It isn’t unusual for a middle-aged family man to want to get out of the house now and again, kick back a little and just get away from it all. Jeff Flick isn’t any different.

Well, actually, he is.

Flick, a 1977 Harbor graduate, appreciates his time alone; he just appreciates it more when he’s on the run. And run he does, like the battery bunny, he just keeps going and going and going.

So far this year, Flick has been maintaining a race-a-month pace. That might not seem like a lot, but all three races have covered 50 kilometers (31 miles).

He’s got another one coming this month, a 50-mile race in June, a second 50-miler on July 12 and a 50K two weeks later. Then he’s running in a 100K race on Aug. 2. All of which should help him be in shape for 100-mile Wasatch Front on Sept. 8. The Wasatch will be Flick’s first try at a 100-mile race, so he’s not really sure what to expect for a time.

“Well, you have to finish in 36 hours or they pull you from the race,” he said. “If I could do it in 30 hours, I’d be thrilled. The woman who won last year (Liz Irving) finished in a little over 23 hours and set the women’s record. But she’s pretty quick.”

Kyle Skaggs, the 2007 men’s champion, finished in 19:35:14.

Flick, who lives in Salt Lake City, won’t have to travel far to reach the 100-mile race. But he will have to cover a lot of ground once he reaches Wasatch Mountains. The course runs from Layton, Utah to Midway, Utah, and has its share of ups and downs. By the time the runners finish, they will have surmounted a cumulative elevation gain of 26,882 feet and made their way down a cumulative elevation loss of 26,131 feet.

All of which helps explain Flick’s heavy racing schedule this year. The best place to train for a distance race, he said, is in a distance race. The long runs are a necessary part of his training, and it’s nice to have the ancillary services available when he’s putting in all those miles.

“You’ve got to do a lot of training,” Flick said. “And sometimes you’ve got to get out and do some distance work, and the races make it easy. When you get out in the mountains by yourself, there are no water stations and no food. And in a race, if something happens, they eventually come looking for you.”

The son of Jane and the late Clifford Flick grew up in the Harbor and played tennis for the Mariners.

“We did the things kids did then,” he said. “We rode our bikes and went to the beach. I wasn’t much of a tennis player and didn’t play in college except some intramurals.”

Flick pursued his studies at Miami of Ohio and did his graduate work at Washington University in St. Louis, eventually earning his Ph.D. While he was studying in St. Louis, Flick also started to compete in triathlons. He swam, biked and ran his way through 30 or so triathlons before turning his attention to long-distance running.

“I was living in California, in the Bay Area, and I heard about the Western States 100,” Flick said. “It sounded crazy.”

Flick now works for Myriad Genetics, in the pharmaceutical division, where he is involved with drug development. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children, Nathan, 13, Abbey, 11, and Evan, 6.