Faster than planned: Ultra runner Hubert Carl crosses America

Ultra runner Hubert Karl from Zeil am Main in the Haßberge district has reached his goal. On March 27, he began a 4,000 kilometer run on Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. Now he has arrived six days earlier than originally planned. Carl has successfully completed his ultra running program 66/66/66. At age 66, he wanted to jog the historic “Route 66” from Chicago to Los Angeles in 66 days.

The ultra runner reaches the destination earlier than planned

“Now I've really missed my target,” he joked in a phone conversation with BR24. “I'm glad I was able to do it, to implement my weird idea in such a positive way.” Hubert Carl has become a social media star on his running track. He currently has 80,000 followers on Instagram. Before he started running, he had 900 followers. “I think it's great that you're a role model so you age well,” he told BR24 shortly before his destination.

Now, after 60 days, he is again looking forward to a “normal breakfast” of coffee, bread and chocolate. He only ate porridge in the morning while running. He initially planned to run 60 kilometers daily. But to get through the Mojave Desert, among other things, he “worked well” in the first 2,000 kilometers of the run. He covered a distance of 84 kilometers in one day. At the start of his serious run, he had a hamstring problem four days in. He only walked on a platform.

The police stopped him

In Arizona, running on highways was not allowed, so he had to switch to secondary routes. Carl was also stopped by the police. His route ran from Chicago, Illinois through the US states of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Los Angeles, California. He ran over 2,000 meter mountain passes and through the desert. He lived in a mobile home with his wife, Christine, and his brother, Edgar.

Hubert Karl is already a record-setting ultra runner: in mid-October last year, he completed the 246-kilometer Spartathlon from Athens to Sparta in Greece for the 25th time. More often than anyone before him. Before his USA run, he had run about 193,000 kilometers in his career. That's more than four and a half times around the Earth. He has completed more than 130 ultramarathons so far. The longest “Peace Run” is 457 kilometers from Hiroshima to Nagasaki, Japan. Hubert Karl completed it 27 years ago in 85 hours. He lost eight kilos.