A Conversation with Pam Reed

How'd you get started in running?

I started when I was 15; I was in track, which I hated. I really ran because I wanted to play tennis. I was in all sports growing up in a really small town in Michigan. Cheerleading, gymnastics, track and tennis. I was trying to pick one that I thought I could do in college. I thought I could play tennis, so I started running to get in shape for that.

I started doing races right in college, like 10Ks. And then I moved to Arizona; that's when I picked up triathlons. And back then, it wasn't spring triathlons; it was the Olympic distance. Then I moved up into half marathons. And then I got divorced and I met my husband now and he'd just done Ironman Canada ... and I wanted to qualify for Hawaii [Ironman] and he goes, 'Oh, no, you gotta do Canada,' so, that was kind of a long ultra-thing. I'd done a couple of marathons by then, and then I did the Ironman in Canada and did phenomenally well. I mean, I placed and won money there.

Then, right after that, his client was 60 years old and doing the Leadville Trail 100-Mile Run. And I'm like, "You're kidding! That's ridiculous!" So we go and do a 100K ... it was called the Elkhorn 100K, really one of the hardest 100Ks in the U.S. and ...

What's an easy 100K?

Well, there are road 100Ks. This was up in the mountains and it was hot, hot. And we got dead last, dead last. But we finished, though. And he was like, "Oh, this is so cool! Now let's go do a hundred-miler!" So a month later, we went and did at the time the hardest hundred-miler, which was called Wasatch, up in Utah.

Halfway through, he has to drop out. And we hadn't been married very long. So I asked him, I said, "Are we gonna still be married if I finish this?" He kind of groaned and I just took off. I ended up finishing the thing in 32 hours. I went on to do 10 of those [Wasatch races]. I've done over 50 hundred-milers. I've done over 100 marathons.

So I can call you a professional ultra-distance runner?

Well, I guess you could call it that. But I don't make any money on it. I'm working on trying to get an agent. Now don't advertise that because it's not good to advertise that you don't have any sponsors. But I'm working on that. I need to get some sponsors because it's so expensive. I mean, Laura and I are paying for ourselves to go to London and the double Boston. That's going to be a minimum $2,000 for me to do that. I have children. I have a job; I put on the Tucson Marathon. It's very, very expensive.

Are you incapable of running a regular race, like a 5K on the weekend?

I'm not incapable, but I won't do them anymore. I'm afraid because I'm competitive and I might yank a muscle. I'll try to go too hard and it doesn't make sense for me.