hear you ask well that will become apparent shortly. The story I would like to tell is about two utter mad men one from the United States the other from The United Kingdom. The American was a fantastic athlete called Marvin Skagerberg the Englishman was called Malcolm Campbell.

The year was 1985 and a challenge was issued to both men just for a laugh why not run across America in easy stages of forty miles or so a day for three months. Both men being game for a laugh or as I suspect just ever so slightly crazy agreed. Now we come to the point of the race the two runners would be running for and on behalf of the charity that that was set up to find a cure for the fatal disease that robbed baseball of one of its brightest stars. The Lou Gehrig Race for life was on, only three thousand five hundred and fifty nine miles to go.

Both of our athletes where experienced ultra marathon runners having run many races in excess of one hundred miles in fact Malcolm had already completed several six day races where distances of five hundred miles were achieved. Malcolm had never beaten Marvin in competition before so this time he was determined to do so. His training regime which had already been formidable went on to new lengths.

During the race not only did the two men run there hearts out they attended dinners,fund raising events all for the charity. How they where able to do this knowing the next day they had another forty miles to run is beyond me. The physical and mental toughness of both of our athletes is nothing less than miraculous.

As expected Marvin had the lead on accumulative time it looked like Malcolm was destined to come second but with just a few days to go Marvin took a wrong turn on his way to Pittsburgh Malcolm swears he never had anything to do with the sign for Pittsburg being turned the wrong way. By the time Marvin had realised and corrected his mistake he was two hours behind Malcolm. This was the point Malcolm thought he had a realistic chance of winning the race with only twelve more stages to go and feeling strong he thought I can do it.

The race finished on July 10th 1985 in New York City,after three thousand five hundred and fifty nine miles over one million dollars raised for the charity Marvin who had run his heart out beat Malcolm by sixteen minutes. Just sixteen minutes separated our two great athletes after running all that way,what a remarkable achievement.

As a footnote Malcolm also completed after this race a further six day race and alongside Marvin a one thousand mile race this time in the United Kingdom the honors this time went to Malcolm fully deserved. The Guiness book of world records recorded that Malcolm in the year 1985 had run five thousand five hundred and two competitive miles.

I can remember being very proud of the achievements of my uncle who went on to run in many other ultra marathons became president of the International Association of Ultrarunners a post which he held until his retirement at the age of seventy in 2004

Well run Malcolm and Marvin

Learn more about this author, Mark s stephens.
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