The Great American Footrace
Posted by planetultramarathon on December 29, 2006
Was given this link by Andy Milroy the other day. I never realised that a documentary was made of this amazing race.
http://www.itvs.org/footrace/index.htm
The Transcontinental Foot Race started at Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles and finished in Madison Square Garden in New York City. 199 runners left Los Angeles, California on March 4th, 1928 at 3:30 p.m.. 55 runners finished on May 26th, 1928. Only men were allowed to enter the race. The race took 84 days to run from coast to coast. It was called the Bunion Derby by the newspapers. The Bunion Derby followed Route 66 from Los Angeles to Chicago. From Chicago to New York City the race ran wherever the promoter, C.C. Pyle, could get the town to pay a fee. Dr. K.H. Begg, a prominent medical expert, predicted that the race would take five to ten years off the runners’ lives. The runners ran an average of 40 miles a day, nearly the equivalent of two marathons. The shortest distance they ran was the first day, 17 miles from Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles to Puente, California. The longest distance was 74.6 miles from Waverly, New York to Deposit, New York, the 79th day. The race ran from California through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennyslvania, New Jersey and New York. The race covered a total of 3,422.3 miles.
