accomplished in Newark, New Jersey. He won the first six-day race in history, in 1875 that was held in P.T. Barnum's Hippodrome in New York City. Weston spent 8 years touring Europe, starting in 1876 in England where he challenged England's racewalking champion to a 24-hour, 115 mile ultramarathon. The Englishman quit 14 hours and 65.6 miles into the race, but Weston walked the full 24 hours and covered 109.5 miles. His performance caused a bit of a controversy when he later admitted to having been chewing coca leaf throughout much of the race. In 1879 he defeated the British champion "Blower" Brown, in a 550-mile (890 km) match which he walked in 141 hours 44 minutes, winning him the prestigious Astley Belt. In March 1884 he completed his Temperance walk of 5000 miles in 100 days, excluding Sundays, with a meeting at the Royal Victoria Coffee Hall, Lambeth, chaired by Dr Norman Kerr. In April 1906, Weston walked from Philadelphia to New York, a distance of over 100 miles, in less than 24 hours. In 1907, at the age of 68, Weston repeated his Maine-to-Chicago walk of 1867, beating his own time by over 24 hours. In 1909, he walked 4,000 miles, from New York to San Francisco, in 100 days. His last great journey was in 1913, when he walked 1546 miles (2488 km) from New York to Minneapolis in 51 days. Weston spent most of the remainder of his life urging others to take up walking for exercise and competition. He warned that automobiles were making people lazy and sedentary. Death Weston was severely injured when he was struck by a New York City taxicab in 1927, and never walked again. He died in his sleep at his Brooklyn home on May 12, 1929. Weston was buried at St. John Cemetery in Queens. Legacy Weston was the subject of a 2012 biography, A Man in a Hurry, described by U.S. sports writer Brian Phillips as "a spectacularly entertaining book." A career biography, Weston, Weston, Rah-Rah-Rah!, was also published in 2012. References External links Edward Payson Weston at Flickr Commons Six-Day Race – Part 2: Edward Payson Weston (1870-1874) at Ultrarunning History Further reading Edward Payson Weston. The pedestrian: being a correct journal of "incidents" on a walk from the state house, Boston, Massachusetts, to the U.S. Capitol, at Washington, D.C., performed in "ten consecutive days", between February