Episode 45 - Andy Mathews | 444 Florida Miles, 314 Tennessee Miles, Long Haul RD, Community Man

Andy Croom Mathews is a Florida history teacher who became a race director almost by accident and an ultrarunner almost by eavesdropping. In 2001, at 39, he overheard two men in their fifties talking about something called the Vermont 100. His thought was simple: if these guys can do it, I can do it. He mailed in a paper application with a check, flew to New Hampshire without arranging a ride to the start, packed his drop bags in the wrong order, and finished in twenty-three hours and eight minutes. He had to ask the race director whether he'd broken twenty-four, because his watch had died.

Twenty-five years later he has around fifty hundred-mile finishes, a left arm rebuilt with metal after a chainsaw accident, and no vision in his right eye following a stroke he returned to work from on Monday.

This conversation is built around two runs. Last July, at 63, he ran the Last Annual Vol State Road Race - 314 miles across Tennessee in the July heat, from the banks of the Mississippi to the Georgia line. It is one of Lazarus Lake's journey races: no crew, no pacers, no aid stations, and no getting into a vehicle for any reason. Runners resupply at gas stations and Dollar Generals, sleep where they can, and rely on locals who set up canopies and coolers by the roadside. Andy finished 35th overall in seven days, thirteen hours and forty-seven seconds, fueled substantially by single-serve packets of Spam.

Five months later, at 64, he ran 444 miles around the Florida National Scenic Trail - through swamp, past alligators, over a fence, alone except for his wife Amy in a truck. He missed the fastest known time by a couple of hours and finished anyway.

In between there are the failures, and he is unusually good on them. A drop at the Moab 240 at mile 130 that he attributes squarely to sleep deprivation and one bad decision. A start at the Cowboy 200 he took on knowing he had COVID. Years in his fifties when he pulled out of races he could have finished because he wasn't going to break twenty-four hours and that mattered more to him than finishing. He describes the moment that stopped, and the friend he sought out as a mentor because she finishes everything she starts.

He and Amy have run A1 Ultra Events since 2018, when they borrowed money to buy a struggling hundred-miler called the Long Haul. It had sixteen finishers. They cut the price to seventy-five dollars, handed a belt buckle to everyone who made the cutoff, earned nothing, and turned it into the only Western States qualifier in the third most populous state in the country.

There is also a stranger in a Deadwood casino bar in 2011 who, hearing that this Florida man had just dropped out of a hundred-miler, told him he ought to be ashamed of himself attempting something like that at his age. Andy was 49. He went home, trained through the winter, and at 50 ran the fastest hundred of his life - nineteen hours and fifty-six minutes at Heartland, sixth overall. He has been collecting at-your-age moments ever since.

On September 25 he goes back to Nebraska for the Cowboy 200, the race he abandoned last year. He'll be 65.

For the full video conversation, head to the Run Long After 60 YouTube channel and subscribe.