Professor Learns How to Run for 24 Hours--and Lives to Tell About It

Tonight at 6, Mike McMahan of Laguna Beach will begin running laps around the quarter-mile dirt track at Fred Kelly Stadium in Orange.

McMahan plans to be running at 7 p.m.

And at 8.

And at 9.

And through the midnight hour and all through the night. When the sun rises Saturday morning, McMahan, 40, will be only halfway to his destination.

McMahan is one of 24 entrants in the Orange 24-Hour Run, an event in which runners race against the clock--or possibly the calendar--trying to cover as many miles as possible in 24 hours.

“Most people try to get 100 miles in. That’s the average goal,” race director Don Pycior said. “Some people go and lie down for an hour, then get back on the track. Getting those miles in is a mental game and a physical game.”

Of course, running continuously for 24 hours (a 12-hour race also is offered) would seem like a pain, not a game, to the average runner. So what’s the attraction?

“It’s the challenge,” McMahan said in answer to a question he has been asked countless times. “You’re exploring your limits in a way you don’t get with other races.”

The challenge, McMahan said, is mostly psychological.

“It’s comparable to counting to a million. You’re thinking, ‘OK, I’m through six hours, great!’ And then you realize you’ve got 18 hours to go. You have to play a lot of mental games with yourself and know that eventually, you’ll get there.”

McMahan, a philosophy professor at Saddleback College and UC Irvine, began running 10 years ago as conditioning for his first love, beach volleyball. He began racing, working his way up to the marathon. He has run in about 35 marathons and has a best of 2 hours 49 minutes.

In 1985, McMahan agreed to pace a friend through portions of the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile race from Squaw Valley to Auburn.

After that, he was hooked. The next year, McMahan finished the Western States in 24:15 and just missed out on the silver belt buckle awarded to those who finish the race in less than 24 hours.

He registered for the Western States again last year, but his entry was turned down. (The race has grown so popular that a lottery is held to limit the number of runners.)

“Since I didn’t get in, I was searching for something to do,” McMahan said. “I heard about the 24-hour run, but believe me, I had no idea what I was getting into.”

Nevertheless, McMahan took the lead, running ahead of 48-year-old Leo Marquez of Bakersfield.

At 100 miles, McMahan, fueled by watermelon, pancakes, pasta salad, chicken noodle soup and “all the bananas I could eat,” was averaging 9-minute miles and was still feeling good.

Ten miles later, McMahan began to fade, and Marquez passed McMahan at about the 120-mile mark. Marquez finished the 24 hours at 131 miles, breaking his previous record of 121 and winning the race for the third time. McMahan ran 127. (The world record for 24 hours is 177 miles, held by Yiannis Kouros of Greece. Kouros, 32, also holds the record for running 1,000 miles: 10 days 10 hours 30 minutes 35 seconds.)

“Leo’s someone who has the capacity to be running 8- or 9-minute miles in the late stages of the race compared to most of us who at the same time were hobbling,” McMahan said.

After he finished, McMahan thought about a permanent retirement from running.

“When you’re done, the immediate thing you think is, ‘I will never do this again.’ I call it temporary sanity. It usually goes away in a couple of days, though, and then you’re gone again, making plans for next year.”

Before he could start making preparations, though, McMahan had to take eight weeks off because of a stress fracture he incurred about 70 miles into the race.

“I knew something was wrong at that point,” he said. “I felt pain and numbness in my left leg. When I stopped, the whole thing ballooned up to about three times the size from the knee down. The doctors said I probably had already been developing one (a stress fracture) in training weeks before.”

McMahan averages 80-90 miles a week in training and runs what he calls “speed work”--a full marathon on the Irvine track once a week. He said his strategy for tonight’s (and Saturday’s) race is to get as many miles in as possible before late Saturday morning, when the sun will begin to make running uncomfortable.

“I’d like to surpass 127 miles,” he said. “If possible, get into the 130s. Where I end up, I don’t know until I do it. With something like this, the only thing you can say is just try to finish it.”

Though McMahan runs one 50-mile race each month from September through May and a 100-miler or 24-hour race once a year, he said there are limits to his interests in ultra-distance events.

“From my perspective, those people who ride their bikes across the country (Race Across America) are the ones who really take it to an extreme,” he said. “I mean, some don’t sleep for days on end, and being in that bike saddle for 3,000 miles, that’s beyond my imagination. And some of those riders put themselves in extreme danger because they start hallucinating while they’re riding.

“At least in a 24-hour track race, you don’t have to worry about getting run over by a truck.”

John Koningh of Newport Beach and Derek May of Balboa raced to victory in the Mid-Summer’s Night Dream 12K last Saturday evening at Coto de Caza. Koningh and May intentionally tied for first place in 37:24, though Koningh was awarded the victory.

Two-time Olympian Steve Scott, who had said he was just running for fun, was third in 37:29. Kathleen Smith of Mission Viejo won the women’s race in 43:35. The heat, about 85 degrees when the race started at 5:30 p.m., and the course, very hilly through the first half, took its toll on the 2,186 entrants, many of whom looked battle-worn by the finish.

Greg Gonzales of Huntington Harbor won the Pop Proctor 10K on Sunday at San Clemente in 34:38. Brigid Sterling of Irvine won the women’s race in 38:38.

Race Schedule:

Today: Orange 12- and 24-hour run and relay. Fred Kelly Stadium, Orange. 6 p.m. For information, call 538-8338.

Saturday: Lake Gregory 5 & 10K. Lake Gregory Regional Park, 8 a.m. Elevation 4,720 feet. For information, call 387-2594.

Sunday: Ninth Samuri Nisei 5K. Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. 8 a.m. For information, call (213) 324-3723.