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By Davy Crockett
100-mile attempts mostly ceased across the world during the 1940s due to World War II. By 1946 some isolated 100-mile attempts reemerged, including a walking event in England where seven athletes accomplished the distance in less than 24-hours. Rex Whitlock of Great Britain walked the 100-mile Bath Road course in an amazing 17:44:40 in 1952.
Ultrarunning, at other distances, also came to life again in South Africa when the Comrades Marathon (55 miles) was held again in 1946 and the Pieter Korkie 50 km was established in Germiston. In England, the London to Brighton running race (52 miles) was established in 1951, using the famed road used by walking and biking events for decades earlier. Ultrarunning was reawakening.
During the prewar decades, hundreds of successful 100-mile attempts and events were held. Would the 100-miler truly come back in the modern era of ultrarunning?
World War II formally concluded, but conflicts continued across the world. During the aftermath of the war, with evolving superpowers, the changing world map, and the resulting Cold War, it made it a difficult time for ultrarunning to emerge widely. But the running sport has always been resilient.
After decades of 100-mile races, matches and successful finishes in less than 24 hours before 1930, the Great Depression turned ultrarunners’ attention to more important matters – surviving. Opportunities to earn a living as a professional runner dried up as public interest waned. Memories of past accomplishments and records faded. Occasionally the newspapers would pull out of their dusty archives a story about Edward Payson Weston’s walking wonders which was treated as “believe it or not” oddities, rather than something that others could accomplish.
In the 1920s one of the greatest British ultrarunner ever appeared, who made a serious impact on the forgotten 100-mile ultrarunning history before World War II. He was Arthur Newton of England, South Africa, and Rhodesia was a rare ultrarunning talent who had world-class ability in nearly all the ultrarunning distances from 50 km to 24-hours. Newton learned most of his serious running on a farm in remote Africa and was bold enough to step onto the world stage and beat everyone. His dominance in the early years of South Africa’s Comrades Marathon (54 miles) helped the race get off the ground to become the oldest and largest ultramarathon in the world.
For at least 150 years, running or walking 100 miles within 24 hours has been an impressive feat sought after by thousands.
Many of today’s ultrarunners think that ultrarunning was invented during their lifetime. An article appeared in April 2020 Ultrarunning Magazine that stated falsely, “the format that most of us know as ‘ultrarunning’ today (trail and road races, typically 50k to 100 miles) is barely 50 years old.” Such statements are ignorant of the rich history of the past and the ultrarunners who paved the way, running ultradistances on dirt roads and trails for more than two centuries.
Contrary to popular misinformed opinion, 100-mile races did not originate in California, with the Western States 100 in 1978. One hundred years before, by the end of 1878, more than 200 successful 100-mile finishes had taken place in the 19th century, most of them with times under 24-hours, on dirt roads, trails, and indoor tracks.
Competitions to walk or run 100 miles have taken place for more than 300 years. 
The 100-miler! Running or walking 100 miles in one-go is an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately, some people of today still mistakenly believe that the 100-miler was invented in 1974 when a man without his horse ran 100 miles. Contrary to the cunning marketing hype that has been spread for decades, the history of the 100-miler ultra on all surfaces started long before that year. The sub-24-hour 100-miler was accomplished by hundreds of people before that famed journey in the California Sierra in 1974. In April 2020, Runner’s World magazine erroneously called that run “The First 100-mile Ultra.”
The concept of walking or running extreme distances has taken place for thousands of years in many cultures, motivated mostly to relay swift communication between settlements or armies. Historic stories have been found regarding distances that were further than 100 miles such as Pheidippides’ run from Athens to Sparta in 490 B.C., a distance of about 153 miles.