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By Davy Crockett
During the first half of the 1980s, Bernd Heinrich, of Vermont, was the fastest ultrarunner in America. Today, few know of him and his amazing running records and accomplishments. Heinrich is the birdman and beeman of ultrarunning. He also was unique from most other ultrarunners in that rather than competing in many races, he was very selective in his race choices. When he ran, he had specific goals to win or set records, with laser focused training for these few specific events. Using this approach, he was able to win and set several American records.
Heinrich appeared suddenly on the ultrarunning scene, setting a record in his very first ultra, and he quickly rose to the top of the sport. He was named “Ultrarunner of the Year” three of the first four years of Ultrarunning Magazine. He had a quiet nature and never sought for the running spotlight, but eventually was one of the few to be inducted in the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame.
As a boy, Heinrich grew up living deep in a forest in war-torn Germany. In his life priorities, running was secondary to his true love, observing, researching, teaching and writing about nature. During his intense running years, he was able to find a balance to become a world-renowned expert in his professional naturalist career. Ultrarunning historian, Nick Marshall wrote about Heinrich in 1984, “Often runners don’t know much about the backgrounds of individuals whose athletic accomplishments may be very familiar to them, so it is quite nice to see one of our sport’s star gain recognition as a successful pioneer in a totally unrelated field.”
An ultramarathon held in 1911, The Mount Baker Race, was America’s first mountain trail ultramarathon. It was held in the state of Washington on a volcano, Mount Baker, located in the North Cascade mountains above the city of Bellingham. This historic forward-thinking race required participants to run between 28-32 miles and climb more than 10,000 feet through forests, over snow trails, across glaciers, and up to the wind-blown summit overlooking the Puget Sound to the west.
For more than a century there has been a “sport” involving combining ultrarunning with golf. No, this isn’t a joke. In 2016, Karl Meltzer of Utah, who has more 100-mile trail wins than anyone, set a world 12-hour speed golfing record of 230 holes, covering about 100 kms in the process. This created attention in ultrarunning circles, and we were left to wonder, how long has such a thing been going on?
Johnny Salo, of Passaic, New Jersey, was the greatest American ultrarunner of the first half of the 1900s. This is part two of the story of his amazing life and the story of the 1929 “Bunion Derby.” If you haven’t already, go read 
Johnny Salo was perhaps the greatest American ultrarunner of the late 1920s. Ultrarunning historian, Andy Milroy, rated him as the top American ultrarunner of the first half of the 1900s. His career was cut short due to tragedy, but during the years 1928-1930 there was no one better or faster. His story is a “rags to riches” tale as he sprang onto the national scene practically overnight. He was the most popular and most successful runner in C. C. Pyle’s historic transcontinental races of 1928-29. He and other fellow Finnish-American long-distance runners of that time were greatly talented and were able to dominate at many distances.
In recent years, the story of the amazing Tarahumara (Rarámuri) runners from Mexico exploded into international attention with the publication of Christopher McDougall’s best-selling 2009 book, Born to Run. Runners everywhere in 2009 naively tossed their shoes aside for a while and wanted to run like these ancient native Americans from hidden high Sierra canyons in Chihuahua, Mexico. Many other runners left the marathon distance behind, sought to run ultramarathons, and dreamed about running the Leadville 100, which exploded with new entrants.
With such a rich and long history that has been told and retold over the years, it is not surprising that folklore has crept in, and historic errors introduced by mistake or on purpose, making the legend of Western States and its origin story even more compelling. With the establishment of the Internet and social media, much like the “telephone game” myths have been told and retold.