We'll Go On, Ever On Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dean Karnazes

Dean Karnazes has loved running for a long time. He started running while a child and incredibly hiked rim to rim across the Grand Canyon and climbed Mount Whitney by the age of eleven! He ran through high school, gaining recognition as "most inspirational" team member but he didn't gel with his high school coach and stopped running for fifteen years. When he took up running again, it was at ultra long distance events that he had success. He has won a number of long distance events, including the 135 mile Badwater Marathon (a 217 km run across Death Valley). He's also won the Vermont Trail 100 Mile Endurance Run.

In addition, he successfully ran 350 miles in 80 hours 44 minutes (without sleep!). He's also run across the United States and swam across San Francisco Bay. In 2006 he ran his 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days, ending with the New York Marathon. That feat is the subject of the movie "UltraMarathon Man: 50 Marathons, 50 States, 50 Days." If you're interested in knowing more about the incredible accomplishments of Karnazes, you can read "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner" or ""50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days".

For his athletic achievements, Karnazes was named Endurance Athlete of the Year in 2005, 2006 and 2008 by "Competitor" magazine and Best Outdoor Athlete in 2007 by ESPN ESPY. Here's a tip from Karnazes for anyone looking to participate in endurance events - eat sardines as a good source of protein.

Answer: Paula Radcliffe

Paula Radcliffe is another runner who started running as a child, often accompanying her father on his runs. When she was twelve, she participated in her first national race and finished in 299th place. That was in 1986 and she kept on running. In 1992 she took the Junior title at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Throughout her career she's run cross-country as well as the half and full marathon distances. In 2002 she moved to the marathon distance and ended up winning the London Marathon that year. She's won the New York marathon three times (2004, 2007 and 2008). She's won the London Marathon three times (2002 as well as 2003 and 2005). She's also won the Chicago Marathon. She represented Great Britain at the Olympic Games four consecutive times from 1996 to 2008 but unfortunately never won an Olympic medal.

She held the record for the fastest women's marathon time (a time of 2:15:25) for sixteen years before it was broken in 2019 by Kenyan long distance runner Brigid Kosgei. Running those distances at those speeds certainly takes it's toll and Radcliffe has had some ups and downs in addition to her incredible success. She's contended with a foot injury, a stress fracture in her lower back and a rather embarrassing "top running moment in history" in the UK in 2006 when she had a very public upset stomach during the 2005 London Marathon (which incredibly she still won!)

Answer: Eliud Kipchoge

Eliud Kipchoge was born in Kenya in 1984. He started running relatively late compared to a lot of other runners. He was sixteen years old when he met his trainer and in 2002 he won the Kenyan trials for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships junior race. He held the world junior record for 5000 metres from 2003 to 2012 (with a time of 12:52.61 minutes). In 2004 he won a Bronze medal at the Athens Olympics in that distance. He made his debut at the half marathon distance in 2012, competing and finishing in third place. The following year he made his debut at the marathon distance at the Hamburg marathon and at his debut at that event, he not only won but also set a new course record.

In 2015 he won the Berlin marathon with a personal best time despite having shoe problems and finishing with bloodied and blistered feet. In 2015 and 2016 he won the London marathon. He took the Gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, winning with the largest victory margin since the 1972 Olympic marathon. In 2017 he was one of three runners participating in a Nike event to try and run a marathon in under two hours (this would be the first time ever to achieve this). Kipchoge finished twenty five seconds shy of that goal. His winning streak continued however - he won the London marathon in 2018 and 2019. In 2019 just a few days after running the marathon distance in London, he attempted another sub-two hour marathon, this time achieving that goal with a time of 1:59:40. The achievement went into the Guinness Book of World Records however didn't count as an official IAAF time due to the way the event was set up. For his absolutely incredible achievements and dominance at the marathon distance, he's won several accolades including Best Marathon Runner Awards and Male Athlete of the Year Awards.

Answer: Katie Spotz

Katie Spotz, born in 1987, was named Elite Female Athlete of the Year by the United States Coast Guard (where she's an active duty Response Officer) in 2020, and for good reason. Starting in 2008, she has so many incredible achievements and firsts.... Let's start in 2008. She was the first person to swim the entire length of the Allegheny River. That river spans 325 miles (523 kms) between New York State and Pennsylvania. She obviously got a taste for difficult endurance events. In 2010, she rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean from Senegal, Africa to Guyana, South America. She covered 3,038 miles (4,889 kms), becoming the youngest person to do so, the only American to row the distance and the second woman to do so.

On to 2011 when she joined a team-mate and broke her pelvis while attempting to become the fastest two-person team to cycle across America. Despite breaking her pelvis, they finished the activity in 7 days, 16 hours and 59 minutes. In 2020 she became the first woman to run nonstop across the states of Vermont and New Hampshire and the first person to run nonstop across the state of Maine. In 2021 she broke "the female world record for the most consecutive ultra-marathons in a row by completing 11 daily 31-mile runs" (just under 50 kms).

She competes in Ironman competitions as well as marathons, triathlons and cycling events and raises money for clean water initiatives. She wrote a book about what she learned while traversing the Atlantic Ocean called "Just Keep Rowing."

Answer: Kilian Jornet

Jornet grew up in a mountain hut in Spain and at the tender age of three, he climbed Tuc de Molières, a mountain in the Pyrenees that has an elevation of three thousand meters (almost ten thousand feet). Since that young age, he hasn't stopped moving or climbing. Jornet loves climbing so much that he has his own personal passion project called "Summits of My Life". As part of this project, he's climbed everything from Kilimanjaro to Denali to Everest. When he climbed Everest, he did so without supplemental oxygen or fixed ropes and he found a way to the top via a new route.

Climbing doesn't seem to be enough of a challenge for him as he's also a duathlete and ski mountaineer. He also runs ultramarathons, many of them on mountainous trails. He's a champion skyrunner. Skyrunning involves running up mountains that are a certain height and have a minimum incline requirements. Here is but a small list of some of his incredible achievements. In 2015 he placed first at the Mount Marathon Race in Alaska, setting a course record. He also won the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run in Colorado, setting a course record for running the race counter-clockwise. He also won the Ultra Pirineu, Bagà, Spain, again setting a course record. He won Gold Medals in the Skyrunner World Series in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2021 he completed a vertical kilometer with the fastest known time at 28'48'04.

Answer: Pheidippides

According to legend, Pheidippides is the man behind the marathon distance. He is said to have run from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory of the battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Pheidippides was a courier and initially ran about 250k (150 miles) in two days, to try to get help. He then ran what became the marathon distance (twenty six miles) to announce the victory. Upon reaching Athens, he collapsed and died. You'd have thought this might have dissuaded people from taking up the distance but the romanticized tale only inspired people. Pierre de Coubertin, one of the founders of the modern Olympic games, invented the race and called it the marathon. The additional distance of 385 yards was added in 1921 in London so that the race could finish outside Buckingham Palace where the Royals could watch the finish.

The man who played Pheidippides in the 1991 movie was himself an ultrarunner. Yiannis Kouros, also known as the "Running God", "Pheidippides' Successor" or "Son of Pheidippides", has Gold medals in numerous races. He won the Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon four times and took first place in the Sparta to Athens run four times. He also won the Surgères 48 hour race, an invitation only ultramarathon, seven times. Kouros has quite a simple philosophy that has helped him succeed: "when other people get tired, they stop. I don't. I take over my body with my mind. I tell it that it's not tired and it listens." So there you go folks, the secret to running long distances!

Answer: Camille Herron

Camille Herron has earned the right to do pretty much whatever she wants to do while running and this accomplished runner chooses to run with her long blond hair down, drinking beer, eating tacos and donning a Spiderwoman costume. Herron was born on Christmas Day and grew up in Oklahoma. At the age of seventeen, her family lost everything to a tornado and as a young runner she had to deal with a number of injuries. This inspired her to learn and adapt. She was a three time track and field champ and the valedictorian of her high school.

She was the first 3-time winner of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. In June 2017 she became the third American to win the gruelling Comrades Marathon, with quite a memorable finish. She was in the lead but stopped at the wrong timing mat until a male runner came up behind her and let her know the race wasn't over. She sprinted the last two hundred meters to win the race.

According to the International Association of Ultrarunners and Ultrarunning Magazine she holds several World Records and she has several World Championships, including the 100k and 50k distances (both in 2015). She is the first athlete to win all three of the International Association of Ultrarunners' 50K, 100K, and 24 Hour World Championships. In February 2022 she beat everyone (including all the men in the field) at the Jackpot 100/US Championship and in April 2022 she became the youngest woman to run 100,000 lifetime miles.

Answer: Haile Gebreselassie

Gebreselassie was born in Ethiopia and was one of ten children. He has a very distinct running posture which he allegedly got from running the ten kilometer (six mile) distance to school every day while holding books in his arm. When he runs, it still looks like he is carrying books in one arm. He won medals as a junior in the 5,000 and 10,000 meter distances and won four consecutive Gold medals at the 10,000 meter distance before eventually moving to the marathon distance. As a marathoner, he won Berlin four times in a row, holding the record for the fastest marathon time for three years. His first place marathon finishes include Berlin, Amsterdam, Fukuoka and Dubai.

Incredibly, in 2005 he was undefeated in every road race he ran. This included a 10k race in Manchester, the Amsterdam marathon and the Tilburg Ten Miles Race (where he set a new record). In 2015, after a twenty-five year running career he retired. His incredible career included two Olympic gold medals, eight World Championship victories and the setting of twenty-seven world records. He's the former president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation, sold cars after retirement and became a small-lot coffee farmer. His coffee, under the name Haile Estate, is distributed by Starbucks Reserve.

Answer: Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana was born in Leningrad, USSR in 1989. She was born with spina bifida and was paralyzed from the waist down. She was abandoned in an orphanage and, having no wheelchair, walked on her hands for the first six years of her life. American Deborah McFadden was visiting Russia and adopted her, bringing her to live in Baltimore with her and her partner. Tatyana took up a number of sports to help strengthen her muscles and at the age of eight, she began racing. She hasn't looked back.

She's won or placed in so many marathons including winning the New York City marathon every year between 2013 and 2017. In 2013, she won the Boston, Chicago, London, and New York marathons which made her the first person ever to win all four major marathons. At the Chicago marathon that year she set a new course record. At the 2015 New York marathon she smashed the course record by over seven minutes. At the 2012 London Paralympic Games she won three Gold medals. At the 2016 Rio Paralympics she took the Gold medal in four different events in her category - the 400m, 800m, 1500m and 5000m. She also earned a silver medal in the marathon in Rio.

She's also an activist who fights for the rights of disabled athletes. While in high school she sued the public school system for the right to start at the same time as able-bodied athletes instead of racing around an empty track by herself. Her lawsuit led to the Maryland Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities Act which was passed in 2008.

Answer: Scott Jurek

Jurek started running while in high school but didn't enjoy it at first. He accepted a challenge from a training partner and entered the Minnesota Voyageur 50 Mile in 1994. Without having run a marathon as a trainer and this being his first ultramarathon, he placed in second. And so an ultra running legend was created. He ran the same race again in 1995, placing second again. He then won that race in 1996, 1997 and 1998. In 1999 he ran the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run for the first time and beat the five-time champ. In 2004 he set a new course record for the run.

Over the next several years he won many long distance races, including the McDonald Forest 50K, the Bull Run Run 50 Mile and the Badwater Ultramarathon (which is considered one of the toughest races in the world). He was named "UltraRunning Magazine's" North American Male Ultrarunner of the Year in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007.

In 1999 Jurek switched to a plant based diet and has credited his diet to his ability to perform and recover. He co-authored a book called "Eat & Run" about his philosophy on nutrition and exercise.