Running ultra marathons
Miles Benevich of San Antonio tries to run an ultra marathon once a month. Recently he ran a 100-kilometer race (62 miles) in the Colorado Rockies.
“That was by far my slowest run. They gave us 24 hours to complete it and I finished a little over 20 hours. I started at 3:15 in the morning and finished at midnight, so there was a lot of running in the dark with just my headlight to show the way. It was exhausting because of the elevation and I thought I might come in last, but there were other runners behind me.”
He saw some wildlife.
“I took some pictures. I have a page on Facebook called Doing the Miles. I put some photos on it of the moose that I saw in the mountains.”
Once he circled San Antonio on foot.
“I ran 100 miles around Loop 1604. That was my largest run so far. It took me a good 25 hours to complete that run.”
His goal is to run 3,000 miles this year. He started running just 3 years ago.
“I smoked cigarettes all my life and spent a lot of time not doing anything. This really is a new adventure for me. I just decided to get my life and health together Not that I had low self-esteem or anything, but I just got tired of seeing that person in the mirror and decided to make some changes. They really have seemed to take me to another place and I just enjoy doing it. I have had so many benefits from it and have met some really fantastic people along the way.” Miles makes his living as a funeral director and when he doesn’t have business or family obligations, he takes a run. An app on his phone records his running.
“It records all my runs and breaks down all the activities and shows the routes that I run every day. It’s just a simple app available to runners.”
Sometimes he runs obstacle courses.
“Every so often, maybe a half mile or mile, there’s an obstacle. It might be monkey bars or swinging on a rope or doing some sort of climb, maybe swimming through some freezing cold water, just some little obstacles to break up the run.”
Some obstacle courses feature electrical shocks.
“They look like you’re running through a long hallway or a tunnel, but hanging down from the ceiling are electrical wires. I’m not sure how much voltage they carry but the first one I ran across threw me to the ground.”
Miles says anyone can start a running program.
It just takes determination and confidence. He has lost 20 pounds since he started running.