ADAMS TWP - A lot of life is simply about going the distance. And Harry Kirsch has the stamina to do it.

It's what keeps him on the seat of his stationary bicycle during his regular workouts.

Kirsch pedals about the same distance each day - around 135 miles. If he were running rather than riding, his feet would be carrying him the equivalent of 32 miles each day, more than a marathon. Mileage on a bike compared to foot travel is a 4:1 ratio.

Kirsch would know this because, until recently, he was a marathon man. Last year he sustained a hip fracture while training for the Marine Corps Marathon. The event would have been his 50th certified marathon race. The stress injury sidelined him from long distance running, something he had been doing six days a week.

A former Marine, Kirsch had chosen the Marine Corps Marathon as his first long distance race when he first took up running at age 57. He was 58 at the time of his inaugural marathon and finished in three hours and 33 minutes.

Last year, he was to have run the Marine Corps marathon for the 18th time, coincidentally on the occasion of his 80th birthday. He also has run the Boston Marathon six times as well as other well known long-distance races

With pins in his hip and crutches under his arms last October, Hirsch came home from the hospital and realized running around North Park, his usual haunt, wasn't going to happen right away. That's when he got on his Schwinn AirDyne exercise bike and pedaled 50 miles the first day of his at-home convalescence.

He attended physical therapy sessions after hip surgery and got a chuckle from the therapists' disbelief in his stamina on the treadmill. He and they finally reached an agreement he would be doing more than originally expected. Far more - particularly when it came to riding the stationary bike.

"The stationary bike is nice; it moves the upper body," said Kirsch, who no longer has to mind the weather to make the miles. Kirsch said he rides about "60 miles in the morning, four hours non-stop with just a sip of juice every 10 miles. I'll do 10 or 20 miles in the afternoon and the rest in the evening."

He knows of nobody else who does what he does, not after a hip fracture and certainly not at 81 years old.

"I'm still running, maybe just five miles," a distance he likens to be no more substantial than a piece of candy. "Ten miles is nothing to me." Kirsch's trips around North Park are weekend events, now that he has devoted more time to the Airdyne stationary bike inside his farmhouse in Adams Township.

"Biking doesn't have the impact of running. It's better for your body with fewer injuries to your knees and back," he said. His greater mileage takes more hours to complete, but he does save on the daily drive time between his home and North Park.

Kirsch's clock has the same number of hours as everybody else's but he manages to have more time than most because he spends less time in the bed. "I've been an early riser all my life. I'm up by 5 a.m. and I don't get into bed until midnight."

He also said he hasn't turned on his television since April. When he mounts his stationary bike, "I turn the radio on, but I don't really hear it.

"Throughout my whole life, whatever I get involved in, I just keep going. I'm the marathon type. If you told me to do 200 miles on the bike, I'd do it; the legs just keep turning. Four hours might seem like a long time, but the next thing you know, you're there," said Kirsch of his routine morning stint.

When he's not racking up the miles in one manner, he's doing it another. Kirsch mows about 50 acres of land all summer long on his farmstead. "I work around the house and farm all the time," he said. That's when he's not volunteering his time with the Evans City food bank, as he has for the past 20 years.Wiry, and yes, buff, he still fits into his World War II era Marine dress blues and admits with a laugh, "Horses eat less than I do." The instrument panel on his exercise bike calculates the number of calories he burns on a ride. On an average ride, he converts 4,000 calories into motion.Lucky for him, he doesn't have to spend his time preparing the fuel for his body. "My neighbor brings me food, she feeds me all the time," he said. And every day, he takes his evening meal with his nearby son and daughter-in-law."I'm my doctor's favorite patient," he said. Kirsch neither wears glasses nor hearing aids and doesn't take much in the way of medicine. "I think he really takes care of himself," said Dr. Katherine Ke, his physician and a fellow runner."I use him as a role model for a lot of my patients I tell them it's never too late to start. (Kirsch) started in his 50s and runs four marathons a year until just recently. He's can example of how you can do it. He's determined and really inspiring."We know regular exercise can reverse the processes we normally associate with aging, and I believe good health and physical fitness go hand-in-hand. Genetic programming doesn't mean you can't become flexible," added Ke.Despite thousands of miles of bone-jarring running over the past 25-years, Kirsch doesn't complain of knee or back pain. And it's fair to say he's got a year or two on his fellow North Park runners with whom he has made countless circuits on the park's roadways.Many of those fellow runners are members of Hot Harry's North Park Runners. The running club, of which he is president, was named for him by those inspired by his stamina, dedication to the sport, and by the three hours, 33 minutes it took him to finish his first marathon after only taking up running a year earlier.Hot Harry Kirsch even has a monument to his stick-to-it nature in North Park. It was put there by Hot Harry's North Park Runners and for all runners who use the park to measure out the miles.Located near the J.C. Stone Field, the spot has a drinking fountain to quench the thirst of runners, a bench to rest upon if they need a break, flowers to please their eye and a bronze plaque to inspire them. It's paved with Belgian stone plucked from streets in Pittsburgh. During his working life, Kirsch made innumerable trips driving a trolley and later a bus around the city.