Starting at 10 a.m. on June 9, 1972, Gil Rocha ran a mile, four laps around Dos Pueblos High’s 440-yard track, in five minutes and four seconds. He carried a baton that he handed to Tom Phillips, who also ran a mile, in 4:53. The baton was passed to eight more runners — Dale Nickel, Joe Szerwo, Joe Lambert, Tom Kelsey, Craig Bjorkman, Carl Udesen, Mark Pruner and Doug Hopwood, who finished his mile at 10:49 a.m.
Then it was Rocha’s turn to run again, starting another cycle of miles by the 10 DP distance runners. And so it went for the rest of the day and through the night — with Phillips and Lambert consistently cranking out sub-5:00 miles — until exactly 10 a.m. the next day, as Nickel was rounding the final turn of the team’s 1,106th lap.
The Chargers had run 276 miles, 769 yards — the distance from Goleta to San Jose — breaking the high school record in the Runner’s World 24-Hour Relay. The previous record was 271 miles, 1,217 yards — established in 1971 by a DP team that included nine of the boys who ran in 1972.
