The Legend of Cliff Young: The 61 Year Old Farmer Who Won the World’s Toughest Race

The legendary story of Cliff Young is already known to many runners. If you aren't familiar with it, you're in for a fascinating read.

An Unlikely Competitor

Cliff Young

Every year, Australia hosts 543.7-mile (875-kilometer) endurance racing from Sydney to Melbourne. It is considered among the world's most grueling ultra-marathons. The race takes five days to complete and is normally only attempted by world-class athletes who train specially for the event. These athletes are typically less than 30 years old and backed by large companies such as Nike.

In 1983, a man named Cliff Young showed up at the start of this race. Cliff was 61 years old and wore overalls and work boots. To everyone's shock, Cliff wasn't a spectator. He picked up his race number and joined the other runners.

The press and other athletes became curious and questioned Cliff. They told him, "You're crazy, there's no way you can finish this race." To which he replied, "Yes I can. See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I'd always catch them. I believe I can run this race."

When the race started, the pros quickly left Cliff behind. The crowds and television audience were entertained because Cliff didn't even run properly; he appeared to shuffle. Many even feared for the old farmer's safety.

The Tortoise and the Hare

Cliff Young

All of the professional athletes knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race. In order to compete, one had to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn't know that!

When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night.

Eventually Cliff was asked about his tactics for the rest of the race. To everyone's disbelief, he claimed he would run straight through to the finish without sleeping.

Cliff kept running. Each night he came a little closer to the leading pack. By the final night, he had surpassed all of the young, world-class athletes. He was the first competitor to cross the finish line and he set a new course record.

When Cliff was awarded the winning prize of $10,000, he said he didn't know there was a prize and insisted that he did not enter for the money. He ended up giving all of his winnings to several other runners, an act that endeared him to all of Australia.

Continued Inspiration

In the following year, Cliff entered the same race and took 7th place. Not even a displaced hip during the race stopped him.

Cliff came to prominence again in 1997, aged 76, when he attempted to raise money for homeless children by running around Australia's border. He completed 6,520 kilometers of the 16,000-kilometer run before he had to pull out because his only crew member became ill. Cliff Young passed away in 2003 at age 81.

Today, the "Young-shuffle" has been adopted by ultra-marathon runners because it is considered more energy-efficient. At least three champions of the Sydney to Melbourne race have used the shuffle to win the race. Furthermore, during the Sydney to Melbourne race, modern competitors do not sleep. Winning the race requires runners to go all night as well as all day, just like Cliff Young.

Gareth Roberts
East Valley Consulting
East Valley Consulting
Scottsdale Arizona

2012 Top Party Schools!!!

GARETH ROBERTS

EAST VALLEY CONSULTING

EAST VALLEY CONSULTING

(CNN) -- Perhaps right now in Morgantown, West Virginia, they are raising a glass, or rather a mug, to celebrate their No. 1 ranking from the Princeton Review.

Not as the best university for academics, but for being named the best party school in the United States.

The 22,000-plus students there like to let some steam off every now and now, according to the survey, which asked questions of about 325 people on 377 college campuses.

All the schools on the top 20 list have more than 15,000 students, save for DePauw, which came in at No. 12, and No. 19 University of Maine.

"The schools on this list are mostly large, public universities with strong academic and research profiles, as well as highly successful athletic programs," West Virginia said in a news release. "But in the big picture, clearly this list has no real credibility."

West Virginia also topped the "Lots of Beer" list while Providence College was No.1 for "Lots of Hard Liquor."

Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, led the "Stone Cold Sober" list.

"Schools on the 'Party Schools' list are those at which surveyed students' answers indicated a combination of: low personal daily study hours (outside of class), high usages of alcohol and drugs on campus and high popularity on campus for frats/sororities," the Princeton Review said on its website.

The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University. It is a test preparation and college admissions consulting company based in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Here is the full list of the top 20 party schools:

1) West Virginia University
2) University of Iowa
3) Ohio University
4) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
5) University of Georgia
6) University of Florida in Gainesville
7) University of California-Santa Barbara
8) Florida State University
9) Miami University of Ohio
10) Syracuse University
11) Penn State University
12) DePauw University
13) University of Wisconsin-Madison
14) University of Mississippi
15) University of Texas-Austin
16) University of Maryland
17) University of South Carolina
18) James Madison University
19) University of Maine
20) University of Tennessee

Gareth Roberts

East Valley Consulting

East Valley Consulting

Scottsdale Arizona