For the past ten years, every Saturday in early August, I’ve been lapping a dirt track called Clap Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts with nearly 100 men and women.
The name of the event is the Sweltering Summer Ultra, an eight-hour fixed-time race. Cover the 0.3553 mile dirt oval over and over from 7am to 3pm.
You can run, walk, jog, and even carry a watermelon. That’s right, “Wallee the Watermelon” is what most participants carry with her one lap alternately throughout her day. You can go without stopping, or you can pause to eat, drink, change shoes, use the restroom, and more. The only “rule” is that the event starts at his 7 and ends at 3 and only completed laps (no partial laps) count. towards your total.
These are my people and every year this is my only ‘race’. I’m sweaty and tired, but I’m looking forward to it like it’s a holiday.
John Capen is one person we all share tracks with. He inspires us all. At 85, he’s still going strong. Do you know Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”? Carpen is an old man and a marathoner.
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Capen lives in Ulster County and doesn’t stop moving. He has completed his 161 marathons. In his 90 years of his life, he has no intention of quitting and continues with his goals. You inspired me and others every time our paths crossed on “Wrap of Clap”. If he can continue, so can we!
Capen’s story needs to be told, so I emailed him to ask him about his running career and life in general. After all, it was in 1975 that he took up running, the beginning of his first running boom.
“When I was 38, there was a lot of talk about an exciting middle age and the need to exercise,” he wrote in an email. “My father died when his heart stopped at 75, and my mother had been treated for heart disease since she was 43, so I had a double ancestry. I thought I should start running.”
And he didn’t stop. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced his habit of running 12 marathons a year, which he has been doing each year since 2015 through 2019. Every year his goal is for him to cover 2,000 miles on foot. .
Sports remain central to his life.
“Now that’s the key to good health,” Kapen said. “At 85, I don’t want to damage my limits and just walk the distance. On his 5 miler for Lions Labor Day in Warwick I did, but Run/ walked and won the only gold medal in my age group. ”
Carpen calls the marathon “distance, not speed.” At age 49, he completed the marathon in about four hours. Now he’s happy to finish in three times as long as he used to.
Capen has a rather ambitious goal of completing a marathon in all 50 states. He’s not even halfway there, but some of his fondest memories are that in both the Dakota and Colorado and Wyoming he completed his two marathons in three days. That’s what I did. He also fondly recalls his marathon run in San Francisco, which started from crossing his bridge over the Golden Gate.
Capen lives in Stone Ridge and pastored the Shady United Methodist Church and the Federated Church in Athens (Greene County). He has served as a pastor for the past 56 years. He has been married for 60 years, has been a widower for 4 years, and has 4 grown daughters.
When asked about his best performance, Kappen was quick to point out his longevity, along with his old race times. ) record as the oldest finisher of an ultramarathon.
So what keeps Capen running? His answer to this question was simple.
We hope John Capen continues his healthy progress at Clap Park and elsewhere to complete many more laps.
Pete Colliso, a member of the Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club and track coach at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, writes about running every week. His contact is he runhed246@hotmail.com. For more information about the club, please visit www.mhrrc.org.
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