Further info on Stan Miskin by Tim Erickson

Now a bit more about Stan for those who don’t know the full story. Stan was a Melbourne based Veteran walker and runner who had completed many ultra-distance running events during the 1980s. In 1988 he decided to walk rather than run in the annual Sri Chimnoy 24 Hour event being held at the old cinders Adelaide Harriers track in Adelaide. He successfully completed the distance in 22:59:38, becoming our oldest Centurion at 63 years of age. He also became only the fourth Australian to both walk and run the 100 mile distance within 24 hours. Within a period of less than 2 years, we had seen Claude Martin, Jim Turnbull, George Audley and Stan achieve the run/walk double. No further athletes achieved this feat until Yiannos Kouros in 1998.

Stan did not even know that the Australian Centurion club existed at the time he qualified. It was only after he saw a race report of our 1994 event that he contacted us in early 1995 and sent the relevant documentation to verify his performance. This created a difficult situation for us – should we recognise the performance or not?

After extensive investigation, it was decided to grant Stan Centurion membership (after all, it had been our own fault in that we had been out of circulation all these years) but to set a firm rule that no such dispensations would be made in the future. Now the onus is on the competitor to contact us beforehand and forewarn us of any attempt. Only if one or more of our members can be present and only if we can absolutely verify the correctness of the performance will we consider such applications.

Stan was a well known ultra-distance runner. He ran his first marathon in 1978, aged 53 years, and caught the bug. By 1988, he had run 81 marathons (best time of 3:16), many 50 milers (best time of 7:39), had a best 24 hour running distance of 187 km and a best 48 hour distance of 241 km.

Stan’s career as an ultra competitor has extended nearly 30 years from 1978 to 2006. His race toughness is legendary and anyone who has raced against Stan knows just how determined and single minded he is in his approach to racing. He has also been a wonderful club member during his 11 years with the Centurions and our conversations over the phone and on the track have been too numerous to count. I look forward to Stan’s continuing involvement with the club in his new capacity as senior advisor and mentor. Put your feet up and enjoy it, Stan!