Pioneers of Possibility
He Spent 30 Years Building Races. What He Actually Built Was a Community. | PoP. Ep. 25, Ron Horn
Descripción
Ron Horn will tell you himself: he doesn’t like running. Never has. From the first step to the last, it has never felt natural. He’s done it for almost fifty years. He’s run thirteen marathons, eight ultramarathons, and directed or timed more races than he can easily count. He cried at the finish line of every major race he’s ever done. Five of the seven people at his wedding were runners. His wife has worked every Pretzel City Sports race for thirty years. So when Ron says he doesn’t like running, you have to understand what he means — because what he likes, and what he’s spent half a century building, is something else entirely. Ron grew up in York, Pennsylvania, playing football, baseball, and softball. He was a decent athlete with a big frame and a love of food he has never once apologized for. In 1980, a teammate named Jerry Smith went to Houston for two years and came back looking, in Ron’s words, like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. When Ron asked what happened, the answer was simple: I took up running. Ron started jogging after softball games. Weight dropped off. Two miles felt like an achievement. Then a 10K, then a marathon. Then another, then another. He ran his first at the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, missed four hours by eight minutes, and was too stubborn to accept that. He ran five marathons before he broke it. What really hooked him, though, wasn’t running — it was the community. He joined the Pagoda Pacers, the smallest and friendliest of the three running clubs in Reading at the time, became its president, and started directing races for the March of Dimes when he was on their board in 1987. He had a background in corporate marketing — nearly thirty years in senior positions — and he knew how to read what motivated people to show up. By 1996, Pretzel City Sports was officially a company. This July will mark thirty years. Today, Pretzel City Sports times roughly 250 races a year across southeastern Pennsylvania and beyond. Ron’s signature events include Labor Pain, a twelve-hour endurance race on Labor Day that sends every finisher a custom sweatshirt printed with their exact finishing distance weeks after the race — something no other race he knows of does; March Madness, a ten-hour timed loop event; the Dirty Bird trail race; the night run series Ghouls & Fools; the summer Thirsty Thursday series; and, notably, two clothing optional races at nudist camps, which Ron describes as his two happiest days of the year. Labor Pain is his favorite — a race that functions more like a festival, where people show up not knowing what distance they’ll run and leave with a number that belongs to them alone. There are runners who haven’t missed it in seventeen or eighteen years. In this episode, Kareem and Ron discuss: * How a transformed softball teammate became the unlikely catalyst for a fifty-year running career * The galvanizing moment of being beaten in a 10K by a 67-year-old woman — and what it lit in him * Why running is one of the few honest measures of progress in life * How Pretzel City Sports was born from a March of Dimes board meeting and a race that was about to disappear * The art of the race application — and why Ron’s read more like essays than entry forms * Labor Pain: the twelve-hour race where your sweatshirt is waiting for you six weeks later, with your exact distance on the sleeve * Why the trail running community will stop and carry an injured stranger on their back * The business of remembering names — and what it means to a runner at mile 18 Ron Horn built something people come back to for two decades. Not because it’s the toughest, or the fastest, or the most prestigious — but because it’s fun, and because he never forgot that’s why people lace up in the first place. Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #RonHorn #PretzelCitySports #TrailRunning #RunningCommunity #RaceDirector #LaborPain #Ultrarunning #PennsylvaniaRunning #MarathonTraining #ReadingPA #PioneersOfPossibility #PioneersPodcast #EnduranceRunning #LocalLegend #Running This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com [https://pioneerspod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
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