For a retired geography teacher and cross country coach, literally running around the world might be a wild dream come true. For 71-year-old Cheyenne, Wyoming native Brent Weigner, it was a reality that just made sense.
“Being a geography teacher, I love animals, different cultures, different food,” he said. Pair that with his love for movement, and it wouldn’t be long before he began breaking records.
Weigner, who participated in the Monument Marathon Saturday, Sept. 26 for his 356th marathon, has been running marathons for 52 years, his first being right out of high school in 1968. It wasn’t long until he ran in all 50 states, all the Canadian provinces, 181 countries (184 if you use the International Organization for Standardization list for measure) and all seven continents ten times over.
He is the only man to run ultramarathons at both the geographic North and South Poles—in snowshoes. He holds the world record for marathons run in the most countries; the person with the next highest number of countries has run in 156.
To continue chasing marathons in unique countries, he began organizing many of his own marathons, since smaller countries often don’t host marathons. In fact, in 2019 he organized the first ever marathon in Vatican City, which has been designated its own country by the Country Marathon Club.
He had been in Yemen chasing another new country to add under his belt when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“I left for Yemen to run on Socotra Island. They woke us up at three in the morning on March 17 or something like that and said we had to get out because they are locking the country down because of COVID,” Weigner said. “They kept us at the airport for nine hours. We were the last airplane out before the country locked down (for COVID-19).”
It was the only time, so far, his wife Sue has gotten to cash in on their contract, which states he cannot be gone for more than 10 days and can only run one marathon a month. They wrote up this contract in 2017, and if Weigner breaks it, he owes his wife a stay at a nice hotel for a few days. Still, supporting his marathon career is something he is thankful to her for.
“My wife is such an angel,” he said. “She really is the wind beneath my wings because she lets me do as many international marathons as I want,” as long as he stays within the bounds of the contract.
It’s no wonder she had him sign the contract. At 71 years old, Weigner has already suffered many injuries from his extreme running experiences. He’s had bone spurs in both heels, has separated his shoulder and has spinal stenosis and foot drop, according to an article in Runner’s World; not to mention he is also a three-time cancer survivor.
“It’s a minimum of three,” he said. “It depends on what you count.”
His first run in with the unwelcome disease was has a child, although he didn’t know it. His parents didn’t tell him that he had been diagnosed with Lymphoma at 12 years old. When he finally found out in college, he supposedly only had six months to a year left to live.
His latest bout happened just this past winter, right before he was to head to yet another obscure country for a marathon. His memory starting getting really bad, and eventually he got an MRI that told doctors he had a benign meningioma tumor that was the size of a baseball on his brain. He had to call off two marathons he had scheduled for January, but was able to get back up and running in time for his race in Yemen. That’s when the coronavirus hit.
Despite all the trials he has faced in his extreme running career, Weigner always remains optimistic and has no plans of retiring from running anytime soon.
“My glass is always half full. Sometimes it’s only a quarter full, but I think it is full,” he said. “I tell people that running is overrated, but movement is not … I just have to keep moving.”
While COVID-19 slowed his marathon pace a little bit, having only competed in 13 so far in 2020, he still plans to keep competing. Up next, he has a marathon in Fort Collins, Colorado on Oct. 4. He attributes his ability to continue participating in such extreme events at his age to the Man upstairs.
“I really believe the only reason I can run marathons at 71 is because I have a guardian angel watching over me,” he said. “I give credit to the Almighty that I can keep trucking along.”
*Originally published in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald on Sep. 30, 2020.
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