Alumnus Completes 27th Ultramarathon

If you could harness the intellectual stamina and determination required to earn a degree from MIT and apply it to athletics, you'd expect to see alums climbing Mount Everest, biking to their 50th reunions, and sailing around the world. And you have.

Now meet Hung Ng, a 42-year-old alum who earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1990 and went on to run 92 marathons and 27 ultramarathons to date. Ng, like many of the other athletic alumni profiled on this blog, seems to enjoy preparing for his races almost as much as he enjoys running them.

"In sports, there are people who jump into it, and then like me, there are people who read all about it and try to control as many variables as they can," Ng recently told a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel.

While regular marathons are 26.2 miles in distance, ultramarathons are anything longer—50 miles, 100 miles, etc. In fact, the last ultramarathon that Ng ran was the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, California. Spanning 135 miles, Ng clocked in at 33 hours, 45 minutes, and 26 seconds.

That was in mid-July. Barely two weeks later, on July 24th, Ng competed in a 24-hour ultramarathon in Wakefield, Massachusetts where he came in second.

Interested in learning more about ultramarathons and ultramarathon culture? Check out this list of "Ultra Blogs" or find a race in your state.