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Pirrung Keeps Running

Always A Few Miles To Go

By Myles Dannhausen Jr.

Aaron Schneider turned the 2011 Door County Fall 50 into his own personal Century Run, running the course twice to complete his first 100-mile race. The rare double-down sounded familiar to ultra-running icon Roy Pirrung.

Two years ago the Sheboygan resident went east to run the Boston Marathon. His friend, Green Bay Marathon Director Sean Ryan, was heading there as well to work with Boston Race Director Dave McGillvray.

“Why don’t you run with us?” Ryan asked Pirrung.

McGillvray has run 39 consecutive Boston Marathons. When he signed on as technical director in 1988, he didn’t end his tradition. Once most runners have finished and the award ceremony is complete, he heads to the starting line to run his own personal Boston Marathon, mostly in the dark, his brother serving as his aid stations.

Pirrung jumped at the chance to run with McGillvray, but for him, that didn’t mean giving up his spot. He simply ran the race as planned, met a car at the finish line, and went back to the start in time to run the course again with Ryan and McGillory.

“I finished the first marathon in 3:34,” Pirrung said. “Then the second in 4:26. So I ran two Boston Marathons back-to-back in eight hours flat, which I thought was pretty neat.”

Pirrung, a frequent visitor to Door County, where he has run the Hairpin Run, the Fall 50, Door County Half Marathon, Pot Park Run Wild and the Sevastopol Turkey Trot, doesn’t shrink from a running challenge.

Last summer Pirrung and his friend Victor Vella created their own personal trilogy of endurance runs in Italy that sounds absurd to even the most experienced distance runner. He started with the Nove Colli (Nine Hills) race on May 21, a 202.6 km race with 3,200 m of elevation gain.

Then he ran del Passatore (The Sieve) on May 28, a 100 km run from Florence to Faenza. Finally, he topped the trilogy with the 722 km Turin to Rome ultra on June 2, finishing in 6 days, 18 hours and 12 minutes.

For those keeping score, that’s over 1,000 km of running – or 25 marathons – in 18 days. He came out of it injury free. Pirrung said he’s never suffered a serious running injury thanks to a religious stretching routine and thousands of miles of base running.

“I got to the point where I can just do it,” Pirrung says. “Now I do less training and more racing, always trying to go further.”
This fall he completed his 900th race, a list that includes 119 marathons and 167 ultra marathons.

In October he earned himself a small spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as part of Team Jenipede at the Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee.

Sixty-two runners formed the Jenipede, setting the record for the most runners to complete a marathon tethered to a rope.

“It’s really serious, Guinness has strong regulations,” Pirrung said. “We wore a race belt with a climbers carabineer and we’re all connected by a single length of rope.”

With about a meter between each runner, the group had to measure their speed, plan bathroom breaks, and, if one slowed down, they all slowed down.

The effort wasn’t just about grabbing a quirky record. It was done as a fundraiser for Jenny Crain, a leader in the running community who was hit by a car while training for the Olympic Marathon trials in 2007. Doctors thought Crain, now 43, would never walk or talk again.

In a post on Tom Held’s Off the Couch blog, Pirrung said the effort brought him “something I had not experienced in years.”

“I woke up at 3 a.m. on race day, apprehensive,” he wrote. “What if the day went sour and I was the one that did not ‘make it happen.’ Others I spoke with felt the same. The more people that were on the rope, the higher the chances something could go wrong. Things did go wrong, but we stuck together as a team and overcame the obstacles of the day. When we couldn't run we power walked, and finally, that final .2 was there, Jenny was there, the crowd support was there and it was magnificent – we HAD to run!”

Crain joined the Jenipede in her wheelchair for the final .2 miles, pushed along by famed marathoner Bart Yasso of Runner’s World.

The group initially hoped to raise $75,000 for Crain but flew past their goal and raised $108,000 for the Make it Happen Fund, which supports her continuing rehabilitation effort.

“She is a leader in the community, full of energy,” Pirrung said. “She inspired a lot of people.”

Pirrung continues to make it happen as well, for himself and for others.