Randi Bromka Young
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Looking back on her career as an ultramarathoner, Randi Bromka Young can pinpoint the moment it all started: She woke up one day when she was 31 and ran as far as she could from her house.
The day before, she had awakened “after a long evening out” and decided to quit smoking and drinking.
“The next day when the hangover was better, I went for my first run,” she recalled. “I just put on some old sneakers from Kmart that had paint stains on them, and went out and ran. And when I was, like, just ready to collapse, I stopped, put my tail between my legs and walked home and got in the car and measured it, and it was exactly one mile.”
She was “disheartened,” she said, but she kept at it a few days in a row. Soon, her husband, Barry, who had been running for six years, joined her.
After seeing how fast she took off in the first few blocks, he told her she might make it farther if she slowed her pace.
“He introduced me to that concept, and then the out-and-back concept that day, because the day before I had taken the local bus home when I ran out of juice,” she said.
1986 Boston Marathon
Young didn’t think of herself as much of an athlete before that, but looking back, she can trace her roots as an athlete and adventurer back to childhood.
“My typical day during the summer as, say, a junior high and high school kid, would be to ride my bike to the beach in the morning to watch the sun come up and have a quick breakfast over a driftwood fire. And then ride my bike home to do whatever chores my mother had laid out,” she said. “And once I was done with that it was off with the bicycle and the golf clubs to the local course. And from there, sometimes my mother would pick me up and we'd go out to the club for swimming, diving, and tennis. And then I'd get on my bike and go back down to the lakeshore, which was Lake Michigan, in Racine, Wisconsin, and I'd either play volleyball or waterski until it was time to go home.”
The transition from running a mile to running ultramarathons was “rather quick,” in Young’s words.
Her first race was the famed Boulder Bolder 10K and then some short summer races and a short triathlon.
Leadville 100 1987
By 1987, she had run six marathons and was looking for a new challenge. “I was thinking I could either go faster, or I could go farther,” she said. “And so I went to the local…high school track and tried doing some speed work, and said, ‘No, maybe I'm a long slow distance person.’”
That made sense, she figured, because she had previously been a long-distance swimmer and done some long bike rides.
In July 1987, Young ran her first ultramarathon, the Vail Valley 50 Mile, which she heard about just a few days before race day.
“We toed the starting line, and I was the only female and ended up beating all the men at the 50 mile,” she said.
That encouraged Young, who had already signed up to run the Leadville 100 mile race that August.
Living in Aspen, Colorado, she said, “it seemed normal to me to go from not running to a 10K to some marathons, and then some ultras.”
Western States 100 1989
In addition to training, Young was working at the time at a small gift shop in Aspen called Wax and Wicks. Her boss there paid that first Leadville entry fee on the promise that he could put the trophy in the store’s front window if she won.
Young won the Leadville 100 in 1987 in a time of 24:12. She returned three more times, finishing the race in 1988, 1989, and 1990. Her fastest finish was the last one, 21:55, when she finished second to Ann Trason.
Self coached, Young trained alone. One of the keys to her success at Leadville in particular was living close enough to train on the race course and get to know it, she said.
“I knew every part of that trail to the point where I could lie down at night ready to sleep and I would imagine myself [running it] from the beginning,” she said. “And going through all of these different spots that I would think of in relationship to [the landmarks, such as] that's the pink and purple place — because the early summer flowers were just prolific there — or that's where the raspberries are, or that's Mosquito Hill… And I could really picture it from start to finish.”
Start line of 24-Hour World Championships
She represented the United States at the World 24 Hour Championships at the Central Milton Keynes mall, in England, in 1990. She finished about 113.7 miles for 7th place among the women. The marble floors were particularly hard on her legs, which were used to the trails, she said.
In Sacramento in 1992, Young won the TAC 24-Hour Championship, running 138.29 miles on the one-mile loop, and setting age-group records in 12- and 24-hour races and running her own personal best at 100 miles in 15:45.
The night before her first appearance at Leadville, a representative from the company Spenco, which makes insoles and other foot-care products, was looking for a woman to sponsor in the race. Skip Hamilton, a well-known ultrarunner, suggested Young. Spenco sponsored her that weekend and for much of her career, paying for race fees, airfare, and lodging for competitions, and finish and media bonuses. Young had a few other sponsors along the way and tested shoes and gear as well.
Young continues to stay active; she’s currently planning a backpacking trip in the South San Juan Wilderness for summer 2023.
Laura Fay is a journalist and runner in Brooklyn.
