14: 100 x 100-milers

Ultrarunning History

By Davy Crockett Both a podcast episode and a full article (Listen to the podcast episode too with audio clips from some of the runners.) New book - Early history of 100-milers The sport of running 100 miles competitively has existed for multiple centuries. In the 1800s, the most prolific 100-mile runner was probably George D. Cameron "Noremac" (1852-1922). It is estimated that he exceeded 100 miles in 80 of his races across his 25-year running career. Frank Hart (1856-1908) finished about 77 100-milers in 24 years. For both, most of those races were six-day races where they usually ran far more than 300 miles. In the modern era, by the mid-1970s, running 100 miles in competition started to become more available to anyone. Before 1980, no one ran dozens of 100-milers during their running career, only a handful of 100s. Ultrarunning legend Ted Corbitt (1919-2007) ran fewer than ten 100-milers. By the end of 1999 a few prolific ultrarunners had piled up 100-mile race finishes. Richard and Sandra Brown of England were way out in front with 87 and 82, reaching 100 miles in both running and walking events. Ray Krolewicz of South Carolina was next with about 60 100-mile finishes to his name. Don Choi, the prolific multi-day runner from San Francisco, had more than 40 100-mile finishes but had retired from 100-mile running in 1997 at the age of 48. The world's greatest, Yiannis Kouros had an estimated 40 100-milers, most of them wins. As the decades passed, in 2024, there were 30 talented ultrarunners who had achieved 100 100 milers. Who are they? Recent News: Kim Sergeant Kim Sergeant, age 65, of Galveston, Texas, finished her 100th race of at least 100 miles on May 19, 2024 at 3 Days at the Fair in Augusta, New Jersey, making her the 30th person in the world to reach that milestone. She started running trails in the 1990s and soon finished her first 100-miler at the 1995 Arkansas Traveller 100. After finishing 3rd at the 1996 Rocky Raccoon, she became hooked on running 100-milers. She finished Rocky 13 times. Kim with Yen Nguyen, also in 100x100 club. Kim ran track in high school, was her team’s captain, but did not run long distance seriously until much later. She became a pharmacist, moved to Galveston, Texas, in 1988, and like many others, ran the seawall and soon ran the Houston marathon. She was encouraged by others to try trails and her ultrarunning career began. She became a determined, tough-minded 100-mile runner, who has experienced only 11 100-miler DNFs. She has run mostly flat or rolling 100-milers such as Umstead (10 finishes), Arkansas Traveller (8 finishes), and Vermont 100 (6 finishes). In 2008, she started running many fixed time races too and achieved some wins at 48 hours. Her 100-mile PR was 25:44:52 at 2001 Rocky Raccoon. Kim’s mom, Nancy Sergeant Kyper, was at first very concerned about Kim’s ultrarunning obsession but became her greatest cheerleader and was with her from 64 of her 100-mile finishes, and ran with her in two ultras at the age of 81 before passing away at age 89 in 2021. She supported Kim in her pursuit to achieve 100x100 and would have been very proud of this achievement. Kim pushed hard to reach this goal and finished fifteen 100-milers in 2023. The 100x100 Club Determining how many 100-mile+ race finishes a person has is a hard task because there is no official list and no single database has a complete list of results. The criteria I and others in this "club" have used to count 100-mile races includes: An official race, overseen by a race director, where 100 miles (161 kms) or more is achieved within a 48-hour period. Results are found on ultrasignup.com, DUV database, or verified with a race director. 100 miles must be reached within the established cut-off time for the race. A race of more than 100 miles is counted as only one, even if hundreds of miles were reached in the race Solo 100-mile runs,