Whipped Cream Difficulties

Donald Ritchie, ultrarunner.

Ritchie set international track records at distances from 50 to 100 kilometers and in timed events that took up to 24 hours, with a particularly successful stretch in the late 1970s. He set two track records at a blistering pace when he ran 100 miles in 11 hours, 30 minutes and 51 seconds in 1977, and 100 kilometers in 6 hours, 10 minutes and 20 seconds the next year. In 1979 he set a world road record after running 100 miles in 11 hours, 51 minutes and 11 seconds.

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Ritchie was usually nonchalant when talking about his accomplishments, but he admitted that his 1989 run from Land’s End to John O’Groats, from the top to the bottom of Britain, had been a challenge.
“I developed a feverish cold soon after the start and then faced vicious head winds and sleet,” he told The Independent. “The cold soon developed into bronchitis, and this, together with stomach pains, intestinal blood loss, a sore mouth, regular nose bleeds, chest pains and torrential rains, led me to feel very relieved when I finally reached Land’s End.”
He still managed to set a record, completing the roughly 840-mile run in 10 days, 15 hours and 25 minutes.

I spent some time trying to put this into a different perspective for my fellow Texans. I found several different figures for the east-west distance across Texas, and I’m not sure which is most reliable. But one way of looking at it is: 1-10 from the New Mexico border to the Louisiana border is 877.45 miles. So Richie basically ran something very close to El Paso – Orange in less than 11 days.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2018 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Obits, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.