Donald Ritchie, 73; ultrarunning pioneer

As a student in his native Scotland, Donald Ritchie became known as a gifted 400-meter runner. At the finish, he always noticed that his competitors were exhausted but that he was barely warmed up. So he moved up through the distances, eventually becoming a marathon runner, once clocking 2 hours, 19 minutes, 34 seconds in the London Marathon.

Even after marathons, when his fellow competitors collapsed at the finish line, he found his stamina had barely been tested.

Ritchie, whose death June 16 at 73 was announced by the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU), became the United Kingdom’s greatest “ultrarunner” and one of the best in the world. He set international records for distances from 50 kilometers to 200 kilometers and in timebased races of up to 24 hours.

For mountaineers who scale Everest, there is no place higher to summit. For runners like Ritchie, there was always another yard, mile or horizon. His inspiration helped to increase the number of ultrarunners by 1,000 percent over the past decade, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The IAU, which organizes world championships over ultramarathon distances, said Ritchie set world records: for 100 miles around a track at London’s Crystal Palace on Sept. 25, 1977, with a time of 11 hours, 50 minutes, 31 seconds; and for 100 kilometers on the same track on Oct. 28, 1978, when he clocked 6 hours, 10 minutes, 20 seconds.