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South Russell runner wins 100-mile race
(by Steve Novak - July 09, 2009)
South Russell runner wins 100-mile race
By STEVE NOVAK
About 20 years ago, Wyatt Hornsby quit his attempt to make his high school cross-country team. "I thought it was too hard," he said.
Two decades later, the South Russell resident, crossed the finish line first in a race which was 32 times longer than a cross-country course.
Last month, Hornsby was the winner of the 100-mile Mohican Trail Race in Loudonville as finished the ultra-marathon in a time of 19 hours and 52 minutes.
Hornsby's race at Mohican State Park began at 5 a.m. June 20 and nearly 20 hours later, wearing an elastic head lamp, he crossed the finish line at 12:52 a.m. the next day.
To say that Hornsby was fatigued when he crossed the finish line would be an understatement. "Someone offered me a beer," he said. "I wasn't able to drink it."
His victory was the culmination of an obsession with running, which began in earnest about five years ago. He began by running in several 26-mile marathons. He raised his sights in 2007 when he entered his first 100-mile race -- the Burning River 100 in Cleveland.
His time and his endurance were good enough in the Burning River race that he decided to stay in the game of ultra-marathons. He ran in the 2008 Mohican Trail Race, finishing fourth.
Ever since running in that race, Hornsby continued a regimen of an almost daily running program. He runs between 80 to 110 miles each week, and sometimes as much as 20 miles in a single day.
Also since last year's Mohican race, Hornsby has run in some local 26-mile marathons, including the Cleveland Marathon last May.
In this year's Mohican race, Hornsby stayed with the pack of leading runners through more than 80 percent of the circuitous cloverleaf trail. With about 15 miles remaining, he passed the lead runner, Matt Aro, of Minnesota. From that point to the finish, Hornsby kept the lead.
Once he had found a steady pace and was able to stick to it, Hornsby said it was relatively easy to keep in step with the leading pack of runners through the opening 80 miles of the race. "There's not a lot of pressure in second place," he said.
Hornsby said that a good runner in one of these races tries to average a mile of running in every 10 minutes. However, the pace varies, and he said that during some of the hills on the trail, he did slow his pace to a walk.
Along the way in the Mohican cloverleaf trail, there are several comfort stations where runners can stop briefly for refreshments. Hornsby said there are nearly 20 of these stations along the trail, but he tried to use them as little as possible.
"One-hundred mile trail races can be won by limiting time at the aid stations," he said. "(It is) easier said than done. You just want to sit down and rest."
Hornsby said that even after completing a series of 100-mile races in the past few years, it is still quite difficult to mentally accept the fact that he is running in a race which is the equivalent of a highway stretching from Cleveland to past the Pennsylvania border.
"I don't think you ever get over that psychological barrier," he said. "You say to yourself, 'Am I really running 100 miles?' It's hard, no matter how often you've done it."
Hornsby, who is employed as a fund-raiser for University Hospitals, said the victory at Mohican had special meaning on his personal calendar.
"June 20 is my birthday. I'm 36 years old," he said. "And then the next day was Father's Day for me and my son, Noah. I can't think of any better way to celebrate those two days."
He said there most likely will be more 100-mile races in his immediate future. However, he said there was a significant impact on his life the moment that he and his head lamp crossed the finish line first in the dead of night last month.
"I've always been kind of an underdog all my life," Hornsby said. "Even in this race, I was an underdog -- I wasn't the one who was picked to win. This was the first time that anything like this ever happened to me. I wanted to win, and was willing to put it all on the line. Nothing was going to stop me."
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