At 85, this Ulster County runner inspires on marathon courses
Each year for the past decade, on a Saturday in early August, you can find me over in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on a dirt track at a place called Clapp Park, doing lap after lap after lap with close to 100 other men and women.
The name of the event is the Sweltering Summer Ultra, an eight-hour fixed time race. We cover the 0.3553-mile dirt oval as many times as we can, from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m.
You can run, walk, jog and even carry a watermelon − yes, it’s true, “Wally the Watermelon” is alternatingly carried for one lap by most entrants throughout the day. You can go without stopping or you can pause to eat, drink, change your shoes, use the bathroom, etc. The only “rule” is the event starts at 7 and finishes at 3, and only completed laps (no partial laps) count toward your total.
These are my people, and this is my one and only “race” each year. I look forward to it like a holiday − albeit, a sweaty and tiring one.
John Capen is one of the people with whom we all share the track. He’s an inspiration to us all. At 85, he is still moving, and moving strong. You’ve heard of Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”? Capen is the old man and the marathon.
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Capen lives in Ulster County and never stops moving. He has completed 161 marathons; in his ninth decade of life, he doesn’t plan to stop and he continues to have goals. Every time our paths crossed during our “Laps of Clapp,” it provided me and others with a boost of inspiration; if he can keep going, we all can keep going!
Capen’s is a story that needs to be told, so I emailed him some questions about his running career and life in general. Turns out, he didn’t start running until 1975 − the beginning of the first Running Boom.
“When I was 38 years old, there was a lot of talk about the exciting middle years and the need for exercise,’’ he wrote in the email. “I had gotten a double barrel of ancestry with my father having died at age 75 when his heart stopped and my mother had been treated since the age of 43 for her heart condition. I figured I should start running.’’
And he hasn’t stopped. The COVID pandemic curtailed his habit of 12 marathons per year, which he accomplished each year between 2015 and 2019. Each year, his goal is to cover 2,000 miles on foot − mostly walking now − which averages to about 5.5 miles per day for 365 days.
The sport remains a central part of his life.
“Right now, it’s the key to good health,’’ Capen said. “At age 85, one doesn’t want to push himself over the edge and do damage so walking the distance is sufficient. Although at the Lions Labor Day five-miler in Warwick I did do run/walk and won gold as the only person in my age group.’’
Capen refers to the marathon as “distance, not a speed.” At age 49, he finished a marathon at around four hours. Now, he said, he’s satisfied with walking the distance in three times that long-ago finishing time.
Capen retains the rather ambitious goal of completing a marathon in all 50 states. He’s less than halfway there, but some of his fondest memories were clicking off two marathons in three days in both Dakotas, and then again in Colorado and Wyoming. He also fondly recalls running the San Francisco Marathon, when it started by crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.
Capen lives in Stone Ridge and serves as pastor at Shady United Methodist church as well as at Federated Church in Athens (Greene County). He has been in the pastoral ministry for the past 56 years. After 60 years of marriage, he has been a widower for the past four years and has four adult daughters.
When asked about his best performances, along with long-ago race times Capen was quick to point out his longevity. At age 81 a few years ago, he set a record for being the oldest finisher at the Green Lakes State Park 50-kilometer (31 miles) ultramarathon.
So, what keeps Capen going? His answer to this question was simple: “The health program and trying to do 2,000 miles per year on foot.”
Here’s wishing for continued healthy forward movement and many more laps at Clapp Park − and everywhere else − for John Capen.
Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club member Pete Colaizzo, the track coach at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, writes on running every week. He can be reached at runhed246@hotmail.com. For more club information, go to www.mhrrc.org
This article originally appeared on Poughkeepsie Journal: Sweltering Summer Ultra: Ulster's John Capen inspires at marathon
