PYLE’S NAME FOR this event was the Transcontinental Foot Race, but sportswriters dubbed it the Bunion Derby. Death March might have been more like it. The top prize of $25,000 lured 199 entrants, from experienced distance runners to farm boys, for a 3,422-mile running, walking and, if necessary, crawling race from L.A. to New York. Runners were expected to average 40 miles a day and then, at night, appear at the sideshow organized by Pyle to squeeze cash out of spectators. After 84 days, the 55 remaining contestants staggered into Madison Square Garden, and 17-year-old Andy Payne took first prize home to Oklahoma. Between the French Canadian runner hobbling along with one leg swollen from shin splints to the family of one competitor pushing their broken-down flivver into the Garden to watch the finish, it was, the Tribune wrote, “one of the most heroic, if one of the most absurd athletic contests ever held.”
The emcee at the Garden: Bears great and Pyle client RED GRANGE.
Body part most often injured while running, according to one survey: THE KNEE.
Route of the L.A.-to-Chicago leg of the race: ROUTE 66.
Number of Bunion Derby runners who dropped out after being hit by cars, motorcycles or (in one case) a bicycle: 12.
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“He had more ideas than any man I ever knew.”
–RED GRANGE ON C.C. PYLE
