Be inspired to run a bit more

From The New York Times

Ted Corbitt, who began running as a child on his father’s cotton farm in South Carolina and virtually never stopped, becoming a pioneer of ultramarathon running in the United States, died Wednesday in Houston.

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By his own count, Corbitt ran 199 marathons and ultramarathons, which are typically races of 50 or 100 miles or 24 hours. (Marathons are 26 miles 385 yards.) He won 30 of those races and never dropped out of one until he was 75, he said. He trained by running as many as 200 miles a week. In his heyday, Corbitt — shy and slight at 5 feet 7 inches and 130 pounds — was a United States marathon champion and a member of the United States team at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, where he finished a disappointing 44th in the marathon.

At various times, Corbitt held American records in the marathon, the 100-mile run and the 25-, 40- and 50-kilometer events. He also won national American Athletic Union championships in several distance running events. His fastest time in a marathon was 2 hours 26 minutes 44 seconds.

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His training regimens were legendary. For a time, he ran 200 miles or more a week, often in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He once ran the marathon distance every day for a month. He often ran a 31-mile loop around Manhattan in about 3:45. Sometimes he did two loops. He also trained with weights.