This Ultra-Man is a Shoe-in to Inspire Kids

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“Momma always says there’s an awful lot you could tell about a person by their shoes. Where they’re going. Where they’ve been. I’ve worn lots of shoes.”

— Forrest Gump                        

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            You can tell an awful lot about Ed Wehan by the pile of running shoes on his front doorstep. The ones caked with dirt tell you he has been on muddy trails. The cleaner ones with worn treads tell you he has traveled countless sidewalks and roads. The newer ones tell you he has more miles to go.

Ed has worn lots of running shoes. He has worn them to complete 115 marathons and 40 ultra-marathons of 50 to 100 miles. While the fictional Forrest Gump went on a running journey that lasted three years, two months, fourteen days, and sixteen hours, Ed has been running for a full four decades.

His odyssey began in 1973 when, at age 29, he didn’t recognize the reflection in the mirror. After earning an MBA at the University of Southern California and joining the working world, Ed fell out of shape. Understand, as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, he had been a supreme athlete. A four-year varsity tennis star, he once made UCLA’s Arthur Ashe – then the nation’s No. 1-ranked collegiate player – work to earn a 6-3, 6-3 victory.

Ed treated running like an opponent’s weak lob – he attacked it. In less than three years he went from jogging a few laps on a track to running a full marathon in 3 hours, 30 minutes.

“My compulsive personality took over,” recalls Ed, who broke 3 hours in his third marathon and ultimately lowered his PR to a blazing 2 hours, 36 minutes. (Ed, who turns 69 this Thursday going on 47, still regularly breaks 4 hours; last month he ran a 1:52 half-marathon.)

Looking for a new runner’s high, in 1979 Ed entered The Western States 100 – an insanely tortuous 100-mile race up, down and across California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. He finished seventh overall in 18 hours, 48 minutes to become only the 15th person to earn a coveted silver belt buckle for breaking the 24-hour barrier.

While Ed was tireless as a mule at 100 miles, in 50-mile ultras he had the speed of the Pony Express. In fact, in both 1984 and 1985 he clocked the fastest Masters (age 40-and-over) times in the nation at the distance with a best of 5 hours, 39 minutes – an average pace of 6 minutes, 46 seconds per mile!

The running accomplishments of this longtime resident of Ventura, California are all the more remarkable when you learn Ed is a cancer survivor of more than two decades and a dozen years ago he had open-heart surgery to correct atrial fibrillation. He had actually completed a couple 100-mile races with his heart functioning at about 60 percent capacity. Not surprisingly, Ed ran six miles the day before heart surgery. Six months later, he finished third in a 50-mile ultra.

Seven years ago, Ed took on a new challenge – fighting childhood obesity by promoting physical activity and nutritional education. Specifically, he helped create “SummerFest” for local school kids that was named the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness “Event of the Year” for the State of California three years ago.

“It takes a community to fight childhood obesity,” Ed says. “Parents can’t do it alone, teachers can’t do it alone. It takes all of us advocating for, and being role models for, healthy eating and physical activity.”

“I don’t expect every kid to want to run a marathon or climb Mount Whitney,” says Ed, who of course has reached that summit – the highest peak in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet – with his teenage daughter. “But hopefully we can encourage kids, teachers and parents to make physical activity a part of their lives.”

And start building their own pile of running shoes on their front porch.– You can contact Woody at WoodyWriter@gmail.com