Ultrarunning History

By Davy Crockett Peter Napoleon Campana (1836-1906), of Bridgeport, Connecticut, known as "Old Sport," was recognized as the most popular and entertaining “clown” of ultrarunning. It was said of him, "Campana kicks up his heels and creates a laugh every few minutes." He was one of the most prolific six-day runners during the pedestrian era of the sport. All of his amazing ultrarunning accomplishments were made after he was 42 years old, and into his 60s. He competed in at least 40 six-day races and many other ultra-distance races, compiling more than 15,000 miles during races on small indoor, smokey tracks. He never won a six-day race, but because he was so popular, race directors would pay him just to last six days in their races. Admiring spectators would throw dollar bills down to him on the tracks during races. He didn’t age well, lost his hair, had wrinkled skin from being outdoor so much, and people thought he was 10-15 years older than he really was. He never corrected them in their false assumption and wanted people to believe he was very old. While he was well-loved by the public, he wasn’t a nice person. During races, when he would become annoyed, he would frequently punch competitors or spectators in the face. In his private life, he was arrested for assault and battery multiple times, including abusing his wife, and spent time in jails for being drunk. Read about the fascinating history of the more than 500 six-day races held from 1875 to 1909 in Davy Crockett's new definitive history in 1,200 pages. Get them on Amazon. Campana’s Youth Campana was born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1836. His family came from France. When four years of age, he moved to New York City with his mother, his father having died in North Carolina of yellow fever. Shortly after his arrival in New York, his mother died, and he was cared for by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. He first worked as a messenger boy, the first delivery boy for the New York Clipper in 1853, then became a hose-cart attaché, and finally a full-blown fireman, one of the “Fulton Market Boys.” On his left arm he had tattooed “Clinton Engine Co. 41, Old Stag.” He said he learned to run in the fire department and saved a great number of lives. “Like a young partridge, he tried to run as soon as he was hatched and has been running ever since.” He became very involved in athletics and received the nickname of “Young Sport.” His first race was with a man named Lee, in New York City for $10, for a half mile. He  next raced the champion of New England, Amos Saunders, of Brooklyn, in a five-mile race. "The day of the race arrived and found him in prime condition for the test of endurance and speed. He won the race in a canter." As a young man of about twenty years old, in 1856, Campana moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. He became a peddler of nuts and fruit, and at other times operated a corner peanut stand. “He soon became known in Bridgeport as an expert and fearless volunteer fireman and did good service at several large fires. He was always a fast runner and was noted for his courage and promptness of action in time of danger.” He made a challenge to all New England runners in a five-mile race to win a belt. He won the race that took place in Providence, Rhode Island. Life Before an Ultrarunner In 1860, he lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, again working as a fireman. He once challenged the entire fire department of the city to a half-mile race. The challenge was accepted, and he won in 2:30. He competed in several races up to ten miles and won many. He beat a noted runner, “Indian Smith” at ten miles, in 57:26. That year, he married Mary Jane (Dalton) Campana (1840-) and had a son Napoleon Campana (1861-1862) who died as a young child. In 1862, Campana enlisted in the Civil War, with the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry. He claimed that he fought at Gettysburg and lost a chase going after a confederate soldier who had been separated from his co...

By Davy Crockett Connie Gardner, from Akron Ohio, is the 25th person inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, joining the Hall in 2024. From 2002 to 2012, she was a national champion twelve times at 50 miles, 100 kilometers, 100 miles, and 24 hours. She has finished at least 180 ultras, with more than 80% of them on trails, with nearly 100 wins, including three wins at the prestigious JFK 50 in Maryland. During her ultra career, she established 37 course or event records. She was a member of the U.S. National 100K Team and the U.S. National 24-Hour Team for many years, competing in many World Championships. With a busy family life and children, she didn't start running ultras until her late 30s, but dominated into her 50s. She was named the USA Track and Field (USATF) Ultrarunner of the Year in 2003 and 2012, and the USATF Masters Ultrarunner of the year in 2011. Learn about the rich and long history of ultrarunning. There are now eleven books available in the Ultrarunning History series on Amazon, compiling podcast content and much more. Learn More. If you would like to order multiple books with a 30% discount, send me a message here. Constance “Connie” Margaret (John) Gardner (1963-), of Akron, Ohio, was born in Washington D.C. to Dr. James Edward A John (1933-2010) and Constance Brandon (Maxwell) John (1932-1999). Her father was an electrical engineer and president of Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. He worked with the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. where Connie went to elementary school. Her ancestry on her father's side was from Cornwall, England, by way of Belgium and Canada. Her ancestry on her mother's side was Irish. Even as a child, she was always competitive, trying to reach for lofty goals. She explained, “My brothers and I were always trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, flying a kite, for three days, playing War for as many days as we could.” Each year, a field day was scheduled at her school. “I was terrible. They wouldn’t put me in anything because I wasn’t very fast. If you weren’t good at anything else, they threw you into the distance run because nobody wanted to do it. So the first year I failed and then I started to train for it. I wanted to do it. I’ve always wanted to see that I could do.” She believed she was a good kid, but got in trouble often with her teachers and sometimes experienced the paddle. She would often run before school to help her focus. “All I needed to do was to run down to the river, watch the sun come up, run home, and go to school.” High School and College Years In high school, Connie competed on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at Olentangy High School, in Lewis Center, Ohio. She won all-conference honors, running on the 4X800-meter relay. Her team finished runner-up at the state finals in 1980 and 1981. She said, "I was so focused on running, that my crowd in high school was just my cross country team, so I didn't get in any trouble.  I made sure we wouldn't botch up our chance to win state. At a young age, that kept me on a nice path." Connie attended Ohio State University and then The University of Massachusetts where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in sports management. While a freshman at age 17, she ran her first marathon at the 1981 Columbus Marathon and finished in 4:11:00. At UMass, she was on the eight-person rowing team for three years but continued running. She would run six miles to and from the boathouse. She ran a lot of 5Ks and 10Ks during the 1980s and a marathon in the fall and in the spring. In 1987, she married Robert Charles Gardner in Massachusetts. They would have two daughters, Abby and Gwen. Busy Life as a Mom Connie moved to Portland, Oregon, to attend graduate school. To earn money, she became a bicycle messenger. That unique job helped get her into top physical shape, and she started to run with running groups.

By Davy Crockett Stu Mittleman was the sixth person to be inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame. During the 1980s, while a college professor from New York, he became the greatest multi-day runner in the country who won national championships running 100 miles, but ran much further than that in other races. During that period, no other American ultrarunner, male for female, exhibited national class excellence at such a wide range of ultra racing distances. He brought ultrarunning into the national spotlight as he appeared on national television shows and became the national spokesman for Gatorade. Learn about the rich and long history of ultrarunning. There are now eleven books available in the Ultrarunning History series on Amazon, compiling podcast content and much more. Learn More. If you would like to order multiple books with a 30% discount, send me a message here. Stuart “Stu” M Mittleman was born in New York City in 1951 to Irving Jacob Mittleman (1924-2009) and Selma R (Mitzner) Mittleman (1929-2023). His Mittleman grandparents were Jewish Russian immigrants who came to America in 1913. When he was in high school in Dumont, New Jersey in the late 1960s, he was on the track team and ran the mile in 4:39 mile, the half mile in 2:01. He was better at wrestling in which he lettered and was a district champion. At the University of Connecticut, he continued wrestling for one season but switched to long-distance swimming and weightlifting. At Colgate University, he was on the dean’s list and earned his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts. He earned his master's degree at the University of Connecticut. He was a heavy smoker during school, going through two packs of cigarettes per day. During the early ‘70s, he became disillusioned with the state of the country during the Vietnam War era and spent time on the West Coast, where he took up running again “for his head.” But while skiing in 1975, he had a terrible fall, tore his ACL and damaged cartilage. He had knee surgery and could not run for five months. When he could run again, he did it for relaxation and to find a quiet time for himself. Becomes a Marathon Runner In 1977, he ran up Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, Colorado and fell in love with running. He went into a running store and asked how he could sign up for the Boston Marathon, three months away. They told him he needed to qualify, so he ran Mission Bay Marathon in San Diego with a qualifying time of 2:46. Early into his dream race at Boston, he was running in a drainage ditch in efforts to pass runners and twisted his ankle terribly. Disappointed, but determined, he tied ice around his swollen ankle and vowed not to drop out of the race. He finished in 4:03. He returned to Boston the next year and finished in 2:31:11. After finishing the New York City marathon six months later in 2:33:00, he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t run any faster, even though he was never tired at the end of his races. “I just started thinking, why did I have to stop? I wondered how much longer I could have run." This thought made him turn to “the longer stuff. First Ultramarathon Mittleman was 5’ 8” and about 140 pounds. As a graduate student in sports psychology at Columbia University, Mittleman ran his first ultra in 1978, running 6:11 in the Metropolitan 50 in Central Park, New York. That year the race was poorly organized, and the front-runner went off course, but he placed 8th with 6:13. “I ended up sprinting the last 10 miles and I was hooked.” He liked ultras better than marathons because they were less competitive and they had a friendlier atmosphere. The 1979 Unisphere 100 With that elite performance, he qualified to enter the 1979 Unisphere 100, held at Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York, on a 2.27-mile loop road course around Meadow Lake. This 100-miler was first held in 1978, won by Park Barner in 13:57:36. In 1979,

By Davy Crockett  During the first half of the 1980s, Bernd Heinrich, of Vermont, was the fastest ultrarunner in America. In 2007, he was the fifth person to be inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame. Today, few know of him and his amazing running records and accomplishments. He was unique from most other ultrarunners of his time in that rather than competing in many races, he was very selective in his race choices. When he ran, he had specific goals to win or set records, with laser focused training for these few specific events. Using this approach, he was able to win and set several American records. Heinrich appeared suddenly on the ultrarunning scene, setting a record in his very first ultra, and he quickly rose to the top of the sport. He was named “Ultrarunner of the Year” three of the first four years of Ultrarunning Magazine's existence. He had a quiet nature and never sought for the running spotlight, but eventually was one of the few to be inducted in the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame. As a boy, Heinrich grew up living deep in a forest in war-torn Germany. In his life priorities, running was secondary to his true love, observing, researching, teaching and writing about nature. During his intense running years, he was able to find a balance to become a world-renowned expert in his professional naturalist career, studying birds, bees, and other animals and insects. Ultrarunning historian, Nick Marshall wrote about Heinrich in 1984, “Often runners don’t know much about the backgrounds of individuals whose athletic accomplishments may be very familiar to them, so it is quite nice to see one of our sport’s star gain recognition as a successful pioneer in a totally unrelated field.” Learn about the rich and long history of ultrarunning. There are now eleven books available in the Ultrarunning History series on Amazon, compiling podcast content and much more. Learn More. If you would like to order multiple books with a 30% discount, send me a message here. Childhood in Germany Forest in The Hahnheide Bernd Heinrich was born in Bad Polzin, Poland in 1940 to Gerd Heinrich (1898-1984) and Hildegarde Maria (Burovna) Heinrich (1917-2012). His father became an internationally known research biologist and a German pilot during World War I. Near the end of World War II, he and his family fled their large farm near Gdansk to escape advancing Russian troops in 1944 and crossed what would be the future border for East Germany. Henrich recalled, “The times were not easy. The biggest problem was filling our bellies. Papa decided that the best chance of finding food would be in the forest. We came across a large reserve called “the Hahnheide,” and within it a small empty hut used before the war by a nature club from Hamburg. The forester in charge gave us permission to move in. We lived deep in the forest for five years. We had no work and hardly ever any money.” They survived by foraging for nuts, berries, mushrooms, and hunting small rodents and ducks. This experience began his love for nature and was “a rare mix of survival and enchantment.” Mushrooms in The Hahnheide Heinrich recalled, “We were totally immersed in nature. Like most animals, our major concern was finding food. I didn’t like picking berries because I had to move so slowly, from bush to bush. I much preferred picking mushrooms when I could run at will through the damp forest, feeling the soft green moss under my bare feet.” Young Heinrich collected beetles and birds’ eggs for his family’s food supply. He became obsessed with the creatures around him. “I had no playmates and never owned a toy. Yet I didn’t feel deprived. Who needs toys after having seen caterpillars from up close and knowing they can turn into moths?” Heinrich became fascinated with bugs and insects. When he was nine, he drew a birthday card for his father and on the back; he wrote that he had collected 447 beetles of 135 species.