54-year-old Wyano man sets record in Alaska
On his postal route, mail carrier Tom Jarding walks 12 miles each day. Even before his workday begins, he runs seven or eight miles.
Each stride moved the 54-year-old Wyano man closer to his dream. Last month, he set a record for a 1,100-mile Alaskan race, crossing the state on foot on the trail best known for its annual sled-dog race.
Jarding, a mail carrier with the Herminie Post Office, completed the Alaska Ultra Sport Iditarod Invitational from Knik Lake to Nome in 20 days, 14 hours and 45 minutes.
He hiked the trail faster than the 1974 Iditarod champion sled-dog team and broke the old race record by more than a day and a half.
The competition follows the Iditarod Trail and began Feb. 28, a week before the famous sled-dog race. Up to 50 competitors can walk, bike or ski the trail that traverses mountains and the frozen Yukon River.
Jarding said he knew he could break the record after finishing the first 350 miles of the race.
It was the fifth time in 10 attempts that he won the opening section of the race.
"I knew this was it. I can't remember a storm or anything, and that's why it was a record," he said. "You can't control the weather; the only thing you can control is taking advantage of what you've got."
Jarding served in the Army in Alaska from 1973 to 1979, where he began running, camping and practicing survival techniques. There he met his wife, Debbie, a Plum native. The couple relocated to Pennsylvania after he was discharged from the military and in 1984 moved to Wyano in South Huntingdon Township.
Jarding ran marathons until 1988, when he began running ultramarathons -- any race longer than the marathon distance of 26.2 miles, some 50 miles or 100 miles long.
"It seems like the further I went, the better I did," he said. "I wasn't real fast, but if I went long enough, I did OK."
He hiked the full course for the first time in 2001 after meeting Tim Hewitt, another ultramarathon racer from Greensburg.
There were five competitors in Alaska this year from southwestern Pennsylvania, including Jarding, Hewitt and his wife, Loreen, who set a female record for the 350-mile section.
Jarding said terrible blisters, trench foot, stomach viruses and freezing temperatures -- "normal" is considered 35 degrees below zero -- that could cause frostbite or hypothermia are just some of the problems participants encountered.
The race is about the personal achievement, Jarding said, as winners do not receive a trophy or monetary award. In comparison, the first-place finisher in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race won $50,400.
Jarding will travel to Harrisburg next week, where state Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, will recognize his achievements on the Senate floor.
Jarding doesn't plan to compete next year, but he said he may return in the future. He said it's unlikely that conditions would be favorable for him to make the record time again.
"I've learned. I've had a lot of disappointments. But I was ready this year. I was ready and the trail was ready," Jarding said. "It was like I was being sucked to Nome, it was like there was a force taking me there. I think one step forward, one less to take."
