Episode 37 - Bobby Keogh | 45 Years Running. 108 Hundreds. Still Racing at 77.

There are fewer than 40 people on earth who have finished 100 or more races at the 100-mile distance or longer. Bobby Keogh is one of them. He has 108 official hundred-mile finishes — closer to 140 when you factor in his multi-day mileage across 6-day and 10-day events. He ran his first trail race at 32. He is 77 years old. He has been at this for 45 years and he is not slowing down — he is registered for a 100-hour race, a 140-mile crewed run along Route 66, and a 72-hour race. This year.

Bobby Keogh almost never gives interviews. He doesn't own a computer, a television, or a microwave. He borrowed a computer to record this episode. And for two and a half hours, he talked.

He talked about what made the early Leadville Trail 100 and Rocky Raccoon so special — when the whole town showed up, local restaurants competed for best aid station food, and runners were treated like family.

And he talked about exactly what got lost when the money arrived. He described guiding six heat-exhausted runners to safety during a race that had run out of water — then nearly missing the cutoff himself. He made the case for mandatory trail maintenance as a condition of race entry. He explained, quietly and without drama, why ultrarunners are fundamentally different from every other endurance athlete, and what the sport owes the land it borrows.

He ran the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning twice. He finished Nolan's 14 on a torn adductor tendon. And in the final minutes of this conversation, he described what happened on that rock face in the dark — guided across by seven cherubs he could smell, feel, and see.

"The most amazing thing that has ever happened to me in my life."

Bobby Keogh is the third guest in 37 episodes of Run Long After 60 who belongs to the sub-40 club of runners with 100+ hundred-mile finishes. Catra Corbett was the first. Ed Ettinghausen was the second. That is not a coincidence. That is the mission.

If you want to see the full unedited video conversation — the laughter, the pauses, all of it — head to the Run Long After 60 YouTube channel and subscribe.

If you know someone who belongs on this podcast — someone doing hard things in the second half of their life, with stories that haven't been told — send a guest suggestion to guestinvite@runlongafter60.com.

Thank you to Christopher Neil Johnson for the music and the team at @MurphyOtter for the animation and graphics that make this show what it

is. The Hippo Avatar is here to stay.

LIVE STRONG. RUN LONG. AFTER 60.