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| PATRIOTIC RUNNER — Top, Terry Crapanzano competes in the Bataan Memorial Death March in New Mexico. He called the race, which commemorates the Bataan Death March in World War II, his most rewarding. |
Terry Crapanzano often listens to the Johnny Cash song, “I've Been Everywhere” on his I-Pod on his morning runs.
It is an appropriate song for the Hammond native who is about to enter an exclusive club.
When he competes in the Maui Marathon in Hawaii in September, Crapanzano will have run a marathon in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.
The 50 States & D.C. Marathon Group was started in 1989. To be a member, a runner must have completed a valid marathon in at least 10 different states or have run 100-plus marathons. According to Crapanzano, the group currently has around 1,500 members with 350 having finished all 50 states. He said that number should have grown to about 400 members by the time he competes in Hawaii.
“To be able to say you've done something maybe 400 people have done is kind of neat,” Crapanzano, who is also a member of the 50 States Marathon Club, said.
Not bad for a runner who after running his first marathon - the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans in 1996 - told his fiancee, “Never let me do something this stupid again.”
Crapanzano's running career started in the fall of 1984. He was 29 years old, weighed 200 pounds, was going through a divorce from his first marriage and in his words, had “never done anything athletically in my life other than intramural sports in college and pickup games in high school.”
A friend who had run in the Crescent City Classic 10K in New Orleans persuaded him to run in the Classic with the promise of free food and beer at the post-race party. Crapanzano started preparing by running in his neighborhood.
“The first time, I ran about 200 yards,” Crapanzano said.
See CRAPANZANO, 2A
But Crapanzano kept at it, gradually building up his mileage. He also went on a diet during that time, dropping from 200 pounds to 155 in a matter of three to four months. He soon got to where he could easily run the distance of the race - 6.2 miles - and ran in the Hammond Oaks as a training run for the Classic.
The Classic has since become a must for Crapanzano who has run it for 24 straight years.
Crapanzano also began running the Swamp Run, a 10-mile race from Ponchatoula to Manchac. He ran that for a bunch of years before progressing to the Mardi Gras Marathon's 13.1 mini-marathon in 1995. The mini-marathon's finish also coincided with the 26.2-mile marathon.
“After running the mini-marathon, I felt real good and just hanging around after the race and watching the people who had run the full marathon, seeing how excited they were to have run a marathon, I knew that the next year that I would start training to run a full marathon,” Crapanzano said.
Crapanzano trained for the marathon but his longest run prior to the race was 18.6 miles, causing the final five or six miles of the actual race to be a struggle.
“What they always call the gorilla kind of jumped on my back,” Crapanzano said. “I really was hurting pretty bad when I crossed that finish line. But all it took was about a couple of beers after the race and an hour later, I thought about my accomplishment and thought, no, it really wasn't that bad. If I train a little more, I could do a little better so I think I will run another one.”
Because he was getting married the following year, it was two more years before Crapanzano competed in another marathon, the Blue Angels Marathon in Pensacola, Fla. It was there he ran his fastest time, finishing in 3 hours, 51 minutes.
Crapanzano was at the Houston Marathon in January 1999 when he ran into a gentleman at the pre-race expo wearing a T-shirt with “50 States & D.C.” and a map of the United States on it.
“I told him, ‘That's a neat shirt, what it's all about?,” Crapanzano said. “He said, ‘I've run a marathon in all 50 states and D.C.' Here I am fixing to run my third marathon and I said, ‘God, that's pretty amazing. I'd never be able to do anything like that. He asked, ‘You think you could run 20 marathons?' I thought I might be able to do 20. He said, ‘If you could run in 20, you can get into the club,' and that's how it started.”
Crapanzano ran in two marathons that year, four in each of 2000 and 2001 and has averaged six a year since. He never repeats a state or a marathon after completing a marathon, comes home to color in the state on a map in his office in his home.
Crapanzano and his wife, Debby, an avid photographer, make vacations out of the marathons. While in Wyoming, they visited Yellowstone and saw Seattle, Vancouver and British Columbia on a trip to Idaho. He has also caught baseball games at Fenway Park in Boston, Camden Yards in Baltimore and Chase Field in Arizona where he visited the Grand Canyon.
“You get to see the United States and that's all part of the quest,” Crapanzano said. “While you are doing this in the different towns, you do the tourist thing and get to see all the interesting things in this country. And you kind of coordinate all these things while you are doing it in order to get a little more bang for your buck and your traveling dollar. You also get real good at using the computer and being your own travel agent. You learn how to navigate around a lot of different travel sites and check pricing. It gets kind of expensive. But like I tell people, I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't own an RV. Running is my hobby and my passion.”
Another of his passion is Saints and LSU football games (Saints fans will remember Crapanzano as “The Fence” guy in the Superdome). When he ran the Philadelphia Marathon in 2003, it so happened the Saints were playing the Eagles the same day.
“I ran the race that morning and didn't have time to go back to the hotel,” Crapanzano recalled. “I tossed on some deodorant, changed clothes at the car and went straight from the race to the game and got there at the end of the first quarter.”
Crapanzano also does not let running get in the way of LSU home games and vice versa. He leaves Hammond at 5 a.m., gets a spot for tailgating, runs around the campus or lakes for about two hours, showers, then gets to tailgate the rest of the day.
Crapanzano also recalls the marathon he ran in South Bend, Ind. which ends on the 50-yard line of Notre Dame Stadium.
“As you enter the stadium, they play the Notre Dame fight song,” Crapanzano said. “I was cheering, ‘LSU!, LSU!, LSU!' The guy who was announcing names said as I came across the finish line, “You wouldn't be an LSU fan, would you?'”
Crapanzano said his favorite race was the Twin Cities Marathon between Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. he ran in October 2003. The race starts in front of the Metrodome and finishes up in front of the Capitol.
“It's a beautiful course,” Crapanzano said. “It's held the first Sunday in october so the leaves are turning and its run around a lot of beautiful lakes in the area. You run across the Mississippi River which is neat for people in Louisiana to see how small the river is up there. And you're running toward the Capitol coming down a hill to finish the race and there's a huge American flag flying from a hook and ladder fire truck. It was really spectacular.”
Crapanzano said there is a tie for the toughest race in which he has competed. The one in Wyoming in October 2002 was held in the Medicine Bowl National Forest between Cheyenne and Laramie at about 8,000 feet altitude. The other was one he gets emotional remembering - the Bataan Memorial Death March held at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. That race is held at about 5,000 feet on a mostly dirt course. There is a complete ascent up a mountain from mile six to mile 13. At mile 20 is a sand pit in which the runners run in ankle deep sand for about a mile.
The reason for the toughness of the course is that it commemorates the Bataan Death March of World War II in which thousands of American and Filipino soldiers died. While the race is open to all runners, there are two divisions for military personnel - light, in which the runners run in BDUs and boots; and heavy, in which they carry 35-pound backpacks while wearing BDUs and boots. Survivors of the Death March are often on hand to meet the runners.
“The day before the race they were at a table at the expo where you can shake hands with them and talk to them,” Crapanzano said. “I couldn't do that that day. I had to wait until I finished the race and they were at the finish line before I could actually go up to them and talk to them. It was my little way of running that race in their honor. I tell friends who run they've got to go do that race because of that. That for sure was my most rewarding race.”
Another tough race for Crapanzano was the one in South Dakota where it rained throughout the race and the runners had to run through water.
Most of the marathons have food unique to the area at the end of the race (New Orleans has jambalaya and red beans, for example), but Crapanzano said the award for best food goes to Rhode Island which served whole Maine lobsters.
Crapanzano said in addition to the sites and food, what he enjoys the most is the people he meet.
“You meet some of the nicest and most interesting people around on the journey,” Crapanzano said.
Some of the those people he meet also go to prove the theory that the world is a small place. Crapanzano recalled the time he was in a rest stop with other runners following a race in Wyoming when a gentleman walked in and asked what was going on. Crapanzano explained they had just run a marathon. The man said he was not from around there and when Crapanzano asked where he was from, he said Louisiana.
“He said, ‘I bet you've never heard of where I'm from,” Crapanzano said. “I said, ‘try me.' He said, ‘you've ever heard of Pumpkin Center?' I said, ‘yeah, I'm from Hammond.'”
It also turned out that the man's wife was a patient of Crapanzano's brother, a dentist in the area at the time.
On another trip to Portland, Maine for a marathon, Crapanzano ran into three couples from the Hammond area, including the former superintendent of schools. When he called for information about the Bataan Memorial Death March, the race official who answered said she used to live in Hammond. And when he was in the airport after running the marathon in Alaska, he met a man wearing an LSU shirt and Saints hat. The man and his wife were on a cruise and were heading back to Hammond.
“You just run into people all over,” Crapanzano said.
Crapanzano said part of how he always stays motivated to run is that he does not look at running as exercise.
“I tell people all the time that I don't like to exercise, I just love to run,” Crapanzano said. “Running to me is my hobby, my passion, so I don't look at it as exercise. If I looked at it as exercise, I'd probably wouldn't like to do it.”
Crapanzano said he tries to get in 40 miles a week in training for marathons. He runs four or five days a week, running eight miles on weekday mornings and between 12 and 18 miles on Saturday mornings. As a sales representative for Barnett Millworks, Inc., he often tries out new routes to run while on the road. When home, he runs on the old Hammond Oaks route which started and finished on the SLU campus after going through town. He often meets the same people who offer him words of support.
“It helps you when you're out running on a morning when you are not feeling good that people give you a little encouragement,” Crapanzano said.
Of course, not all of the drivers he comes into contact with are that friendly.
“When people see runners out, there is a saying, ‘Share the road with a runner,'” Crapanzano said. “But sometimes people don't want to share a road with a runner.”
Crapanzano is particularly easy to spot on patriotic holidays - such as Memorial Day, Pearl Harbor Day and Sept. 11 - when he wears red, white and blue clothing and carries an American flag. He likes to run early in the mornings, even in the winter time. “Sometimes, especially when it's 20 degrees outside, it's hard to get out of that warm bed to go run,” Crapanzano said. “But once you force yourself to get out there and you start running, you're glad you did because you feel so much better. The reward after you finish running is the runner's high. To me running is about setting personal goals, striving to achieve them and having fun while you are doing it.”
Crapanzano knows he is close to his personal goal of running in all 50 states. He started doing the math in recent races, counting down the miles he has remaining.
“The last race I did was in South Bend and when I got to the halfway point in that one, instead of think 13 more miles, I was thinking 39 more miles. That's how many more I had to go to finish,” Crapanzano said. “As I'm running Hawaii and counting off each mile, it will be different than any other race because I will realize it will be 20 more miles to completing the goal, 13 more miles. When I get to that last mile, no matter how bad I might be feeling that day or hurting, I can only imagine the feeling that will come over me.”
Crapanzano said he has not gotten emotional about finishing a race since his first one, but is sure that will change in Hawaii.
“I'm sure I'll be emotional when I cross that finish line in Hawaii, knowing that I've accomplished a goal that when I first started I would never dream would be possible,” Crapanzano said. “We as human beings sell ourselves short. We are all capable of doing so many things if we just go out and try. Too many times we just get comfortable and we get into a routine and we don't want to go outside the box. You should always strive and try to do new and different things. It doesn't have to be running a marathon in all 50 states. Whatever somebody's hobby or passion is, you should put total effort in everything you do.”
And what will Crapanzano do once he reaches that goal?
“People have asked me that question,” Crapanzano said. “Some people in this club, once they finish it, they start to do it for a second time. We've had some who have done it for third and fourth time. I have no plans to do that. I think it's an accomplishment to do it once. But as long as I'm able and my body holds up, I'm going to continue to run. I do plan on continuing to run marathons. How many a year, I can't tell you right now. Initially, I probably will not be traveling as far. I'll try to do the ones closer to home. But once a year like to go and do one off somewhere and tie it in with a vacation.”
