A Man Turns Life Into An Endurance Sport

By Ray Glier

Jim Kerse, 75, is still propelled by goals, not a bucket list. A bucket list hints at some end game and Jim doesn't envision an end. A distance runner and paddleboarder, Kerse wants to start competing in Masters track & field throws competitions by 80. He also wants to become a decent lawn bowler and go racewalking. He is not thinking about an end to anything.

Once upon a time, Jim's goal was to be sheep farmer in New Zealand, which he did for six years, but then he became a physical education teacher and off he went, first in Rugby, and then Cricket, and then this goal-scoring spree:

*In 2022, Kerse became the oldest man, at 73 and 355 days, to run 10 marathons in 10 consecutive days. The Guiness Book of World Records has awarded him the certificate to back it up. He did six marathons to “warm up.”

*This bloke from Nelson, on the South Island, is gearing up for a six-day race in September, which will cover 409 kilometers in Australia.

*Kerse has done the Western States 100-miler.

*He has a goal to run 80 kilometers every week. His fitness juggling includes paddleboarding three times a week.

*In Masters track & field, he’s not settling for chucking one element. Jim wants it all. He is going to train for the throws pentathlon: discus, shot put, javelin, hammer, weight. This is what you call braving the elements.

Kerse’s dynamism and exercise entrepreneurship is symbolic of what is catching on around the world with people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s and that is…

…just getting after it. Guardrails are coming down.

In explaining his zeal for exercise, Kerse said, “I’m hooked on the endorphins” as if those hormones and neurotransmitters produced by the brain have a coercive power over him.

(Here’s a reminder from the Cleveland Clinic of what endorphins can do for you). 

Kerse, as he tells it, is a clunker. He describes his running pace as slow, which is more reason his story needs to be out there. He’s regular, like you and me.

“I’ll confess, I’m not fast and I’ll be doing a lot of walking,” Jim said of the six-day race in September.

Jim will mix in a little bit of racewalking those six days because, he says, “this running thing is getting hard.”

But…he’s still running. Jim has run 104 marathons, 60 ultra marathons, and participated in 10 Iron Man competitions and five New Zealand Coast to Coast events (mountain run, cycling, white water kayak).

And here’s the nugget Geezer Jocks look for from each other:

Jim is using Danny Dreyer’s Chi Running method and he said it has kept him healthy through all these runs all these years. There are key focus points to Chi, but Kerse keeps it simple.

Land on your forefoot, not on the balls of your feet, he said. Make the muscles absorb the shock of the ground, not your joints.

Here is a link to Chi Running, but Jim's other takeaway from Chi that has helped him is this:

Do not take your stride too far out in front.

“The worst thing you can do is hit the ground with your knee (absorbing the shock),” he said.

**

There was a plan to Kerse's pursuit of the Guinness record goal, not just resilience and feistiness and endurance.

Jim approached it as a 24-hour process. The races were held at 5 a.m., then moved up to 4 a.m. in subsequent days. He had to go to bed at 7 p.m. so he could get up at 2 a.m. for breakfast.

“You run the race then have a great big smoothie afterwards and then Lesley (wife) cooks me a big cheese and bacon toasty sandwich dripping in olive oil,” Kerse said.

Lesley got out the massage gun and cruised over his hamstrings and calves for a half an hour. Then it was into the cold pool at the motel for an aqua jog for 30 minutes.

After his swim, Jim had his main meal and always a bottle of Australian beer. And then bed at 7.

“Each day, I never got any better, or worse, physically or mentally,” Kerse said. He seemed to say it with a shrug, which is the way of grinders, like Jim.

And that’s how you get on Page 5 of the Guinness Book of World Records.

**

When he was 34 years old, Jim ran a marathon in 2 hours, 41 minutes. His age has pushed him to 6+ hours for marathons. He has done 104 marathons and he gets slower and slower He won't quit easily.

These endurance jaunts are his calling. Endurance reminds him of his father, Renton, who came through the Depression, then made it home from World War II, and turned 100 acres of soggy soil into a thriving 400-acre sheep farm.

“I love seeing people struggling and then overcoming odds and I think that's why I got into endurance sport,” Kerse said.

“I haven’t thought about retirement,” he said with a slight chuckle. “I’ve still got goals.”

You bet he does.

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