Around the world and back again

Published 9:42 pm Tuesday, October 28, 2008

An Austin man has run far enough to get around the world twice in his lifetime, and he’s still going strong.

Jerry Ulwelling, a 1964 graduate of Pacelli High School and longtime Austin resident, ran his 50,000th mile (the Earth’s circumference 24,901.55 miles) this past August.

The milestone was just another step in a long athletic career that has seen Ulwelling win over 100 trophies for running and over 60 first place age group awards in his career.

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“I’ve done it along time and I’ve loved it and I love sweating,” Ulwelling said. “My basketball coach at Pacelli, Don Carlson, instilled an attitude about hard work and commitment. If you do something, you do it right and you do it all out or you don’t do it.”

Ulwelling began logging his miles after he was married in 1965 at the age of 19. Ever since then he was always running to stay fit and compete.

“In running you don’t get lucky like in other sports,” Ulwelling said. “If you don’t put in the training you can’t get lucky and run a three-hour marathon and that’s what makes it so meaningful. It’s good for your self esteem and great for you attitude. I don’t like to say I outwork other people because that’s kind of a knock on them. But I think I work pretty hard at anything I do.”

Ulwelling was never just a runner (see below), he competed in high school football and track and it was actually basketball that got him started in distance running. He started running a mile three or four times a week to stay in basketball shape, and by the early 1970s he was running from Austin to Lyle to touch the Iowa border sign.

“I started wondering how far I could run,” he said.

Runs to Lyle, led to runs from Albert Lea to Austin and Blooming Prairie to Austin, which he did at least 100 times in his life. At his peak, Ulwelling was running 40 miles a week, but its now down to 10 or 15.

Eventually Ulwelling took on the task of running marathons and he ran 42 of them over a 20 year period. Those races took him from New York, to Philadelphia, to Kansas City.

But it was his race at Grandma’s Marathon in the Twin Cities in 1981 that Ulwelling remembers most. That race saw him run a career best time of 2 hours and 45 minutes and qualified him for the Boston Marathon — something he’d been trying to do for three years.

“That was the highlight of my life,” Ulwelling said. “I really experienced a runner’s high coming down in the last 400 yards. You have that real warm sensation come over you.”

Ulwelling’s time saw him average one mile over every six minutes and 18 seconds.

In the winter of that same year, Ulwelling turned the heads of some his friend’s when he ran from Blooming Prairie to Austin after a snow storm to prepare for a game of basketball.

Ulwelling started the run two hours before the tip-off of his game and finished just in time. It wasn’t the first or the last time he took a big run before playing basketball.

“It didn’t make sense to most people, but when you’re in training it made sense to me,” Ulwelling said.

Ulwelling’s longtime friend and Austin resident Paul Leif said it wasn’t uncommon to spot Ulwelling on any area roads at any time — day or night.

“Any time we’d see a runner on the road, we’d joke there’s Jerry,” Leif said. “One time me and my wife were driving north of Rochester and it actually was him.”

Ulwelling’s running also gave him a big appetite.

“There was this one time in between games at a basketball tournament where Jerry ordered two full meals at Perkins,” Leif said. “When Tim Duren offered him half a chicken. His eyes lit up and he ate that whole chicken after eating two whole meals.”

But that food doesn’t hinder Ulwelling’s health as he currently has six percent body fat and he plans to stay there.

And in the end, staying in shape made Ulwelling a much better basketball player.

“Almost everybody I ever guarded was better than me to start with but after two or three quarters they would wear down,” Ulwelling said.

But it also wore out his teammates.

“When we played in the city league, every time we took a timeout about ten seconds into the timeout he’d say ‘let’s go guys they’re resting.’ So we’d have to get back on the court and we couldn’t rest either,” Leif said.

Besides Coach Carlson, Ulwelling also gives credit to his wife Nancy, who has helped him keep up with all of his activities.

“If you don’t have a great spouse that supports this, you’re gonna be divorced. She gave me rides all over the place in any kind of weather,” he said.

A JACK OF ALL TRADES

Jerry Ulwelling has had his hands in quite a few sports throughout his life

BASKETBALL

Ulwelling played basketball for over 30 years, and he was part an Austin City League team that won two state championships. Individually, Ulwelling won all-state basketball for city league in 1972 when he scored 40 points in a tournament game.

“The city league was really a big thing,” Ulwelling said. “It was ex-Gophers and the best of the best. 10 people were selected (to all-state) and I was lucky enough to be one of them.”

Ulwelling also helped win won of those two state titles when he hit a buzzer beater to win the title after trailing by one with 20 seconds left.

“We set up a play to get the ball to Dave Lobb,” Ulwelling said. “We worked the ball around and he passed it to me at the last second and hollered shoot. I shot and made it at the buzzer. That’s Dave Lobb for you.”

Ulwelling played over 1,000 games in his career with Lobb.

“He had the ability to play with anyone in the whole area. He’s the best athlete ever out of Austin,” Ulwelling said.

MARATHONS

Ulwelling ran his first marathon in 1977 at the age of 31. He finished that race in three hours and 35 minutes, and his fastest time was two hours and 45 minutes.

“When I first started I always thought it was just elite runners that ran marathons, not just regular runners like myself,” Ulwelling said. “Then it got to be the challenge of the distance and it was a mental toughness thing. After about two hours you start getting tired and you work through the barrier.”

Ulwelling — who is the first Austin runner to compete in a marathon — ran 42 marathons in his career and had 11 finishes under three hours.

TRIATHLON

Ulwelling was as on a team that won the ‘border to border’ triathlon across the state of Minnesota five years ago.

The triathlon went 526 miles in four days. Over the first two days, the team biked 426 miles, and it ran 50 miles on the third day.

Ulwelling and his teammates — Greg Storey and Jeff Miller — covered the 50 miles in under six hours by having each team member run 120 400-meter runs.

“We’d jump out of the vehicles and run. It was a challenge to keep going,” Ulwelling said. “When people ask me what I was really good at. It was having good teammates, these were probably the two best triathletes around.”

RACQUETBALL

Ulwelling played racquetball for 30 years. He and his partner Mark Ramlo took second in the state doubles meet twice.

FOOTBALL

As a sophomore, Ulwelling was a backup defender for the Pacelli football team that took second place in state in the fall of 1961.

As a senior, Ulwelling played for the Pacelli football team that was six points from being undefeated.

BIKING

Lately, Ulwelling has gotten into competitive biking. He bikes weekly and has won some competitions.