Darryl Beardall

Beardall worked as postal carrier, then as a telegraphist worked for thirty year for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. He ran his first marathon in 1959, winning a trophy at the Petaluma Spartan Marathon.^[3] That year, the United States Army diagnosed him with cardiomegaly. He kept running anyway. He ran twelve miles a day, daily, for sixty-five years. He broke his hip in 2016. In July 2022, he walked ten kilometers of the Deseret News Marathon with a walker.^[1]

He competed fifty-five times in the Dipsea Race, thirty-two times in the Napa Valley Marathon and forty times in the Deseret News Marathon. In 2013, Amby Burfoot calculated that Beardall ran about 280,000 miles in his lifetime, the most he could find.^[2]

Beardall died of bladder cancer on November 6, 2023, in Santa Rosa, California, aged 87.^[4] He was inducted into the Dipsea Race Hall of Fame.^[5]