Founder, Director Emeritus

Roy Benson

Since 1976, he has held a national certification as a Fitness Instructor from the American College of Sports Medicine. He has presented several hundred professional papers and lectures for academic and popular audiences.

He currently serves as a Special Contributor for Running Times magazine with a monthly readership of over 250,000 serious runners. His newest book "Heart Rate Training" was published by Human Kinetics in the Spring of 2011.

Coach Benson ran competitively for over 45 years with personal bests of 1:52.7 for 800 meters and 4:19.8 for the mile. As a master's runner, he ran 36:06 for 10k, 17:22 for 5k, 4:52 for the mile and qualified for the Boston marathon with a 3:09:05 PR at age 40.

He coached at the University of Florida from 1969 to 1979 as head X-C coach for seven years and head T & F coach for three years. For 16 years, 1993 to 2008, he served as Community Coach at Marist School (a 2A size private school) in Atlanta where his girls and boys teams won 16 state class 4A X-C championships and individual runners won a total of 20 state titles in x-c and track.

He also founded the popular Smoky Mountain Running Camp 46 years ago.