His Father’s Dying Wish Inspired Him To Run Ultra-Marathons

Several years ago, a friend sent Johanan Ramirez a text message with video of a grueling obstacle-course race. At first, Ramirez thought, “No way I could do that.” But his father, who was dying of cancer at the time, helped change his mind.

Ramirez on one of his runs. Ramirez is also the brother of Texas Standard reporter/producer Joy Díaz. Photo by Jim Skelding.

“When I showed my old man, he looked at the video and he was like, ‘Man, I wish I could do that.’ ‘I wish I could do that’ is the reason why I started doing this, the reason why I started running.”

“I started simple, one foot in front of the other one. Over and over again, and all of a sudden you run a mile. Then you run two, then you run three, then you sign up for your first 5K, 10k, your half-marathon, your marathon, and only about 0.03% of those finishers will ever run an ultra-marathon.”

“I had no idea there was even such a thing as an ultra-marathon. But finding out that there was a group of crazies that were covering the 100-mile distance was fascinating. I wanted to know if I could do that.”

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