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Podcast: Ultrarunning History
Episode: 14: 100 x 100-milers
Description: By Davy CrockettÂ
Both a podcast episode and a full article
(Listen to the podcast episode too with audio clips from some of the runners.)
 Early history of 100-milers
The sport of running 100 miles competitively has existed for multiple centuries. In the 1800s, the most prolific 100-mile runner was Frank Hart (1856-1908), a black runner from Boston, Massachusetts. He reached 100 miles in at least 85 of his races across his 25-year running career. Most of those races were six-day races where he usually ran far more than 300 miles.
In the modern era, by the mid-1970s, running 100 miles in competition started to...