Dubbed the "Mayor of Running," Bart Yasso is one of the best-known figures in the sport, but few people know why he started running competitively, how it changed or rather saved his life. As the Chief Running Officer for Runner's World Magazine for over 30 years, Bart was the public face of Runner’s World at races in the United States and abroad. Many runners have told Bart that he had the greatest job in the world, getting to travel to races around the world and meet runners of all abilities. He is one of the few people to have completed races on all seven continents from the Antarctica marathon to the Mt. Kilimanjaro marathon, but it's not the details of the races he recall it's the people he meets. During this interview he shares some of these memorable experiences along with how he feels about "Yasso 800s", a marathon-training schedule used by thousands around the world.
One of the icons of the sport, Yasso has been inducted into the Running USA Hall of Champions, He has also completed the Ironman five times and the Badwater 146 through Death Valley and cycled, unsupported and by himself, across the country twice.it was an honor for me to speak with him.
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Memorable quotes
Never Limit where running can take you- physically, geographically, emotionally, spiritually, - the sport has done a lot for me
There are no shortcuts in running, you have to do the hard work if you want to run faster
You can get a lot more out of your body than you think and running proves that
First thing I did when I walked into my office, was I said to myself, today I have to get someone who today isn’t a runner, to run.
I don’t have a sign that says, Hi I'm Bart Yasso, tell me your running story, but people do come up and tell me their story
Who would not want to run with a youngster, in their first race, and call that your job
If a sport is powerful enough to suppress something as evil as apartheid, that’s my sport
I really wanted to travel the world and never thought that running would be the vehicle to take me where I ended up running races, it really was a dream come true
The coolest thing in the sport of running, I got to physically witness, women coming into the sport
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Resources
His Book: Life on the Run)
http://www.bartyasso.com/
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