Amby Burfoot : ​Running legend to take part in Jack 15!!

Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and retired editor of Runner’s World magazine, will be among the contestants at this year’s Jack 15 Road Race.

Burfoot, who is in Brookings as a part of the South Dakota Festival of Books, has entered to run the 15.2-mile race from White to Brookings Saturday, Sept. 22. The prolific author also will be available to sign books after talks on Sept. 21-22.

Dave Graves, co-director of the Jack 15, said, “Within the running community, few names are bigger than Amby Burfoot. In addition to his own running prowess, Burfoot steered Runner’s World into the premier magazine for runners. Fellow runners will enjoy hearing him talk as well as maybe having him autograph one of his books.”

Burfoot won the 1968 Boston Marathon in a time of 2:22:17 while a senior at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., his home state. He was a teammate and roommate of Bill Rodgers, who would win Boston four times. He also roomed with fellow running legend Jeff Galloway. Burfoot’s college coach was John J. Kelley (The Younger), the 1957 Boston winner.
Burfoot holds a marathon PR of 2:14:28, set at the December 1968 Fukuoka Marathon in Japan. It was one second from the American record at the time.
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He continues to run the Boston Marathon, initialing at five-year intervals from his 1968 win and annually since 2013, the year of the terrorist attack. His time this year was 4:53:22 (11:1 pace). Burfoot, who turns 72 Aug. 19, expects to run at a similar pace for the Jack 15, which has the distinction of being the oldest road race in the Midwest. It has been run every year since 1963.