Edward Payson Weston - the Star of Pedestrianism

Brian Phillips of Grantland has written a fascinating story about Edward Payson Weston, who became a major sports figure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by dint of his pedestrianism--taking astonishingly long walks, often in competition with others:

Edward Payson Weston - The Pedestrian

In his 20s and 30s, he somehow became one of the most celebrated athletes in the English-speaking world despite the fact that he was physically unprepossessing — 5-foot-7, 130 pounds, with a body resembling "a baked potato stuck with two toothpicks," as one journalist wrote — and that his one athletic talent was walking. Just straight-up walking made Weston, for a while, probably the biggest sports star on earth. . . .

Weston's athletic career started with two things: an insane bet, and the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. During the 1860 campaign, Weston bet his friend George Eddy that Lincoln would never win the White House. If he lost the bet, Weston would have to walk the 478 miles from the Massachusetts State House in Boston to Washington, D.C., to watch the inauguration. . . .

 

Pedestrianism took two forms, each of which Weston helped to popularize. There was track walking, which usually took place at a skating rink or inside a large exhibition hall. Sometimes a competitor walked around the track alone, racing the clock; sometimes he faced one or more competitors, who would agree to walk for a certain period of time, or to a certain distance, or until one of them was forced to give up. . . . The other form of pedestrianism was outdoor destination walking, of the sort that initially made Edward Weston famous. In 1867, he became a household name by walking from Portland, Maine, to Chicago in 26 days, 1,200 miles along the post road. Weston was greeted by massive crowds everywhere he went; newspaper writers around the country worked themselves into a froth debating the merits of the undertaking.

Read much, much more about this fascinating topic in Phillips' article and in the Wikipedia article about Weston.