As a man who’s made it his business to keep people active, one could say Paul “Crazy Legs” Stofko teaches by example; with everything he’s involved in, it’s hard to believe he still has the energy to train for “ultra” runs himself. We finally caught up with the trainer and race organizer to hear about what he’s been keeping himself—and Northwest Indiana—busy with lately.
A NWI native, Stofko grew up in Schererville and graduated from Lake Central High School. It was there that he first discovered his passion for running during his junior year.
“I started running just to stay in shape really,” he said. “But I got kind of addicted to it.”
Like all beginning runners, he started with the ubiquitous 5k and 10k runs. Then he started building up to some real distance and started doing marathons. It wasn’t until he was attending school in Arizona that he got drawn into “ultra running,” which is pretty much anything that goes beyond the traditional 26.2 miles of a standard marathon.
“They have a great ultra community out in Arizona, and that’s where I first got into doing 50k and further, somewhere around 1999,” he told me.
Now, after twenty years and countless thousands of miles since his first fateful run, Stofko has developed his talent and hobby into his life’s work. He’s made himself a race organizer and director, an ultra runner, a running coach and a personal trainer as well as being a husband and father at home in Chesterton. His wife is a respiratory therapist at Porter Hospital and they have two children: Noah, who is five, and Natalie, who will be two in January. Stofko is the only runner in his family. For now, anyway.
His full-time job is for a company called Symbria. He works as a contractor within Wittenburg Village in Crown Point, providing programs and seminars for senior residents to keep them active, healthy, and engaged. Before he was offered the job on a full-time basis, Stofko split his time between Wittenburg and Omni Health and Fitness in Chesterton, where he was a personal trainer.
“Actually, I still help them out when I can, usually just a day a week or so,” he says.
But it was beyond the walls of the gym that Stofko really wanted to stretch his legs. In 2008, Stofko began directing races for the first time instead of running in them.
“I kept hearing complaints from runners that if they wanted to do races, they had to drive to Chicago,” he said. “But I saw a lot of parks in our area that were underutilized. I wanted to promote all the trails that NWI has to offer, so I started putting together this series and trying to organize these races.”
In 2011, the result of his hard work was the Crazy Legs Race Series.
Composed entirely of trail runs, these races of the Crazy Legs series are held on off-road trails throughout the parks of NWI. In 2013, the series included eight distinct races and had between 30 and 50 participants per race.
“We’re not too fancy yet,” Stofko said, explaining that he’d like to get more people into the series and out on the trails. “A lot of times I hear from people that they had no idea these parks even existed.”
And discovering and exploring new areas seems to be part of the draw for this young series. La Porte in particular Stofko says has been supportive of his work, and three or four his races are held in their park system.
For 2014, Stofko says he already has seven races tentatively set. For now he wants to keep the number of races around eight, but he did say that he’s looking at new areas to hold them in.
“Some of the courses people really enjoy, others people don’t, or the race doesn’t attract many people in the first place, so you weed out those ones and try some new stuff. That’s what I’m doing right now, contacting parks departments for new spots and to get some dates set; runners tend to like to schedule their races in advance,” Stofko said.
Another tactic he keeps in mind when organizing races is to try to line them up with events that are already being held at the parks.
“That way it’s mutually beneficial. We promote each other’s events and everybody wins,” he explained.
While his love for the series is obvious, there’s no denying that it takes a lot of time and effort to keep the whole operation running. Though Stofko originally planned to have other directors take over some of his races, that hasn’t happened yet. For now, it’s just him managing everything with the help of a few friends. The commitment has cut into the number or races he wants to do, but it’s worth it to him to introduce more people to what NWI has to offer its runners.
Although organizing the series has taken a toll on the quantity of distance races he participates in, it apparently hasn’t affected the quality.
“My biggest race this year was the Indiana 100,” he said.
That race, a 100-mile off-road trail run starting at the Chain O’ Lakes State Park in Albion, IN, had about 300 runners and was Indiana’s first 100-mile ultramarathon. Stofko not only successfully completed the race, he also set a new personal record (“PR” in the racing world) at 19 hours and 9 minutes of running.
While I think we can all agree that that’s crazy, it turns out that the “Crazy Legs” nickname didn’t actually come from his running career. The truth is that it came from a company softball team he played on years ago. Not being very good at softball, the only aspect of the game Stofko was good at was running the bases, inspiring his coach’s side-line hollerings.
If you’d like to experience the insanity, there’s still time. Stofko invites you to sign up for the last race of the Crazy Legs series this year, the Jingle Run 5k. This race will be held at Creek Ridge County Park in Michigan City on December 28th. The sign up form is available at the series’ website, www.crazylegsraceseries.info. Stofko can also be reached by email at stofko121@yahoo.com.