I was good, and could run a 5:00 minute/mile by eighth grade, but when you look at how competitive track is, I’m slow. ![]() As far as being a speedster, I don’t consider myself speedy. Then I ran track in middle and high school, doing well enough to run for CU (Colorado University). ![]() So every spring I would train six or eight weeks for the BB and that’s how I got my start into running. I think I took fourth for my age group that year. This was the point that I ‘started running.’ The school I moved to had a training program for a local 10k, the Bolder Boulder. By the time I moved to Colorado–when I was eight–I was playing football in the fall, skiing in the winter, baseball in the spring, and swimming in the summer. IRF: What sports were you in to? Was running something you found early on, a young speedster, or had you other passions as a kid?Ĭlayton: Personally, I enjoyed being active, digging holes in sand, pretending I was a Power Ranger, and climbing trees. My year just revolved around different sports and the seasons came and went. I was getting old enough that I could actually start doing a lot of different sports. ![]() My Dad never mentioned that we were going to move again.Ĭlayton: Yeah, so I didn’t bring it up and started enjoying life. So when I got, I made some good friends and I think I could tell that my family settled in. So moving to Colorado was heaven when all of a sudden you have three times a day to go play tag and sports outside! I’ve also been a very imaginative kid, which I think helped entertain myself and deal with the stresses of moving. School in Tennessee sucked it was seven to eight-hour days-for a kindergartener-with one 15-minute recess. And being a little kid (six the first time I moved, eight the second), I was even better at making friends. Moving probably wasn’t easy for me by any means, but I’ve always been good at making new friends. Kind of like in the Karate Kid movie, or was it a stress-free experience?Ĭlayton: I don’t really remember how stressful it really was. IRF: How was it moving, though? Things like that are usually a major deal in a kid’s life. Tennessee was a pretty cool place, really good people, but I’m glad we moved to Colorado. There’s this picture of us and there are shingles coming through the roof and then you look over at our neighbor’s, there’s no house! So that was lucky how it worked out. A tornado hit our house right before we were going to move in! It flattened our next door neighbor’s house. Some interesting things happened there, actually. It was a pancake-flat town where I mostly played roller-hockey. I believe mini-me was a lot like the slightly-larger-than-the-average-distance-runner me is: impatient, competitive, candy-loving, and genuinely interested in people and the curiosities of the world.Īs for moving, my Dad was really lucky in the jobs he was offered, so we moved states and went over to Tennessee, right by Memphis. I think a couple times my dad would take us out into the dust bins of Nevada and we’d come back with bull snakes or the like. What were you into as a kid and how life was for the mini-you?Ĭameron Clayton: I started out as a youngster, as many American kiddos do, taking up football, learning to ride a bike, playing on my friend’s farm, and catching frogs. ![]() You moved from Reno, to Tennessee, to Colorado, lots of moving. IRunFar: So Cameron, tell us about how it all began. We caught up with Cameron to hear his story. He is now back home, catching his breath, and taking it all in before tackling his first 100-miler at Western States in a month’s time. Since then, it has been something of a whirlwind for the Boulder-based runner: two more podium finishes at TNFEC50 and Lake Sonoma, a call from Greg Vollet that led to him joining the Salomon International Team, and a trip to La Palma to race his first Ultra SkyMarathon when he toed the line at Transvulcania a couple of weeks ago. I mean, this is a guy who hadn’t run an ultra until last September when he showed up and won the Run Rabbit Run 50, breaking the course record while doing so. It’s safe to say that Cameron Clayton has made an immediate impact on the world of trail and ultrarunning.
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