FitView By Efren Martinez Champions Among Us
For Charles Wickersham, running just isn’t a passion, it’s his own prescription for fitness. He has been a proud member of the Shadowchase running club for 7 years and most of his running friends jokingly refer to him as Pharmboy. Just recently Charles entered my racing age group, so of course he caught my attention. Sure I’ve gotten the win from him in the past on short distant races, but only because he ran out of racing real-estate.
Charles is an endurance runner meaning he races those grueling 100-mile ultra marathons. In fact, he not only races them, he wins them. In the hot month of August 2013 he took the overall win in The Run de Vous 100-mile race in San Martin. Even though he credits his win mostly from being acclimated well, training in our hot Modesto summers, I believe the truth of the matter is that Charles is just a very humble and educated runner. At The Run de Vous he took the win in 18 hours 15 minutes.
Make no mistake, Charles is no different from most of us here. He is a loving husband to his wife Marian and a great father to his two boys. When Charles isn’t running he enjoys helping others as a Pharmacist here in his hometown. With that said, I can’t help to think that his education has helped him in knowing how to win races. He’s very smart about his training and his nutrition. He has mastered one discipline that I have yet to embrace and that would be “recovery”. Charles runs about 50-70 miles a week and sometimes more depending on the distance of an upcoming race, but he knows when to scale back and rest to avoided injury. In Charles’s mind recovering after training is essential. In fact he thinks that it’s the key to staying injury free and for him there is no shame in taking time off for recovery.
My friends, Charles is just getting started and I see him making us even prouder as another one of our local superstar athletes. His up and coming races include racing against 1200 ultra-marathoners in the Way Cool 50k near Auburn, the 100k race in San Francisco around lake Merced, a 50 mile trail race in the Mountains around Reno and in June he’ll be running a 24 hour race around Crissy Field in San Francisco. WOW! If you add it all up it equals out to Charles Wickersham, the Ultra-Runner. This year Charles has opted out from competing in The Modesto Marathon but you will still see him out there supporting his beloved running club, Shadowchase, and community in fitness by pacing the 3:10 group during the marathon. I asked Charles to share a final thought with The Modesto View and here’s what he had to say, “Running is free. You can just put your shoes on and go. You don’t have to run races to enjoy being outdoors. You just have to be outdoors.”
If you would like to learn more about what makes Charles Wickersham an ultra runner I invite you to view a documentary on him here on youtube. (Run PharmBoy Run)
Charles’s Endurance Running Tip For training I try to do all my runs on an empty stomach. Sometimes this is referred to as a “glycogen-deprivation” run. Basically it forces me to deplete more of my muscle glycogen in order to train my body to increase its glycogen storage.
