One thing you immediately come to know about Maurice Robinson, he’s a guy who favors the long haul.
In his eighty-plus years of life on this planet – all spent in Arkansas – he’s enjoyed an almost sixty-year marriage which produced two children, over nearly five decades living in Benton. He can also boast of a long career as an electrical engineer, serving Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation for just shy of forty-four years. When Maurice puts his mind and his talent to something, it sticks.
In hindsight, therefore, it should not be a surprise that once he took up running, it would be a long-term proposition and for twenty-three years and counting, it has been just that. But no one, not even Maurice himself, could have imagined where his trademark stick-to-itiveness would eventually lead him.
“I got hooked on running and racing,” he said in a landslide of understatement. “I enjoyed running with neighbors and friends and enjoyed getting trophies once in a while. That was fun. I got addicted.”
Addiction is the only thing that explains the audacity of Maurice’s running career, which he took up on a whim at the invitation of a family member. Although his first training run was inauspicious (“I ran about a hundred yards and just bent over,” he says) he’d soon joined a local running club and was entering local races, an activity spurred on by his wife Norma.
“My wife is a breast cancer survivor,” he says. “I started going with her to 5K Races for the Cure. She enjoyed walking them and she would jog a little. I would go with her wherever she wanted to go. We went to several states.”
Like many runners, Maurice kept pushing his limits, running longer and longer races. He’d made it up to the half-marathon distance (a little more than thirteen-and-a-half miles) when Fate put him on a more extreme path.
“In my Sunday school class, there was a man who ran marathons and ultramarathons,” he says. “One day, I found out he was going to run the Arkansas Traveler 100 out of Perryville. I said, ‘A hundred miles? That’s impossible.’ When he did it, he came back and could barely walk because of the blisters on his feet. I thought, ‘Why would anybody want to do that?’”
Intrigued, Maurice entered a fifty-miler on a friend’s suggestion and has since completed numerous ultramarathons, including seventeen one hundred-mile races, by his recollection. To put that 1,700 miles into perspective, imagine running from San Francisco to Denver or Chicago to Jacksonville, Florida – and seven-tenths of the way back – in one stretch.
Then imagine doing it in your golden years and at a pace that ranked top-ten in the world in your age group, as Maurice did at age seventy-five. And even if you did all that, it pales in comparison to what Maurice set out to do next.
“I was almost seventy-nine years old and I had a desire to leave a greater legacy for my family than just being the fastest runner in the world at one point,” he says. “So, I looked at race records for eighty and above.
“We got together Christmas Eve 2020, and I stood up in front of everybody and told them about this dream I had to run the fastest one-hundred-mile race in the United States by anyone eighty and above. I begged them, four family members from three generational levels, to be on the team to help me do this. I don’t think they thought I was in my right mind, but they said they would help.”
Team 80, as he dubbed his squad, kicked off April 2021. Water aerobics, cross-training and of course, road work became his daily regimen under the watchful eye of training partner Pete Ireland, himself an octogenarian, who agreed to sign on as Maurice’s coach. After some tune-up ultras in September and November 2021 Maurice arrived at the Prairie Spirit Trail race in eastern Kansas for his bid at immortality. The morning of the race was dark and brisk, but dry and without wind, unusual for Kansas in winter.
“I was the last to start but I was good,” he says. “I jogged out and I threw up my arms real wide and I gave thanks to my Creator and my parents for making me like I am and getting me to the start.”
The moment was so overwhelming, he had to fight his adrenaline not to exceed the pace Pete had set for him. His first challenge was to make the turnaround at mile fifty-one-point-five in fourteen hours; run slower than that and he’d be disqualified. Achieving that mark, the strategy called for him to reach mile sixty-one running solo, then a series of pacers would help him stay on target through the mental blur and physical exhaustion to the finish line.
“My grandson-in-law paced me about sixteen miles, then my son paced me for the next nine miles to the aid station,” he says. “My son’s wife paced me for six-and-a-half miles after that and Pete got me for the last seven miles.”
The last leg proved the most difficult; Maurice had gradually developed a lean in his running posture from about mile seventy-five and by mile ninety-seven, every step took concerted effort.
“The last three miles, that forward lean began to go to the side,” Pete says. “When that happens, it’s really hard to keep your balance. He was still moving well but his back was bothering him and every opportunity we came to road crossings he would run up to a roadside post and grab onto it to stretch his back.”
Pete had calculated a time cushion into the pace, but each stop and start – including more than one fall due to balance issues – were bleeding time. To reach the finish at all, let alone in record time, Maurice would have to find a gear few people ever have to reach for.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to make it,” he said. “I stepped over to a trail post and grabbed it, hugged it and momentarily stretched my back again. I could see the red inflatable finishing archway, so I doubled down to finish the course.
“When I stepped over the timing mats and hit the finish line, I couldn’t cry tears. I just cried dry tears of happiness to see my son and other members of my family waiting there with open arms. It was so emotional.”
Maurice completed the race of his life in twenty-nine hours, three minutes and change, averaging under seventeen minutes, twenty seconds per mile. The time bested the American record and is the second-fastest one-hundred-mile time in the world for a runner age eighty and over. In time, the media would come calling and the governor would send a congratulatory letter, but the best tribute awaited him upon arriving back home.
“When we returned to Arkansas at my son’s house, we were greeted by about a couple dozen friends and family members,” he said. “They were holding big cardboard signs, each with a different phrase. The cutest one was the one my granddaughter, Boyce Bethel, was holding that read, ‘My Paw Paw is faster than yours.’ That’s what I was going for.”
Despite being in superb physical shape – his heart rate throughout the run averaged only one hundred twenty-one beats per minute – Maurice couldn’t so much as jog for a week and it took a month to fully recover. Norma made him promise he wouldn’t do another race as taxing as a record attempt, but she relented on him running more races. With her blessing, he trained for and completed his latest ultra, in Tennessee over Labor Day, making eighteen ultras in his career.
“She said, ‘You can do others that are not that intense,’” he says with a grin. “We talked about it and she’s OK’d this latest one. She’s a jewel.”
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