Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
OREM — Grant Holdaway retired last year, but it’s hard to tell. After more than 50 years of doing business, he closed his Vineyard Garden Center, but the 85-year-old still spends 12 hours a day, six days a week tending to his “little” two-acre garden.
He still lives the motto he taught his children.
“Our motto up here was ‘hoe to the end of the row,’” he says. “It means whatever job you have you finished it.”
Holdaway has always gone the extra mile. He worked two full-time jobs — teaching school and running the garden center. He opened the business so he could teach his kids the value of hard work.
He still goes the extra mile. He grows fruits and vegetables to help neighbors in need and to provide extra income for former employees.
Sometimes, however, he goes the extra 50 miles.
When Holdaway was 67 years old he read an article about the Wasatch 100, a 100-mile run, and decided he wanted to take up ultramarathon running.
“I thought I'd like to try it,” he says. “It just intrigued me.”
He started running-walking 50- and 100-mile races.
Of course, even on the race course, he hoed to the end of the row.
When he was 72, he was one mile from the finish line of the Wasatch 100 but had only 10 minutes to get there — any longer and he would have been disqualified. He was not, however, one to run a 10-minute mile, especially after running 99.
“We gave it all we got and we got down to where the finish line was and I give it all I had and I just crossed the finish line and later I found out I had about one minute to spare,” he says. “I collapsed on the ground and I heard this little boy’s voice, ‘Is he dead?’” Holdaway laughs.
“You have to almost train your subconscious self,” he says. “There was something that said ‘you just got to rest, Grant. You just gotta rest.’ And then there something else that says ‘get up and get going.’
“It's pitting yourself against a very hard goal,” he says. “Just something in me that says if I prepare it right can do it.”
“So I don't know whether it's genetic or just the fact that I've always felt like I ought to make use of my time no matter whatever I'm doing whether it's farming or scouting or running,” he says.
Holdaway no longer runs 100-mile races — he no longer moves fast enough to finish them in the allotted time — but he still takes on 50-milers. This month he ran, or rather fast-walked, the Orem Boy Scouts of America 50/20 — 50 miles in 20 hours. Walking through the night, he made it with an hour to spare.
Holdaway and his kids and grandkids last year reclaimed their Guinness world record for the most family members competing in an ultramarathon.
“The weeds, weeds everywhere, weeds and weeds and more weeds!”
Holdaway, his back bent over by age, spends a warm sunny morning removing unwanted guests from his garden.
The work, he says, is a lot like running ultramarathons.
“You just have to endure and endure and endure ’till you get to the end of the row,” he says. “That's a good motto for everyone.” With more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, Peter is a skilled reporter, producer, and editor. He's won the National Press Photographers Association Reporting Award, as well as national NPPA editing and photography awards and six regional Emmys.
