60 miles for 60 years and still running
Doug Robinson
Golf? Fish? Sleep in?
Nah, he chose to put himself through hours of misery consisting of physical and mental torture.
He chose to run. And run and run and run.
Henderson ran 60 miles on his 60th birthday.
He ran for 16 hours up and down mountains and across barren valleys, half of it on paved road, half on dirt trails, with members of his LocoMotion Running Club and family taking turns running with him. Along the way, Henderson encountered hardships such as a leaky water bottle, dehydration, stomachaches and getting lost on a mountain trail for a half-hour.
Happy birthday to him.
"If I hadn't had my LocoMotion family with me, I probably would have given up half way through," he says. "They distracted me with talk."
That Henderson, a retired firefighter, was even attempting such a feat would have been difficult to imagine years earlier when he was a sedentary, pudgy middle-aged man, but here he was completing the equivalent of two and 2/3 marathons to kick off the seventh decade of his life.
Inspired by his hero, Jack LaLanne, the 93-year-old exercise guru who performs feats of strength and endurance to celebrate his birthdays, Henderson decided to come up with a birthday feat of his own.
He drove from his home in Salt Lake Valley to Panguitch, and, at 4 a.m. on May 31 — three days before his 60th birthday — he ran off into the dark night, with his son, Chris, driving the support vehicle and his wife, Mary, running by his side, lending more symbolism to the occasion. She would run 30 of the 60 miles.
He followed Highway 89 out of town with the Milky Way sprayed across the sky overhead, establishing a prudent routine of walking every fifth mile. His little birthday party, with its ever-changing cast of running partners, turned onto Highway 12 and reached Red Canyon just as dawn was breaking. They ran through Red Canyon into Bryce National Park and past Ruby's Inn before meeting his family at the Fairyland trail head for breakfast. His children and their families had camped out on the route to support him.
From the Fairyland Loop Trail he ran to the Queens Garden Trail, then onto the Navajo Loop Trail and Bryce Point and Swampy Canyon Trail and the Whitman Trail and so on until he reached the other side of Bryce. At about 8 p.m., just as dusk was settling in, he arrived at the tiny town of Tropic, finally concluding his run on a plot of land where once stood the house he lived in during the first year of his life.
Recent comments
I've known Dorrell for several years now and run with him in...
GS | July 23, 2008 at 10:59 a.m.
Hey Math guy: A marathon is 26.2 miles...multiply it by 2 and you...
EdM | July 22, 2008 at 12:20 p.m.
Sorry Robinson but 60 miles is equivalent to 2 and one fifth marathons...
Math | July 22, 2008 at 10:14 a.m.
