Tanner Conley
Staff Writer
For most people, running is an action to be performed rarely.
It is only to be called upon when we are late for class, meetings or social events, and oftentimes is reserved for gyms and athletic centers only. For one Laramie resident, however, running represents a state of mind and a way of life.
Helene Neville is a world-renowned runner with multiple accomplishments under her belt. Most notably, Neville is the first person to ever run across 50 states solo. That represents 13,850 miles across the span of nine years. That is an average of 4.21 miles every day. For nine years. By herself.
“The more I ran and the more people I met, the more I fell in love with it. I fell in love with our country and had a deeper love for its people. But that was only eight states, so if this is like a project, I need to do all 50,” Neville said.
Alaska was the hardest state to run through, Neville said, due to a combination of dangerous terrain and dangerous wildlife.
“There were really no services from Fairbanks on. But I have this lingering neck pain, because when I was running north, I was always looking [side-to-side] for bear,” Neville said. “I had a bear whistle, bear spray, air horn…I had everything.”
Literally running across the states is a task most healthy 20 years old cannot achieve, and Neville has been doing it since she was 50 years of age.
While she obviously did not run for nine consecutive years, she still achieved something that no person has ever done through the history of time.
“Getting older doesn’t mean slowing down,” Neville said. “The first time I did it was to run from California to Florida. I really went out to reconnect with my mom’s spirit. When I finished, I wanted to run back, but I didn’t have the money.”
But her achievements do not end there. In 2013, she ran from Vancouver, Canada, all the way to Tijuana, Mexico in 45 days. That is 1,520 miles in a month and a half. For those seeking the statistical side of things, that is 33.77 miles per day for 45 consecutive days. Neville was 53.
This behavior is certainly conducive to an Olympic level athlete, but Olympic level athletes do not often find themselves battling a life-threatening illness.
During the 1990’s, Neville was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This disease is a type of cancer in which the lymphatic system of the body (lymph nodes and immune system) grows abnormally.
After several rounds of chemotherapy, radiation treatments and three different brain surgeries, Neville completed the 1998 Chicago Marathon. She has since relapsed twice, once in 2013 just before her Vancouver/Tijuana run and again between 2015 and 2017.
“My mother always said ‘as long as you have air in your lungs you can pass on some sort of inspiration. As long as you are upright and breathing, there’s someone worse off than you, and you can go find that person and help them,’” Neville said.
So how does someone like this train?
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” said Liz Vassey, the director of the documentary “The Human Race,” in which Neville is featured. “I’ve never seen a human being work harder.”
Neville, who regularly runs marathons on a daily basis, does not run when training for one of her cross-country trips.
“I run every morning and I tried to do a wall squat next to her, and I think I made it about a minute. She has legs made of iron, I’m pretty sure she could do a wall squat for 24 hours,” Vassey said. “She is one badass human being.”
Neville continues to update her Facebook page, “One on the Run,” to reflect the current status of her runs and uses it as a platform for support. Throughout her journey, she has met countless kind souls who offer support in her journey.
Neville will be hosting a speech entitled “Rethinking Impossible” during the University of Wyoming College of Business and Honors College Sandberg Series of Speakers today. This will be accompanied by the aforementioned documentary “The Human Race.”
