David Clark has reached 142,000 miles (Nov., 2020)


David Clark
DOB: 24 June 1953
Los Lunas, NM
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(updated Nov. 2020)

I recently hit 142,000 despite a couple of foot surgeries and a kidney transplant over the last couple of years.  Coming up on 52 years of running in the Spring with somewhere around 1200 races so far.  My next big goal is 250,000 km ( 155,343 miles). Should take 6 years or so. It doesn't get any easier!! 
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I started running in 10th grade because all my friends went out for the high school track and cross country teams. I was truly terrible, but kept it up and got better. I ran cross country in college and kept it up in the Army and afterwards. Part of it is the thrill of competition, part of it is the good feeling of being fit, and part is stress relief and cardiac health.

 In college, a teammate gave me a copy of Joe Henderson’s “LSD: The Humane Way to Train” and it totally transformed my training. I had my first 3000 mile year in 1984 averaged over 3500 miles a year until 2009 with a top year of 4046 miles. In all that time, my long-suffering wife has accepted my habit and compulsion so we just mold our lives around running. My best times are surely behind me but out of about 800+ races, I have PRs of 16:54 for 5K, 59:39 for 10 miles, a 2:50:14 marathon, and a 5:05 50K trail run. I

've been fortunate to stay healthy and biomechanically sound (except for occasional hockey and rock-climbing injuries). I've also been fortunate to find good running clubs that provide an extra measure of motivation - I’m still doing about 55 miles a week and a full schedule of weekend races. This year, I’ll be running in the New Mexico Senior Olympics (5k, 1500, and 800) for the first time where I will get to compete against all the other old farts. Now I have my eyes set on 155,343 miles - 250,000 km, just so I can say that I've run “a quarter million kilometers”.