About Us

This website aims to cover all related ultrarunning and ultrawalking information for events and races around the globe. This includes races at the Elite through to the FatAss level as they all deserve to be reported and form part of the sport. This also includes Ultrarunners and walkers who raise money for charity through their achievements. Sometimes their claims can be “slightly out there”, but the truth will always come out and you the reader can decide what is correct and what isn’t.

Since going out at midnight and watching the “Westfield Runners” trudge along the Princess Highway at Sale, Victoria, I have been hooked into the sport of “UltraMarathon”. For those unaware an ultramarathon is running or walking any distance over 42.195km.

I was never graced with an athletic bone in my body, but since that day in 1988/89 have participated in a few ultras and have a personal best of 121km at the 24hr distance and 78kms at the 12hr distance. I have also written a book about the Westfield Run, several other articles, served on the AURA Committee, helped the Colac race over the last five years and have run a couple of websites and blogs.

“Planet Ultramarathon” is my latest creation. Several years ago I use to log on religously to David Blaikie’s website “Ultramarathon World” and like most of the community I was dissapointed when David moved on.

My aim is for this site to help fill the void that David’s site left. There are a lot of other good World and National Ultra sites in existance now and I hope that we can all network and keep promoting the sport on the Internet. The relationship between myself and Abichal Watkins of multidays.com is an example of this networking. The growth of ultramarathon running and walking depends largely on how we promote ourselves on the WWW!

What do I want this site to do? It’s going to report race results and stories from all around the world. It’s going to present previews to races and cover solo runners and walkers. I hope that in time it will contain a comprehensive calender of races around the world and be the main collection of ultra links on the world. In time, I hope to expand the medical and training resources available for the ultra sport. I am also willing to create web pages for ultra runners or ultra races that do not have a presence on the web. Yes, Im aiming high and no doubt it will take time to achieve. But Im looking forward to doing this for the sport I love. i have never claimed to be an expert in the sport, but i have had the ear and confidence of a lot of top runners over the years and have been fortunate to record some of the historic events of our time.

I am always looking for people to help with the site on a permanent basis. It could be helping to add entries into the calender, sourcing articles and results from their country or collecting photos to put on the site. There is plenty that can be done and it would be done as a “TEAM” effort.

Over the past few weeks I have been lucky enough to gain some helpers for the Website. So much so, that I now consider the website a collaborative website owned by everyone in the sport and not just me .

The other members of the team are:

Summer Wesson -

: Eight years ago I took a road trip from Atlanta, GA to Los Angeles, CA, loved it, and never went back. When I was young, I was diagnosed with both asthma and a disease called juvenille rheumatoid arthritis and my doctors told me I would never be able to run. In 2003 I decided to challenge that by signing up for the LA Marathon. I fell in love with running and after a year, both diseases were in remission.

I began ultrarunning in 2007 and have since competed in 7 ultra distance events and paced in two, so I am still a baby in the community. One of my favorite things to do is pace and crew. This year I will be pacing in Western States and Angeles Crest again and crewing Dean Karnazes in Badwater, which is quite an honor since it is part of his Desert Grand Slam. In Los Angeles, I am a casting director for several popular television shows and a manager at my company, Central Casting. Link

Connie Karras - Self-employed clinical exercise specialist and running coach at KARRAS WELLNESS TRAINING in Highland, IN, USA and have been ultrarunning since 2005.  Proudest achievement to date is 2007 Badwater Solo and planning to do it again:  www.active.com/donate/trekkingformax.  Served as Calumet Region Striders Running Club newsletter editor in 2006. Crewing for Scott Webber at this year’s Badwater from the 14th to 16th of July .

Tony Mangan - The ultra running achievements of Tony Mangan from the Metro St Brigids Athletic Club in Dublin are quite extraordinary. It takes your breath away just reading about them. In October 2003 Tony climbed off a treadmill at the Dublin Marathon expo having run for a solid 2 days. His reward was the World 24 and 48 hour treadmill running records. Twice this year he has completed in 48 hour races. In Brno in the Czech Republic over St Patrick’s weekend he won covering 426 kilometres whilst 2 months later in Surgeres in France he came second after running 401 kilometres. We interviewed Tony recently to find a bit more about this amazing athlete. Link

If you would like further information or would like to contribute some thing for the site, please email me at pessam@bigpond.net.au . All contributions are welcome.

Regards

Phil Essam

Wagga Wagga

Australia

To contribute, please send an email to pessam(at)bigpond.net.au

Here are some of the articles that I have written over the years.

Bryan Smith - AURA Hall of Fame Inductee

Westfield Book

History of the Square

Field of Dreams

Ten Days in November

Crewing in Ultras

George Perdon

My best 24hrs
One night in Prison