10-27-2022 Howard Mag - Flipbook - Page 76
“I never set out to be anybody’s inspiration,”
he says. “But more and more I’m finding
that people come up to me saying that they
are inspired by my efforts. I never intended
or tried to do that, but if it helps inspire
somebody, all the better.”
A Running Life
Green grew up in Illinois and started
running in high school, after his older
football-captain brother suggested it would be
a good sport for his considerably scrawnier
sibling.
He continued middle-distance running
at Concord University in West Virginia, but
dropped out after a couple of years, partly
because he defied team rules by refusing to
cut his hair.
He moved back to the Midwest and met
Kay while they were both working in a local
factory. In 1984, the couple visited Columbia
to help Tom’s sister with some construction,
and stayed. Tom started a contracting business
that he shuttered a few years after his accident.
His first ultra was in 1983, the 50-mile
Mountain Masochist Trail Run in Lynchburg,
Virginia, founded by Horton in 1979 — a
race he would go on to finish 29 times. His
first 100-miler, the same year, was the Old
Dominion 100 Mile Endurance Run in Fort
Valley, Virginia. It didn’t go well.
Green didn’t know how to pace himself,
how to get enough fuel, how to keep from
getting lost, and how to adjust his mind to the
reality of running that far. Horrific heat and
humidity didn’t help, nor did 14,000 feet in
elevation gain.
“My first 100-miler, I got to 60 miles and I
thought I was going to die,” Green says. “It just
ate at me. I kept playing it over and over in my
mind, thinking about what I could have done
differently.”
The following year, 1984, he tried again
and completed his first 100-miler. When he
came up short in the same race in 1985, he
got so annoyed with himself that he set a
bigger challenge, running all four 100-mile
races in a single year: Old Dominion in June,
Western States in California later the same
month, Leadville in Colorado that August and
Wasatch in Utah in September.
The feat put him in the record books.
Green in 1985, running a metric marathon
(a 16.3-mile race) through Ellicott City.
IMAGE COURTESY OF TOM GREEN
Still Setting Records
In the frightening days immediately after
the accident, when it wasn’t clear if he would
walk again, “his mindset was that he was
going to run,” says his wife, Kay.
She has supported her husband’s running
from the start, traveling with him to races and
76
| Fall 2022 | howardmagazine.com
This photo was taken in May 2015, a few
days before Green left the R Adams Cowley
Shock Trauma Center at the University of
Maryland. A tree branch fell on him, causing
multiple skull fractures, a broken collarbone,
and a stroke. IMAGE COURTESY OF TOM
GREEN
making sure he has the food, hydration and
clothing he needs to get through the miles.
She knew he needed to get back out there.
“That’s his life, and what he needed to do,” she
says.
Six weeks after the accident, Green reached
a milestone of walking 10 steps without
assistance. Three months after that, he could
walk an unsteady mile, and by that November,
he covered 39 miles during the 24-hour
Crooked Road 24-Hour Ultra in Rocky
Mount, Virginia.
Trainer Dennis Albright has been helping
Green build his strength, starting in August
2015.
Albright had surgery in 2009 to remove an
acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor between
the inner ear and brain that impairs balance.
His experience improving his own stability
prompted fellow runners to suggest that he
could help Green.
Three days a week at five in the morning,
Kay drives Green the short distance to
Albright’s fitness studio, Performance Private
Training, for a half-hour strength and balance
session.
At first, Green could barely lift a two-pound
weight. Now, the workout includes 10-pound
dumbbell lifts, triceps pulls, steps through low
hurdles, pushups and squats.
Albright, 50, was with Green for every
step of the Yeti 100-Mile Endurance Run
in Virginia in 2019, steadying him when
necessary and helping pass the hours with
plenty of laughs and conversation.
Green is still setting challenges for himself,
though they look a bit different now.
In September 2017, Green returned
to 100-milers, running the Yeti 100-Mile
Endurance Run in Virginia in 29 hours and
45 minutes with his friend Charlie Romanello,
who was running his first ultra marathon at
age 63. “I was not going to let my injury defeat
me,” he wrote on Facebook.
In March 2021, when he crossed the finish
line of the Conquer the Wall Endurance
Challenge in West Virginia, some 47 hours
after he started, he became one of a few people
in the world to run at least one 100-mile race
in five consecutive decades of his life, from his
thirties to his seventies.
He’s also inching his way toward the top of
a longevity list, which measures the years and
days from a participant’s first 100-miler to the
last. (He was 28th at the last update.)
Another challenge is to run his age in miles.
Last year, he ran 71 miles during the Cape
Fear 24 Hour in North Carolina.
In October, he plans to run 72.