The Popcorn Stand: Running the right way the wrong way

When Jimmy Piersall hit his 100th Major League home run he ran around the bases backward.

Loren Zitomersky is going way farther than Piersall — literally. Zitomersky plans to run next month’s Boston Marathon — the entire Marathon — backward.

His goal is to break the world record for the fastest marathon ever run backward. Of course you know what I’m going to say. I would have thought if he just finishes the Marathon backward he would set the world record.

But apparently at least one other person has run a Marathon backward. So I looked it up.

Actually a lot of people have run a Marathon backward. And 100 kilometers backward. And have run backward for 24 hours.

There’s a whole list of world records for running backward from 50 yards to the 24-hour run. Although the records for retrorunning, as it’s called, I think need to be updated.

According to the website I went to the world record for running 50 yards backward was set in 1887 at 7.8 seconds. I may actually go after that record.

The record Zitomersky is trying to break, though, was set last year and if you ask me it’s an incredibly impressive 3 hours, 38 minutes, 27 seconds.

Zitomersky, who’s known as “Backwards Guy,” has heard all the jokes of course such as “you’re running the wrong way,” which actually isn’t all that clever since Zitomersky could very be running the right way, he’s just doing it backward.

And Zitomersky is doing it for a good cause as he’s raising money and awareness for an epilepsy cure.

So here’s backing Zitomersky.

— Charles Whisnand