Excerpt of Chapter 15, The Misfits, from In Search of Al Howie by Jared Beasley. Al Howie was one of the world’s first ultrarunners, taking on insane thousand-mile runs in split shorts and tank tops, fueled by beer and his own personal demons.
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
—Rob Stiltanen
Much is made of the Tarahumara of the Copper Canyon of Mexico, and rightfully so. They are some of the greatest runners in the world and are perhaps distant relatives of the multiday runner. They dominate in races that are hilly, demanding, and generally stretch from 100 to 200 miles long.
Japan’s Marathon Monks
The marathon monks of Mount Hiei, Japan, have several long-distance endurance tests that are unmatched in the world. The greatest of the monks’ so-called “marathons” is the Kaihogyo, a 1,000-day meditation. This is done on a seven-year plan, the last year of which the candidate has to do 53 miles a day for 100 days in a row. This is on the same course each day, which includes treacherously steep, mountainous terrain in and around 250 sacred Tendai Buddhist shrines.
Like the Tarahumara, the monks wear sandals, which are called “waregi.” They are simple, disposable, and very similar in style to the huaraches that the Tarahumara use. They are aliens in their own land, as they do something no other Japanese do: wear shoes in the house. They leave their abode before daylight, wearing their running sandals. According to one marathon monk, this is because the monks do not intend to come home. They put on their shoes the same way dead bodies are adorned with shoes awaiting visitation in homes, and they also wear white, the color of death and purity in Japan. With them, they carry a walking stick and a small blade to kill themselves with if they fail to accomplish their goals. The course they travel is littered with unmarked graves where past candidates have fallen. They are considered some of the greatest endurance athletes in the world. Only 46 have accomplished the task in the last 150 years. Ones who have completed the Kaihogyo have seen the dead arise, heard the sound of ashes as they fall, and been able to communicate with the animals, plants, and great trees of the forest.
The Leatherman
In Westchester County, New York, and parts of Connecticut, there is a legend as mysterious as Bigfoot, but as real as tax debt: the Leatherman. The Leatherman was a regional legend, a vagabond who toured a regular circuit, avoiding civilized society. In the 19th century, tramps were such a nuisance that people considered poisoning them. They held a social rank just above vermin.
The Leatherman avoided danger by staying on the move and sleeping in caves that he remembered with the geographic precision of a migratory bird. He made a loop of southern Connecticut and Westchester County, 365 days a year. He decked himself out in a suit stitched together of pure leather, winter and summer.
He travelled 10–12 miles a day, trekking the trails and back roads to avoid the general public. He’d arrive at welcoming homes he kept mapped in his head. These kind homes knew exactly when he would be arriving each year and would have meals and provisions set out for him. He rarely said “thanks”; he just nodded and moved along. He made his distance, each day, for survival. It was his way in the world.
He maintained this routine for nearly 40 years and was widely considered to be insane. In 1888, when the great blizzard hit, he was taken into the hospital against his will. They determined he was indeed sane—emotionally disturbed, but sane. He is perhaps the closest ancestor to an Al Howie and the multiday runners of the 1980s and ’90s.
The Sri Chinmoy Races
Sri Chinmoy was an Indian spiritual leader who believed that feats of athleticism were a path toward holiness. Moving to New York in the 1960s, Sri Chinmoy produced a series of races in Queens appropriately called the “Sri Chinmoy races”–these are some of the earliest known ultramarathons of modern times. Runners who stepped to the line at the Sri Chinmoy races were enigmas, vagabond members of a cult that pushed the extremes of the body and mind. They were searchers. Pounding pavement was their yoga. If society thought “joggers” were weird, then the spectrum of personalities who showed up for these experiences would warrant a call for the men in the white jackets. Queens was the “Cuckoo’s Nest” and Nurse Ratched was off duty.
The Alien: Peter Hodson
Peter Hodson hailed from Godmanchester and has been described as looking as if he’d “escaped from an insane asylum.” His hair was cut scalp-short and he carried his hands super low and moved them like a Nordic skier with dislocated shoulders. This maneuver wasn’t complete till his hands were stretched out parallel to the ground like a set of flaps on a Cessna coming in for a landing. Like many, he had a temper and was quite paranoid. He kept to himself, mostly, and his wardrobe was like Joseph’s technicolor dream coat but on a threadbare budget. He became known as the Alien, or the “alien warrior.” For one, his accent was so strong that no one could understand a thing he said. According to the Sri Chinmoy Archives, Hodson was a cockney lad, whose faded, low-tech clothing and prison-guard style looked right out of Mad Max. However, when he won the 700-miler, everyone was mystified:
“Hodson’s shabby gear, green, springless Ron Hill sneakers and thick cockney accent kept us in the dark for much of the race about his ability, but when it dawned on us that Peter was taking a full, eight-hour sleep each night and making up 50 km on Richard Cozart during the day, we realized that this was an uncommonly talented runner. Far from being pressured or anxious, he never arose in the morning without a hot shower and shave, a tooth-wash, a detailed examination of the standings, breakfast, and a social call at Al Howie’s tent. In fact, it was with some difficulty that we persuaded him to remain on the track for a few extra hours that last night, rather than “have a kit” and finish in the morning. A veteran of over 100 marathons and several ultras, Hodson seemed to value participation over race results, although he finally achieved a serious attitude, and perhaps a small tear as well, when a chorus sang ‘God Save the Queen’ in his honor after he received his trophy at the awards ceremony.”
On one occasion, Peter was catching a breather at a race and was resting near his supplies on a bench. This being on the far side of Queens, all kinds of characters were wandering around the strange race in the park. On this particular day, a homeless man, nearly blackened by dirt and car exhaust, was rummaging through a trash bin.
Ever the paranoid, Hodson took note, as his eyes narrowed like daggers and locked on to the man at the garbage can. The other did the same, noticing an odd man marking him. Peter’s thought was, This guy is waiting for me to get back in step and do away with my pack. Who knows what the homeless man was really thinking, as he was never made available for interview. We do know that the homeless man slowly shuffled toward Hodson and then, astonishingly, offered him his own items.
In many senses, Peter Hodson is a standard bearer for what a multiday runner was: an alien. An athlete originally formed from training but perfected by some mental tic that turned into an edge as the miles stretched into the hundreds. He completed some of the best of the Sri Chinmoy races as well as the 1992 Trans-Am.
Jesse Riley, aka “Goggles”
Jesse Riley towered well over six foot three and was toned full of muscle. He looked like what you’d think an ultrarunner would look like. Jesse, however, was a racewalker. That’s the official term they prefer, and if images of the local kook with a Walkman strapped to their hip and their arms flailing as they power walk laps around your country-club golf course come to mind, forget it. These guys post serious numbers.
Some have been documented as putting in over 500 miles in six days, real racewalking. Jesse competed in some of the great Sri Chinmoy races, alongside some of the biggest names in multiday running. He race-directed the revival of the Great American Foot Race in 1992 and organized them for four consecutive years. He directed a run across Australia and made the arduous journey himself, becoming a “barrow man.”
Jesse was born to two professors. His father was a Harvard grad, and his Austrian mother taught at Clemson. The former’s love of running, boxing, and nutrition had a major impact on him. In 1985, when Jesse was 22, he began the normal runner’s path: a 10K, followed by a marathon. He got down to a 3:02 marathon, barefooted, but didn’t stop there. He became more intrigued by longer distances. He did a three-day racewalk to Atlanta, culminating in 130 miles. Wanting more, he found just what he was looking for in New York. Jesse first met Al Howie at Sri Chinmoy. His easygoing spirit was a great foil for Al to release tension as he ran. “Ya, when he would come around to lap me, again, he would slow down, and we would talk for miles.” Al would take off again, and in a race that could last up to 17 days, he would find Jesse, again and again. They would pick up right where they’d left off.
Jesse won the Lewis and Clark race across Washington State. The event was open to runners and walkers, but the best runner couldn’t stop “the machine,” as they called him. With little sleep, Jesse pummeled the field into submission, and in mountains where runners often slow to a pitty-pat step, Jesse strode long and steady, his legs in tune like a human metronome.
If the eyes are bigger than the stomach in some circumstances, that mold was broken with Jesse. His massive blue eyes, compounded by the ginormous goggles he wore, would have put Peter Lorre out of a job, but his stomach was even bigger. “Ten stacks of pancakes.” Riley laughs every time he thinks about it.
“Ya, I downed ’em in one lap. They just looked so good.” Once at a Sri Chinmoy race, the morning plate of eggs came out, destined for 15 bellies; they only found one.
Sleep deprivation was not an obstacle for Riley. He lived in a storage rental in Key West and worked two to three jobs a day, washing dishes or doing whatever he could to get by. After his father committed suicide, Jesse’s search for meaning and fulfillment didn’t figure sleep into the equation.
The Wise Walker: Bob Wise
Another striking figure on the ultrarunning scene was the wild card of Georgia. Bob “I like to let my walkin’ do my talkin’” Wise was a fantastic racewalker. He once put up 903 miles in a 1,000-miler against good runners before the cutoff got him. He was notorious for never giving up, even when everyone else had.
Bob was overweight, ill-tempered, independent, and stubborn. This kept him on the track when the weather got rough and kept him from feeling daunted when his competitors kept putting laps on him. Bob’s goal was to do the distance at all costs. Stopping short of his personal goal was complete failure. His eccentric nature never made him a favorite among race organizers, but nevertheless, he made his mark. Sometimes on trees.
Bob had a habit of dropping his head as he walked like a man with a magic eye in the crown of his noggin. On many occasions late at night, Bob was seen to run right into trees. Almost anyone who has ever run or walked with Bob has seen him hit one, and all attest to Bob, like a robot vacuum cleaner, backing up and then proceeding on with his business—that is, after he said “excuse me” in his down-home twang.
Sri Chinmoy once hinted to him that he should tape a roll of toilet paper under his chin to keep his head up. Bob’s response: “Good idea.” In one Sri Chinmoy race, Bob was seen washing his face and drinking from a large bowl of water. Whether he knew it or not is not known, but the bowl was being used by the runners to wash their feet. What is agreed upon is that Bob wouldn’t have cared.
“Oh, I saw him shit his pants many times,” Emile Laharrague remembered. “Yes, I saw the mochalatto coming down,” he added, laughing till tears streamed down his tan cheeks. Complaints came in from considerate Sri Chinmoy disciples, but Bob resisted orders. “Your shit stinks, too. Fuck off.”
In 1989, Bob joined a race across Washington State. These types of races have strict cutoffs and Bob didn’t make it. The last time he was seen, he was down a sharp bluff pissing into the Columbia River. He was wearing a fisherman’s vest, one of those that has a thousand pockets for lures and tackle bits, but Bob had them all stuffed with candy bars and gummy bears.
One of his favorite running recipes was buttermilk and coffee. After his supplies ran out, he would go 30–40 miles with no liquids, then climb down boulders to drink from the same river he had pissed in, unaware that the Columbia actually flowed north.
According to Riley, he had been in a severe auto accident and was lucky to be alive. “His big advantage was he was absolutely not afraid to die. Bobby was just not afraid to die. It was not even in his thinking.”
After the cutoff was levied on the slowest, Bob, half a state behind, was clueless. That was, until he called back home to Georgia. His father was stern. “Bob, this is your daddy. The race is over. They’ve finished it.” Bob was not moved. “Mine isn’t.” He trekked on. When he lost the route, he figured he would just keep heading west until he hit the ocean. That would signal that he had indeed crossed the state.
The one-lane road he was on dipped and presented the Pacific Ocean ahead, leading him down into a state park. When a guard discovered him bathing nude in the Pacific, he asked what the hell he was doing there. Bob informed him that he had just run clear across the State of Washington. In custody at a mental hospital, Bob received a call that baffled his captors. It was the governor of Washington. Because of Bob’s tenacity, the state government had decided to acknowledge all runners who completed the run. That meant Bob was going to get an award from the highest members of the state. To the astonishment of his captors, he walked away with a grin and a medal.
After one race, Bob, bringing up the rear, plopped down on a porta-potty. He passed out from the exertion of the race and his legs stiffened like frozen pipes. Organizers, thinking everyone had finished and was gone, had the potty hitched up to a truck. They were completely unaware that Bob was still in it. Yelling and screaming, but unable to move, Bob was carted off from the finish line. At some point, someone discovered a half-naked man with headphones dangling from his neck and a look of utter disdain on his face.
Emile Laharrague, The Red Devil
Training is a relative term. If one man’s milk is another man’s poison, then one runner’s workout is another’s idea of hell. Emile Laharrague spent more time in jungles and deserts than on any track. Hitchhiking down into the Copper Canyon of Mexico, he lived with the famous Tarahumara Indians. A picture sent to Jerry Dietrich showed Emile, in red sweatpants that later became his trademark, surrounded by the Tarahumara in their flowing, colorful wardrobes. Their faces were covered like Apaches going after European terrorists, but according to Laharrague, that was their celebratory getup.
They had just finished a 50-mile training run through the rugged cliffs and canyons. He had promised Dietrich he would enter the New Astley Belt races organized by Dietrich but sent the picture instead.
Laharrague was small and cut like an Adonis. He sported a pointytipped goatee and ran so smoothly you could balance water on his head. He was known as “El Diablo,” or sometimes the Red Devil, for the goatee and the red sweats with cutout sleeves he always wore. He often brought shrunken heads and blowguns to races. His philosophy on food was simple. “The monkey eats the banana, I eat the monkey.” Running for groups that were mostly vegetarian, he was often heard screaming, “I NEED FLESH!”
Laharrague developed cerebral malaria on his explorations, which greatly affected his running. It lingered with him the rest of his life and could hit him at any time. When it did, the six-hour 50-miler and French 1,000-mile record holder was reduced to a crawl. Subsequently, it cost him many races. Cerebral malaria, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, is “part of a multi-organ disease” in which “patients develop fever, headache, body ache and progressively, delirium and coma.”
In 1985 Laharrague placed third in the first Sri Chinmoy 1,000-miler, earning him the French record for that distance. He then finally made it to the New Astley Belt race out West. It proved to be an epic battle: a 400-meter death trap, set in the desert of southern California, where temperatures rarely dipped below 100°F at night. During the day, temps neared Death Valley levels.
Most participants dropped. Even ultra pioneer Don Choi quit due to an unstoppable nosebleed. Laharrague had no crew. That was his custom, but he had befriended a few triathletes who brought him a chicken. “I ate it in one lap. I needed flesh.” Later, when they asked him what he wanted, he replied, “a bucket of ice cream.” That he also downed in nearly a single flash around the track. The only man ahead of him on the last day was Stu Mittleman.
Stu was outfitted with the best team. “Oh, he had Gatorade, Nike, and a whole group of Hooters Girls cheering him on,” Laharrague remembers. Stu would not be caught, but that is not what impressed Dietrich the most. “Laharrague had the worst case of blisters I’d ever seen, ever, but he did not stop and held off Saccone to finish second. It was a fantastic feat. When it came to extreme conditions, Laharrague was one of the toughest.” Emile competed in some of the most brutal races in the world at that time:
- The Marathon of the Sands
- The Trans-American Footrace, 5th
- Sri Chinmoy 1,000, 3rd
- The Gibson 6-day, 2nd
- Colorado 6-day (150-meter indoor track, wood floor)
- New Astley Belt 6-day, 2nd
- Pepsi-Cola 24-Hour Bicycle Marathon in Central Park
- Trans-Texas in 1986, 1st
- The Badwater in 1990
In 1986, he won the 1,000-mile race for the Battleship Texas, where conditions were so bad only two finished. The other was Bob Wise. When Emile arrived, the party was already over, as no one thought the race was still going on. When he ran into Dallas, George W. Bush, the governor later to become president, was to be there. “I saw no Bush,” Laharrague quipped. “There was a band and it was on TV, but he wasn’t there.”
When asked what the most difficult race he ever ran was, he demurred. “The best ones,” he said, “the most memorable ones, were never official. They were the ones nobody sees—out there, in the jungle, or the great road across New Guinea—everything else was just training.”
The Spiritualist: Trishul Cherns
Trishul Cherns has run over 230 ultramarathons, including the 3,100-mile race on three separate occasions. He has 112 Canadian national records, from 300 km to 5,000 km. In 1986, at the 6-Day World Championships, he landed third place with 538 miles, and he’s done 221 miles in under 48 hours. He was also an early member of Sri Chinmoy and was the first to put forward the idea of the 1,000-mile race, which at that point had never been run on a certified course.
Life is one great meditation for Trishul. If it’s not spiritual, it’s not worth it. He’s in it for the experience. “LSD,” he laughs. “Long slow delusion,” he clarifies, referring to the hallucinations runners often experience in multidays. For many years he was a devout member of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team and believed in the guru’s message of run and become.
Trishul has an encyclopedic mind. He can remember times from almost all his races, and not just his own times. A self-proclaimed “numbers guy,” he quickly proves it. “Let’s see, Al did his first 24-hour in ’81 and then came back the next year with 150 miles.” Ask him about the Westfield he ran in ’87; he can give splits of the main runners and the finish times of most he knew.
Ask him about any runner of note and he will spit out their best marathon times like a PEZ dispenser. When it came to running, he found meaning within. He ran with the best and was inspired by the best. “Great ultrarunners do not always pan out to be great multiday runners. Great multiday runners have the ability to run to a place where great ultrarunners do not care to go. Al Howie cared to go to those places and enjoyed doing it.”
At one particular race, a dog was hanging around the track. He named it Dharma. Dharma seemed to notice Trishul each time he made the loop. The dog was skinny and went nuts for the dog food Trishul put out, and after a day went by, Trishul kept him for his own. The two took to each other and Dharma started running with Trishul around the course. He even earned spots in several running magazines.
Dharma ran more miles in 24 hours than most Olympians. Little did Dharma know that someone else had their eye on him. “I came up toward the Unisphere and the start/finish line. I look over and see Dharma. He looked lost. Down on his knees, with his face in Dharma’s food bowl, was Bob Wise.” Trishul confronted Bob, but Wise smarted back, “Seems to be working for the dog, might do something for me.”
Dharma finished 100 miles in under 30 hours.
Tom McGrath, The Black Sheep
Tom McGrath looks you right in the eye when he speaks to you and never blinks. It’s as if his body is so tense, even his eyelashes are flexed. His Irish accent is reduced just enough to understand him, and he wears two gold chains on his left wrist from former days as an illegal blackjack dealer. They are never out of sight, as he likes to talk with his hands.
He left home at age 11 to join a brotherhood, found athletics, and at 15 came to New York for the first time with a Gaelic football team. While the others went to bars, he ran around the park. He was still running four hours later when they came back. “That’s when I realized I could run.”
Tom would do numerous ultras, competing in Sri Chinmoy races, 300-mile races around Central Park, then 1,000 miles around Central Park Reservoir, five years in a row, and a record-breaking run across America in 54 days. Every run had one thing in common: They were all for charity. But what no one in the running community knew was that Tom was a terrible alcoholic. A bartender remembered, “You never knew which Tom was coming in, the 17-mile-a-day Tom or the 17-pint-a-day Tom.”
Tom was a loner among loners, as he was usually the only one at multiday events with a real job. He owned over ten bars in the city before settling down in the aptly named Black Sheep. Tom could also show up to races fat and out of shape.
Once, coming off a yearlong binge, he showed up to a 1,000-mile event with a round Buddha belly. Tom’s arches dropped on day seven of the run. “It hurt like hell. They’d freeze my feet in a bucket and push ’em back up and say, ‘okay, off with you.’” He was often heard to shout, “We’re sucking diesel now, boys!”
A former PE teacher with a degree in health education, Tom was either in running mode or drinking mode, and the two didn’t mix. “I ran on muscle memory. It stays with you.” Asked about Al, his fingers tap the table as if gears in his brain are starting into motion. “Al,” he smiles, with an honest glint in his eyes that makes you wonder what exactly he’s thinking about. “Oh, yeah. He was the fast one.”
Yves Pol, Running in Reverse
Yves Pol of Saint-Thomé, France, was the fastest in the world. No one could touch him in the marathon or the 24-hour—no one, no Olympian or bone-thin, monk-like Tarahumara Indian. The only condition was that the race had to be backwards. Pol was the world record holder for 24 hours, backwards, 99.24 miles. He was the second man to break the four-hour marathon, backwards. He was also, not surprisingly, a former circus performer.
Imagine a tiny Frenchman who would sing operatic riffs and various national anthems while running, in falsetto, all in French. Then imagine, after your years of training, you’re being passed by a man, in full voice, half your size, and running backwards. Even more, imagine, you’re a French woman in Central Park and it’s the last leg of the New York City Marathon. You’ve run completely out of gas. You are wondering what those first 25 miles were for, because you can’t finish the race. Suddenly, you hear your mother tongue. You look up to see a face bursting with life, stuck to a short, tight body of a runner, going backwards, telling you, “You have to have willpower.” You burst into tears and follow that face and make it to the finish line.
Yves ran 191 miles in five days backwards at the Sri Chinmoy fiveday race in 1987. Pol’s last five-day race was also done backwards, the infamous “Marathon de Sables,” a 200 km run across the blistering Moroccan desert. He finished 14th in a field of 25 competitors. The Frenchman crossed the finish line after 59 hours with a desert flower between his teeth. Fred Lebow said, “I believe he is the best in the world. I don’t think anyone in the world could challenge him running backwards.”
In 1989, Yves ran with several others in the “race against terrorism.” After the Lockerbie crash, he ran 500 miles to Heathrow, to No. 10 Downing Street, the US Embassy, and on to Scotland. The last five miles to Lockerbie, he was escorted by Eleanor Bright, whose husband had died in the crash. For this run, he ran straight ahead. Actually, Yves was a 2:30 marathoner when he wanted to be. He just didn’t want to be.
Explore In Search of Al Howie
Al Howie was one of the world’s first ultrarunners, taking on insane thousand-mile runs in split shorts and tank tops, fueled by beer and his own personal demons.
Then he disappeared amidst a swirl of kidnapping allegations and an Interpol investigation.
In Search of Al Howie is the critically acclaimed story of a man who ran forever and how author Jared Beasley found him—uncovering the origins of ultramarathon and exploring the larger-than-life personalities who carry on the legacy.