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Below
is the article from the Providence
Journal online version
Friday - November 11, 2000
No
small feat for a runner
This
weekend, Jerry Dunn adds to his quest to complete 200 marathons
this year
By JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer
PAWTUCKET -- It is 5:18 a.m. in a dark parking lot just off
the highway and a tall, gaunt man dressed in black is looking for
his fix: endorphins.
Obsessive, compulsive, and a combination of both, he's been called.
Or a freak of nature. A genetic anomaly. Flat-out crazy. Sisyphus
with a cell phone.
But Jerry Dunn is no running joke. If things stay on course, including
the Ocean State Marathon on Sunday, he will have completed 200 marathons
in one year by Dec. 10. (There is not one zero too many on
that number.) At age 54, the former massage therapist, log-home
builder, waiter and husband to the current Mrs. South Dakota, is
a traveling road show who shuns stretching, doctors, and who considers
dehydrated barley grass breakfast.
Dunn is traversing the country, hitting 17 official marathon races,
but arriving early in each city so he can run the sanctioned 26.2-mile
courses for several days, for a total of 183 solo treks. In 1991,
he ran across the United States over a three-month period to raise
money for Habitat for Humanity.
He's no Alberto Salazar; he purposely clocks over-10-minute miles
and has been known to stop for a hot dog on a course. But his quest
-- breaking a world record of 104 marathons in one year -- has earned
him a nickname: America's Marathon Man.
The why is less clear. He's an only child of a dock foreman and
the manager of a religious bookstore in Indianapolis, and he likes
the attention, he says. He traded one addiction (alcohol, which
he gave up decades ago) for another. He wanted to get paid to do
what he loves, and to set a new record for the United States Mega-Marathon
Association.
"Don't limit your challenges, challenge your limits" is
his official line.
To make an appointment with the always moving Marathon Man, you
call him on his cellular phone. At first, last week, there seemed
to be a bad connection. Dunn was running, in Central Park. "I'm
in the office," he explained.
IT IS FOGGY, in the 40s, and way too early in the morning,
four days before the Ocean State Marathon. Dunn is preparing for
day three on the Ocean State Course, from Warwick to Providence.
His rental car, a green Mazda Protege, idles in the parking lot
of the Comfort Inn in Pawtucket. He eats a glazed doughnut and coffee
from Dunkin' Donuts, a topper to the dried chlorophyll he downed
earlier.
He is a string bean in a long-sleeved black shirt and running tights:
150 pounds on a 6-foot-tall frame, with body fat in the single digits,
and not an inch of it in his cheeks. He carries two water bottles.
A fanny pack holds his phone, and four Power Gels, tubes of vitamin-enhanced
goo. His shirt touts his six corporate sponsors: PowerBar, Sprint
PCS, Endurox R4 Performance/Recovery Drink, and others.
"People ask me: 'Are you crazy?' " he says, as he steers
past the Ground Round and onto Route 95.
As he drives, he tells his story. His first run was a quarter-mile
dash on the beach in Sarasota, Fla. and the 10K races that followed
were good excuses to drink beer. Booze broke up his first two marriages,
he said; his running addiction broke up his third.
Elaine Doll-Dunn is different, he says. They met at a marathon and
wed during the Walt Disney Marathon in 1995 in Florida. He wore
a tuxedo jacket; she, a white skirt. They said vows in the Magic
Kingdom.
The couple live in Spearfish, S.D. She arrives in Providence today
and will run with him Sunday, part of her goal to run 26 marathons
this year. She is 63.
He steers into Cranston, along Narragansett Parkway, where the center
lines are red-white-and-blue for Gaspee Days. He parks on a side
street, at about mile 13 of the course. He plans to run to the start
line and back. He leaves a note on the windshield, requesting immunity
from tickets. He signs it: America's Marathon Man.
He pulls a black cap over his thinning gray hair, and white gloves
on his hands. "We'd better saddle up here," he says, starting
the run.
Really, he says, along the way, he's a normal guy. He has a master's
degree. He and Elaine play Scrabble at dinner. He does two crossword
puzzles each day.
Then he notes that between last month and this month, he will have
run 41 marathon courses in 47 days.
The course turns onto Warwick Avenue. This is not a pretty part
of the race: strip malls, car-repair shops, fumes from traffic.
It turns onto West Shore Road, where the smell of pancakes from
a diner taunts.
Strange things happen to someone running for miles on end, every
day. Small diversions grow big.
"Look!" Dunn shrieks, four miles into the run. He has
spotted four pennies on the road.
"These guys aren't that beat up," he says of the coins.
He pockets them, explaining that for fun, he tries to spot stray
change.
By now, there is light and people to say hello to, which Dunn does
often and loudly. He encounters varying attitudes on his journey,
from the Nashville runners club that ran with him daily to the spectator
who chewed him out for using his cell phone during the New York
Marathon last week. There was a Jerry Dunn Day in Indianapolis.
His best time is 3 hours and 23 minutes, in Chicago in 1983. For
this journey, his quadriceps are sometimes sore, as are his shins,
but nothing serious. He eats about 4,000 calories a day. He hasn't
had a physical since 1991.
He wears his 13th pair of running shoes so far this year. His even
gait makes it look easy. He says it is. Every distance is too far
until you've done it once, he counsels.
He is still running at 11:06 a.m., having so far gotten lost, talked
on the phone to his mother and to Elaine, and stopped for a sandwich.
As he heads down Narragansett Parkway, his phone rings again. "A
half mile left," he tells his caller.
His car is still there. He eats a banana and prepares to return
to the Comfort Inn, where he will do his crossword puzzles, put
his daily update on www.marathonman.org,
and perhaps put on jeans and cowboy boots for another open-faced
turkey sandwich at the Ground Round.
It's a traveling salesman kind of life, he says.
On Dec. 10, after a marathon in Tampa, it will be done. For this
year. He's got an idea for a television show.
It would be about, he said, the Ultimate Cross-Country Challenge.
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