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Dylan Thuras: It was around midnight on March 10th, 1879, and a crowd was gathering outside Madison Square Garden, back when it was called Gilmore’s Garden. And they were all there for an event, a kind of race. And in the days leading up to it, newspapers and magazines had been stirring up the excitement. So when the day finally arrived, people were ready.
The race was set to begin at 1 a.m. in the morning, but the crowd had started lining up hours and hours earlier. People were pressed together, clamoring towards the ticket booth. The ticket sellers worked as fast as they could, but they simply could not keep up. The crowds pressed and pressed towards the door. People started sneaking in. People were shouting, “Get back, get back!” Bookies were yelling too, shouting out the odds, trying to get people to place their bets. Then, as the clock struck one, the faint sound of music began playing inside the arena. The race had already begun. The crowd went feral. People began throwing themselves against the arena doors. The crowd rushed forward. And finally, the doors burst open and people began streaming in. So what was this event? What kind of event were people clamoring this hard to see?
Well, in 1879, America’s very favorite sport was competitive walking. Walking in circles over and over and over. I’m Dylan Thuras and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible and wondrous places. Today we are examining the phenomenon that was the six-day race, when Americans literally busted down the doors to watch athletes walk in circles for days at a time.
This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.
Dylan: Walking as a competitive sport began with a bet. It was during the 1860 presidential election season, and a guy named Edward Payson Weston made a bet with his friend that Lincoln would lose. Lincoln obviously did not lose. And according to the terms of the wager …
Matthew Algeo: The loser had to walk from Boston to Washington, and they had to do it in 10 days.
Dylan: This is Matthew Algeo. He’s the author of the book Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport.
Matthew: I am probably one of the world’s leading experts on pedestrianism. Yeah, it comes with a lot of responsibility, but I’m willing to do it.
Dylan: So the loser of this bet, Edward Payson Weston, set out to begin his walk from Boston to DC in 10 days. And Weston had a flair for the dramatic. So he thought, okay, I have to do this. Let’s turn it into something of an event.
Matthew: He would send postcards to the newspapers in the towns he would be passing through along the route. And so as he made his way from Boston to Washington, crowds started coming out just to see him walk through their town. And people began to follow in the newspaper his progress. And so he made it to Washington. He was about four hours late, so he didn’t win the bet, but he won enough attention that after the war, he was able to commodify this activity of his, which was long distance walking.
Dylan: This was also happening just around the time that roller skating was invented. So Weston started hosting long distance walking events at roller skating rinks.
Matthew: He could go into a town and he would hold an exhibition in one of these roller skating rinks to walk, say, 100 miles in less than 24 hours. And he would charge people 10 cents just to come in and watch him walk in circles in these.
Dylan: But soon, competitive walking had moved well beyond the rinky-dink roller skating rink. Around this time in the United States, big communal halls were being built for political rallies, for agricultural fairs. And because of industrialization, the move to shift work, the move into cities, people started to have more leisure time than they did in the past.
Matthew: It says something about how starved people were for entertainment—especially in smaller towns and cities—that droves of people came out and paid their dimes just to watch Weston walk in circles in these roller skating rinks.
Dylan: We should probably address the elephant in the room here. If watching people walk around in circles doesn’t sound like the most titillating activity, just bear in mind there were not a lot of other options.
Matthew: You have to remember when, like in, you know, the 1860s, 1870s, in the early days of pedestrianism, there was nothing to do at home. You didn’t have electricity. There’s no photograph. There’s no telephone. I mean, you could read, you know, often by candlelight or gaslight. That was it. So there wasn’t a lot of competition for entertainment when pedestrianism came on the scene.
Dylan: That said, people did find ways to make these races pretty exciting. Here’s how this would work. The object of the game would be to put up the most miles possible, more miles than your opponent over the course of the race. And the races were insanely long.
Matthew: They would start right after midnight on Monday morning and right up to midnight on Saturday night. You couldn’t race on Sunday because, you know, public exhibitions and entertainments were prohibited on the Sabbath. So the six-day race kind of became the default. So, you could dip in any time of day or night. The arenas were open 24/7.
Dylan: In the center of the ring would be a track, maybe an eighth of a mile or something like that. So keep in mind, that means 100 miles is close to 1,000 laps. And some athletes would put in 500 miles in six days, walking 500 miles. On the track would be these walkers, wearing tights and leather shoes, and shirts that sometimes had advertisements on them. Generally, the rule was you had to walk heel-toe, meaning a part of your foot had to be on the ground at all times. It was walking, after all, not running. Funnily enough, when the sport took off in the U.K., people did actually try running to win. But usually the runners burnt out faster than the walkers, and in the end, couldn’t put up as many miles. Walking might sound, you know, easy, low energy. But often by the end, these athletes would just be barely stumbling around the track.
Matthew: There was no rule that you had to stay on the track continuously for six days. But of course, every minute you were off the track, that meant somebody else was on the track making miles. And so the incentive was to sleep as little as possible. I like to say these were as much tests of sleep deprivation, like how much sleep deprivation could you handle, as much as, you know, the physical exercise.
Dylan: Each of the competitors had a tent they could dip into when they needed a break, or maybe something to keep them going. Most of the walkers drank booze on their breaks. Our old friend Edward Payson Weston, the guy who started competitive walking, actually got in trouble once for chewing coca leaves during a race. But usually he stuck to whiskey, which he would also pour on his blisters. These are tough people. Spectators would drop in after dinner or between shifts. They would grab a sandwich and enjoy the show, watching these sad people stumble on their 4,000th lap around the track. And if you got sick of watching the action, the arena had other diversions for you.
Matthew: They understood, the promoters and the competitors, that watching people walk for days at a time wasn’t the most exciting thing. And so they had a lot of add-ons. There were always bands playing at these events. Of course, you could wager on anything. There would be vendors. You would get, you know, oysters or pickled eggs. Those are the kinds of things they sold in the stands. You could buy souvenir postcards. You could go down up close to the track or even go into the middle of the track and poke your head in the tents that the competitors used. I also wonder what those tents smelled like inside at the end of six days.
Dylan: At the big, big events, like the ones at Gilmore Gardens, competitors could actually go away with enormous prize money. The race we just talked about at the very beginning of this episode had a prize of nearly half a million dollars, adjusted for inflation. But there were a lot of other ways to see and participate in six-day races.
Matthew: You know how, like, companies have softball leagues now in the summer, that sort of thing? Well, there were pedestrian leagues. There was a department store pedestrian league in New York. Lord and Taylor was the best team. There were newspapers at St. Louis that all organized teams and had competitions.
Dylan: The accessibility of the sport also created new stars of pedestrianism.
Matthew: One of my favorites is Frank Hart, who was Black. He came originally from Haiti, was a grocery store clerk in Boston, was one of these guys who thought, I can do that, and it turned out he could. He got noticed by some of the promoters, and they encouraged him to move up into the bigger, more lucrative races, and he was able to succeed at that. And there were also women who competed. Ada Anderson was one of the most famous. So it was really kind of cool. It was a very democratic sport among not just the spectators, but among participants, too. I mean, it’s just like the most basic, fundamental human exercise, right? I mean, it’s something that everybody could relate to, walking, and I think that was part of the appeal as well.
Dylan: Pedestrianism’s heyday was both very bright and fairly brief. The sport, which started in 1861 with Weston’s losing bet, was already starting to lose steam by the 1880s. So just about 20 years. Part of what was to blame was that baseball was really starting to take off as America’s pastime. And then, in the 1880s, the modern bicycle was invented. So that’s the kind of bicycle we know today, as opposed to those penny-farthing bikes with the huge front wheels.
Matthew: Well, the six-day bicycle races really were fun to watch, and they almost overnight usurped the pedestrian, the walking matches. Now you could watch crashes at 20 miles an hour, right?
Dylan: However, even though the sport does not enjoy the popularity that it once did, you can find six-day races to compete in, if you are so inclined. There’s one in Milwaukee called Six Days in the Dome. Australia seems to have a few. And there’s one in Arizona called Across the Years.
Matthew: Somebody who read the book emailed me and said, hey, have you ever done one of these races? And I said, well, no, I’m not much of an athlete. And he said, oh, well, you got to do one. And so he set it up, and we met for a 24-hour race. And we did. In New Jersey, it’s called Three Days at the Fair. It made me realize how much better the shoes are, right? I ended up losing a toenail just doing—I did 52 miles in 24 hours, right? And then you think about these guys back then, like, oh, my God, the punishment their bodies must have withstood. I’m not saying, like, if I got to time travel, I’m not saying it’s the first thing I’d do, right? I mean, it’s on the list. It’s in the top 10. Like, I’m going to go back and see Jesus or whatever, but I definitely want to see a great walking match in, like, 1879.
Dylan: In fact, right in my backyard, in Queens, New York, there is a race that I have always been profoundly intrigued by. It is called the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3,100-Mile Race. And for 52 days, racers go from 6 a.m. to midnight, around and around and around and around and around. There is something strangely beautiful about the idea of a test of unbelievable endurance in which you go absolutely nowhere. Maybe this is some kind of metaphor for life.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.
This episode was produced by Amanda McGowan. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Alexa Lim, Casey Holdford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall.