Randy Ellis wanted to celebrate the moment by honoring his father who passed away about four years ago, so he made sure he was wearing his dad’s lucky shirt when he broke the record. The Sapulpa resident, who is 71, set a new national benchmark for most miles run in a six-day span.
Competing at the Six Days in the Dome race in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last week, Ellis completed 380-plus miles in 144 hours, shattering the previous mark for runners over 70.
“I was going for the American record for 70-and-over runners, the record was 345 miles, so that is what I’ve been training for and gunning for,” said Ellis, who grew up in Sapulpa and still lives here. “The race went really well and I ended up getting 380 miles. You’ve got six days inside the dome – it’s a speed-skating dome that they put a three-lane track on the outside, around the hockey rinks, and you’ve got six days to go as you want, when you want, stop when you want, to see how many miles you can do.”
It is just the latest accomplishment for the acclaimed ultra-distance runner, who in addition to running 100-mile races through the Rocky Mountains (the Leadville Trail, which has elevations of over 10,000 feet; he last completed it in 2013), has also run across the entire country east to west and then again north to south, each time making sure he passed through Sapulpa on the way. He ended up writing a book about his 1998 cross country run in 2005, which is available on Amazon, called “Running with Payne: A Step by Step Journey Down Route 66 & Beyond,” which mirrors a similar run by a Native American runner named Andy Payne in 1928.
The 1970 graduate of Sapulpa High School didn’t play any sports in high school, saying he was “too slow” to be really competitive, but once he got out of college and discovered running, he realized he was much better at longer distances.
“I’ve been doing what they call ultra-runs, anything over a marathon, since 1986,” Ellis said. “I just found that I was built for endurance, not speed, and that the longer I go, the better, so I started running a couple of marathons. Then a 50-miler, then a 100-miler, and then it was just one thing after another. And 25 years ago, in 1998, I did my dream run of running across the country, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and that was a real thrill.
“As you get into the longer distances, you have to mix a lot of walking. People think you just run your guts out, but when you get into the longer distances, it’s just slow running, fast walking, how to mix those, the optimum run/walk ratio, how to eat, get the proper nutrition. There’s a lot of experience and know-how to that, so even though I’ve slowed down over the years, I feel like I’ve gotten better at the longer distances, because of just knowing how to go about it.”
As for his big record last week, the Six Days in the Dome run featured much less interesting scenery than his cross-country trek 25 years ago. It was all indoors on an oval track, with each lap 443 meters – just longer than a regular track that is typically 400 meters. So Ellis completed over 1,200 laps over the six day race, finishing sixth overall and fourth among men.
“People say, ‘Gosh, that’s got to be so boring,’ and I say, ‘No, we switch directions every six hours!’” Ellis said, laughing. “It helps the muscles a little bit to go in a different direction. It does seem really boring, but you meet a lot of nice people, there’s a lot of things going on. There happened to be two ice rinks inside (the oval), so there were always hockey games going on, speed skating, ice dancing. It isn’t that bad.”
During the race, he was able to stop to eat, go to the bathroom, even sleep – although he didn’t do much of that.
“Eating, I had everything right there at the trackside, we had a table right there, it was like a pit stop, I could stop in and grab a PB&J sandwich, get something to eat,” Ellis said. “My wife Marcy is always extremely helpful, she would go out and get something and bring it back to the dome. Sleeping – we had a hotel about three miles away and I did not go the first night, but after that, I would go during the day and get maybe one or two hours of sleep a day, and I might just doze an hour at the track, we had a chair there. So I was probably averaging less than three hours a day of sleep.”
As he approached the record on the final day, he made sure he honored his late father.
“I got into running when he was in his 50s, he started running and he had a favorite shirt he raced in all the time,” Ellis explained. “It’s so thin you could read through it, so for special occasions, I’ll put that shirt on. I put that shirt on for the lap that broke the record. It was cold in the dome, so I had to wear several shirts, but I finished with my dad’s favorite shirt, a Route 66 Marathon shirt. You can’t read it because it’s totally worn out.”
So he broke the record … and then just kept on going.
“My wife and my brother were there, we celebrated setting the record and took a few minutes to celebrate and eat,” Ellis said. “It was a little hard to find the motivation (after that). The last night, I didn’t hardly sleep any, I had to hobble through. I had a blister, so I was limping and just kept going. I really wanted to move the record up high enough so that the next guy will have to really, really work to break it. That was part of the motivation.”
People ask him why he keeps running such extreme distances at his age, but Ellis just loves to run, and as long as he can physically do it, he will.
“I love to compete and I’m extremely blessed to be able to do it,” he said. “I’ve obviously slowed down, but I hope it’s encouraging to people to take care of themselves and exercise. Why? It’s something I’m gifted to do, I love to do it and I’ll do it as long as I can.
“The races, like that six days, it takes a lot of mental focus to keep your body doing what it doesn’t want to do. There comes a point where you got to just keep pushing and focusing. I enjoy that. I just feel like the Lord really helps me, just gives me the strength to get through that, gives me the friends and encouragement and help to get through that.”
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- See photo (by Marcy Ellis): Randy Ellis breaks the record while wearing his father’s favorite shirt
