Ben Blankenship just ran 100 miles. He is Eugene's most interesting runner because of so much more.

Why a former Olympian is pushing himself to his limits.

Photo courtesy of Jessi Gabriel.

There is never a good time to lose your sight. That said, Ben Blankenship’s vision got darker and blurrier at a particularly tricky moment earlier this month.

Blankenship, a 34-year-old who has lived in Eugene since 2012, was running his first 100-mile race through a Pennsylvania forest on March 16 when it happened. That he was there at all was also something he could not have seen coming.

His introduction to running had been inauspicious. Blankenship was in middle school and had just moved to Stillwater, Minn., when his mother entered him into the mile at a community “all-comer” meet, intended as a way to meet friends. He alternated between walking and jogging, hating every lap. In high school a few years later, he gave the event a second chance and his fast times opened doors that were promptly closed by his poor grades. To get to Mississippi State, he had to first finish courses the summer after his senior year of high school just to graduate. His grades went up and his times dropped. But when he wanted to transfer to run closer to home at Minnesota and was blocked by the Bulldogs, he simply left campus, unsure what was next.

“So I took this long trip out to the West Coast. And like any, you know, 19-year-old I just kind of hung out and did some soul searching,” he said.

He got back on track: After eventually landing at Minnesota, he was fast enough to become the NCAA runner-up in the 3,000. He got knocked off it: Injuries stalled his entrance into the pros. While trying to figure out how far to pursue a running career, he worked in Colorado pushing a wheelbarrow as part of a crew excavating septic fields. 

And yet, within just six years, he was part of Oregon Track Club's elite training group in Eugene, and racing in the 1,500-meter final at the 2016 Olympics. He remains one of only eight American men to make an Olympic 1,500 final in the last 40 years.

For some, that might be a life’s landmark achievement. But Blankenship has a personality that moves on quickly. 

Last fall, he ran his first marathon in a time that qualified him for February’s Olympic marathon trials. When he didn’t forecast much room for improvement at that distance, he was already thinking what was next. Which is partly how he found himself in March’s Rabid Racoon 100, running multiple loops of a 12-mile course that included hills, trails with uneven footing, a fairly technical descent and a creek crossing. 

He walked into an aid station and told his friends and family that, um, “Hey, I can’t see.”

He doesn’t want to come off as dramatic. His sight wasn’t completely gone, he said.

“Just not seeing well enough to be confident where I’m putting my feet,” he said.

No big deal. There were only about 75 miles to go.

Blankenship was in it for the long run well before he showed up in Pennsylvania. It’s what has made him the most interesting figure in running in running’s unofficial capital, Eugene, even if he doesn’t see himself that way.

Eugene became TrackTown not simply because its university’s teams were often better than anywhere else, but because the connection between the city and sport was stronger than anywhere else.

Before waffle-iron soles, Bill Bowerman’s most famous invention around the city were the all-comers meets that drew droves of competitors, from children to the elderly -- the exact type that Blankenship’s first introduction to running was modeled after. At Oregon home meets in the 1960s, it wasn’t uncommon to see Mark Hatfield, the state’s governor, working as a javelin official.¹

Track is still revered but it isn’t immune to ebbs and flows of interest. This could be described as an ebb moment. Local volunteers who have spent decades working Hayward as meet officials remain loyal, but aging. Staging multiple Olympic trials, NCAA championships, USA championships and the 2022 world championships have tapped out some fans’ wallets and energy. Though the community “All-Comers” meets returned to Hayward Field last summer, they did so after a seven-year absence. Multiple professional training groups used to be based in Eugene. That’s not the case anymore.

And the outdoor season that was once a fixture on the community calendar now carries a feeling of a way to pass the time between spring football’s end and fall camp’s beginning. A decade ago, Oregon regularly hosted four home meets every spring, not including the conference or NCAA championships. In 2023, Oregon hosted just two meets. Same for this season.

Enter Blankenship, whose unorthodox path to the Northwest, come-what-may attitude and zeal for running feels so Eugene he could pass as a cross between a character written by Ken Kesey and Kenny Moore.

On Tuesday nights, he coaches Big Timber Running Club, a community group. In Springfield, as part of a city program, he has also coached a five-week crash course in track and field to middle schoolers across the city. Each session ends with a big meet that can feel as alive as a Trials.

“It is an amazing atmosphere to be part of and I think the enthusiasm of those meets revitalizes my love for track and field,” Blankenship said. 

Since 2022, Blankenship’s nonprofit, Endless Mileage, has partnered with the Springfield’s park and recreation district to plant in Dorris Ranch, a city park and working filbert orchard, one filbert tree for every man who has broken the four-minute mile barrier and every woman to have run faster than 4:30. About 830 trees have been planted as part of the project dubbed the Fast Forest.

The idea came out of Blankenship’s frustration that corporate-speak about carbon offsets lacked any specificity or accountability. Fast Forest’s trees are wrapped with a biodegradable tag listing the runner’s name, time and site of the run, and catalogued on an online map. 

“My biggest goal was to have Don Bowden and Francie Larrieu’s trees to be there forever,” he said. “I wanted somebody when I'm long gone to be able to walk through the fast Forest and be like in 1957 and 1975, the first Americans broke these barriers in the mile and those trees are going to be here for generations.”²

Also under his nonprofit’s umbrella, Blankenship and a team of volunteers have spent the last two years collecting more than 20,000 pieces of used running gear from brands, pro and amateur athletes, stores and community members in Eugene, Seattle and Flagstaff, Ariz., then redistributing them to children not only in Eugene and Springfield, but places farther afield, like Yoncalla and Port Orford. Blankenship inventories everything.

Though Blankenship acknowledged that he has felt track’s vibrance within the city dim somewhat, he downplayed the notion that any of his ventures were done as a master plan to fill a void. He wasn’t great at school, he reminded an interviewer. Writing emails takes him forever. He knew he was good and passionate about running and wasn’t ready to “close that door” on it within his life, so he looked around for ideas to make his nonprofit last.

“I feel like I owe the sport so much for all the success I've had in my life,” he said. “I feel like my life would have turned out so differently if running hadn't gone well. And my biggest fear, I think, is the sport has so much to offer and it's such an easy sport in terms of access, and I know that that statement is not true. 

“I know that not everybody feels comfortable running where they live, and not everybody can afford shoes and not everybody can afford apparel and race entries. And getting into the marathon world makes me feel like running is less and less fun because it's not so much about the broader appeal, it's about how much can you spend to go buy stupid things to run fast to buy stupider shoes. But that's a whole ‘nother conversation.  

“My biggest fear is like some kid goes out for cross country or track, shows up, doesn't have any apparel and quits, and that moment is a fundamental one that changes his life trajectory. And if all he needs is a simple pair of shoes, we can do that. And really that's why I started [Endless Mileage] is that I don't want any kid to show up and not have fundamental items to have success. Sometimes it can be hand-me-down shoes. Sometimes maybe it's a brand-new pair of spikes. But I want to make sure that we can, at least in Oregon, no kid doesn't have those opportunities because they don't have something.”

The idea for a 100-miler came when Blankenship was running in Eugene and ran into a friend with ultramarathon experience, Emily Halnon, on a trail, and she suggested it. 

Then another friend, Matt Barnhart, came up with what Blankenship loving refers to as “a stupid idea.” It defined an official summit climb of Spencer Butte, the 2,058-foot tall rocky outcropping peering over south Eugene, as any run to the top that originated below 500 feet of elevation. Barnhart wanted 52 summits in one year. Blankenship wanted to go for double. 

In February, as part of his training to test his limits before the Rabid Raccoon, he devised his “Everest challenge.” As he wrote on Instagram: “Goal: Ruin the legs and have a fucking blast. Plan: Loop Spencer Butte efficiently to conquer as much vert as possible in the shortest amount of time.” 

Almost 18 hours later, he’d covered 25,233 of elevation gain over 48.8 miles. 

“I'm really all about just kind of pushing myself into the great unknown whatever that might look like and really in the running space,” he said. “I'm not very good at anything else.”

Which brought him to the 100-miler. 

“With this vision, it’s gonna be a long night, and it’s gonna be a longer day,” he remembered thinking. 

Concerned, he told his support crew, which included his partner, Jessi Gabriel, what was happening at his next stop through an aid station. They calmly figured out what had happened: Anyone tackling marathon distances or longer must replenish the calories they lose while running, and Blankenship had forgotten to refuel, essentially taking in zero calories for three hours while also running in warmer conditions than he was used to.

His crew, which also included Halnon, gave him ginger ale. Then they gave him broth. They gave him a stern reminder to eat the five calorie-rich gels he was supposed to eat per loop. 

“If it was me left to my own devices,” he said, “I’d probably still be out there running.”

He felt better within 45 minutes. As good as a 100-mile race can feel, anyway. At one point, he began reciting to his crew the plot of the Brad Pitt movie, “Fury.” Pictures he posted of his blister-ridden feet afterward to social media are not for the squeamish.

Blankenship finished in second place, in 18 hours, 59 minutes and 9 seconds. He quickly began looking ahead. There are big hopes for his nonprofit. And recently, he asked his Instagram followers if they knew of any good 100-mile races in the fall.

-- Andrew Greif, for The I-5 Corridor

Greif has written for such publications as the Los Angeles Times and The Oregonian. His career began with an internship at The World in Coos Bay, where he wrote obituaries, crime roundups and sports stories.

1. As retold from BOWERMAN AND THE MEN OF OREGON, by Kenny Moore. 

2. Want to find a specific runner’s tree? You can search that. https://endlessmileage.org/fastforest