69: The 100-miler: Part 16 (1976-1977) Max Telford and Alan Jones

In the 1970s, the sport of ultrarunning received very little attention in the mainstream media. In April 1974, Park Barner from Pennsylvania, the top ultrarunner in America at the time, did appear on a local television show. The episode was entitled, “The Loneliness of the Ultra-Distance Runner.” He also later was on CBS's PM Magazine. But the ultrarunners who really succeeded in getting the attention of the public were those who rarely participated in formal races and instead put on endurance stunts that were attention-grabbers.

The most prominent runners had the help of skilled marketing resources to keep their name in the spotlight. Their goal was not to go after sanctioned records or even formal course records. Instead, they focused mostly on getting their name into the Guinness Book of World Records to claim invented "world records," which are what we call today "fastest known times." Because the most elite ultrarunners in the world were not self-promoters, they remained in general obscurity except among their ultrarunning competitors and clubs. It was the self-promoter record-seekers who truly became famous.

Two of these individuals who caught the attention of the American public in the mid-1970s were Max Telford of New Zealand and Alan Jones, a marine from Iowa, who was stationed in Oregon. Telford was touted as being the greatest long-distance runner in the world and Jones became known as "Captain America." Both ran 100 miles and both their stories are fascinating and inspirational. It is believed that neither went down the fraudulent road as many other self-promoters did.