C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race PDF Author: Geoff Williams
Publisher: Tantor eBooks
ISBN: 1618030892
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Among the runners of C. C. Pyle's First Annual International Transcontinental Foot Race were an assortment of underdogs, including twenty-year-old Oklahoman and part Cherokee Andy Payne, who wanted to win over the girl of his dreams and pay off the mortgage on his family's farm; Paul "Hardrock" Simpson, who was in over his head but couldn't let down his North Carolina hometown; Mike Kelly, a luckless boxer from Indiana; Seattle's Ed Gardner, one of four black runners who encountered bigotry; Charles Hart, a sixty-three-year-old Englishman hoping his best days weren't behind him; and Frank Johnson, a middle-aged husband, father, and steelworker from St. Louis who broke away from his humdrum life and dared to do something different. Newspaper and magazine journalist Geoff Williams details this historic event and the colorful cast of characters involved, based on firsthand accounts of those who were there and interviews from many living descendants. C. C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race is a classic American story so astonishing and surreal that you have to hear it to believe it.

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race PDF Author: Geoff Williams
Publisher: Tantor eBooks
ISBN: 1618030892
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
Among the runners of C. C. Pyle's First Annual International Transcontinental Foot Race were an assortment of underdogs, including twenty-year-old Oklahoman and part Cherokee Andy Payne, who wanted to win over the girl of his dreams and pay off the mortgage on his family's farm; Paul "Hardrock" Simpson, who was in over his head but couldn't let down his North Carolina hometown; Mike Kelly, a luckless boxer from Indiana; Seattle's Ed Gardner, one of four black runners who encountered bigotry; Charles Hart, a sixty-three-year-old Englishman hoping his best days weren't behind him; and Frank Johnson, a middle-aged husband, father, and steelworker from St. Louis who broke away from his humdrum life and dared to do something different. Newspaper and magazine journalist Geoff Williams details this historic event and the colorful cast of characters involved, based on firsthand accounts of those who were there and interviews from many living descendants. C. C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race is a classic American story so astonishing and surreal that you have to hear it to believe it.

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race

C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race PDF Author: Geoff Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
An account of an incredible 3,423-mile foot race across America, the Great Foot Race of 1928, and C.C. Pyle, the legendary sports promoter who masterminded the event. A year before the Great Depression, endurance fads were all the rage, from dance marathons to flagpole sitting, and spectators would shell out hard-earned cash to watch. When notorious sports agent and promoter C.C. Pyle offered a $25,000 prize for a foot race from Los Angeles to New York, 199 runners from all over the world took their marks and half a million spectators flocked to the starting line. The race was grueling, but an astonishing 55 participants made it to the Madison Square Garden finish line 84 days later. In re-creating this classic American drama, the author accessed never-before-published material and the support of several descendants of the participants.--From publisher description.

Official Program

Official Program PDF Author: Charles C. Pyle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Marathon running
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Great American Foot Race

The Great American Foot Race PDF Author: Andrew Speno
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
ISBN: 1629797979
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
This accessible and thoroughly researched nonfiction debut introduces young readers to a fascinating, little-known event—the Transcontinental Foot Race, which came to be known as the Bunion Derby. It is set in 1928, the height of the Roaring Twenties—a time of optimism, a time of excess, and the Age of Ballyhoo. Publicity-seeking Americans tried to outdo each other with outrageous stunts. Dance marathoners danced for days on end, pole-sitters sat atop flagpoles for weeks, trained athletes worked to beat records, and Charles Lindbergh made the first solo transatlantic flight. What could top this? Cyrus Avery, an ordinary Oklahoma businessman, teamed up with C. C. Pyle, the "P. T. Barnum of Professional Sports," to hold a transcontinental foot race. More than 100 men of all races and nationalities started the race in California and faced all manner of obstacles—from extreme weather to poor food and living conditions, to prejudice to injury—to make the cross-country journey across the United States, ending in New York City. This "Bunion Derby" pushed human endurance to the limits in an unforgettable show of "ballyhoo." This book is written in a folksy style that perfectly captures the mood and tone of the late 1920s and includes archival photographs, a map of the derby route, stats, a bibliography, and source notes.

Official Program

Official Program PDF Author: Charles C. Pyle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Marathon running
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Book Description


Bunion Derby

Bunion Derby PDF Author: Charles B. Kastner
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826343031
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
On March 4, 1928, 199 men lined up in Los Angeles, California, to participate in a 3,400-mile transcontinental footrace to New York City. The Bunion Derby, as the press dubbed the event, was the brainchild of sports promoter Charles C. Pyle. He promised a $25,000 grand prize and claimed the competition would immortalize U.S. Highway Route 66, a 2,400-mile road, mostly unpaved, that subjected the runners to mountains, deserts, mud, and sandstorms, from Los Angeles to Chicago. The runners represented all walks of American life from immigrants to millionaires, with a peppering of star international athletes included by Pyle for publicity purposes. For eighty-four days, the men participated in this part footrace and part Hollywood production that incorporated a road show featuring football legend Red Grange, food concessions, vaudeville acts, sideshows, a portable radio station, and the world's largest coffeepot sponsored by Maxwell House serving ninety gallons of coffee a day. Drawn by hopes for a better future and dreams of fame, fortune, and glory, the bunioneers embarked on an exhaustive and grueling journey that would challenge their physical and psychological endurance to the fullest while Pyle struggled to keep his cross-country road show afloat. "In a wild grab for glory, a cast of nobodies saw hope in the dust: blacks who escaped the poverty and terror of the Old South; first-generation immigrants with their mother tongue thick on their lips; Midwest farm boys with leather-brown tans. These men were the 'shadow runners' men without fame, wealth, or sponsors, who came to Los Angeles to face the world's greatest runners and race walkers. This was a formidable field of past Olympic champions and professional racers that should have discouraged sane men from thinking they could win a transcontinental race to New York. Yet they came, flouting the odds. Charley Pyle's offer Of free food and lodging to anyone who would take up the challenge opened the race to men of limited means. For some, it was a cry from the psyche of no-longer-young men, seeking a last grasp at greatness or a summons to do the impossible. This pulled men on the wrong side of thirty from blue-collar jobs and families."--from the Preface "No writer 'owns' a swath of history the way Chuck Kastner 'owns' the wildly crazy C. C. Pyle Bunion Derbies. The inaugural race was a truly American epic: from its massive scope to the fact that it was dominated by a handful of second-rate runners who decided there was no future in continuing in the underdog role. Chuck's book makes you want to schedule your next vacation for Route 66, there to relive the zaniness and heroics of 1928."--Rich Benyo, editor, Marathon & Beyond Magazine "Bunion Derby's narrative arc transcends the academic approach one would expect from a university press."--Philip Damon, on the Peace Corps Writers website

Cash and Carry

Cash and Carry PDF Author: Jim Reisler
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786452625
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
C.C."Cash and Carry" Pyle made several fortunes representing professional football and tennis players--before losing everything and disappearing into history's dustbin. This work reevaluates Pyle's fast life and times while analyzing his extraordinary and enduring legacy. In 1925, Pyle rocked the sports world by inducing Red Grange to abandon the leafy confines of the University of Illinois for pro football, in essence thumbing his nose at protesting academics who insisted the move would irreparably harm both the college game and Grange's career. The book continues through all of Pyle's successes, and more than a few of his failures, including his signing of controversial French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen and his near-bankruptcy following losses incurred staging the short-lived annual Bunion Derby, as newspaper columnists dubbed the notorious 3,470-mile transcontinental footrace first held in 1928.

Eat and Run

Eat and Run PDF Author: Scott Jurek
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408833409
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
An inspirational memoir by Scott Jurek, one of the finest ultrarunners in the world.

Runner's World

Runner's World PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Runner's World magazine aims to help runners achieve their personal health, fitness, and performance goals, and to inspire them with vivid, memorable storytelling.

Running Through the Ages, 2d ed.

Running Through the Ages, 2d ed. PDF Author: Edward S. Sears
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476620865
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Beginning with prehumans running down prey, this book describes how ancient, medieval and modern runners have come to run ever faster. Writers of antiquity left few detailed accounts of running but in the early 1800s detailed accounts of running feats and matches appeared in newspapers, journals and books. Nineteenth century pioneers like George Seward, Harry Hutchens, Walter George and Bernie Wefers are here given long-deserved recognition. The six-day Go-as-You-Please races of the 1870s and 1880s--featuring running's first great female performer, Amy Howard--are discussed. Twentieth century luminaries Helen Stephens, Jesse Owens, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek, Bob Hayes, Abebe Bikila and Joan Benoit-Samuelson are included, along with the Bunion Derby races of 1928-1929. New material for this revised and expanded second edition includes coverage of the 1970s running boom, women marathon pioneers, the impact of drugs on running, and the feats of 21st century runners such as Usain Bolt, Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebrselassie.