Breaking Barriers: The First Black Runner to Complete Marathons on All Seven Continents with Tony Reed

Tony Reed | DFW Running Talk
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Chris Detzel: [00:00:00] Welcome to DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel. So let's get started.

All right. Welcome to another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel. And today we have special guest, Tony Reed. Tony, how are you? Fine. And you? Doing well. So you've had quite the background in running and had a great running career. I can't wait to dive in. And I'm sure you're still killing it. I love it.

Tony Reed: I'm still killing it, but I'm killing it slower than I was when I was young.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. That's what happens when we get older, isn't it? Yes. One of the things that was very impressive, I was reading, your background, and it says you became the first Black person in the world to complete marathons in all seven continents, that includes Antarctica. So Antarctica has got to have been a really tough marathon, no?

Tony Reed: It was extremely tough. Antarctica. And what made it even more interesting with us was I was using Marathon Tours and Travel.

Chris Detzel: Huh, yeah. And back

Tony Reed: then [00:01:00] they were the only ones who had a marathon in Antarctica and they were only holding it every two years.

Chris Detzel: Okay,

Tony Reed: yeah. And I remember one year, it was, the weather was so bad, they were not able to run a marathon on the continent.

Instead, they ended up running something like there's 300 laps on the bottom part of the ship and 400 laps on the top part of the ship in order to get a marathon in down at the heart of it. Sounds terrible. It's a challenge just getting there because we sail through the Drake Passage.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: And the ship could only hold about 125 people, so it's not like a Princess Cruise line. So you are literally feeling every wave that was hitting the ship.

Chris Detzel: Oh my God.

Tony Reed: So you actually run your laps on the ship. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Luckily for us we had decent weather, so we were able to sail to Antarctica and get off the ship to actually run the marathon.

Chris Detzel: Wow. Let's dive into that more later, because that's super impressive. And You've also run like 130 something marathons, is

Tony Reed: that right? [00:02:00] Yes, 132 marathons, and my first one in 1982 at the Cowtown Marathon.

Chris Detzel: Huh. Wow, that's been going on for a while.

Tony Reed: My first running goal was to run 50 marathons in one state, and that was Texas.

50 marathons in one, okay. So for about 25 years the only marathons I ran were in Texas. I had run 21 White Rock marathons, 20 Cowtowns. Houston, San Antonio, Austin, as well as the Dallas Trails Marathon. Dallas Trails. I've not heard of that one. Yes. Yes. That one. I ran that one from 1993 to 2004.

I think it stopped around 2006.

Chris Detzel: Okay, got it. And

Tony Reed: I also ran the two of the Nort, Texas State University marathons. People didn't realize they used to have that one. No that one was run back in the early 1980s. And the Walk of Fame Marathon, which was held in Lubbock, Texas. As well as [00:03:00] the Daybreak Marathon, which was held in Wills Point, Texas, which is just east of Dallas.

How do you remember all this, man?

Chris Detzel: I've run a lot of half marathons, and I can't even tell you all the ones I've done, so that's pretty impressive. Tell us a little bit about your journey. Just how you got into running, because from my understanding, you ran from high school on up.

Tony Reed: So when I was about eight years old, I was at a summer camp in St.

Louis, where I'm originally from, and they found out that I was pre diabetic. Okay. And they said that I would probably go on insulin by the time I was a teenager. But I went to a high school where it was mandatory that you participate in sports two out of the three seasons, and that third season you had to take P.

E. So that's when I got into, to running track and cross country, and I didn't have to go on insulin in high school, but we didn't quite understand the reasoning behind it. The reason why in college, again, it was mandatory that you had to take P. E., and I read the book Aerobics by Dr. Kenneth Cooper here in Dallas, and knew Aerobics, [00:04:00] and in knew Aerobics, he, there was one paragraph where he stated, Diabetics who are dependent on insulin could decrease their intake.

Or go completely off of it if they maintain the fitness program. In 1976, while I was in college, I set a lifetime goal of averaging 3 miles a day of what I call running, walking, or crawling. And I've kept a handwritten running journal since 1979. I still keep it to this day. How many books do you have?

Is it, have you gone digital yet or no? I am now on volume three, but last year in Berlin, Germany, I logged mile number 50, 000, and I have averaged exactly three miles a day since 1979. Weird, like you've averaged three miles a day since 1979. I if I'm doing the math and you're actually running marathons [00:05:00] maybe there's, that counts the days off.

Chris Detzel: So got it. Got it. So for me, it was all about averaging. So averaging three miles a day. And I realized that it was tough for me to run every day. So it may be running, 3, 6, 9, all the way up to 18 miles.

Yep.

Tony Reed: And trying to hit an average also of 1, 200 miles a year. So I've always kept those long term goals and I never tried to go more than two days in a row without run.

Chris Detzel: That's pretty lofty. It's funny because I get close to 1200 miles a year ish. Some are more, some are less. And that's pretty impressive. Today people running 2, 500 miles and I'm like, I'm not sure you're going to be able to keep that up for a long time, yeah. Cause I do think that 1, 200 to 13, 14, whatever a year is probably good to run marathons, right? Like you can do pretty good training around that. So I like that. You've proved it 130 something times. All so you read [00:06:00] this book and it helps you and you start in, in college and you start averaging three miles a day.

And so tell me more.

Tony Reed: Yeah when I moved down here to, to Texas, I originally came down here for graduate school and, at TCU, and I never forget in February of 1979 there was this big ice storm that hit Fort Worth, and I was walking across the university, I was walking from the dorms to the to the library, And saw these idiots out there running down University on this ice, and I kept thinking these guys have got to be crazy.

Couldn't have found out that was the very first Cowtown Marathon. Huh. And it really piqued my interest about, okay, so what is this marathon running stuff? Yeah. I made my way over to Dallas in 1980 and was working at Texas Instruments. So Texas Instruments had back then they had a running team.

Chris Detzel: Awesome.

Tony Reed: In 1981, I ran on a [00:07:00] team where we had a team entered into the Cowtell Marathon. Back then it was just the Cowtell 10K and Marathon. Okay. And while I was waiting for the 10K to start, I looked at these guys running the marathon and thought, Oh, they look just like me. The build and everything else, I'll go ahead and give that a try.

So 1982, and it would be my very first Cowtown Marathon. And I decided that every year I would run the White Rock Marathon in December, and the Cowtown Marathon in February, and start my training program for White Rock in July. In fact, on July 2nd, which is my birthday. And so I realized that training for the White Rock Marathon in December got me through the calorie gaining month of November with Thanksgiving, followed by training for Cowtown in February got me through the calorie gaining month of December.

Chris Detzel: So when you did Cowtown the first time, did [00:08:00] you, and a lot of people don't do it right, from a training standpoint, did you know to train? And then run, the amount, the several miles, did you do all that, forehand or were you not ready for it?

Tony Reed: I was ready for it. In fact again, that was before Al Gore discovered the internet.

Yeah. So the only way you can really learn how to train for a marathon was through reading books. So I read a number of books about it and later on, I ended up coaching people and one of the things that they stated back then. Was you needed to have a base of about a thousand miles before you even begin the marathon training program.

That's interesting. And the other interesting thing back then was the prevailing wisdom was if you couldn't run it in under four hours, you shouldn't even make it to the starting line. So as a result of that, you literally, You really had to train in order to make it to the marathon.

Chris Detzel: Okay, you took that stuff really intensely.

I like that. You really [00:09:00] took it serious.

Tony Reed: And then when I look at runners today, a lot of them don't have a strong base before they even begin a marathon training program, and you get a very high dropout rate of people actually finishing a marathon who started training for it.

Chris Detzel: People, I think a lot of people like to set these lofty goals and set these lofty goals.

Marathon is always one of them. And you look at a marathon, it's a long ways, and if you don't train for it, it's even harder, you can really hurt yourself. And so. You've done several marathons, I'm sure you've had some really great ones and some bad ones and things like that. And, even if you are in really good shape, sometimes it's you have a bad day and that bad day feels bad.

If you don't train, you're just gonna feel bad, period. And maybe a pretty good chance of not completing the marathon. And

Tony Reed: I like to say I, I've never had a bad marathon. I have had marathons that turn into training runs after 20 months. Fair enough. [00:10:00] Smart. Yeah, you actually know, at some point in time, I'm going to throw the, I'm going to throw the towel in.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: And I'm not going to look at this as a marathon, but it's just a long marathon. It's a long training run. Yeah, it's a long training run that's actually preparing me for my next marathon.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. So you did that one marathon and then you're like, okay, I'm going to do two a year at least. So the one in White Rock in December, and then the one which is now run Dallas is that correct?

Yeah. And then the Caltown, which I've done the half several times. I love that race, by the way. I love both of them, but Caltown has been always special to me. I don't know why I just, I think for me, it's always been because the crowd support has always been pretty good. And. It was always a cool atmosphere, but I've always enjoyed it.

So I think that's really cool that you've been running it since 1982.

Tony Reed: Yes. And as I like to say, in the early, Houndtown was actually known as one of the toughest marathon courses in Texas. [00:11:00] Yes, because around mile 20 you would be running downhill and street for those who are familiar with Fort Worth, they would, as you're running downhill and street.

And then headed towards downtown, and then you got to the Hewlin Street Bridge, which is very long uphill. And that's when you're crossing over the train tracks into Trinity River. That used to be like around about 18 or 20. Okay. And I remember going down the street and I'm watching the people in front of me and I'm seeing people running down and they're making this right turn.

And I thought, great, we might have to go up this hill. Those are the people that were literally quitting the marathon. They went up the hill and just, now

Chris Detzel: there's races that have just hills, so that's interesting.

Tony Reed: So then I believe around 1985, they changed the route so that runners would end up going down that hill.

They made it a lot more what I would call runner friendly. That's interesting. So was that hill just almost unrunnable or what? [00:12:00] It was just after running 18 miles to look up this hill that is about a half mile or three quarters of a mile long. Yeah it's just mentally taxing and you didn't know what was beyond that here.

Chris Detzel: That makes sense. Those are always a struggle. And I still think CalTown is, I don't know what it is. I've only ran it, so I've run it like 10 times and the, usually I don't have a great race. I still love the race, but I've only had two or three pretty good races and the rest are like. It's always been tough to me, I don't know why maybe it's some of the hills and it's the rolling hills and there is a hill a mile nine, or 11, I forget, but that seems to be, it's gets into my mind a little bit,

Tony Reed: interesting thing back then, instead of giving medals, Oh, they give trophies.

They get trophies.

Chris Detzel: Nice. I like it. Look at that.

Tony Reed: All of the runners ended up getting the finishers trophy back in 1982. [00:13:00]

Chris Detzel: So that's not anything new. All finishers get the. The trophies, the

Tony Reed: same thing for White Rock in 1983, everyone got a finisher's trophy.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. If you're watching on video, then you can see the trophies that Tony's showing.

I like it. So you run so early in your career, you're running a couple of marathons a year, and then as you start thinking about, what was next? I was like, okay, now I want to do these 50 marathons in Texas. Or was it, Hey, I want to when did it, when did you start thinking about.

The seven marathon, when did you start getting outside of Texas? Okay

Unless you want to talk about something before.

Tony Reed: Back then when I ran my first marathon, I was married. Okay. And as I'd like to say, I couldn't justify going out of town just to run a race. That makes sense. So my long term objective, I said if I could just run in Cowtown and White Rock, and as my kids would get older, as they say, when their kids are young, they want your time and not your money.

When they get older, they want your money and not your [00:14:00] time. As the kids would grow older, They wanted less of my time, and then I would be able to go and travel out of town to races.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, okay.

Tony Reed: And I had decided when I turned 50, I wanted to run a marathon on my birthday, and I wanted to run a marathon a month, and each one had to be in a different state or country.

Chris Detzel: So when you turned 50, that was like last year, right? I

Tony Reed: wish.

Chris Detzel: Okay,

Tony Reed: I was wrong. All right, go ahead. So what, so there were only two? Two marathons in the world that were on my birthday. That was Leadville, Colorado. Yep. And the Gold Coast, Australia. I opted to go to Australia.

Chris Detzel: That makes sense.

Leadville's pretty rough, if you've done that marathon before.

Tony Reed: Yes. So. That year, and by the time I turned 50, I had already run 50 marathons in Texas.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Wow. So you hit it, when did you hit it that year when you were 50 or 49? I hit

Tony Reed: that in, [00:15:00] let me look at my notes. I did that I believe in 2004.

Chris Detzel: Okay. All right.

Tony Reed: So 2002 or 2004 and I turned 50 in 2005. Okay,

Chris Detzel: got it.

Tony Reed: And in 2004 I had a business trip over in Europe. So I ran a marathon. I took advantage of that. Just ran a marathon. Yeah, that weekend.

Chris Detzel: That's great. I love those trips, by the way. That's exactly, I won't run marathons. I don't do halves and things, that's the way to do it.

If, I went to Belfast one year and they had a half marathon in the it was a trail half marathon. I thought, I'm gonna sign up for that. So I get there on Friday. Night and then Saturday morning it's, and they're like seven or eight hours of a difference. So I was pretty tired and I went out and ran it and I won the half marathon and then I had some beers with some locals on that Sunday.

It was so awesome. And then I went to work on Monday. So

Tony Reed: I love that. The European marathon really opened my eyes to what [00:16:00] a small marathon could really look like.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: So this is the Tailwinds Marathon in Copenhagen. They had a five hour cutoff, and you had to qualify by proving that you could run a marathon in under five hours.

No problem for you. And then they held the race registration out of the back of a guy's pickup truck. That's awesome. We knew going into the race that there were going to be no finisher medals, no No t shirts, no bibs, and no aid stations. Oh, that's a tough one. Yeah, and when we got there, we were lucky that he was able to get someone to donate the race numbers.

Someone else donated the cheesiest looking finishing medals you would have ever seen in your life. Sure, he had

Chris Detzel: something.

Tony Reed: And, they had measured the course, so we knew that it was certified. And there were going to be no one stopping traffic, right?

Chris Detzel: At a place you've never been.

Tony Reed: Yes, to a place that I've never been.

And I got lost twice during the marathon. Yeah. But I still managed to, of course, cross the finish line and [00:17:00] finish. So that was my first international marathon. And like I said Go Coast Australia was my second one. Okay. And at that point, someone was saying you can either run marathons in all 50 states or, pursue running the seven continents.

And I looked at it and I figured the cost to go to run a marathons in all 50 states, especially to go to places like Idaho, Montana, and all these places, I said I'd just as soon go ahead and travel overseas. So the next marathon I ended up running was the 2006 Great Wall of Rome Marathon, again through Marathon Tours.

And on that trip, I met runners from Texas. So the main ones I remember was Jill and Jillian, who live in the Dallas Fort Worth area. There was Steve, who was a physician here in Dallas, I believe. All of us ended up hanging out in China for about 10 days after we, we ran the marathon. Wow. And so we all said what's next?

And I soon to realize with marathoners, [00:18:00] especially adventurous marathoners, The question is always going to be is what's next. That's

Chris Detzel: all right. That's right. ~So just to back up, I think we got lost, like the technology messed up. Once you, you didn't, I didn't hear anything you said about Australia.~

Tony Reed: Okay, yes, running the marathon in Australia was an eye opener. I went down there by myself, made all my own travel arrangements, flew into Brisbane, Australia. Wow. Had booked my car rental, went out to the rental car, and I did not realize they drove on the other side of the road. Oh, man. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to hear this.

Chris Detzel: I bet that was worse. So this was, again, prior to the internet really, being out there. I had my directions printed off on how to drive from the airport in Brisbane to the Gold Post, but they had been hit by a really bad rainstorm or what have you in Australia that washed out some of the roads.

Oh, wow. So now

Tony Reed: I'm having to try to attempt to follow printed directions only to find out I couldn't because The roads have been washed out and I'm [00:19:00] driving on the wrong side of the road. It was an adventure. It was the right side of the road

Chris Detzel: there. Yes. Anyways, how'd you get through it? What'd you do?

You just stopped and asked people or what?

Tony Reed: Luckily the brake and the gas pedal are on the same side of the operating on the same side as they do here in the States.

Chris Detzel: Okay. That's

Tony Reed: good. However, the windshield wiper and the turn signal are on the opposite side. So every time I wanted to turn, I would instinctively end up hitting the windshield wiper and, the wipers are going back and forth instead of the turn signal operating.

And yeah, I had to stop at gas stations and, trying to get a map and trying to get directions on how to get to the Gold Coast.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Tony Reed: But once I got there, everything was just fine once I got there. And the plane trip to get down there was horrible. Really? So I thought to myself, I'm never ever going to do seven continents because the plane flight was something like over 24 hours to get there back then.[00:20:00]

And I had a horrible flight. It's still pretty

Chris Detzel: far.

Tony Reed: Yeah, I had a horrible flight. I was literally trying to figure out how I can get back to the U. S. without getting on a plane. That's how bad the flight was getting down there. And the day after the race, I went on a tour of a rainforest, and I had the race application for the Antarctica Marathon in my pocket.

So we get off the tour bus, we go up to this little bush, and the guide, the tour guide says, this is the Antarctica bush. And I thought, okay, this is an omen. And I have been. Antarctica Marathon application in my pocket, I'm standing right in front of the Antarctica Marathon board, so I says, okay I'll take this as a sign, and soon as I got back to the U.

S., I mailed in the application for the Antarctica Marathon, which was in 2007.

Chris Detzel: It's back up. So you run the Australia Marathon. How was that?

Tony Reed: That was great. I had a great time. One of the things [00:21:00] I realized when I got to Australia is just as. And I don't think Americans may be conscious of this, but when we're walking down the street, we tend to walk on the same side of the street that we drive on.

Australians were doing the same thing, so I was constantly bumping into people until I realized I needed to walk on the other side of the sidewalk. And same thing with running. So it was interesting just getting mentally adjusted to that. But like you said, my birthday's July 2nd, which is wintertime down there.

So the weather was perfect.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, that's good. Okay, so then you get information about the Santa Artica, you mail it in, and they accept you obviously, and then you go to, when was that one?

Tony Reed: The Artica Marathon was in February. Which is summertime down there.

Chris Detzel: Which, yeah, you need summer there.

Tony Reed: Yes, and it was [00:22:00] interesting being down there because since we sailed down there, we had kind of classes and little workshops about life in Antarctica and about ecology.

And they said that you could see the impact of global warming down in Antarctica before the rest of the world could see it. And I found it real interesting because since then, I've looked at photos of people running marathons in Antarctica and you didn't see a lot of snow. So it was really, I'd say, more of an ecological trip.

And we just happened to take one day to, to run a marathon, but the rest of it was sailing in and out and around Antarctica and learning about the How fun is that? I'm sure you can learn a ton. Yes. One of the interesting things was that Antarctica is the only continent where there are no countries.

And anytime you were in one of the research stations there in Antarctica, You are technically governed by the laws and rules of those countries. For the Antarctica Marathon, we ran through the [00:23:00] research basis for Chile. Russia, China, and Uruguay. Oh, that makes sense. And we got our passports stamped by all of those countries.

That's cool. So technically, in one marathon, I ran through China, Chile, so it was cool.

Chris Detzel: That is cool. I love that. And then how was that marathon? Was it cold? You said the weather was nice?

Tony Reed: It was extremely cold. Oh, okay. In fact the ship's captain said, if you didn't want to know the temperature, plug your ears.

And I did, because I knew the minute he said minus Whatever. Whatever came after that, I was just going to stay on the ship. I was not going to get out there and run the marathon.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, that, that would have been me. But you did go to Antarctica for the marathon, so it makes sense that you just run it.

Tony Reed: Yes, and I kept telling myself that living in St.

Louis prepared me to run the Antarctica Marathon. Really? I know it gets chilly there, right? Yes, one of the sports I played in high school was soccer, and I was in fact a starter on our varsity soccer [00:24:00] team. But our soccer season was in the wintertime in St. Louis back then. So we would be playing on top of 12 to 18 inches of packed snow.

The soccer field was marked off using crushed charcoal instead of chalk. So we wouldn't know what the playing field was like. Makes sense. And your incentive behind starting was you got the opportunity to run up and down the field and stay warm instead of freezing on the sonic lock.

Chris Detzel: That makes sense. That would probably incentivize me a little bit.

I'm not a big I like to run in the cold, but not that cold, you know. You do the Antarctica. Now, did You said you had a pretty good race. Was it, did it, I'm sure it slowed you down in the minuses.

Tony Reed: What's the Oh, tremendously. We had to go up a glacier. That was three quarters of a mile of just a sheet of ice.

So would you have to wear some

Chris Detzel: kind of different shoes or something?

Tony Reed: I wore my regular running shoes, but I had this kind of slip on that had spikes on the bottom of it.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: So I was [00:25:00] able to literally run up the glacier and then turn around and run back down. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: And

Tony Reed: I still have those, and when we have an ice storm here in Dallas, I will put those on.

In fact, put on just about all the clothes I use down in Antarctica, I still have them. And I will run around White Rock Lake wearing those clothes. So it's peaceful, there's no one else out there, and it's

Chris Detzel: nice. Yeah. Remember in 2013, I think 14, we had that ice capade, here in Dallas, the, yeah, the marathon was shut down in December and all that stuff.

Did you go out for a run with those, the, those shoes and stuff? Yeah,

Tony Reed: most definitely. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: You're like, finally I get to use 'em, so, that's pretty cool. And then so what was next after that? How you get home and. By the way, I have a quick question because I was thinking about this.

And one of the things that I think is very noticeable in our running community is that people like to run with others a lot and, there's lots of now, communities [00:26:00] and different parts of DFW that, probably 60 or 70 groups, now that you can run in, did you run in any groups back then, or?

Tony Reed: Back then the main running group that I ran with, Was the Mid Cities Runners, the Mid City Runners Club. I don't know if they're still in existence today. But they would have a series of races leading up to the Dallas Marathon. Yeah. They have what I call, I think the Noctil 9, the Terrible 10 Miler, the Torturous 20 Miler.

All those would be leading up to the White Rock Marathon. So I was a member of that running club. I was also a member of the Arlington Road Runners at the time because they had some really good half marathons in the Arlington area. And so these were all before a lot of those areas became developed.

Chris Detzel: Got it.

Tony Reed: That's interesting. The roads were open.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. A big running club that I've been part of, and they've been around since, for a while, is Dallas Running Club. And they have some, they have a training group now [00:27:00] that, really focused in on one is the first one is Dallas, so run Dallas, so get people to the marathon or half marathon or whatever you want, really now.

And then they have a spring program that will allow you to get to I don't know if it's Oklahoma that they care about now, or Boston, it's in that range, so I'm not sure what that is. race focuses, there's all kinds of marathons there, but no, that's

Tony Reed: good.

I was just curious if you, I was actually a member of the cross country club of Dallas, which then changed its name to the Dallas running club. And I am a member of the Dallas running club.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Do you run some of the races? They only have five or six now, but

Tony Reed: no, I don't right now. I just enjoy running.

Running, running for the sake of running versus running in races. But I was on the board of directors for the Dallas Marathon for I think seven or ten years. Okay. And right now I'm on their advisory board.

Chris Detzel: All right. So you know Logan and everybody else over there. Yes, Marcus.

Tony Reed: [00:28:00] Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Tony Reed: Yes. Yes. In fact, I was actually working the finish line of the marathon.

I usually end up working the finish line of the marathon. And working in the information booth during the expo.

Chris Detzel: Okay. And that's awesome. A lot of people will need information. And I can tell you that, my wife volunteered to, for packet pickup and I ran that, I paced the half. So that's how I volunteer is just pace, pacing.

And my wife will pay sometimes, but she also volunteered, likes to volunteer for packet pickup and stuff like that. We know Marcus really well and some others that, it's a very local Kind of run, but it's big now, right? It's probably the biggest run in DFW race.

Tony Reed: Yes. I actually wish they would name the ultra after Marcus.

Chris Detzel: Yeah,

Tony Reed: she was the one I think who conceived it, I'm sure he did. I think it would be a great honor because she's been around for a long time.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. I was like, when are you going to retire? He's I don't know, man. I like this job still. So you know, he's really good [00:29:00] at it. All right, get back from Antarctica.

What's next after that? What do you, what happened there and what were you thinking and stuff like that?

Tony Reed: One of the interesting things about us sailing down to Antarctica. The I guess the president of Marathon Tourism Travels talked with the gentleman who was the race director of the Findel Mundo Marathon, which was in Ushuaia, Argentina.

And the race was normally on a Saturday or Sunday. And he convinced the race director to change the date of the race until that Wednesday. So we were able to dock in Ushuaia, Argentina on Tuesday and run. No way. So we were able to get, we were able to cover two continents in one trip. Now, they don't do that anymore.

Chris Detzel: Actually, you covered several continents in one trip,

Tony Reed: technically. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So with that, the only marathon I had left to finish was, the only continent [00:30:00] was Africa. So the runners that, again, we initially met up in in China, who were from Texas, They convinced me to go ahead and run the marathon in Kenya with them in June.

So three of us ended up finishing our seven continents together. That's pretty cool. So it was Jill, Jillian, and I all finished up in Africa together for our seventh continent.

Chris Detzel: Wow. I bet that was special.

Tony Reed: And it was while I was down in Antarctica. The race director told me that there had only been two other Blacks to finish a marathon in Antarctica.

And none of them, at that time, had finished the Seven Continents. How'd that make you feel? Made me feel pretty good. Yeah. It gave me added incentive to go ahead and finish a marathon in Antarctica. And Jill and Jillian were talking about, again, running a [00:31:00] marathon in Africa. To wrap up the Seven Continents, I thought, hey.

Might as well, may as well go, may as well go ahead and knock it out. That's pretty cool. And they were already talking about what's gonna be after seven continents? And of course they were trying to convince me to run the Mount Everest Marathon. Uhhuh . And I decided not to. I smart out of running that one.

Smart man. But, uh,

Chris Detzel: you've gotta be there to get used to it for 10 days or something, you have to spend time there because it is really hard on you, and so you probably made a good decision.

Tony Reed: Yes, and they pointed out that the rocks were falling down the mountain while they were running, so you literally had to dodge.

Oh my God. Boulders during that marathon. No

Chris Detzel: thanks. I just want to run a marathon, not dodgeball, but I'm sure it's fun. Some people like that.

Tony Reed: And one of the things, one of the things I tell people is once you start doing these type of adventuresome things, you meet adventuresome people along the way.

Chris Detzel: For sure.

Tony Reed: In a banquet in Buenos Aires, it's totally [00:32:00] random where you sit. I happen to sit next to this lady named Jenny. And we struck up a conversation and Jenny wanted to run a marathon on all seven continents. Now at that time there were about 250 people in the world who had run marathons on all seven continents.

So the odds of meeting someone else who had the same goal was pretty remote. And she also said she wanted to climb the highest mountain on all seven continents. And the only one she had not tackled was Mount Everest. So we ended up spending dinner talking about international races and Mount Everest.

Jenny ended up finishing marathons on all seven continents. So in 2008, I was featured in runner's world for being the first black to do the seven continents. Jenny was featured in Runner's World for being the first woman in the world to run mountains on all seven continents and climb the highest mountains on all seven continents.

Chris Detzel: That's pretty cool.

Tony Reed: And when I was in Ushuaia, [00:33:00] Argentina, again, I was about to board the ship to go to Antarctica. And someone called my name, and it was this lady named Elizabeth from my high school in St. Louis. Small world. And so she's there with a friend of hers, and his name is Dave Hunt. And she introduces me to him, and all of us start talking.

It turns out Abe Pond had reached the summit of Mt. Everest 13 times. Wow. More times than anyone other than the shepherds who worked on Mt. Everest. And he had rescued people on Mt. Everest. Wow. When there was an avalanche on Mt. Everest, he happened to be there and ended up rescuing people. And if you know the history of Mt.

Everest, I think it was in 1924, there was a British expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest. These two climbers Irvine and Mallory, died trying to reach the summit and they didn't know whether or not they ever reached it. Dave Hahn found Mallory's body on the summit of Mount Everest.

50 years or so after, was it 50 or how many [00:34:00] years it was after he had died up there. Wow. That's, I'm sure it was preserved for the, from all the, being frozen and stuff like that. Yeah. Wow. That's a crazy story.

So like I said, I tell people, it's you venture outside your comfort zone.

Yeah, then you start exploring the world. You meet some truly amazing people along the way.

Chris Detzel: I think running does that, is maybe it's just any sport that you get hardcore into, but it just brings the community together where no matter where you get, I can go. I remember going to Tel Aviv one year for work.

I went a couple of times in that year and I found a running community that would have run with me, just the few days that I was there, and I will never forget that, it's it's just people are running everywhere. That's the beauty of it. And then you can find them.

They're there.

Tony Reed: Yeah. And like to force to quite a bit of reading about the places that I'm going to go before I get there. And when I was running in Berlin, I noticed these little squares, brass squares on [00:35:00] the ground. And people didn't realize that they, there was a group, an organization that was identifying the houses that people lived in who died during the Holocaust.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: And so these squares, they're probably no bigger than two inches that I was noticing while I was on the ground running. That's fine too. I think people who are on the tour buses, they're not exposed to those types of things. So I was running through the neighborhood, so I always take my running shoes with me whenever I travel and slip them on and get a tour of the city.

Chris Detzel: Wow. What a great journey. What what have you been doing now? What's your focus now? Is it just running with the community and running at the house? Or, obviously you're involved in the Dallas, run Dallas stuff, volunteering and stuff like that.

Tony Reed: About in 2020, I was on a road trip.

with a friend of mine, and she came up with the suggestion that I do a documentary about distance runners, and [00:36:00] more specifically about African American women distance runners. I think I saw that on your website. I ended up writing and directing a documentary called Breaking Three Hours, Trailblazing African American Women Marathoners.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: And to put it in perspective, the first one broke three hours in 1975, and that was Marilyn Bevins, and she broke it in Boston.

Chris Detzel: Okay, yeah.

Tony Reed: And she ended up becoming one of the top ten fastest female marathoners in the world in 1977, when she placed second at Boston. The second is Chicago.

Chris Detzel: Pretty impressive.

Tony Reed: So between 1975 and 2020, only 19 African American women broke three hours in a marathon. Really? And I did the numbers during that time, 14 million people finished marathons in the U. S. Roughly 2 percent or only 280, 000 finished marathons in under three hours. Nineteen were African American women born in this country, and of that [00:37:00] nineteen, I knew nine of them.

Chris Detzel: That's pretty crazy. Now, it's been broken a lot of times now. Just, women in 220s and 225s and 217s, stuff like that.

Tony Reed: But very few of them were African American women that were born in this country. Oh, in the U. S.

Chris Detzel: Got it. Yeah. That makes sense. Wow. That is impressive.

Tony Reed: Awesome. The documentary came out.

And last year, Runners World identified it as one of the most motivational and inspirational running documentaries of all time.

Chris Detzel: That's pretty cool. I'm going to have to read it.

Tony Reed: And last year, I wrote and directed another documentary called We Are Distance Runners, Untold Stories of African American Athletes.

That one ended up winning 19 awards in film festivals in the U. S., Canada, Sweden, and India.

Chris Detzel: Look at you, Tony. You're just, that's impressive. Now tell me a story, tell me one of the stories in it, that's really cool, that you like a lot.

Tony Reed: Okay If you don't mind. [00:38:00] On that one, we profiled six African Americans, and I happened to be included in that documentary.

Chris Detzel: Okay.

Tony Reed: In the third grade, when I also, again, they found out that I was prediabetic, I was in my mother's office at Soldan High School, where she was a principal secretary. A gentleman walked in, and she introduced us, and his name is Ron Gregory. And when he left, she said that was Dick Gregory's younger brother.

People in St. Louis know that Dick Gregory and Ron Gregory were great distance runners. In fact, Dick Gregory set the national high school record in the one month. But they refused to recognize it because he was running an all Negro track meet. Back then, high school sports in the state of Missouri was segregated.

Chris Detzel: This sucks. And Nick Gregory led a walkout of the black high schools in St. Louis, which forced the integration of high school sports throughout the state of Missouri. That's awesome. So because [00:39:00] I was going over to Soledad High School every day after school, I got exposed to cross country running.

Tony Reed: Yeah. And Ron Gregory was the cross country coach at Soledad High School. That's pretty cool. And introducing me to cross country running and distance running. That's pretty close. Even while I was in third grade. Close that. And all your memories. How do

Chris Detzel: you remember all this stuff? I know you wrote it, but, that was in third grade, you know?

Tony Reed: Both of them are in, both of them are in the documentary. Okay. Now there's something called the Marathon Hat Trick, which consists of running at least a hundred marathons on all seven continents, and marathons in all 50 states.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: There were only 60 people in the world who had done that as of, it was around 2017.

They're only looking at 60 people in the world. And you're one of them, right? I'm one of them. Of those 60, three are African [00:40:00] American. Who comes? Two went to the same elementary school in St. Louis. No, that's crazy. And that's Lisa Davis, that's Lisa Davis and me. So the odds of all this happening is pretty remote.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, that is scary, but it did. And

Tony Reed: Lisa's parents went to Soldan High School, which is where Ron Gregory was also a teacher. He was highly influential, yes. Wow. And in fact, Ron Gregory ended up studying the National High School records in the mile and two mile, and both he and Dick Gregory were NCAA All Americans in track and cross country.

Chris Detzel: Wow. What a story. What a great story. I love that. How fun. Thank you for sharing that. So now you've wrote some documentaries and books and things like that. You've got a book out, too, right?

Tony Reed: Yes. I've actually written six books.

So one of my favorite books is the one that I wrote about my adventures on running marathons on all seven continents. Like I said, I was a [00:41:00] business executive. My area of expertise was information technology. In fact, and later on, I Went to UT Dallas, got a master's in accounting and passed the CPA exam.

I saw that. So I ended up writing a book about using the same techniques that I used to run marathons and to coach runners, was the same thing that I was using to manage my IT staff. And again, borrowing from distance running, it's all about getting people to move outside of their comfort zones, to become more adventuresome, to become what I would call calculated risk takers.

So there's something called a type T personality, which stands for thrill seekers, and you have mental thrill seekers and you have physical thrill seekers, so your mental thrill seekers, you're looking at your entrepreneurs your project managers who are all people that take risk on the physical side of risk taking.

You have your endurance athletes which include of course, your marathoners, your triathletes, [00:42:00] all of these people who deal with with These different activities where you are in these environments where you have no control over the weather. So you have to develop that mental toughness in order to be successful in those sports.

So I was basically, so I was basically taking the same techniques that I was using to run marathons to manage my technical stuff.

Chris Detzel: Cool. Love it. I love how you blended those two together. I think there's a lot of, as I look at some of the most successful people. And those that really run and really focus in on accomplishing certain things within running are, in general, it's a general statement, but pretty successful in business too, or vice versa, right?

Because they put They just know how to focus, and they want to be the best they can,

Tony Reed: one of the challenges that they're actually having in corporate America today, is people are coming into corporate America, they're afraid to take risk.

Chris Detzel: Yes.

Tony Reed: In fact, what they will do, rather than to [00:43:00] take risk and take responsibilities, We will take our cell phones, we will call our boss, text our boss, and instead of going ahead and making that particular decision of doing all the research, and then making the appropriate decision, we just pass the buck up the ladder.

Yeah. So we're losing a lot of risk takers, so to speak, in corporate America.

Chris Detzel: Yeah that could be a lot of things, right? You could have a micromanager, and it's oh, why did you do that? Those kinds of things. But I'm with you. I think that's true. If I think about like my careers, just thinking about those that don't make decisions, just make it happen, it's look, you could just make it happen.

Like, why are you asking so many people who cares, I agree with you. Yeah.

Tony Reed: That's a good point. So one of the things that I told my staff is to say, never come to me with a problem unless you have at least three possible solutions. Because my objective is to hire problem solvers, not problem identifiers.

Exactly. Exactly. My, my solution to that particular problem would be to get rid of you. Exactly. I [00:44:00] love that. Very

Chris Detzel: blunt. I like that.

Tony Reed: Yeah. So if I'm busy doing everyone else's work, I won't have time to go running.

Chris Detzel: You need that time to run. It's don't bother me. I'm on a run, make a decision and go, like we'll deal with it if it's, if there's some fallout later,

Tony Reed: now, there was a very interesting flip side to this, though. I encourage my staff to take two week vacations, not just take a day here and a day there. I said that when you take a one week vacation, you spend the first three days thinking about But, the work that, that you left at the office, you enjoy yourself for one day, then spend three days thinking about the crap you're going to walk back into when you get into work.

And I said, so I want you to take a two week vacation so you'll be like me, you'll come back in the office, you'll forget people's name, you'll forget your login ID, you'll forget your password. Yeah. That's when you enjoy yourself. 100%. And I commit to them, we will not call you while you're on vacation. I truly wanted them to just get away and enjoy themselves.

And the [00:45:00] only way they could do that was for their fellow coworkers to be willing to take risk and take responsibility and cover each other. So it went all the way down such that everyone became a problem solver. Everyone was willing to step up and learn new things because I wanted them to know everything that I was doing.

So I would go on vacation and no one would call me.

Chris Detzel: We need more leaders like Tony Reid here. I love it. I'm sure your staff loved you.

Tony Reed: I've, I was looking out for their well being and their best interests. And I encouraged them to, like I said, to go outside of their comfort zone. So I had to ask them, tell me something that's on your bucket list and I would encourage them to pursue it.

Because I knew it would get them outside of their comfort zone. And they would bring that same energy and that same Inquisitiveness, so to speak, back into the office place. So I had a gentleman, for example, who was an amateur race car driver. [00:46:00] Another one who got into barrel racing at rodeos. Flying big two handed kites.

When is that? I would, people would say, Hey Tony, I've always wanted to write a book.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: So I would encourage them to pursue doing that, block out 30 minutes every day just to sit down and write. So I was encouraging and motivating them to do all these things outside of work and bringing that same energy and excitement into the office because I told them my objective every day I went to work was to leave as quickly as possible.

Because there were things that were more exciting and more fun that I wanted to do. There was only so much you could do to make a job look hot and sexy.

Chris Detzel: That's right.

Tony Reed: You're still gonna do work. And I figured, figure, you know what? Once you reach that point. That let me get you excited about things outside of work and bring that same enthusiasm into the office.

Chris Detzel: I think, if you don't have a life and all you can do is work and you don't do anything after work, that, that's to me, it's just not [00:47:00] feasible, like I don't want to just go to work all day every day. Look, I like parts of my work and things, but, get a hobby. I remember there's this guy, he used to be one of my clients at work and He was such a great leader that, he did, what are those, the biking, running and swimming, triathlons, but the full and everything.

And he was really good at it. And he'd go to that main one every year. And, but his staff started doing some running and some biking, but then started following his guidance, and those things. And it was like, wow, this guy. It's a huge influence on his team, and activity there, they thought a lot like, like he did, he was a senior leader and he had other senior leaders below him and things like that.

And so they were just as focused as he was, not just at work, but outside of work, and it sounds like that you're like that as well.

Tony Reed: Yeah, there's something called a transformative leadership style.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: [00:48:00] And that's exactly, that, that's exactly what the gentleman was doing.

And that's exactly, it turns out what I was doing. It's like you not only talk the talk, but you walk the walk your staff sees, where you're achieving different things, where you're expanding your comfort zone, you're not afraid to learn new technology or new processes. You're very much open minded and very much.

Solutions oriented versus problem oriented. Give you an example, we had one technical project where they guesstimated it would cost us between 10 to 12 million. I asked for a budget of 4 million and we did it for 2. 6 million. And it came in ahead of schedule. That's awesome. See? And so I just had one story after the other where my staff members were just excelling in their work and I wasn't micromanaging and some of the other managers couldn't understand what was going on.

It's it's your leadership style.

Chris Detzel: If you're highly respected and you get a team that's highly productive and inside and outside of work, I think that, and you [00:49:00] have a leader that is the same. I think that, speaks volumes and people will follow that. And respect that, I know plenty of leaders that have, that are just like that.

And I love that. It's, there's this one guy I would love to go anywhere he goes. Just let me know, seriously, there's leaders that bring their own leaders to other companies, you see it and see CEOs and things like that. So as you think about it.

Tony Reed: Go ahead.

I was gonna say, one of the things that, that I like to tell managers is a friend of mine was out running. He was in fact, actually training for the Dallas Marathon. It was his last run before the marathon, so you're looking at two, two to three days before the race. And he saw this leaf laying on the ground and he decided, that was going to be his imaginary finish line.

He's going to slam his foot down on the leaf and say, that's it, ready for the race. He slammed his foot down on the leaf. And twisted his ankle and that he didn't realize that there was a nut underneath the leap. And I tell people, [00:50:00] just because you see a leap and you think it's fragile, be very careful.

It may be a nut. So when you're looking at that employee that you think is fragile, and as a manager, you're going to use, your ego and your power and you're going to slam that employee. Person may be a nut. So you treat every person with respect.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. Tony, this has been really great.

What a great career from a running career and then lots of great stories and front run books. And I had no, I did have some idea, but didn't know all these awesome stories. So I appreciate you coming on and telling them. I'm positive that people are going to love this and appreciate you coming on.

Tony Reed: You're welcome. And one of the things that I tell people when they look at my accomplishments is I didn't do it all in one year. That's number one. And then resting is just as important as running.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Tony Reed: So take those days off and enjoy them.

Chris Detzel: [00:51:00] Very good. Yes. I absolutely agree with you. I think resting is important, but stay consistent in your running.

Keep doing it. That's how you're going to get better and that's how you're going to accomplish 132 marathons in seven countries. Be the first at different things like you. That's pretty amazing. Thanks Tony, for coming on. Thank you everyone for tuning in to another TFW running talk.

I'm Chris Detzel, rate and review us. Don't forget until next time, talk to you soon. Thanks, Tony.

Tony Reed: Okay.