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By Davy Crockett
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By March 1875, Edward Payson Weston, from New York City, was on top of the ultrarunning world (called Pedestrianism). He had just won the first six-day race in history, was the only person who had ever walked 500 miles in six days and held the 24-hour world walking record of 115 miles. Through his efforts and the promotion of P.T. Barnum, the sport had been given a rebirth and was on the front pages of newspapers across America.
Weston had won hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s value for his exploits and obviously others wanted a piece of this action too. Was Weston one of a kind, or would others succeed in dethroning him? A true rival did emerge from Chicago, an Irishman who worked hard to try to become the best, Daniel O’Leary.
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The Across the Years race, established in 1983, is one of the oldest fixed-time races in the world that is still held annually. The race is always held at the end of the year, crossing over to the new year with a grand celebration. Through the years, it has attracted many of the greatest fixed-time ultrarunners in the world and still today is the premier and largest fixed-time race in America. Over its impressive history, about 2,500 runners have logged more than 500,000 miles at Across the Years. It all started in 1983, the brainchild of Harold Sieglaff, of Phoenix, Arizona. This episode is a tribute to Sieglaff and the other pioneer ultrarunners who were the first to run this famed ultra.
P.T. Barnum featured ultrarunners (pedestrians) in 1874 who were attempting to reach 500 miles in six days, to bring paying patrons into his massive indoor Hippodrome in New York City 24-hours a day. Even though the first attempts by Edward Payson Weston and Edward Mullen came up short (
The ultimate showman, P.T. Barnum of circus fame, was surprisingly the first serious ultrarunning promoter and established the first six-day race in America. He was famous for the saying “There’s a sucker is born every minute,” and figured out how to get America to come out by the thousands to watch skinny guys walk, run and suffer around a small indoor track for hours and days as part of his “Greatest Show on Earth” presented in the heart of New York City. In this episode, details of Barnum’s connection to ultrarunning history are told for the first time.
Congratulations to Eric Clifton, originally from North Carolina, now of California, who was inducted into the 
The six-day race became the most popular ultrarunning (pedestrian) event of the 19th century. In 
Recently, the six-day race received some attention in ultrarunning news because the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) announced that they would no longer recognize the six-day event or keep records for it. This shocked many ultrarunning historians and particularly runners who participate in multi-day fixed-time races. After a brief uproar, the new IAU leadership back-peddled, somewhat admitted to their ignorance about six-day ultrarunning history and agreed to continue to recognize the event that has roots in the sport going back nearly 250 years.