Music. Hi team, I'm Fitz Kohler, your very noisy race announcer from Fitsness.com. And welcome to the Fitsness Show. I am pumped because I have a guest I've been dying to talk to for a while. He's called the Marathon Junkie. And you know what? If you're going to be a junkie, you might as well be a junkie for running. He calls himself a running fool. He is vice president of Marathon Guide, and he has run not one sub three hour marathon, not 100.
He has run 500 sub three hour marathons. And if you're not a running person, you have no idea what that means. That means he's gone 26.2 miles in less than three hours, 500 times. And who does that? Who does it? Why do you even do that? It seems like one sub three hour marathon might be good enough, but not for this junkie. He's very fun, fun piece of the running industry. And I'm happy to have him on my show. I love this guy. It's Chuck Engel. Welcome, Chuck. Hey, Fitz. How are you?
I'm good. I'm great. Thank you. I'm watching College World Series and my Gators are killing it right now. So, how are you? Yeah. Outstanding. Good for you. It's fun. We've got a home run hitter that keeps just whacking those balls out of the park, which makes it a good time for all of us to wear orange and blue. What about you, Chuck?
As a runner, I was watching the NCAA Division I Championships championships and your gator parker valby is now the only five-time single season ncaa champion and i i just wow what that's just impressive i mean cross-country champ indoor outdoor 5 000 indoor 3 000 and outdoor 5 10 000 and i i mean it's one thing to win an ncaa title but to win five in a single season i mean and she's the only one who's done it so i was it was impressive Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, she's spectacular, and she's sweet, and she's smart. And, you know, if you're going to have someone represent your university, she's doing a great job. And I hope she ends up in the Olympics. Yeah, she's got a shot here. What are we at, a week and a half, a week and a half to go? And then we'll find out. Now, are you following the Olympics? Or do you have – I'm guessing you are. That's a silly thing to ask. Are you expecting great things from the Americans in the Olympics this year?
Yeah, I think year in, year out. I always expect our sprint teams to do very well. It just seems to be a national pastime for most Americans to watch the Olympics with the sprinters. And, you know, there's some outside shots for the distance. Certainly, I think Parker Valby. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think the middle distance, the distance runners are dominated and have been now for at least two, three decades by the African countries.
But, look, it's always exciting to watch. You never know when you get those, you know, those upsets, especially if an American medals like Mad, like Des. I mean, just a medal. Molly Seidel. Yeah. I mean, even as recently as Molly. Yeah, it's and I'm actually going to Duluth this this coming weekend, get to run Grandma's Marathon, but, you know, get to at least see Dakota and listen to she's going to have a few remarks for us at the VIP dinner.
So excited about her chances and it's going to be great to see a future Olympian. Yeah, for sure. She I announced Fargo a couple of weeks ago and she came and spoke with Dick Beardsley. I was the host and they were on a panel and she basically said that her cross-country coach told her she wasn't even doing a marathon. She'd never even run a marathon, but he said, I think you could go to the Olympics in the marathon because the longer the distance, the faster she got. And she just believed him.
And she was offered a job as a school teacher. That was her degree. And she said, nope, I'm going to train for the Olympics. And there she is. So way to get it done. Right. I think it's amazing what the power of a positive mindset will do. In my years of running, and it goes back to why I am the marathon junkie, is no one ever said I couldn't do this thing. No one said, hey, you cannot do more than one quality marathon in a year.
And I never heard that before. And I wasn't a big fan of the running magazines. I was just not that type of a reader. To me, it was more of a... And I know Runner's World wasn't really a tabloid, but to me, it was a tabloid, all those magazines were. And so I didn't really get the notion that, hey, to run really fast, you've got to focus on one marathon per year. Of course, I was running mid-230s, but I ran, what, 50 of them at 06 and averaged 236. And so no one told me I could not do that.
So I think that's probably what we hear a lot of is just that positive influence is you could go to the Olympics or you can run 50 marathons a year instead of you can't do that. You should be a schoolteacher, which nothing wrong with being a schoolteacher. But, hey, if the alternative is there, why not take a shot for glory? Think big. Let's go all the way back. How did you get started running and how did this whole thing manifest?
I think most people who look at me probably can tell that I'm not cut out to be an NBA basketball player and not much of a lineman for football and really don't have a hand-eye coordination for baseball, although I did play football as a youngster and baseball. I played for the Lodi. What were we? The Lodi. It's been too long. I tried all those sports, but usually he sat the bench and. It's kind of a pre-Fontaine story without me going to the Olympics kind of thing.
But I just, I was too little and people told me I was too little. And, you know, so then I tried out for the choir and that was a blast. I could sing. I played the flute. I practiced pianist. You know, so I, you know, I had a, I had musical talent, but I was, I got hit really hard as a seventh grader playing football and it knocked me out. And I'll never forget the kid who hit me. And we ended up being on the wrestling team together in high school.
But, you know, I turned on my shoulder and helmet and I said, whatever that was getting knocked out, I don't want to experience that again. And so I went, tried to join the band and sat in the choir. And one of the cross country coaches, his name was J.D. Scrant in my junior high. He said, you know, you should probably come run. And running, I think at the time, became that catch all for physically active people who didn't maybe have the stature to play football. ball.
And so I just started running and I, you know, I finished. How tall are you? I'm 5'8 now, but ask any of my high school, junior high classmates. I was 85 pounds soaking wet and about 4'8. Very cute. Yeah. I mean, cute then I guess, but I wasn't really the ladies man that you see before you. Right. Right. You blossomed. I was, I was a very late bloomer. Yeah. I went out for cross country with JD Scranton's junior high team.
And, you know, I was just one of those things that I saw the older kids like Tyler Wood. And then I saw the high school kids, you know, Willie Wiley, for example, and the, and these guys, I mean, they worked, they put such a precedence of how to work hard and, and what it looked like to be in pain without getting injured. During, during exercise. And I don't know, there's just something about, I could work as hard as I wanted
to. And there was another football player on the other side getting in my way. The only thing that got in my way was myself. And I clung to that. I'd love to just go out and work as hard as I could with unlimited amount, just do whatever I wanted to. And if I wanted to run three times a day, I could. And I started to do that. I started running maybe a mile in the morning. And then I wanted to see if I could run from my house to my friend Tim's house, which was two miles away.
And then I'd get to his place and get out the old rotary phone, call my dad and say, come pick me up. But yeah, that's how it got started. It's just too short, too little to play any other, I guess, tier one sport, as they used to call it. And were you competitive in high school? Did you win championships? No. It was really funny. My ninth grade year, my high school team was comprised of seven seniors and myself. And I was the freshman. them. The top seven had qualified for the state meet.
My head coach said, hey, you're number eight. You are the alternate. You get to go to the state meet. I remember going to the state meet and one of the kids sprained his ankle. Ron Stahl was his name. Ron Stahl sprained his ankle the week before the state meet. I didn't have a concept of seniors having worked hard to earn a state meet birth. I was really too young to say, well, he's injured. Clearly, I run.
But Todd Clark, my head high school coach, was an amazing man, still is, just a genius and a hell of a coach. And he instilled upon me that just the values of running and four years of effort for a senior, regardless of whether he's seventh or injured. And he gave the slot to the senior, which even injured, I knew full well he was a better runner than I was at that point. So So I got to see the state meet, and I would never make it back.
I got to see those guys start, and one of my teammates, Willie Wiley, he was second in the state behind the now famous Bob Kennedy. Whose daughter ran in the NCAA championship this past weekend, I guess. So, yeah, I learned a lot from that freshman year. And those guys all graduated, and so as a 10th grader, having earned the only other available varsity letter as a freshman, I took over the reins as a team captain, as a 10th grader.
And they called us Chuck and the seven dwarfs. And, but we had great, we had great athletes. I mean, guys who worked just as hard as I did, but maybe didn't have the, I don't know. I wasn't great in high school. I ran 16, 23. So. Okay. Okay. So, and then how did you, how did you start running marathons or your first marathon?
On well so i ended up coaching in mississippi for and that's a whole other story but i don't feel it's a cross-country or both but we had a men's and women's cross-country team that i inherited from coach billy lamb who is another and i think that that should be a point that's heard is that i was very fortunate my my dad because we moved a lot but he picked a high school for me to attend it was it was an amazing high school i mean an amazing
wrestling coach and bob lettered and we had an amazing referee, even Phil Horvath. I was so fortunate my dad picked that high school for us. It was a massive high school. I think he graduated with almost 300 students. And the competition was fierce. You know, even getting good grades was difficult to do because somebody else would get the, you know, just when they started that 4.1, 4.5 system, just a lot of fierceness.
But the coaching I had all through high school, even college, it was just coaches were so influential in my life. Now, we still haven't gotten to how you started the marathon, but were you a punk at all in high school or were you a mostly good guy trying to achieve great things? I mean, selfishly, I'd like to think I was a good guy. I think I was annoying. I mean, I consider myself, I was kind of a clown, but not a popular clown.
I don't know. You weren't drinking and getting into trouble? Oh, I didn't know. In fact, I had a conversation with one of my same year classmates, and I don't think he'd mind me saying his name. Scott Haney is a kid that I looked up to, and he was in my class, but he was the, I mean, he looks like Sean Connery and, sorry. Looks like George Clooney sort of, and just the good looking kid. And he was the class clown that I looked up to, but he was wicked smart.
Went to the state meet and finished second as a wrestler. He was the kid I looked up to off of high school, just aggressive on the football field, aggressive on the wrestling mat. And if there was anybody I wanted to aspire to be in high school, it would have been him. And he wasn't doing drugs or drinking or whatever. Well, to the contrary, I think, well, he would admit this. He was dating girls and drinking beer. And there was photos that have surfaced on Facebook of a house,
which was not even 100 yards from where I grew up. and people were talking about this house. And how, oh, this is where all the parties took place and all the beer we drank and all the making out that went on. And there were other words that were used that I'll refrain. And I was like, I lived 100 yards. How did I not know this? Well, you were busy running and training for wrestling and getting ready to wake up for track meets and studying. And yeah, I guess I was.
So that's your, just so you know, I was doing sports and stuff, but I was also at the party drinking. Well, yeah, Scott was too. And he was successful. But I didn't see that side of life until much, much, much. I still don't think I've seen that side of life. Okay. Okay. So how did you end up running your first marathon? When did that become a good idea? Well, so as a coach and loving running, I would run in the mornings with my athletes.
And then some of them would have labs in the morning, so they couldn't make the morning workouts. And so I'd be running in the mornings. And if they had to run at lunchtime to get their workouts, then I'd run with them at lunch. And then I'd run with them the other half of the team at night. And I have some of those little, the old James Fix running logs. And I was using them from 1989, actually earlier than that, 85 Ford, I was using those running logs.
And a guy named Hank Hardy was living behind me in this duplex. And he goes, I see you leave the house to go to run. And you got to be putting in 10, 15, 20 miles a day. And I said, I don't know. And I looked at my running log and I said, wow, there's days where I'm running 20, 22 miles. And he said, He said, you should go try one of those marathons. I said, oh, marathons, that just sounds ridiculous. But-
I didn't have the money. I looked at a couple of places to see how much marathons cost to run. And they were exorbitant. They were like $85, $90 to run a race to enter. And then for me as a head coach, and this will date me, but I was making $14,000 a year, teaching multiple classes in college, putting on the men's and women's cross country, men's and women's track and field, intramural director, and in charge of mowing 450 acres of grass, which was our cross country course.
And so I just hard work was part of it, but the income was not there. So Hank said, go run a marathon. He said, there's a local one. And by local, he meant a two and a half hour drive up to Tupelo, Mississippi. And so I scrambled together all the cash and change that I could. And the story goes that it was like $65. I was about $35 short of the entry fee.
And a good a good friend mike lail i didn't know him at the time i just i shoved all this wadded up dollar bills and change and said please let me run your race sir and it's a great story mike lail was a dear friend before his passing and that's the tupelo marathon and he basically said listen i i don't want to scrape your dead carcass off the road you probably won't even finish and And I'm going to take the money, you dumb son of a... And I said, okay. So he took... It was like $65.83.
And he took it. And he said, you ever run one of these before? And I said, no, but I'll be all right. It's a 20-mile followed by a 10K race. And he says, you're an idiot. So that's what got me into it. And how did that race go? Well, contrary to what Mike Lail, all hail, contrary to what he thought, I ended up winning it. I set the course record by over seven minutes. And I collapsed in his arms, this big bear hug that he gave me.
And he said, congratulations, you dumb son of a bitch. You won it. And you set a course record by seven minutes. Oh, I love that. You'd think with that experience, I'd be hooked. But you weren't? Well, I was hooked on continuing to run. I don't think I've ever not been. There's not been a point where I haven't enjoyed the running. But it took me a full two years to the day to go back to Tupelo and run. On. It's on Labor Day every year.
And it's brutal. I mean, it can be 108 degrees like it was my first year. So it took me two years. And the race director reached out, Mike Clare reached out, and he goes, are you ever going to come back? I was like, I don't know. I still hadn't gotten a pay raise two years later. It was expensive. He goes, I'll waive your entry fee. Just get up here. And he did. Course record holder, he put me up at one of the Tupelo Inn, which I don't even think is a hotel any longer.
He took me out to dinner at one of the famous pasta places in Tupelo, drove me by the Buffalo farm, drove me by Elvis Presley's. Like I got a tour from Mike Lael of the whole downtown and all of Tupelo. And I ended up winning it again the second time. And I would go on to win that race eight times, eight times. But yeah, after that second year in 02 is when I really got booked. Okay. So A, that is an excellent origin story.
Very cute. Very sweet. I love that you couldn't afford it and you got to do it anyways. And you won the damn thing. What was your first finishing time? My first tuplo was 234, two hours, 34 minutes, I think 17 seconds. And I think, you know, without being too humble, how incredible that is. That really is. Well, so I didn't know anything about the marathon world. I really, I was ignorant. I mean, I'd heard- But in hindsight, pretty incredible debut.
Well, no, now at 53, I see people opening up with 209s, 210s. And even then, I didn't know then. And I think I was immediately thrown into just the running world. And, you know, one of the early races I did was Chicago and I would go on to do Chicago 10 times, but I ran two 30, two 31. I think my first year at Chicago in 2002. And I was 25th overall. That's one of the few awards I ever kept. I was 20. That's a world-class field. It's massive. Yeah. And 25th overall, I thought this is amazing.
Yeah. But then the guys who won it were like a full minute per mile faster. So early on, I recognized that running in the 230s, while fast compared to some, the true elites were running significantly faster. Right. But the reality is you're the top 1% of the entire sport. And way better than that because of your volume of races and volume of speedy, successful finishes.
It's staggering. I mean, I think the volume, if I was to revert back to my mid-30s and late-30s and an arrogance level there that I'd like to think I've left behind, I would say definitely that the volume, the sheer volume of what I accomplished in those years and the pace at which I accomplished it, I think that would definitely put me in rarefied air. Right. Yeah, but I don't think the times wouldn't at all put me in rare air.
Right. You weren't going to win the Olympics. However, still a pretty incredible debut. And then to continue that, so race number one, wild success. When did you decide, you know what, I'm going to keep doing this, and I'm going to keep doing it under three hours? When did that become a thing?
I don't think I ever thought about three hours. I think it was just at a point, it just go out and race as hard as I can every time i go out and race and it was it was it was by happenstance that the times.
Hovered in the mid 230s for so long i really didn't have the intention of like right now it's like jeez am i going to break sub three again and and i mean i believe i will i've really just been enjoying my my tour so i yeah the sub three didn't really dawn on me i just those were just They happened. You'd go out and run at 235 this weekend. The next weekend, you'd run 237. And then it didn't dawn on me that I was continuously running sub three.
And then I had this seemingly unmistakable ability to recover stupid fast. Okay. So that's one of the big things there is you talked about watching people train injury-free 500 marathons and you've, how many have you run? Because it's gotta be more than 500. Well, yeah, I try, I've tried to retire twice and great folks like Dan Ashworth insisted that I'm, I get back to it because running is who I am. And so it's, I mean, that was in January. I tried to retire. I ran my 500th in January in Maui.
And then I've done six since then. So, and I'm doing and grandma's this weekend. And then I'm scheduled to Mad Marathon. And I honestly, I think I have another 10 to 12 planned this year. Okay. Okay. So yeah, you're well over 500, just as 500 under three hours. Now, how have you...
Continued on mostly injury-free. I know you've had some falls and this or that along the way, but to be able to continue on at your pace without having all the aches and pains that the rest of us are having, you've got to be doing something special. Well, my wife, Summer, tries to say that I'm a hybrid vigor, and I don't think my family minds me saying this. I really, other than my face maybe, I don't look anything like my family members. I'm just a unique genetic freak, I guess.
But I never wanted to offer up genes as an excuse for being a freak runner or for not being anything. Genetics certainly are part of it, but I think there's a work level. And I credit this with my high school coach again, Todd Tark. He said, Chuck, you may not win every race, but you'll certainly outwork everybody in the field.
And I took that to heart as a senior. I just, I knew that I could work harder and I may not win, but doggone if the guy in front of me, I was going to prove to him that I outworked him. So there's a lot of people working hard, but their hips and their knees are screaming and they're debilitating. So do you cross train? What, what do you do besides running to keep you running? Yeah, I hadn't thought of my cross training before.
It was just things that I did. So cycling, deep water running to loosen up the joints. There's a lot of stuff that I just did naturally. And I did it for athletes of mine in college that may have got injured. I put them in the pool for deep water running when Arc Trainer first came out. And so I just would jump on with them or get in the pool with them. And there's a lot of volume involved. And I think the biggest key for me being injury free is, is the gradual progression that I went through.
I mean, I did, honestly, I did hundreds of five Ks. I know I've done hundreds of five Ks, four milers, five Ks, 10 Ks, hundreds of 10 Ks. I probably have done, oh, there's no telling how many half marathons I did while living in Ohio and Mississippi prior to actually entering Tupelo. Okay. Okay. And then what about strength training, stretching, balance training? Do you do those things? I mean, people, I guess when I was younger, people looked at me and said,
oh, he's in the gym all the time. And I hate the gym. I don't lift. I don't stretch. You don't do pushups or lunges or anything? I mean, we used to do plyometrics with the kids back in Mississippi when I was coaching, but we certainly started to do plyometrics at Mountain Union under John Holman. So bounds and one-legged hops and all one-legged hops for a quarter mile, half mile. Okay. Oh, love those. That's strength training right there. Single leg hops.
You just Just tell me your strength training. I mean, plyometrics to me, when you say plyometrics, that's plyometrics. Strength training in my little definitional world is going to the gym and bench pressing and curling and hamstringing. No, but it all counts. It all counts. That single leg work is a big deal. I mean, for hip stability and preventing the knee pain.
Yeah, you just told me you have been strength training. We had the sand pit at Mount Union, and I think it was the thrower's pit, if I recall, or it was the long jump pit. And it was just a massive pit of sand, and we put these inner tubes, these tire inner tubes, like semi-truck tire inner tubes, and they were roughly weighted 20, 30, 40 pounds. We'd put them around our neck, and we would do split leg jumps in the sand pit with this 30-pound bag of sand on our neck.
Oh, I miss those days. That's strength training. That's just a really fabulous version of strength training. But yeah, that's strength training. That makes me happy. I'm a big advocate for strength training because weakness has no benefit. Yeah, I think that's probably, again, the gradualness of it. And I think there's some basic stability strength training that I've done.
But I mean, if you look at my undergrad and my graduate degrees, both were centered around human performance and physiology, kinesiology, biology, chemistry. I mean, everything I've studied has lent itself to that. Knowing more about running than anybody, any of my counterparts. So you're doing the right thing without using a fitness center. Yes. Got it. Got it. Okay. So, and I'm going to go into all the racing for people who want to know, want your wealth of knowledge.
Cause I know you've run all the races and all the places before that. I want to go back to where we met. Cause you and I met, I think it was a 2016, running USA conference. And for folks who don't know, that's the annual conference where people who organize races or do anything within the race production business come together and we share information, et cetera, et cetera. So I meet Chuck and he says, upon meeting, oh, you're from Gainesville, Florida.
I just ran the five points of life marathon there yesterday. And the night before I had, I don't know, 57 bottles of wine. I was so drunk. Oh, and I've done 300 sub three hour marathons. And I just looked at you thinking, why would you tell me about the wine thing? And it was, it seemed to be connected to who you were at that point, but I was very confused. And so your, your connection to drinking wine and running, do you still do that anymore?
And, and how did that evolve? And how has that changed? the wine thing evolved i i wasn't a heavy drinker i never drank in college never drank in high school let me let me preface that i never drank in high school and i i didn't really know much about drinking when i got to college and then after college when i moved to mississippi i i met this guy i mean i had only being paid so much money obviously i worked two to three jobs,
And I ended up working in a fitness, as a general manager in a fitness store, selling high-end treadmills and high-end bikes. And I didn't have a nickel to, you know, if it took a nickel to, yeah. So this guy comes in, and as a general manager, the owner, Jim Ballard, goes, if you sell this guy for anything over $5,000, I'll give you X number of dollars bonus money. And I looked at him, and first he was in a Porsche, and he parked his Porsche around the corner.
And so we all saw him drive this Porsche, but he parked it out of the way so we wouldn't see it. But my boss, Jim Bell, I said, oh, he's going to come in and buy a couple of 25-pound dumbbells, you know, because his girlfriend wants him to get in shape. And I was like, wow, this will be easy. And so he comes into the facility, and sure enough, he goes, hey, I just need a couple of 25-pound dumbbells. And I said, what are you trying to do? And he looked about 40.
I said, what are you trying to attract a younger lady? and he goes yeah she wants me to start lifting i said oh no you're doing it way wrong and of course then i was like a buck 35 and chiseled and fit and did the gym thing wore the tight arm t-shirts and and he goes yeah all right so we became great friends i ended up selling him well over 10 grand in equipment and and he kept calling me saying i want you to come work for me i want you to come work for me invites me over to his house
for to get to celebrate his then girlfriend's graduation from college. Wow. Yeah. And he's got all this amazing wine sitting out. And I didn't know anything about wine, but he had bottles of bottles of great, great wine. And I won't name drop any of the bottles, but I do recall Opus one was sitting there and it was an amazing glass of wine. And honestly, his name is David Strain.
And he's, he's the reason I got hooked on great wine. He showed me a world of wine that to this day, I just won't, I won't drink cheap wine. Kudos to you for not drinking cheap wine now, but it seemed to be a thing you were running and drinking excessively for a while. I don't, I don't believe you are still today. I don't know. I don't know that to be true, but I don't think you do.
Well, when I tried to retire in, in January from running, I guess I kind of, for two months, I just didn't care at all. And it was bad. And I openly admit this. I was going to, and my wife will testify to it. I probably two to three bottles of wine a day. Yikes. I mean, I killed a seller. I absolutely killed a seller. And that's not bragging. That's just admitting to you all and to myself that if not kept in check, it can get seriously out of control really quickly,
especially if you've got an addictive personality. It gets bad. And I put on 15 pounds overnight. It was stupid easy. And then thank God for Dan Ashworth, who is sober. He called me and said, this is not you. you, this is not what you do. And so he got me to Boston and I had my entry and he, he took care of me at Boston, you know, but to that point, it's easy to slip back into those, those habits.
I, I, oddly people know that I would drink a bottle or two before race and, and still hell win, if not run two 35, I think, I mean, I think it catches up. It definitely catches up. It catches up to you. And so I did Charlevoix marathon this past weekend, Again, absolute blast up there. Beautiful along Lake Michigan. Love that race. And I went to this thing called The View the night before, which is a wine bar. And I know I had two glasses of champagne.
And then the bartender told me about his wine cellar downstairs. So I went down the stairs and had a Mount Vita. And then we opened up a prisoner. And we're drinking at the bar. And before I know it, it's 11 PM. And I got to go to bed. And then I got to be up at 4.30 to have breakfast and get ready for the race. Now, I ran fine. And I wasn't worried about my time. I went out like 131, 132 for the half, which was my plan.
And then I was, I had talked to one of the pacers the day before and he says, oh, just come back and hang out with me. I'm going to run 345. And so I slowed as much as I could to allow Walt to catch me. And finally at mile 25, he caught up to me. So we jogged the last mile together. And it, I mean, the last six marathons I've done have been just glorious. They've just been fun. So I'm not overly concerned about whether I drink the night before or not.
I'd much rather have a glass of wine the night before because I like it. But the races now aren't, there's no pressure. There's no pressure on me to, to not drink at work. I mean, no one said, Hey, you know, run sub three and here's $20,000. There's, there's no incentive any longer. Right. I mean, after 500, what's, what's next? I'm 53. I'm not going to qualify for the Olympics.
Yeah. So have you ever considered yourself an alcoholic or has it been something you could nip in the bud if you wanted to? Well, yeah, so I, I did. I, Rick Neal has invited me to go to the Marine Corps Marathon one year. In fact, a lot of years. And he said, now I want you to show up not drinking. And I said, all right. And what's funny is one of his coworkers at the time, I was three weeks without drinking. And she says, you want to go get a glass of wine? And when she said it,
I didn't think anything about it. She goes, because it looks like you need one. And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, look at your hands. And I was the delirium tremors. I had the DTs. I've never considered myself an alcoholic. My wife and I talk about my running goes significantly better when I don't drink. But again, at this stage, I mean, I don't know. And I look at those people, and I've lost a classmate recently from high school.
And you look at his life, and you look at everything he did, and I think to myself, do I want to live an extra three years and not enjoy a good glass of wine? And I really don't. I really don't. And I reconciled that. And if that makes me an alcoholic, label me as you will. That's just curious. I mean, you really, I don't think most people could accomplish. Well, let's, let's take the bar down. I don't think most people could drink heavily on a Friday night and then run a 5k.
Well, a Saturday morning, you have an disagree. I think there's a lot of people. And I mean, a lot of runners that go out and have two or three beers the night before the race. And I think they do just as much after. And that's just my own personal experience watching this stuff. Now, they're not trying to run sub 15 in a 5K. They're not trying to run sub three hours in the marathon. But I think the crowd that I hang out with, if I go to a restaurant, I'll sit at the bar.
And I'll see people around me with the race shirt on that they just got. And they're drinking. I saw them in Charlevoix. I saw them at OC. They're drinking. Well, you know what? You are completely right on that. In fact, I have this. My stomach is so pathetic. I really don't have the capacity to drink and then perform. And I do love a good beer or two on a rare occasion. So that's my bag, but, but I used to kickbox. So that was my sport. I competed as a full contact kickboxer.
And I remember one of my first priorities when I had a fight scheduled, it was like, okay, no alcohol until I, until that final bell rings. And so that sticks with me. I don't drink on a race weekend. I'm happy to have a beer after, but yeah, it's interesting. Not only before a race or after a race, but stomach of steel. So many of our athletes are out like doing fireball shots on mile 18 of a marathon.
I just, I don't know. I'm, I'm either super paper fragile or they're super, super strong in their digestive system. I don't know how people do it. I've done, I mean, of late, I've done some crazy things at mile 18 and I was out at Casper and there was part of the new amazing course of Casper. There was, there was people handing out jello shots and fireball shots and, I had worked the expo the two days prior, so my legs were dead anyway.
And I was actually going to drop at the half because I thought the half would go through the finish line, but it didn't. And so before I knew it, I was at mile 14, and I'd already taken a shot of fireball and a jello shot. And I was like, well, I'm not going to go two miles back to the finish line. I mean, well, now I got to finish the dang thing. I got to do it. And so I soldiered on. To go back to your earlier point about
the beer, I don't drink beer. I don't drink any grain alcohol whatsoever. The only thing I've – I think I can count on my – yeah, I can count on one hand the number of beers I've had in the past three or four years. Okay. I went to Grandma's two years ago to run the race, and I had my first real pre-race beer. Because Duluth is famous for microbreweries. And a bunch of my friends said, oh, you got to try this. You got to try this.
And I was like, all right. Well, I worked the expo all day. And so I went out and had a beer. I actually, I liked it, but I know the chemistry of what grain fermentation does to my body and to anybody's body. And I'll go on the record as saying that wine doesn't have, now the alcohol does, but the fermentation process of wine doesn't have that same effect. And there's studies out there that are buried because there's not a beer company out there that wants them to be prevalent.
And rightly so. There's no profit in posting studies about fermentation process of grain alcohol and what it does to your body. But there's a reason people get a beer gut. We just got to look at the science behind it and most people don't want to see it. No, and so many people when they're having beer, they're having six, 10, 12 beers. I mean, I have a neighbor who was 12 beers per night. He stopped drinking, instantly lost 40 pounds.
Shocker. The volume that people drink on like a 3.2 or a 5.5% beer to get that artificial high or that high that they want, the volume that people drink is just devastating. Okay. All right. We've alcoholed it together. We could go on forever, but interesting. I'm drinking water. This is water. Promise. This is water. This is decaffeinated Diet Coke. A beverage of choice. Okay. So you've done all the things at races, but I want to talk about some of the funny things I have.
I have an opportunity for people to appear on the fitness show if they've got a great story to tell. And so one, well, we've got a couple, but how many times have you puked on a course and what was the most, like, what was the worst situation of you? I can't imagine you haven't done all of these and not thrown up in a bunch of states? I actually have never thrown up. What? Yeah. Yeah. I've never thrown up during a race. Ever. Have you ever had a, um, an unfortunate situation on the other end?
I have never, I've had GI issues, but only during Ironman. So I've not had any, I've seen a lot, but I've not.
In fact, I was running Lake Okeechobee in Iowa and there was a young kid out ahead of me and i when the gun goes off after mile one you kind of know you're either going to win it or you're not okay and i saw this kid out ahead of me i knew i was going to win it i just i could tell that he wasn't going to hold on to the hold on very well and about mile six or seven he stopped mid-course dropped trowel and just let things lose and i knew right then and
there that it would be just a couple more miles before i caught it but everybody Everybody else had to run around that. Wow. Okay. A lot of lower GI issues. And, and I've had during Ironman. Oh, it Ironman has not been good to me at all. As far as that, that that's concerned. So yeah, no vomiting, no, no lower GI issues. Um. I mean, weather has probably been the biggest challenge. I mean, Niagara Falls International Marathon, snow, sleet, hail all in the same day. What month is that?
What's that? What month does that take place? I think it was in October, November. But I think they moved it to May, which still has a chance of that type of weather. That was like 03 or 05 that I went up there. And we were running through puddles of six-inch deep slush, snow, ice. I think I finished fifth or sixth overall with a 230, low 230s, but just brutal conditions. And then I did the Army Marathon in Kylene, Texas. Started off 62 and sunny and beautiful.
And Ed Bandis was the race director. And he looks and he goes, do you see that wall cloud? I said, oh, yeah, well, I'll run it. By mile two, Paula Boone of the 50 States Club was standing on a corner. And she threw a black plastic garbage bag over me because it went from 62 to 34 in a course of two miles. And then it just pelting rain and freezing cold. I ended up in a med tent. I still wouldn't set a course record, but I ended up in a med tent just buried
in warm saline bags and hypothermic. It was brutal. Was that your worst? Was that your most difficult weather-wise? Well, I mean, Pike's Peak is notoriously ugly. I got the top and I don't remember much. I got the top of it and I had a good friend, Andrea Hill, just pushed me back down the mountain. And I ended up stopping at the A-frame. I was delirious from the freezing. I mean, ice all over me. I was frozen solid.
So I think Pipes Peak, although it's beautiful and I'd give up a kidney to do it again. That was weather-wise, that was the worst. It was blowing snow and ice at the top. Yeah. What is your secret? So normally you're a shirtless runner, and I thank you for that. We call that the man shirt, and it's much appreciated. You have a fantastic man shirt. I approve. But what is your, let's say it's going to be 35 out. What do you wear? What is your secret to being comfortable for the whole week?
Well, if it's sunny and no wind, I'll go shirtless at 35. I mean, I've run shirtless at 32 and no wind. I've run shirtless at 27 and no wind. And all I need is gloves and maybe a hat. Okay, so I've been told by many sources, and I attest, I wear the gloves too. Because I want to be in a tank top and shorts in almost any situation. But the gloves go a long way. Why do the gloves work for you? I think it's just a comforting, warm thing.
And I think it has a lot to do with that capillary return and refill. If you can keep your hands warm, it just tends to keep the blood warm, which keeps your core body temperature going. going, which I know sounds counterintuitive, but it's probably just a pseudo effect, but it works. I like love. Catherine Switzer says so, too. So you're in good company. She's like love. Yeah. And then hats, too. I stay warm through my head.
Yeah. So fortunately, unlike so many of my other classmates, I still have a very full head of hair. So hats for me are optional. I have one on today because, well, we've got to talk about Marathon Guide, right? Right. This hat is probably 2003 or 4.
Vintage okay nice nice stylish are you do you like the running caps better than the trucker i'm a big fan of a trucker hat i look a little dorky in the running hat yeah the trucker hat for me was i thought it was going to be a fad and i really try not to do fads but the trucker hat seems to be catching on i think it's here to stay yeah i agree yeah my favorite what's your favorite kind of hat. I have a hat from Brooks that is, it feels like Gore-Tex, but it breathes better, and it's neon yellow.
Okay. And it's got a short little bill on it. It's all soft. There's no cardboard parts to it at all. It's indestructible. My good friend, Brian Diddy's wife, Carrie Diddy, she got it for me one year for, I think, Christmas, or just on a random, heading out to go to dinner or something. She says, here, wear this hat. And I've had that thing forever and I love it. What about shorts? Since you had shorts are your main apparel.
So I'm, I'm currently, I run in the Brooks Sherpa, the three inch to two and a half inch inseam Sherpa. And the only reason I didn't use to carry a lot of gels and salt and things, but my experiences with Ironman have taught me to carry more fuel always.
And I may finish a marathon without having adjusted any, any gels at all, but there's There's just something comforting about these Brooks Sherpa shorts that have like four different pockets and that the longer ones have a zipper pocket that I can carry. I can carry a deli sandwich in them if I want to. They're great. What, what do you like to bring with you when you race, if you're going to eat on the run? So I carry the, you can gel specifically the banana strawberry.
I carried five of those every race. I, and I don't know why five. I just, I thought every five miles, you know, one at the start and then five, 10, 15, 20. And I don't think I've ever done that. I carry it for that reason, but I don't think I've done it. Is there a point in the race? Like I know no matter what distance I'm running, if I hit mile eight, I become hangry every single time. Is there a place where you think I'm going to need some nutrition at that point?
I mean, I've studied it a lot, but the studying in my own lab hasn't revealed any specific stats on it. And do you take candy from strangers? So if fans are out there with cookies and licorice and whatever else you eat, you take from strangers? No. And that's more of a USATF ruling thing. Okay. Yeah. I just don't want to have anybody question my ethics. Okay. My ethics were questioned once in Omaha and it set me back. Significantly. Tell us about that. Well, I was trying to run sub three in all
50 states for the second, well, the third time. Yeah, the third time. And the race director, we were good friends. We had known each other and had talked about coming out there. And he did everything, put me up in a hotel, paid my entry, airfare, meal ticket. And I went out and by mile 17 or 18, I took over the a lead and I won it sub three, two 54 or five or something.
And you know, we were celebrating and I was standing around talking to people about my running and people asking questions and me asking questions. And the race director came up to me and he said, Chuck, I hate to do this. And I said, Hey Tom, what's so I got to take your medal. I got, I got to disqualify you for cheating. Wow. And you know, then the next two to three weeks, I, I just, I looked at him and there's nothing you can do for race records. It's his discretion.
And I looked at him, I said, Tom, Tom, you got to do what you got to do. What am I going to do? Are you with him? No, I'm not going to be a child about it. Did he give you a reason? What was the explanation? Yeah, he said, I cut the course. I said, I'm cheated. And I said, the only thing I can think of, and I said, look, I'll give you my GPS. And I made my Strava public, and in fact.
Marathon of Investigations did a whole thing, so much so that he even went to Omaha to look at the course where Maestrava said I went, or where they said I went off course. And he said, by going off course 50 yards to avoid the flooding river, not only did I slow down during that segment, and it actually added time. I mean, he... Good old Derek Murphy. He knows his stuff. He definitely does.
And, you know, and it's fine. I mean, I went back to Nebraska probably a year later and won the Oregon Trail Marathon in Nebraska and had a brilliant time. The race director was amazing. We took photos together. He said Nebraska's done. I mean, an amazing time. And unfortunately, race directors make decisions all the time that might not be pleasing to a lot of people. But, you know, no ill will toward Tom. He did what he thought was right.
There was no vindication for that with all of your evidence. Well, I mean, once you make a decision to disqualify a runner, you sure can't go back two weeks later and say, oh, sorry, you're now the winner. I mean, you can send an email and say, I regret that decision. Yeah, for sure. Did you get one of those? Yes, I did. Okay. Well, there you go. That goes a long way. That's the first time I've said anything about that publicly as far as the email that he sent to me.
But I think that's why when a race director disqualifies or cancels or does, I think, People need to understand that there's a lot weighing on race directors minds. Right. And I understood that at the time, Tom did what he did. And I was like, Hey, you, he went with the facts that he thought he knew. And it's sad that it took two weeks to clear my name, but it happened.
And on the flip side, I'm sure if you had seen evidence that, whoops, you went the wrong way, you would have said, I'm so sorry. And of course, don't give me the medal. I have full faith you would have owned up to that whoopsie daisy if that had been a real thing. Yeah, to your point, exactly. I mean, I ran the Mad Marathon in 2012 or 13, one of those years. You'll see I have a string of Mad Marathons. And then there's one year where I DNF'd.
And people like, what the heck? And I knew the course. I'd done it three or four years prior. And I just, I missed this left-hand turn that goes out to the cow farms. I just didn't take it. I turned right instead of going left. And I found myself at mile 17 in the lead. And people were saying, you're number one, you're number one. And I knew full well in my heart that I wasn't in the lead. So I, at mile 17, I had a choice to go left and run this dip or call it a day.
Cause my watch, my watch said I was at mile 14 and I was at 17. And I said, guys, I, I, I've made an egregious mistake. I, I have to withdraw. And you know, it's, it's a tough thing to do, but it's not, it's the right thing to do. And as an athlete, if you know, you've, you know, skirted the system, although it wasn't intentional. Yeah. I just pulled myself from the race. Right. I would expect nothing less, nothing less. So how many times have you DNF'd?
And for those of you who don't know, it's did not finish. There's DNS, which is not showing up at the start line. And then DNF is, it happens to the best. I ran the Oklahoma marathon, not Oklahoma city, but the Oklahoma marathon. And it's also one year, beautiful course along a river. And at the finish line, there's a photo of me at the finish line. And I had, I had really ruptured perineal peroneal. One of my shin muscles I had ruptured.
And I was scheduled to run the Harpeth Hills flying monkey marathon the next day, which Harpeth Hills arguably is probably the second, second toughest road marathon in the country behind Blue Ridge. And I got to mile 11.2 and my shin was just puffy, swollen, so much edema. And so I DNF flying monkey the day after winning and setting the course record at Tulsa, at the Oklahoma marathon, not Route 66.
And then, I mean, there's a couple DNFs. I know there are. Oh, there's a race, I think, in Charlottesville, Virginia. And that was a lower GI issue where I was not going to make a scene on the course. And I pulled myself in the race at mile seven. Just from severe lower GI cramps. And I'm sure it was something that I ate the night before or a couple of days before or something, just a lot of traveling. And you know, you know how it is. You traveled all these races.
It can get interesting trying to find the right nutrition. So Charlottesville, Virginia, I'm sure was willing. Fly Harpeth those flying monkey marathon. So tell me when you've DNF, does it feel like the end of the world to you? Cause I know a lot of runners when they, even if their leg is falling off, off. They feel like I have to continue or else I would say, or else what you live to run another day. So what is your thought on having DNF a few times? How does that affect you?
I think there's moments prior to the start of the race where I know I shouldn't have started. And I think anybody in there, anybody who studied their lab will say, this is not going to be that day that I should do this. I was at Ironman recently, Ironman, Texas, and you know, you've shelled out, and this is what gets me too, is I've shelled out $800 to run the race. And I looked at my wife before the race and I said, I should not do this race today.
And of course my father-in-law is standing there and I'm going, man, I, I mean, he thinks I'm a soft-shelled yellow belly bastard anyway, I'm sure. Okay. So, I mean, he's a great guy. I just, I, I'm sure I'm not the manly man that he would envision his daughter probably to, you know, spend the rest of her life with. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't. That's, that's just me thinking because he's such a guy. I mean, he's, he's a master electrician. He served in the Navy.
I mean, he's a man's man, right? I mean, and I feel like I'm pretty good, but I pale in comparison to this guy. He can fix anything. He can do wondrous things. He's amazing. He's a second father. He really is. He's amazing. I can imagine he does a lot of bragging about my son-in-law who's run hundreds of marathons and blah, blah, blah. Didn't you also go to West Point? Yeah, I went to West Point for two years. Pretty manly stuff.
Well, yeah, I don't know. The military is not for everybody. Right. I'm more of a, I'm more of a, too much of a free spirit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he just, I just, I got a text. I was like, well, he's standing there and he wasn't looking at me funny or anything. He actually was concerned. He goes, you don't feel wise. I don't feel well. And you know, I had an okay swim and I'm not a swimmer and the bike ride was just horrible.
I mean, I was just, to your point, lower GI issues, the whole bike ride, like I said, not a running race, but. Is there a place to get off and use a porta potty? Well, yeah, because if you don't, you get disqualified. Okay. And yeah, I mean, they will, if you litter or try to use the restroom on the bike, which I'm not really sure how that works, but I think people do it. Oh, I'm pretty sure they do. You'll see somebody just stand up and okay.
Wide left, just go wide left. But I was, I mean, you can look at my, I don't know if that Strava is public or not, but I was stopping at every aid station, Port-A-John. And it just, and then I got to the finish line of the bike and I fell asleep in the changing tent for, I think my T2 was 39 minutes. Wow. I just fell asleep. And then I got up, came out, staggered into the med tent and off they whisked me to the main medical tent. I was out, just done. So you did not do it. Okay.
Okay. Did not finish. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm glad that decision was made by you or for you sometimes required, right? So to your point, I don't, I don't regret any of the DNFs. I know in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have started. I know I shouldn't start at Harpeth Hills. My shin was a mess. There's no reason I should have done that race. But at the time, again, mid-30s, early 40s, vanity just gets the most of you. It got the most of me.
It feels like your stubbornness is more of an asset than a curse. By and large, I would say it's more of an asset. It's gotten me through certain workouts. It's gotten me through trying times in my life, just pushing through it. Yeah, and certainly it's gotten me through races. I was going to DNF at Casper. We didn't go through the finish line at mile 13. And I thought, well, I'm in this now.
How does your discipline that comes from running, not only discipline, but your, I don't know, all of these things that make you a fantastic, accomplished runner, how do they affect your personal and your professional life? I think that discipline allows me to, some people might call it cramming. I'm up early in the morning. I mean, if I have something I need to get done, an email, an interview, like I know this is time out of my day that I'll get the job done, just like in running.
I don't mind going long hours to get the job done. And I think that's intrinsic upon marathon running, especially to the level where anybody who wants to go more than four or five marathons, you just have to have that innate ability to see things through. And that doesn't mean bludgeoning yourself with a hammer or anything, but it means you've got to understand that there's going to be some trying times at night. Maybe you're like, my wife had the jumpy legs of the night.
I was like, that's nutrition and you're trying and you got to figure this out.
And it gets worse than that you know there's there's been some long hours traveling back from marathons where you know you get back in sunday at midnight but oh it's so worth it to have done the race and and you're not going to hear me bitch about it because it's been it's a blast but you know even driving back sometimes and i my wife will tell you i have this crazy ability to just drive for hours and just go and it's worth it it's worth it to get to the race and even if it's
just her racing it's it's it's worth it to see it through i think that's part of it with business or even in my relationship with my wife. Okay. So normally I wrap up my show with a song of the week and I was going to just lean back on weird spa music, but it's a song that we want people to add to their playlist to add, to boost their running, their weightlifting, their yoga, whatever makes them happy. What song would you like everybody to add to their playlist this week?
Oh, I should have had my playlist pulled up because I do have a, in my office playlist that right as I start the day, I start rocking out the crazy stuff. I'm old, so I'm an 80s guy anything by Foreigner Urgent. Africa by Toto. That's one of my favorites. And it actually has a lot to do with Zach Ramp and his girl when they did it. And it got pulled from YouTube. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I can't find it. They did one to Africa, Toto.
And I think because the band said, Toto said, you didn't have our permission to produce this video. So I would go with Africa by Toto. All right, team. Well, that was the first of two episodes featuring the marathon junkie, Chuck Engel. Well, note that I have never in my entire career asked anybody, any guest to spend two whole hours with me, but obviously with Chuck running over 500 marathons and golly, so quickly. He has so many great stories to share. So come back for part two.
We talk about his favorites. We talk about race directors. We talk about so much more and it possibly is even better than this episode. So I'll see you there. If you haven't done so yet, make sure you click like, give The Fitness Show a review, and get to work. Love you. Hi, this is Rudy Novotny, the voice of America's marathons. We all love how much running has benefited every aspect of our lives, so much so that most of us only wish we'd started sooner.
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