Ed Gravelle

By Alex Kochon

Residence: Ballston Lake
Age: 62
Family:  Wife, Chris; Children, Andrew (37), Emily (34), Sarah (31); Grandchildren, Sophie (10), Eddy (7)
Career: Retired Geotechnical Engineer
Primary Sports:  Running, Biking, Hiking, Triathlons, Duathlons

A lifelong athlete who averages at least one marathon a year (not including hundreds of miles of hiking and trail running), Ed Gravelle knows a thing or two about the “survival shuffle.” In road marathons, it’s known as “the wall.” He hit it in his very first marathon when he was 20 years old during the Niagara Falls International Marathon from Buffalo to his hometown of Niagara Falls. “I was young and stupid,” Ed recalled with a laugh. “I ran the first 20 miles very, very, very fast, and I just hit the wall terribly and both legs gave out. I averaged six minutes a mile to 20 miles and then I ended up finishing at 3:09, so it took me an hour and nine minutes to do that last 10K.”

At age 55, he returned and ran the Niagara Falls marathon again, finishing just six minutes slower than he did at age 20. He credited his pacing for that one.

Sipping chocolate milk outside a Saratoga Springs coffee shop in mid-May, Ed mentioned he ran 12 miles earlier that morning. He was training for the Miles on the Mohawk marathon on May 30, which he had signed up for just nine weeks before the race. He was hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon (which had raced before) and use this race to reignite his running since he had mostly hiked since last June.

He also had the Escarpment Trail Run on his to-do list – a rugged 18.5-mile race from Windham to Hunter he does most years. While his recent flat-road marathon training might not be the best preparation for running over five peaks in the Catskill Mountains, Ed said he loves to set goals and make plans to achieve them. “My favorite thing in life is to pick out something, like this marathon, and say, ‘OK, how am I going to get there?’” he said. “I love the process of thinking about what training should I do and getting myself to do it, and then at that point, the race just becomes the icing on the cake.”

When Ed turned 50, he and his friend Tim Huneck of Rexford, who also turned 50 that year, hiked “50 for 50” 46 High Peaks plus four other mountains in a year. Ten years later, they did “60 for 60” (46 High Peaks plus 14 of New Hampshire’s White Mountains), and have also completed the Northeast 111 (115 peaks in the Northeast), Catskill 35 and more together. “We’re thinking we can do 70 for 70, but for 80 for 80, we’re thinking about redefining a mountain,” Ed said with a laugh. “An overpass over the highway is going to be our mountain then.”

Ed has also been known to challenge himself to a solo “Race the Sun” on the shortest day of the year, usually December 21. Starting at sunrise in Schenectady’s Central Park, he runs the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon course to Albany, then turns around to finish the double marathon before sunset. If he has time, he runs laps around Duck Pond in Central Park until dark. It takes him about nine hours. He’s done that three times and hopes to do it again this year.

But back to the survival shuffle. Ed, who is a two-time Ironman triathlete, seasoned ultramarathoner and accomplished cyclist, said the wall might come with 30 miles left in a race. The shuffle is about putting one foot in front of the other when it hurts, which is extremely hard. 

Ed found himself doing this kind of shuffle through life four years ago when his son, Andrew, was stricken with cancer that broke his spine and left him paralyzed from the chest down. A former ultramarathoner himself, Andrew had the tumor removed from his vertebrae, returned to his job as a deputy with the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office as soon as he was able to, and continues to fight the cancer. “He’s my hero,” Ed said. “Just like he did ultras, he always had a smile and a joke, even though I could tell he was hurting. And he’s just like that now… never a single word of pity about himself.”

An engineer by trade who studied forest engineering at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and earned his master’s in geotechnical engineering at University at Buffalo, Ed had thought about hiking the Appalachian Trail plenty of times. He and Tim Huneck had talked about the ambitious thru-hike through 14 states from Georgia to Maine, but both decided it would require too much time away from their families.

Two years ago, Ed reflected on how he was living his life in the aftermath of Andrew’s paralysis. He was doing the survival shuffle. “I could do it pretty good. I kept a smile on my face, but it’s no way to live,” Ed said. “I said, ‘I’ve got to change something. I’ve got to do something big,’ and so I chose the Appalachian Trail. As soon as I did that, things changed. It was good for me.”

Last summer and fall, he hiked entire 2,180-plus-mile trail in just under four months (four months and two weeks counting three weeks he spent at home healing a stress fracture). Because the pandemic’s nationwide shutdown derailed his plans to start in the spring and hike the traditional route from south to north, he decided to retire from Dente Engineering in July and start a few days later on July 9 at Mount Katahdin in Maine. He finished atop Springer Mountain in Georgia on November 24, just in time for Thanksgiving two days later. “Springer Mountain’s one of those little peaks that’s in the woods, no real view, so I thought that it was going to be anticlimactic getting to the end there,” he said. “When I got to the top there, I cried like a little baby.”

His wife, Chris, told him she had never seen him so happy and suggested he do it again from south to north. Ed said he was considering it and thought he could do it faster. “This is just me,” he said of treating it like a race. “I don’t want to liken it to a race, because it’s not a race, but it’s almost like an ultramarathon because everybody out there helped and looked out for each other,” he explained. “The aid stations, I would call them, were unknown destinations… You’re going along and all of a sudden you’d see a cooler that’s got a Gatorade or a soda in it.”

Once, when he was out of water somewhere in Virginia, he came to a road, and a car stopped abruptly. The driver jumped out wearing a purple bathrobe and asked him if he was a thru-hiker and wanted a beer. “I said, ‘Well, that would be great, but do you have water, too?’” Ed recalled. “He said, ‘Yeah, I have lots of water!’ We start walking to his car and then from the other side of the road, this old man walks over and says, ‘Are you looking for water?’ and he took me over to this big water source that had opened up. Things like that happened all the time out there, where right when you needed something, it was there.”

Another time, when Ed was running low on food, a hiker gave him all of his food then drove 20 miles to get him two breakfast sandwiches and a Coke. He snuck a $20 bill in for Ed as well. “I know it’s corny, but it restored my faith in humanity,” he said.

He mostly hiked alone, while also feeling like he was never alone. Ed had the company of his daughter Emily, her husband Chris Chromczak, and their two children, Sophie and Eddy, for the three highest peaks in Maine (Katahdin), New Hampshire (Washington), and Massachusetts (Greylock). His grandkids were 9 and 7 at the time, and they’ve already completed more than half of New York’s 46 High Peaks.

On May 29, the day before the Miles to Mohawk marathon, Ed planned to accompany Eddy in the 1.6-mile kids’ race up Pok-O-Moonshine Mountain. That, in itself, wouldn’t be easy. “He’s not slow,” Ed said.

This summer and fall, he has plans for more hikes, like Vermont’s Long Trail and the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, possibly with Tim Huneck. He’s also looking to get back into cycling after taking a hiatus from bike racing for the last 12 years due to injury. “He’s a great guy,” Tim said of Gravelle. “He’s very good natured. He’s always upbeat, always positive, doesn’t have anything bad to say about anyone, just a good person.”

Alex Kochon (alexkochon@gmail.com) is the executive director of the Common Roots Foundation in South Glens Falls, a freelance writer and editor, and outdoor-loving mom of two who enjoys adventuring in the Adirondacks.