BY PEDRO VELAZCO
When he was in middle school, Dan Lutes quit track because he didn’t like running laps.
Sunday, three decades later, Lutes is going to run 26.2 miles — not for the first time and not for the last.
“I was on the track team in junior high, but I actually didn’t stick with track back then,” said the 45-year-old athlete who works in Kokomo and lives in Noblesville. “I was trying to be a high jumper and a long jumper but I didn’t like running all the laps, so I quit.
As he prepares to run Sunday, Lutes recognizes the irony between where he stood as a child and where he stands today.
Today, Lutes is in Hawaii to run the Kona Marathon on the Big Island. That race will complete a quest to run a marathon in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C. It’s a project that’s taken more than 15 years.
“It’s something I’ve kind of been planning for so long. I knew this day was coming, but now that it’s actually here it’s kind of special,” said Lutes, who works as a field quality engineer for International Rectifier Corporation.
Hawaii, with its ideal weather and breathtaking views, was saved for last. He’ll run on the same course where the Ironman competition runs the final leg of its famed triathlon.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” Lutes said. “I haven’t been to Hawaii other than a stopover on an international trip. But from everything I’ve heard, it’s just going to be gorgeous.”
A Brownstown native and Purdue graduate, Lutes eventually got into running in the late 1980s when he lived in California and took part in shorter races out there. After moving back to Indiana in 1990, he ran his first marathon in 1993 when he took part in the Chicago Marathon, then got the bug to do all 50 states two years later after running a marathon in Alaska.
“When I first ran Alaska in ’95, that’s when I decided I was going to do the 50 states thing because I already had Alaska out of the way,” he said. “A that time, late ’95 , early ’96 I kind of roughed out a schedule.”
His original plan called for him to complete the quest in 2010, but despite the occasional injury, he ended up ahead of that pace after joining Kokomo Roadrunners and heading off to running trips with the local group.
“I never really got to the point where I wanted to give up on it,” he said. “I got to the point a couple times with injuries or travel schedule I thought I’m not going to be able to get this particular race done, but I never gave up on the overall goal. I’ve been fairly consistent through the years in the amount of marathons I did.
“I think the more I ran, the better shape I stayed in, it was kind of easier to keep that pace.”
Lutes keeps himself in marathon shape with an elaborate regimen. Some days he runs for raw distance, other days he trains on hills. There are days with interval runs and days where he cranks out 800-meter sets. All together, he runs 35-55 miles per week.
Running several marathons a year has turned into a mountain of memories. Sometimes the races stand out, sometimes it’s the terrain or the vistas, and other times the experience he has with friends and family is what makes the experience special.
“I’ve had events where I fell down and busted my knee and got up and kept going on,” he said. “Some of those things really stick in your mind.
“Other ones, like Pike’s Peak in Colorado, [what stands out is] just the amount of energy it took to run up Pike’s Peak and then come back down. It was like a total contracted muscle when I was done. That was one where I felt really good after it was done even though I was totally exhausted.”
Lutes said a race he ran in 1995 in Milwaukee wasn’t particularly memorable for the course, but it was memorable for the fringe benefit of running well. The Milwaukee race was a qualifier for the Boston Marathon (the only American race that requires qualification). He had to finish in 3 hours, 10 minutes to reach Boston.
“[It was] otherwise pretty nondescript, but I ran my fastest race to date there,” Lutes said. “I ran a 3:10:57. They chop your seconds off for the Boston qualifier and I literally ran within three seconds [of not qualifying]. I was just struggling all out those last 200 yards. I ran the last couple hundred yards in an equivalent of a 4:45 [per mile] pace. I don’t run that fast. I normally run at a 7:30, 7:15 pace. To run those last couple hundred yards at that pace was like an out-of-body experience.”
He just made it in under the wire to grab a spot in the 1996 Boston Marathon.
“And that was the 100th annual Boston, so it was a real special Boston too,” Lutes said.
Boston is always special. He’s run the Boston Marathon 14 straight times since qualifying that day in Milwaukee.
“One of the other big things is who you’re with,” he said. “When we went out to Maine for the Kokomo Roadrunners, my wife and I went out together. We had maybe 25 of us from the club. Martha Stewart was there to start that race. It was kind of memorable for a lot of different reasons, but just the people we were with and the gorgeous scenery. You run along the ocean and Mount Desert Island where Bar Harbor is.
“The fact that we were all out away from home doing that together, that made it really special too. That was the first club trip that we’d done.”
Other memories are just as strong, like the adventure marathon in Vermont that involved river crossings and racing up and down a snow-less ski slope, and the freezing rain that fell at the conclusion of his first marathon in Chicago.
Now that Lutes is ready to run the last state in his 50-plus-D.C. tour, he expects a new set of memories to be imprinted Sunday, which will stand alongside his previous top highlights.
“I think Hawaii’s going to be right up there,” Lutes said.
