Moline man keeps running for 38 years
ROCK ISLAND — Homesick, lonely and missing the love his life, Moline's Thom Hammer took the streets of Long Beach, California., in the fall of 1976.
A Certified Public Accountant by trade and an auditor for the Union Pacific Railway, Hammer -- arguably the nicest numbers guy you will ever run across -- ran.
And ran, and ran, and ran.
For 38 years and for 24,901 miles, he ran. Many days on his own, but oh so many many mornings, noon's and nights with a great group of guys dubbed the Saturday Morning Cartoon Club.
In all -- as of Saturday past -- Hammer had circled the globe, completing the unique and amazing fete in a Saturday morning jaunt with friends, his wife, Sue, and daughter, Molly.
“I was in need of something to do when I was in California, and being a guy who works with numbers, I began chronicling my workouts,” Hammer, said in a sit-down at the Rock Island-based accounting firm that bears his name. “I just kept track (of what it would to run around the world). It was a goal-setting issue as well.”
Hammer said he drew his around-the-world running inspiration from Olympic champion Frank Shorter, Aerobics guru Dr. Ken Cooper and legendary Moline High School track coach Gene Shipley.
“There was a sign affixed to Coach Shipley's classroom that read: “Running is sweet misery,” Hammer said. “Boy, is it right. It's stayed with me all these years.”
Hammer -- as modest as they come -- said achieving such a unique goal was not easy. There was weather -- 40-below wind chill to heat indexes above 100-degrees -- and the physical pounding and the repetitive nature of each step. The lanky 60-year-old has worked through a surgically repaired knee, a broken foot, beaten prostate cancer and helped his bride, Sue -- a 10 on the sweetheart scale -- win a battle with a breast cancer.
Aside from a loyal family that includes Lucy (blond lab) and Gracie (black lab), Hammer said Quad-Citians Dr. John Hansen, Keith Wells, Otto Breitmeyer, Barry Davison, Bob Klingborg and Dave Quillen, the Saturday Morning Cartoon Club, made the goal come to life.
“The objective was to train to run sub-three-hour marathons,” said Hammer, who has competed in countless local road races, several Quad-Cities Marathons and has an amazing 3-hour-9-minute marathon to his credit.
“There we were, no matter what was going on in our worlds, running, training to get better. Those guys were great to be around and great motivators. In one marathon, I was having a solid race and about the 20-mile mark was headed for the wall and into a head wind. They circled me, knew I had a chance at a great time and blocked off the wind those final five miles. How fantastic was that?”
Five minutes with someone like Thom Hammer proves his 24,901-mile quest has been about the journey, not the quest; how a man kept a dream alive but made sure things that matter most in life always come first. You can see that when he talks about his wife, Sue, his daughter, Molly, his son, John, and his two grandsons, Brady and Kade.
“The benefit has been the active lifestyle and the many things it has afforded me to do,” Hammer said. “I go back to when I was at Coolidge Junior High in Moline, where on the walls it reads: 'The human body is the one machine that wears out when not in use.' I've tried to follow those words.”
All the way around the globe.