Rae Clark Video (SRA Hall of Fame Induction)

Rae Clark Acceptance Speech (SRA Hall of Fame Induction)

Rae Clark – Inaugural SRA Hall of Fame Inductee – 2013

By John Schumacher

Rae Clark did it all, winning races and setting records on the road, trail and track. So he chuckles in embracing a label given him for his ability to succeed in so many running venues: Renaissance Man.

“Whoever coined that one, I thought that was kind of funny,” Clark said. “Road, track and trail, I do them all.”

He’s done them well enough to earn a spot in the Sacramento Running Association’s Hall of Fame.

Clark, who lives in Auburn and works as a special education teacher in Newcastle, will be inducted during a dinner on Jan. 26 at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento. Other members of the inaugural class are Eileen Claugus, Chris Iwahashi, Helen Klein, Billy Mills, Paul Reese, Dennis Rinde and Linda Somers. Clark, 60, cherishes his induction into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame in 2011. But he points out joining the SRA’s Hall of Fame feels even better.

“This one means more,” he said. “This is where I live.”

Clark started running after moving to the San Jose area in his 20s. He made the most of the opportunity to train with the likes of Rich McCandless, the 1988 California International Marathon winner, and Nancy Ditz, the 1985 CIM winner who finished 17th in the 1988 Olympic Marathon. That training base helped launch a career that includes several records and a handful of ‘perfect days.’

He set the course record for the 72-mile race around Lake Tahoe with a 9-hour, 6-minute and 14-second finish time in 1982. Clark was also one of the regular frontrunners in the early days of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run (seven top 10 finishes, including third place in 1984 and fourth place in 1983).

Clark ran a 2:28:53 marathon 1989 in Las Vegas before delivering a pair of memorable, record-setting performances that cemented his status as an ultra running legend. He won the 1989 U.S. 100-Mile Road Championship in New York City by more than an hour, finishing in a national record 12:12:19. He followed that up by setting another American mark in the 1990 U.S. 24-Hour National Track Championship in Portland, Ore., covering 165.3 miles to win by a whopping 23 miles.

Clark looks back on four races – the Lake Tahoe victory, his marathon P.R. in Las Vegas and his ground-breaking triumphs in Portland and Queens, New York – as magical days when everything clicked.

“It all came together mentally, physically, spiritually, whatever,” he said. “I kept pushing it knowing this is just one of those days. Those were the highlights.

“What speed I had, I could hold the speed for a long time.”

Clark considers himself fortunate to still be running and enjoying the sport.

“I’ve always loved the game, loved getting out there and enjoyed the hundreds of people I’ve met,” he said. “It’s just my life.”

Trail Legend Rae Clark Inducted Into Ultra Hall Of Fame

By Duncan Larkin

December 22, 2011

He is a legend from the “old school” of ultra marathoning. Rae Clark was an ultra legend before the sport became popular. From: Running USA Rae Clark becomes the first Ultra Hall of Fame inductee whose ultra career included a significant amount of what is today the signature element of American Ultra Running: trail racing.

Following a youth sports regimen of gymnastics and cycling, Clark’s running career began in his mid-20s, when he got caught up in the “Running Boom” of the mid-1970s. Living and working in California’s Silicon Valley, he found plenty of company in the Northern California hotbed of distance running. He gravitated quickly to high mileage and hard-paced workouts, tending to train with local runners who were faster than he.

After only a few years of running he broke 3 hours in the 1978 San Francisco Marathon, his first attempt at the distance. Many years later, he would eventually run sub-2:30 for that “short” distance.

In 1980, Clark ran his first ultra, completing the Marysville to Sacramento 50 Mile (which would later become the Jed Smith Ultra) in just over 7 hours. That same summer he entered a race that had just emerged as the flagship event of the rapidly blossoming new sport of trail ultrarunning, the Western States 100 Mile. He finished in 6th place. Clark would become a regular frontrunner at Western States as the event grew in size and stature. He would finish it 13 times, with a best time of 17:11 and a best finishing place of 3rd.

Through the early 80s he would leave his mark on other noteworthy trail ultras, winning, among others, the Grand Canyon 41-mile Double Traverse, the Timberline Trail 40 Mile, the Quicksilver 50 Mile and the Pacific Crest Trail 100 Mile. In 1985, he also won the American River 50 Mile, the premier western 50 mile race.

Throughout the 80s Rae Clark divided his best competitive efforts just about evenly between trail and road/track ultras. In 1982, he demolished the course record of the hilly, high-altitude Lake Tahoe 72-Mile road race, running 9:06:14, a time which has still not been approached in the intervening 30 years. The same year as his American River 50 win, he traveled to southern California and ran away with the Southern Pacific TAC 50 Mile Championship in 5:17:38. This performance elevated Clark to a new level. He was now among the top dozen all-time Americans at 50 miles.

He soon expanded his horizons. The following year, in Santa Rosa, CA he ran 152.2 Miles for 24 hours on the track, at that time the #2 all-time certified American performance. Later that year he ran 7:15 to finish 16th in an international field at the Torhout 100K in Belgium, and then won the AMJA 100K in Chicago in 7:18. In 1988, he took his first official USA national title, winning the 100K Championship at the Edmund Fitzgerald Ultra, breaking 7 hours for the first time. The following year he lost to 3 others in the same national championship despite breaking 7 hours again, but made history by being the 4th of 4 American men to break 7 hours in the same race. The group feat has never been duplicated since.

In the late 80s/early 90s, Clark also represented the U.S. as a member of the National 100K team to the World 100K on three occasions. By the end of the 1980s, Rae Clark’s serious competitive ultra career was winding down. But he saved the best for last.

In 1989, he traveled to Queens, New York where he won the USA National 100 Mile Road Championship by over an hour. His 12:12:19 remains today, over 22 years later, the fastest 100 mile ever run by an American. Then, the following year, his masterpiece: At the USA National 24-Hour Track Championship in Portland, Oregon, he won by over 23 miles with a new absolute (best of both road and track) American Record 165.3 miles, clocking 13:05 for 100 miles en route. It still stands today as the American 24-Hour Track Record. Only last year did Scott Jurek barely eclipse it (in the World Championship on a road loop course), 20 years after Clark set the bar.

Rae Clark was the first American to become a true “Renaissance Man” of the ultradistance sport, excelling at a world class level at all three race-type venues: road, track and trail.