Rank Strangers - a history lesson

The Rank Strangers team was formed for the inaugural 2005 Great Midwest Relay (GMR) which became the MC200 in 2007. Eric Engdahl of Chicago and Mark Clear of Madison organized the team. The zany nature of the event appealed to both of them; they thought it would be great fun to participate in the non-stop 200 mile, 24+ hour event.  All they needed was a team.

Run relays are not rare – there are famous ones like Hood to Coast in Oregon  and River to River in southern Illinois .  Those races are very popular and consequently hard to get into, so in addition to being in our front yard, the GMR had the appeal of being wide open.  

Recruiting for the first year’s team brought out stalwarts who have stayed with Rank Strangers from GMR to MC200.  Eric, Mark, Jeff Shampo and Art Saffran ran all of the first four races.  Holly Dowling ran three times.  There has been a nice split between Illinois and Wisconsin runners.  By 2009 there had been 28 different runners representing Rank Strangers.

The course has been substantially the same each year, and Mark is always with van #1 and Eric with Van #2, but just about everything else changes for Rank Strangers, with new runners joining and the Midwest weather showing its stuff.

Rank Strangers typically finishes in the middle of the back.  Our priority is fun, not fast, although we have a number of experienced marathoners (including Boston qualifiers like Holly, Art and Eric), and even Iron Men (Holly, Martin Tagge). That hasn’t stopped some of our runners from blazing to fast times on their legs, however.

In 2005 the team finished 42nd out of 68 teams in a time of 29 hours and 6 minutes.

In 2006 we were 39th out of 61 teams in 28 hours and 12 minutes.

In 2007 we were 79th out of 115 teams in 28 hours and 13 minutes.

The team did not finish the course in 2008, stopping at the 192 mile mark, at Northwestern University just north of the Chicago city line, when race was delayed by a tornado warning.  Already hours behind schedule because of an earlier tornado delay, we opted to abandon rather than sitting out the delay.  (The race did resume several hours later).  The 192 miles equalled the distance of the previous races.

Mark has taken support of the event to an extra level by having his company, IMS, host the relay’s website.  This reduced the cost to team members – the race waived our registration fee.

Credit for the team name goes to Keith Dudding who drew inspiration from the old song, "I am a poor wayfaring stranger travelling through this world of woe."   He added, “actually, after we've all run a leg or two, we would more closely resemble a tune made popular by The Stanley Brothers ... ‘Rank Strangers’.”