Edward Payson Weston and How Ideas for blog posts happen

Edward Payson Weston (born March 1839, died May 1929) was an extraordinary man. He was an ultramarathoner - not the first, but the one who popularized the sport the most. His career took off when he lost a bet about the presidential election. He bet against Abraham Lincoln! The loser had to walk to Washington D. C. and attend the Inaugural Ball.

Weston challenged many other walkracers but his edge was endurance. He admitted later that he had been chewing coca leaves and that popularized the chewing of coca leaves - an early influencer!

Ironically, Weston was killed when he was struck by a New York City Taxicab.

Edward Payson Weston came into my knowledge when they held the Edward Payson Weston Six Day Race in Pennsauken on the Cooper River in 1980. It was organized by Ed Dodd a Collingswood resident and local school teacher.

At the time, I lived in a brick townhouse on the south side of the river with my then husband, Mike. He had suffered an infection of the heart and we had given up all smoking and taken to bicycling and jogging and walking. I walked the 4 miles around the river almost daily and so, I came across the race and I vounteered to be a lap counter. We lap counters sat at a table and as our 'walk/racer' came by, we noted the completed lap on a chart. My walk/racer was Rob Sweetgall, and he checked on me constantly to make sure I didn't miss a lap!

At the time, my marriage was on the rocks and we were separating. My ex-husband had been a heavy pot smoker and I think the marijuana had helped him keep a lid on his volcanic temper. When he got sick and stopped smoking, he began erupting! His rages were fierce and terrifying and generally caused by such things as automobile problems.

Only someone held in thrall to the unpredictable and violent temper of someone else can understand what it is like to live that way, or perhaps someone who lives in an earthquake zone or below a volcano. I have always been a fairly controlled and mild person by nature, even, I might say, on the timid side. His rages paralyzed me. To make a long sad story short, eventually one of them gave me the energy to walk away. I packed a backpack during exam time at Rutgers where I was getting my Bachelors in Art, and walked the miles to my parents' home in Maple Shade. My father found me on the porch in the morning and gave me a ride to Rutgers so I could finish my exam and get my degree. I already had a job at a library, so I had some small income.

After I left Mike, I began to date Rob. He lived in Newark, Delaware. We had gotten to know one another while I was his lap counter and I had found him very attractive. He was mild and kind and very good looking, tall with sandy blonde hair and peaceful blue eyes and a wide grin. He was the opposite of Mike and that had its appeal as well.

I moved to Philadelphia and Rob and I began to date in ernest, by which I mean he met my family and I went to Brooklyn to meet his mother, her four sisters, and Rob's cousins, also teachers. Rob was working on preparing for his big tour around the perimeter of the United States to kick off his new business venture and his passion - promoting cardiovascular fitness with walking. He gave lectures and demonstrations at schools, corporations, really any place that showed interest. He had lost all of his uncles to heart disease from sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet and he was a man on a mission. He was connected to the Univeersity of Delaware and a doctor, Dr. Nieves, who took measurements of various cardiovascular indicators and supported Rob's efforts. Rob was compiling a list of volunteers' homes that woud give him a bed on his tour from such groups as Rotary and Kiwanis, so we traveled to a lot of those groups for Rob to give his talk. He was good at it. People liked him.

Fortunately, at that time, the company that my ex-husband worked for opened a new branch in Colorado and he moved there, so both his move, and my new move to Philadelphia had removed a lot of the fear and stress in my life. It was a good time. Rob and I decided we would marry when he returned from his tour. I saw him off at the Zero Milestone marker in Washington D. C. on July 4th.

Each month, I took a plane to some destination along his tour route and we spent a day or two together. This kicked up a whole new anxiety in me which, no doubt had its orgin in something much deeper, but I began to fear flying. I started to feel a presentiment that I was going to die in an airplane crash. I didn't want to do it any more. Also, I began to see how my whole adult life I had been tugged around the goals and passions of a man, and not my own direction at all except of course, that I had chosen each man. I had gone to Philadelphia to make residency in Pa. so I could get into graduate school at Tyler and pursue my goals, a masters degree and then a phd. I loved college and was good at it.

A low tide of resentment was beginning to rise inside me. I wasn't aware of it yet. So, when I met Karl at the New Year's Eve party of an old college friend of mine, Roni Chernin Levy, I didn't realize how vulnerable I was. I was untying my connection to Rob. Karl's appeal was that he was an artist, the world that I wanted to move into and he too was kind, mild and attentive. I accepted his invitation to visit his studio and see his work. He was making large sculptures of fish from light wooden frames over which he stretched canvas upon which he painted. They were wonderful. I was entranced. I didn't want to fly around the country anymore. I fell in love with Karl. We began to date, and almost immediately, I became unexpectedly pregnant.

The rest is a different and enormous (for me) story so in short, I gave birth to my daughter and moved to New Jersey, and once again, stopped seeing a man who had re-directed my life, (whether on purpose or by accident.)

The Edward Payson Weston Six Day Race was held each year for a couple of decades and then fell out of fashion along with jogging and running, and indeed, fitness. The culture moved on to something else. I kept in touch with some of the racers, Wesley Emmons, Philadelphia jeweler, Sabin Snow, psychologist (I read a few years ago that Sabin had died), Ed Dodd, who got divorced and married one of his former high school students. He'd had such a kind and supportive wife during the Race, and several chidren. Parker Barnes, the winner of the first race and a computer programmer (like my ex-husband) married another computer programmer and as far as I know, still is alive in Pennsylvania somewhere. I don't know what happened to Don Choi.

The Old Six Day Race is coming back in April of 2027 according to a flyer on the internet. I think they may have held it in 2026 as well. In the 1980 race, Park Barner made 430 miles.

Periodically I look up people I once knew to see what happened to them now that we are all in our 80's. Park Barner is alive but his wife died. I remember her vividly because in that world of ultra-marathoners, she was an anomaly. She sat in a beach chair, stout when all the others were thin as racing greyhounds, and she SMOKED and drank canned soda! Everyone else was macrobiotic and no one smoked anything! Did it extend their lives? Hard to say. I would have to make a graph. My poor sweet Rob Sweetgall died of cancer in 2017 in his late 60's but he did lead a good life and he did good work for his fellow man and achieve his goals. The cousin of my ex-husband, Harry Berkowitz, another marathoner, also died. My ex-husband is still alive at 82 in Colorado. I don't know about Ed Dodd.

Googling up info on some of the old racers, I found this: "Two very influential ultrarunning pioneers, Ed Dodd, of Collingswood, New Jersey, and Don Choi of San Francisco, California, brought their race directing and running skills to the 24-hour arena in the 1970's. These two legendary runners developed a friendship during that year which would later result in the reestablishment of the modern-era multi-day races, including the renowned six-day race. Dodd and Choi can be considered the “fathers” of the modern multi-day ultras. This all came about as Dodd uncovered the history of 19th century Pedestrians, and they both gained experience running 100 miles in 1978, and put on ultramarathons."

And I found this:

"Park Barner of Pennsylvania was one of the greatest American ultrarunners of the 1970s. He was the first competitive American ultrarunner to become broadly known outside the ultrarunning community. He was shy, disarmingly humble and a man of few words. He avoided the spotlight, never was a self-promoter, and was known for his relentless metronome pace rather than speed.

Barner won, and he won often. At one time he held the world record for the 24-hour run and other ultra-distance American records. But he said that he didn’t really need trophies or wins to feel satisfied. To him, running was something he enjoyed doing. He said, “It makes me feel good. I sort of feel like a kid.”

Happy trails however long and whatever speed!

wrightj45@yahoo.com