Keeping To A Keep Fit Theme,

here is a story of an extraordinary runner,

at the inauguration of the Westfield Sydney-Melbourne Ultra Marathon in 1983, the line up for the start of the 543.7-miles (875 kilometers), all of the competitors were in their 20s or early 30s, but one competitor stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, a 61-year-old potato farmer wearing overalls and work boots named Cliff Young, but he had a cunning plan, “I grew up on a farm where we couldn’t afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go out and round up the sheep,” Cliff casually told reporters. “We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I’d always catch them. I believe I can run this race.” as word spread the laughter started,

on the first day of the race, it looked like doubters had been right about Cliff, a few miles into the endurance course, he was already trailing the pack by a lot, and he didn’t look capable of keeping up. While most of the other guys had developed a healthy rhythm, Young was slowly shuffling along, more fast walking than running,

it was then that Cliff’s cunning plan sprang into operation, all of the other runners had been training to run for about 18 hours a day and then stop and sleep for the other six, but the 61-year-old didn’t plan on stopping until he reached the finish line. So while everyone else was sleeping, this proverbial tortoise passed by all of them, establishing himself as the leader on the first night, when dawn broke, the other runners were shocked to learn that the old farmer was now in the lead, and that they would have to catch up to him. Although he was still shuffling at a slow pace, the fact that he simply did not stop running helped Cliff Young maintain the lead for the whole five and a half days it took him to cross the finish line,

and how about this for generosity, Young’s time of 5 days, 15 hours and four minutes was a full 10 hours faster than that of the runner-up, and almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, upon being handed a $10,000 check as a prize for winning the race, Cliff Young decided to keep none of it for himself and instead split it evenly among the other five runners who eventually managed to finish the grueling race, and his legend goes on, in 1997, when Cliff was 76, he set out to raise funds for homeless kids by running all 16,000 km of the Australian coastline. The veteran runner made it through 6,250 km before stopping because a crew member was ill, what an amazing achievement to have run that distance at 76 years old.