Cliff Young, the Remarkable 6-Day Master of Hell

Arguably the toughest marathon ever, the Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon was a 544-mile (875 km) race held from 1983 to 1991 that most would consider an impossible feat. Pamphlets passed out prior to the race read, “WELCOME TO HELL.” It is the equivalent of 21.6 marathons - back to back.

Still, the $10,000 cash prize drew elite athletes from around the world. Most had sponsors like Nike, Reebok and Adidas, and were well-known for impressive past performance records. And the outlier among them was quite obviously Cliff Young.

Cliff Young, a 61 year-old vegetarian potato farmer from Beech Forest, Victoria, with diagnosed arthritis in his legs, showed up for the race in overalls and rain boots. Prior to the race, he told the intrigued press,

“I grew up on a farm where we couldn’t afford horses or four wheel drives… whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 head, and we had 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I’d catch them. I believe I can run this race; it’s only two more days.”

His start was perceived much as the tortoise’s in Aesop’s famous fable. The elite runners left him miles behind for 17 hours of hard running on the first day. And then they stopped to rest. Experts had all agreed that the athletes would perform best if they ran in cycles of 17-hour running stretches and 7 hours of sleep.

But Cliff didn’t stop, and when the competitors awoke the next day, he was miles ahead of them. This continued - for days. One marathoner told the press,

“I’ve been thinking for three days… He’s got to stop. He’s got to stop! But he won’t stop!”

Cliff Young ran for five days, fifteen hours and four minutes. When he reached Melbourne, fans and reporters were there to greet him. Australia had been following this 61-year-old “tortoise” since they realized he may break records.

He broke the all-time record for the race by two days.

When the organizers presented him with the $10,000, he told them he was unaware of a prize. Below he recounts what he did with the money:

“The prize money of ten thousand dollars! Now that’s a helluva lot of potatoes. There were only 11 starters, so I thought I had a chance of getting something and I finished up getting the lot. Joe Record and I had a pact on before we ran that if either of us won we would split the prize money between us. I forgot about Joe and started giving it away left, right and center. I gave $4,000 away to the other runners. So I said to Joe here’s your half of the spoils. He said “Hmm $3,000? I thought the prize was $10,000.” I said “I give the lot away. Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t that concerned.”

Cliff never stopped running. He competed in the race again the following year, placing 7th, despite a displaced hip. At age 63, he ran 150 miles in 24 hours. At 79 and already diagnosed with cancer, he became the oldest man to finish a six-day Ultramarathon. Cliff Young passed away in November 2003, having logged over 20,000 kilometers during his racing career and donated every penny earned to charity.

A force experts could never explain, Cliff was a remarkable example of both what the human body is capable of and what the human spirit values. When asked by a journalist in 1997 what keeps him going, Cliff said,

“I like to finish what I start doing. I like to see it through to the end, to the best of my ability.”

That ability was remarkable by all accounts, but Cliff did not seem to think so. When asked what advice he’d give to others in his “age category,” he said,

“Yeah, get out of your wheelchairs and start doing a few laps, if you can. If you don’t get any exercise your joints start seizing up like a rusty engine. The doctors once told me I had arthritis in my joints and to take it easy, so I said “I’ll fix that up, I’ll run it out”. So I kept running and it disappeared. It is like rust that gets into a vehicle. Well, I think it was like rust in me. I reckon you have to keep your joints moving. Absolutely. No matter what you do, you have to keep moving. If you don’t wear out, you rust out, and you rust out quicker than you wear out.”

This was originally posted on www.TheRemarkables.tumblr.com.