Fastabend wants to finish his 35th 10 Miler in less than 100 minutes

Like a golfer advanced in years, Lynchburg runner Bill Fastabend sets modest goals for himself these days.
In the case of Saturday morning’s 35th Virginia Ten Miler, he doesn’t expect to shoot his age, that is, finish the challenging 10-mile course in 71 minutes or less.
“I’ve been running right around 95 to 98 minutes over the past four or five years,” he said. “I’m getting older, but I’d still like to stay under 100 minutes. My second objective is just to finish.”
If he does, it will be his 35th consecutive successful attempt, no small feat for even the most accomplished athletes.
Fastabend is one of only three runners to complete the first 34 Virginia Ten Milers, along with Bill Draper of New Jersey and Jim Montgomery of Daytona Beach, Fla. He’s the youngest of the three — Draper is 10 years his senior at 81 and Montgomery is now 74 — and last year finished approximately 30 and 40 minutes faster, respectively, in 1 hour, 37 minutes, 15 seconds.
Fastabend knows the feeling of placing far behind his peers.
“In the early years, it was thrilling being able to run in the same race with people like Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers,” he said. “For a nobody like me, a person who always enjoyed athletics and just didn’t have the body to compete, I could say that I ran with a Boston Marathon champion (Rodgers) and an Olympic champion (Shorter). Of course, they finished 40 minutes faster than me.”
He is looking forward to running in the same crowd, at least at the start, with former U.S. Olympic gold medal marathon runner Joan Benoit Samuelson, also the guest speaker at Friday’s 6:30 p.m. pasta dinner at E.C. Glass, site of the Saturday race’s start and finish lines.
“That’ll be fun, to have somebody like that to run again,” he said.
For Fastabend, the benefits of running have far outweighed the sacrifices he’s made in training.
“When I first started running a lot, I used it as a stress relief after a hard day at the office, to put on shorts and shoes and run a few miles,” said Fastabend, who has remained injury-free throughout his career.
“I’ve been lucky with my joints, knees ankles and feet have held up real well. It’s kept me physically fit. I don’t worry about my weight.”
For the past five or six years, he has incorporated cross training into his regimen, working out in the gym at Rehabilitation Associates of Central Virginia two or three days per week.
He officially retired as an engineer with Wiley & Wilson in 2002, but Fastabend has no plans to slow down, though his body may tell him otherwise.
“I have no intentions of stopping,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s hard to get out on cold winter mornings, but once you get out, you’re glad you did.”
Fastabend has slowed over the past 25 years after clocking a career-best time of 69 minutes, 10 seconds in the early 1980s.
“I was finishing right around 70, 71 or 72 (minutes) for years and then I finally hit the 69 and started going in the other direction,” he said.
He used to run marathons, completing seven or eight in the 1970s and 80s, but now is content running in his hometown’s premiere event.
“A marathon is quite a bit longer, but you can make the Ten Miler as challenging as you want to, depending on your training and how fast you want to run it,” Fastabend said.
He still logs the equivalent of a marathon in training each week, culminating with an eight- to 10-mile run on Saturdays.
“He’s an engineer by profession, so he’s very disciplined, very methodical,” Brenda Fastabend said of her husband’s workouts.
So Saturday’s race won’t be that much different from his usual routine, only with a few more climbs. Half of his weekly mileage is on the Blackwater Creek Trail, not nearly as hilly as the Virginia Ten Miler course.