The Unisphere 100 at Flushing Meadows 1978-79

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By Davy Crockett

1978 was a year when new road 100-milers started to spring up across America, put on by independent race directors. Most of these races were available for the non-elite long-distance runners to give the epic distance a try. These 100-milers were held in Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Maryland, Missouri. One race in particular was established that would eventually become a national championship event: the 100-miler at Flushing Meadows in Queens, New York. Going forward 100-mile or 24-hour races would be held at this venue into the 1990s. World and American records would be set on the grounds normally used by thousands of park visitors.

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Unisphere 100

Flushing Meadows Park was created in 1939 for the New York World’s Fair and was also the venue for the 1964 World’s Fair. The races’ namesake, the Unisphere, a massive spherical steel representation of the Earth, was created as part of the 1964 World’s Fair. It is 140 feet high and 120 feet in diameter and weighs 700,000 pounds. The rings around it represent the tracks of the first men to orbit the earth, celebrating the beginning of the space age.

The course for the 1978 100-mile race was a flat, but uneven, 2.27-mile loop that went closely around Meadow Lake. The race included a strong field and was an invitational race where participants needed to have previous ultramarathon experience. Twenty-two qualified runners participated although few had ever run the 100-mile distance before. Five of these runners deserve to be highlighted.

Park Barner

Park Barner (1944-), “The Human Metronome,” was a computer programmer from Pennsylvania. He was the pre-race favorite for the Unisphere 100. Barner had served in the Army and was stationed in Germany during the late 1960s. While there, he watched a movie that inspired him to start running and set a goal to run a marathon.

At the 1971 Boston Marathon, he met ultrarunning legend Ted Corbitt (1919-2017) and asked him, “How do you run 100 miles?” Corbitt’s reply was, “You just have to tell yourself to keep going.” Barner at the age of 27, in 1971, started running ultra-distance races and quickly became the greatest American ultrarunner of the 1970s. In 1976 he gained fame by running 300 km on the C&O Towpath in Maryland, in 36:48:34. During that run he reached 100 miles in 16:14:10.

On August 16, 1975, Barner ran his first formal 100-mile race. It was held on a quarter-mile track at New York’s Queensboro Community College, put on by the New York Road Runners. There were only seven starters and all but Barner dropped out along the way. He reached 50 miles in 6:32 but without any competition, he faded the second half. He won with a time of 13:40:59 for a lifetime best.

By 1978, Barner had finished 41 races of 50 miles or longer and won 19 of them. Barner’s 41 finishes was incredible for a time when relatively few ultras were being held. For more about Barner, see episode 51.

Nick Marshall

Nick Marshall (1948-) was from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. He was an athlete in high school on the track team and the statistician for the basketball team. In his yearbook he was quoted, “I don’t want to be an engineer, I’d rather be President.” Marshall started running marathons in 1973. He realized that the longer the race, the better he could compete. He said, “I was motivated by a simple curiosity over a basic question: How far can you go?” He set his marathon best of 2:41:15 in 1975 at the Harrisburg Marathon.

Marshall’s introduction to ultras came in 1974, at the C&O Canal 100K on a point-to-point course from Washington D.C. to Harpers Ferry. He finished in second place to Park Barner and was then hooked on ultras. By 1977, Marshall was one of only a handful of runners who had broken six hours for 50 miles on both the road and track. That year he beat Barner in the Lake Waramaug 100 km in Connecticut with an amazing time of 7:17:06. Marshall was ready to try his hand at 100 miles at Flushing Meadows.

Cahit Yeter

Cahit Yeter (1940-2011) was an immigrant from Turkey who lived in the Bronx. He claimed that in his native Turkey that he was a champion marathoner with a best time of 2:14 and had run more than 200 marathons in 43 countries. He said while preparing for the Olympics at age 23, he was severely injured in an auto accident and for the next sixteen years put running aside and immigrated to America to start a new life as a chef and bus driver.

He started running marathons again in 1976 with 2:55 at the Philadelphia Marathon. He gained popularity in the Bronx and started to organize races in 1977. Later he founded a running club among his admirers called “Cahit Pacers.” His first ultra was the 1977 Metropolitan 50 Mile Race in Central Park where he finished 9^th in 6:15:18.

Sadly, Yeter’s running career results has been shrouded in doubt. No evidence has been found about his running exploits in Turkey and they are believed to be fiction. He had claimed that he had been born in 1935, but it appears that he was actually born in 1940 and thus claimed Master’s records that were undeserved. In the 1980s he was witnessed cutting courses to improve his times. The controversy surrounding him was very public and It was believed that he used tactics of faking laps at night on loop courses, similar to an infamous ultrarunner of recent years. Clearly Yeter had elite ultrarunning skills, but there has been doubt about what he actually accomplished fairly. In 1978, at age 38, he was ready to attempt his first 100-miler at Unisphere 100.

Bill Lawder

William “Bill” Lawder (1947-) was data processor from Hopewell, New Jersey. He ran his first marathon in 1976 and said it was disastrous because he “lacked respect for the distance and made no attempt to master it.” But he learned and went on to run his first ultra in 1977 at Lake Waramaug 50 miler in Connecticut. Later that year broke six hours at the Metropolitan 50-miler in Central Park with a 4^th place finish time of 5:52:23. He was a very talented and forgotten ultrarunner who would win the JFK 50 in 1979, in record time. Lawder said, “I like running 50s. In a race like this you can enjoy it. You can look around and see what there is to see. If you’re not enjoying the first half of this race, something is wrong.” Lawder started to pile up marathon finishes in the range of 2:50.

Jim Shapiro said of him, “Lawder is the running fanatic, who flies to England, or Miami, or down to Virginia or wherever, to gobble up as many ultra and marathon runs as he can, frequently running the latter in 2:40-plus time simply as a workouts.” Lawder also was ready to attempt his first 100-miler at Unisphere 100.

Rich Langsam

Rich Langsam (1951-) was from New York, a member of Vanderbuilt YMCA. He ran track in both high school and college and was running sub-3-hour marathons by 1975. He started running ultras in 1977 and placed 4^th at the 1978 Metropolitan 50 in Central Park with a time of 5:52:06. In June,1978, he won the Foresthill 40-miler by 150 yards with a time of 4:33:34. Jim Shapiro said of him, “Langsam, an accountant in midtown Manhattan, will run around the island once in a while to stay in trim, and he’s frequently needled by his friends for his predilection for skimpy Union Jack shorts and European-cut racing tanktops.” The Unisphere 100 would be his first attempt to run 100 miles.

Rich Innamorato

Rich Innamorato (1949-), was an accountant from Woodland, New York. In his high school yearbook it was written about him, “With an ability to talk and an interest in sports, Rich will become an excellent sports announcer.” He began running while attending Parsons College in Iowa, where he also played soccer. After graduating in 1970 he obtained employment at a Manhattan publishing house and started running marathons in the city and at Boston. He started running ultras in 1976, and that year received national fame by running from Maine to Florida in 71 days. He was good friends with Ted Corbitt and later founded the Broadway Ultra Society. He would become a running legend for decades in New York City.

The Start

The historic 1978 Unisphere 100 race started at 4 p.m. on June 23, 1978 with twenty-two starters. To run the full 100 miles, runners would run 44 loops. It was the largest modern era American 100-mile race field to that point, but would be eclipsed a week later at the second annual Western States 100.

Barner ran alone from the start, apart from the others, taking off uncharacteristically fast. Marshall reported, “By nightfall and 50 miles, he lapped everyone else at least once with a 5:59 50-mile split. Langsam and Lawder were next at 6:23 and 6:25.” Yeter, Marshall and others were in a second pack that came through at about 6:40. It was a very fast group of front-runners making circuits around the lake.

The Second Half

During the night, the heat took its toll on everyone. The officials placed candles in bags around the lake at locations where there weren’t streetlamps. “There was no fence around the lake, we worried that when runners lost concentration after 60 miles, they might fall into the lake.” One runner explained that he hallucinated. “I saw all kinds of things on the lake. I saw the War of 1812. I saw Admiral Perry there.”

Jim Shapiro was running and recalled. “I remembered how much it meant to come around out of the ghostly spell of two miles of running past empty park benches, out among the trees with the branches that made you duck, the bright moon, the smell of the water, and finally after coming up over a small bridge, seeing the first slice of lamplight from the timer’s table gleaming ahead like a welcoming beacon. I always ran a little smoother and faster then.”

Barner maintained a 9-minute lead at mile 68, but at that point the second place runner Landsam, chasing after him soon crumbled. “Crash time arrived and the fatigue was aggravated by a weak ankle, reducing Langsam from a jog to a halting walk and finally a cruel DNF at 87 miles.” He would give up trying to run 100 miles. Innamorato stopped after 70 miles because he was badly hallucinating.

By mile 75, Barner was in full command, about a half hour ahead of the next competitors who were closely bunched. Lawder was soon reduced to a walk, moving Yeter and Marshall up into the top three. Barner cruised to the win with a time of 13:57:36. His only complaint was that the course was too flat. He proclaimed, “I would have preferred a few hills.”

Yeter finished second with 14:30:05 and Marshall came in third with 14:37:05. These were the top three fastest American 100-mile performances for the year, the first time three sub-15-hour finishes occurred in an American 100-mile race. Lawder finished in 15:37:22. Shapiro finished in 16:19:32. In total, seven finished among the 22 100-mile rookie starters.

Jim Shapiro wrote, “There was a lot of satisfaction and excitement about the race in the East Coast ultraworld and eventually the wires were abuzz again with plans for the second annual version.”

The 1979 Unisphere 100

The second annual 100-mile race at Flushing Meadows was held again in June 1979, with returning champion, Park Barner. Because of the great attention it was receiving, interested entrants were carefully screened. That year Innamorato served as the co-race-director for the New York Road Runners event. He explained about the requirement to have previously run an ultra and mentioned that twelve runners were rejected. “If Bill Rodgers applied, I’d have to reject him. There’s only one person in the race who hasn’t run 50 miles before. This is not a carnival” The cutoff time to finish the 100-miles was a set to be a very difficult 18 hours. It was said, “qualifying times were established to weed out any who might hurt themselves by trying something they weren’t ready for, or who hadn’t the potential to finish within the time limit.” One letter of rejection did not reach a man from Germany in time who flew in to run. “Anyone that serious deserved a chance, and as it turned out the runner acquitted himself honorably.”

Headlining the race that year was the 100-mile track world record holder, Don Ritchie, from Scotland (see episode 72). In all there were 27 starters. “That ultragang, mostly members of the East Coast division, had taken time off from nursing bruised and injured bodies and driven in from the different boroughs of New York and from neighboring states. A few local runners came in early from work for the 7 p.m. start and rode out on the subway, clutching their athletic carry-bags.”

Frank Bozanich, who had run with Ritchie at the Crystal Palace two years earlier (see episode 72), was also in the field. He had flown 3,000 miles from California to run. On the plane some passengers asked why he was flying to New York. His reply, “I’m just going there to run 100 miles. They couldn’t believe it. They probably thought I was really crazy. That’s the most common thing I hear. Sometimes you have a hard time understanding yourself. Most people have a hard time relating. It’s physically hard. It’s a challenge.”

Prerace

Ritchie arrived from Scotland two days before that big race and was picked up at the airport by a running club official. He was fascinated with his ride in a yellow cab. “It was quite a thrill to see the New York skyline for the first time and the cab driver gave a commentary as he drove along.” He shared a hotel room with Bozanich and the next day ran for 8.5 miles in Central Park. He said, “That was quite an experience as there were thousands of other runners of all shapes and sizes doing the same thing.” The next day he rested and walked around Manhattan.

Ritchie said about running 100 miles, “It’s a tremendous challenge mentally. The running is easy. The mental attitude is important, the ability to tolerate pain. It’s annoying pain, always there, like a toothache. If you stop, the pain will go away, or lessen. But your try not to stop.” Bozanich added, “You try not to let your mind wander and concentrate. You’re thinking more about the race itself. If you don’t concentrate, you’ll lose it. You have to listen to your body. Know the pace. Over 100 miles, you’re tire and hurting and there’s a lot of other things you’d rather be doing on a Friday night. So, you have to concentrate.”

In addition to Ritchie, Barner, and Bozanich, there were several other future ultrarunning legends and in the field.

Lion Caldwell

Richard “Lion” Caldwell of Texas was permitted to run, even though he had only one ultra finish on his resume. He acquired the nickname “Lion” as a student at Kansas State University when was playing with some young children and began roaring to entertain them. While going to medical school in Texas, he ran about 12,000 miles on the Galveston’s seawall during the mid and late 1970s. In 1978, the year before he graduated, He ran his first ultra, the Houston 50-miler, which he won in a lifetime best of 5:36:55, the sixth fastest time in America that year. Certainly, he was qualified to run his first 100-miler.

Stu Mittleman

Future ultrarunning hall of famer, Stu Mittleman, a college professor from New York City was also in the qualified field. When he was in high school, he ran a 4:39 mile, but he wrestled at Colgate University rather than running track. Once he quit that sport, he took up long-distance swimming for a while. In 1975, while skiing, he had a terrible fall, tore his ACL and damaged cartilage. He had knee surgery and could not run for five months.

In 1977 he ran up Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, Colorado and fell in love with running. At his first Boston Marathon, he ran in a gutter in efforts to pass runners, and twisted his ankle terribly. Disappointed, but determined, Mittleman tied ice around his swollen ankle and vowed not to drop out of the race. He finished in 4:03. He ran his first ultra in 1978, running 6:13:59 in the Metropolitan 50 in Central Park, New York, placing 8^th. That qualified him to run in his first 100-miler.

Dave Obelkevich

Dave Obelkevich (1943-) was a music teacher from New York City and started running road races around 1973. He remained a true city road specialist his entire running career. He faithfully ran the same races over and over again including the New York City Marathon. He became interested in running in 1972 when he watched coverage of the New York City Marathon on a morning TV show. The next year Dave went to the NYC Marathon which at that time went four times around Central Park. One Saturday in 1976 he looked out the window and was surprised to see a race going on, it was a 50K. He went out and ran one loop with them and the next year, in 1977, he started running ultras. One of his first was the 1978 Metropolitan 50 in Central Park. He finished 19th overall with 6:43 which qualified him for the Ultrasphere 100.

Jack Bristol

Jack Bristol (1949-1991) was an electromechanical technician from Marble Dale, Connecticut. In high school, he ran for the Bethel High cross-country team in the 1960s and then attended college at Ohio State. Out of college, Bristol started running ultras in 1971, always finishing high in the results. In 1974 he co-founded the Lake Waramaug 50 miler and 100 km in Connecticut which became one the most competitive American ultras during the 1970s. In 1974, when age 25, Bristol ran the prestigious London to Brighton 52-miler in England, finishing tenth, in a very impressive 5:44:20. By 1979, he and Park Barner were probably the most experienced American ultrarunners in the Ultrasphere 100 field. It would be his first attempt to run 100 miles.

Others

Other runners in the field included Ed Dodd of Pennsylvania, Tom Osler of New Jersey, Paul Soskind of New York, Brian Jones of New York, Guenter Erich of New Jersey, and John Kenul (1943-2005) of New York.

The Start

The race started at 7 p.m. at the abandoned 1939 World’s Fair Amphitheater in Flushing Meadows Park (demolished in 1996). Ritchie stormed into the lead running at 6-minute-mile pace. Bozanich hung with him for three laps but then it turned into a one-man race as Bozanich fell behind. He did his best to stay close but was already 12 minutes behind when Ritchie, bothered by the 80 degree heat, hit the marathon mark at 2:40:50. Ritchie commented on the gnats around the lake, “An unexpected problem was hordes of files, which appeared in black clouds as the sun went down. I was getting protein instead of carbohydrates.”

The start. Leaders, Don Richie #2, Frank Bozanich #5, Cahit Yeter, Brian Jones #4

Jim Shapiro crewed for Ritchie and said, “I waited on him for each lap, knowing by the large digital clock almost to the second when to expect him to appear around the bend of the path. Cardboard cards with each runner’s number dangled from a long clothesline suspended between the immense concrete pillars. Beneath were stashed rucksacks, shopping bags, and ice coolers that held extra changes of clothes and running shoes. Bottles of soda and other more elaborate concoctions were ducked in ice. The sting incense of Ben Gay hung in the air.”

The officials were under the direction of legendary 67-year old, Joe Kleinerman (1912-2003). He helped establish the New York Road Runners Club and promoted long-distance running in the New York City area more than anyone at the time. Watchers under Kleinerman’s direction would call out the numbers of approaching runners so that the timekeepers for the runners could bend forward over immense swathes of cardboard art paper, with carefully ruled-off squares, to plot the progress of their runners. At one point, one of the officials asked Ritchie how he felt and he replied, “It’s just survival.” He usually never smiled or acknowledged the yells or applause as he ran beneath the night lamps that were set up for the officials and timekeepers.

Shapiro always had two drinks ready for Ritchie. One was ERG, a commercial electrolyte replacement drink. The other was a special mix of “long-chain glucose polymers” which would rapidly be absorbed from his gut to his bloodstream. He would alternate the drink each lap. “I fell into stride as he ran through and handed off the bottle from his right side. Ritchie wasn’t inclined to say much when he was working hard. He chugged from the bottle and returned it with monotonous regularity at a point about 400 yards down the pathway. A wet sponge to dab his high, balding brow, a swab on his thighs, a slap at the thick clouds of gnats which drifted like black mist out of the tall grass surrounding the pond, and with a word of encouragement from me he was off, arms pumping, shoulders hunching more and more deeply as with each succeeding lap, the familiar weariness set in.”

The Second Half

Richie reached 50 miles in 5:23:44 and had lapped everyone at least three times. His feet had become very painful from the hot road starting at about mile 20. Doubts had come into his mind if he could finish the race. He stopped to tape over a blister but the painful foot would cause him to limp noticeably at times. He said, “My feet became very painful but they lost feeling at about 50 miles, which was a blessing and my legs felt fine.” Bozanich dropped out after 50 miles with cramping hamstrings. Caldwell was in second place and cruised through the 50-mile mark at 6:20:08. Ritchie kept extending his lead and reached 100 km in a blazing 6:49:38.

The scene during the night with crews and runners was eerie and was said to resemble the campfire grounds of a tribe of gypsies. “Tucked off in the shadows away from the string of lights, a few exhausted runners lay curled up like children with their hands slipped between their knees. Here and there small groups sat on the steps chatting about the race. An occasional stranger would wander in out of the night drawn like a moth by the brightly lit scene and wondering aloud, ‘A hundred miles! You’re kidding. Gee,’ and stay an hour or so.” Ritchie thought the night life was very odd. “There were people in the park all night doing various things having parties and entertaining each other.”

Runners were “dropping like flies.” Ed Dodd and Tom Osler ran, along with a couple other runners from New Jersey. They all quit before mile 70. Dodd remembered, “The gnats were quite awful. I was amazed at Ritchie’s pounding stride. It made my feet hurt just listening to him run by.”

Ritchie’s Finish

Fred Lewbow and Ted Corbitt holding the finish ribbon. Ted Corbitt trophy on table.

As dawn arrived after about ten hours Ritchie had 20 miles to go and felt new energy as the sun hit him. Nick Marshall reported, “Briefly, the balding, bearded Scot slowed to a bit over eight-minute-mile pace on numbed feet, only to rally impressively the last 16 miles and set a world 100-mile road record of 11:51:12.” Ritchie now held the 100-mile world record on both the track and road. His road record was twenty minutes slower because of the hot weather but he had broken Ron Hopcroft’s 1958 uncertified time on the Box Road by 27 minutes. (see episode 61).

After he finished, Ritchie could barely walk and was carried to a chair so he could dunk his feet into ice water. He said, “I soaked my feet for half an hour in a bucket of cold water to extract some of the heat from them.” It was reported, “A small, awestruck crowd gathered around just to stare, and the man whose mother has to pry out of him the news that he’s won a race suddenly found himself a minor celebrity.” Surprisingly, the press was there with cameras and notepads, including The New York Times. He was even featured in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” and received a trophy from them. After the feet soak, Ritchie was awarded the Ted Corbitt trophy by the legend himself. Ritchie said, “It was a pleasure for me to meet Ted.”

Others Finish

The other runners continued. Shapiro wrote, “Through the evening, the survivors who came in for refueling had various odd requests: an aspirin, a change of socks, a calf massage; and wanting, sometimes, some words of advice or cheer. There was a little humor and something affecting in seeing such intense knots of civilians clustering about the soldiers with their single-minded, almost child-like absorption in their effort.”

Caldwell continued on and finished in an impressive 13:33:46, the certified American road 100-mile best at that time, only second to an uncertified 12:54:31 performed by Jose Cortez in 1971 (see episode 64). Barner had run sluggish because had run an unofficial 24-hour world record of 162 miles just two weeks earlier at Huntington Beach, California. Bozanich also ran there, about 85 miles, but was discouraged because of the poor job they did there keeping track of laps, missing several miles of his effort.

As people observed Barner doing laps in Flushing Meadows, they said that he lacked his usual competitiveness and was more mellow than usual, chatting with crew or runners he passed. People commented, “Park is talkative tonight.” After 25 miles he was in 12^th place but Barner moved up steadily to finish third in 14:14:10. Mittleman finished 20 minutes later in 14:34:14. Obelkevich finished in 15:15:57. Bristol came in 6^th at 16:24:03. In total, 11 of the 27 finished, all under 20 hours.

Shapiro closed up the event with these comments, “The pennants, the digital clock and the plastic buckets that had been used for water were stored away in car trunks. The pathway around the pond was no longer a magic circle, and ordinary strollers promenaded over the asphalt. The once orange moon of the night still hung overhead, pale and sobered, not hinting at how wild a night it had witnessed. All around the city, the few dozen racers went to sleep, scattered again until the call of the next enterprise.”

The parts of this 100-mile series:

Sources:

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), Mar 7, 1977, Oct 18, 1982
Davy Crockett, Swift Endurance Legends
Nick Marshall, 1978 Ultradistance Summary
Nick Marshall, 1979 Ultradistance Summary
Daily News (New York, New York), Jun 5, 25, 1978, Jun 15, 1979,Oct 16, 1985
The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland), Jul 1, 1978
The Bangor Daily News (Maine), Oct 18, 1976
Fort Lauderdale News (Florida), Dec 18, 1976
Lancaster New Era (Pennsylvania), Nov 15, 2003
Jim Shapario, Ultarmarathon
Don Ritchie, The Stubborn Scotsman
2021 interview with Frank Bozanich

73: The 100-miler: Part 20 (1978-79) The Unisphere 100

By Davy Crockett