Harvey Lewis toed his first starting line at the Revco Cleveland Marathon in April 1991. He was just 15 years old.
“I was not a very accomplished runner at all. I would finish more toward the back. I told my team I was going to run this marathon and they said, ‘No way, Harvey. There’s no way you’re going to be able to do that.'” Lewis recalled.
He set out at eight-minute pace, a speed at which he could regularly run seven or eight miles. But around mile 10, he felt like he was going to die, so he switched to intervals of running and walking, finishing his first marathon in just over five hours.
It took Lewis five years to break the five-hour mark, but he was hooked by the power of perseverance and seeing his goal through.
Lewis, one of 64 people who have run every Flying Pig Marathon in its 28-year history, will complete his 100th 26.2-mile race this weekend.
“The greatest expression is gratitude and the elation of feeling the energy of the group,” Lewis said. “The Pig has always been a mecca for me.”
Flying Pig Marathon holds a special place in Harvey Lewis’s heart
Outside of his adopted hometown race (Lewis was born the son of a coal miner in Wheeling, West Virginia), he enjoys the Columbus Marathon and the Twin Cities Marathon in Minnesota. But nothing draws him back like the Flying Pig, especially since he moved to Cincinnati in the late 1990s.
“Some people at work said, ‘Damn, they’re having a marathon.’ I was like, ‘I’ll have to jump into that.’ It was good timing. I got to be here right when the marathon got going.” Lewis said. “It’s kind of cool to see the evolution of a race across so many years. I like to say I started running this race a century ago.”
While every iteration is special for Lewis, there are a few memories that stick out.
There was a year where he was living in Clifton and a party at a neighboring house disrupted his sleep schedule the night before the race. He woke up minutes before the start, drove downtown and sprinted to the start line just as the final waves of participants were hitting the course.
In 2008, a fire on Riverside Drive forced race officials to re-route the course, resulting in a run that was slightly longer than 26.2 miles. Ironically, that was the first time Lewis qualified for the Boston Marathon, the only World Marathon Major he has run in his career.
His personal best is two hours, 48 minutes and 58 seconds, appropriately run in Athens, Greece, where the marathon originated. His fastest Flying Pig time came in 2018 when he crossed the finish swine in 2:50:39.
Times aren’t as important to Lewis anymore. He believes he can run the Flying Pig faster at 50 years old than he could at any point from 1999 to 2014. But he has made so many friends through running and believes so strongly in the power of community, that he often leads a pace group for the race, helping others accomplish their own dream.
“There will definitely be some people going for their (personal best), or people running their first marathon, or people running for X number of reasons. It’s just great to be a piece of that,” Lewis said.
Lately, Lewis has run for his late mother, Betty. She passed away in January 2025 after suffering a stroke. She raised Harvey and his sister as a single parent while working as a nurse and never told them they couldn’t do something.
Lewis watched his mother relearn to speak and move after suffering a stroke in 1994 and used that as inspiration just as his running career was taking off.
“My mother was very supportive of ideas that seemed sort of unconventional. She always let me go for it,” Lewis said. “I definitely take a lot of inspiration from my mother.”
Harvey Lewis takes the term ‘endurance athlete’ to the extreme
Lewis spent his 50th birthday the way any individual would want to: immobilized in a ditch while competing in the Go One More Ultramarathon outside of Austin, Texas. He had run 243 miles in four days but his body physically couldn’t carry him any farther.
Those longer distances keep him young, and he knows that he can compete against younger athletes in grueling environments. At Go One More, he finished tied for fourth place and was older than any two top-10 finishers combined.
“It involves a lot of strategy and it involves a lot of grit. When it comes down to it, you have to be really focused. I compete with runners who can run a lot faster than me in the marathon, but when I have them in an arena where we’re going as far as humanly possible, it levels the playing field a bit,” Lewis said.
His first ultramarathon was in 1996, a 24-hour race where he ran 81 miles, which seems like a small number compared to the distances has has covered in the last 15 years. Lewis has run 15 Badwater Ultramarathons, a 135-mile race in Death Valley. He won the Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in 2021, a last-man standing format where he ran 354 miles. In 2023, he set an ultramarathon world record by running 450 miles over five days.
He credits his longevity to his lifestyle. He became vegetarian in 1996, regularly receives active release therapy to keep his muscles fresh, monitors his sleep schedule and adds alternative forms of exercise to his routine.
From a mental standpoint, he’ll sometimes run purely for the love of the sport. When he finds himself in a tough spot, reminders of the trials of his family and friends keep him moving forward.
“A lot of times, we have these governors on us and we create in our mind what we think we can do. I just kept on shifting the governors,” Lewis said.
Lewis has also run to raise money for social justice. In 2008, he ran the path of Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 salt march. One year later, he ran 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, tracing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s path from 1965. This summer, he’s planning a 250-mile run for democracy to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.
The Go One More Ultra was three weeks before the Flying Pig. After flying back to Cincinnati, Lewis ran 15 miles from the airport to his house on the east side. He spent the time in between the races recovering and gearing up for his marathon milestone, which in his terms meant running up to 60 miles per week.
Most days, he runs to his teaching job at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he has worked for 20 years.
Lewis began keeping track of his mileage in 2010 and estimates he has run well over 100,000 miles in his life. He doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon, specifically wanting to be the longest-tenured Flying Pig “streaker” of them all.
“I’m planning to do it ’til I die. I have some really good role models in Mike Fremont and Wayne Hinaman. Those two have shown that they’ve done it up up to age 90,” Lewis said.
Former marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge’s personal mantra is that “No human is limited.” Lewis is local living proof of that.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Harvey Lewis celebrates 100th marathon at special place, the Flying Pig
Reporting by Brendan Connelly, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
