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Podcast: Ultrarunning History
Episode: 9: The Walkathon of the 1930s
Description: By Davy Crockett
Both a podcast and a full article
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The original walkathons were not the relatively tame fundraising walks of the 1970s for causes. Instead these walkathons were brutal endurance events that had their heyday in the mid-1930s. These walkathons were not ultrarunning events. They were rather twisted walking events, if it could even be called walking. They were mostly a crazy test of enduring sleep deprivation. But still, it is important to understand the history of these competitions, because they had a negative impact on true extreme endurance sports such as ultrarunning in the minds of...