On July 24, Travis Lundell and five of his friends from high school, toed the line of the Speedy Spaniard in Spanish Fork in remembrance of a friend who passed away last May.
Hyrum Shell, 46, died from injuries sustained when a vehicle struck his motorcycle on SR-6 near milepost 145.
According to police reports, the incident happened just after 10 p.m. on May 10 when Shell and his wife were pulled off to the side of the road due to mechanical issues. Shell was then struck by an oncoming vehicle and died instantly.
“He got off to see what was going on, and his wife got off a little further off the road and then a vehicle veered off the road and took Hyrum’s life,” Lundell reported, adding that he wished he had more time with his friend.
“You shake your head because you’re like, ‘He should be here,’ Lundell told Serve Daily. “You don’t know when it’s your turn to go and you hope people remember you for the good you left behind and that’s what we tried to do.”
Shell was a Spanish Fork High School graduate from the class of ‘98, and Lundell was just a year ahead of him. The two ran on the cross-country team together. So, when he heard the news of his friend’s tragic passing, Lundell knew he wanted to do something to pay tribute to the life he lived and the time they spent together.
“As we were thinking of ways to honor him, I thought, maybe we could do a Ragnar with our old high school buddies, but we decided to do the Speedy Spaniard to honor Hyrum,” Lundell said. “We decided to run it as a group and have the slowest runner set the pace. We had six of us in total, but there were a lot more who wanted to be there, but couldn’t. Hyrum was our seventh runner.”
Lundell spoke to the “kind of guy” Shell was, saying that he was someone who always checked in on his friends.
“Hyrum was a kid who had a great sense of humor,” Lundell said. “He was always your cheerleader, your champion and he pumped up the team. As we got older, Hyrum was the one who would always reach out with a ‘Happy birthday.’ His friendship to the guys from the team endured beyond graduation through personal texts, DMs, and other means to let you know he was thinking of you.”
During the Speedy Spaniard, which Lundell admitted was a little less “speedy” than usual due to aging bodies, they remembered moments spent with their friend.
“There were a couple memories that were brought up during the run,” Lundell said. “One was when (Hyrum) showed up with an iron-shaped burn mark on his polyester jersey because he didn’t know you couldn’t iron a polyester jersey. He didn’t have anything else to run with, so he just ran with the iron iron mark on his jersey.
“There were other quirks,” he continued. “When he would run behind you, he would breathe really heavily. We talked about that. It just kind of made us laugh thinking of these things.”
Lundell said that doing this run with friends, in remembrance of Shell, was “therapeutic.”
“It’s therapeutic to talk about him and we wish everybody could hear his laugh and see his smile because as soon as he died, that was in my head,” he said. “As soon as I found out the news, I thought, that infectious laugh is gone, but it’s still here. It’s still in my head and that’s what I’ll remember. It was a good, little run and it brought us together. It was good to realize the blessing we had of running together in high school because these guys are really upstanding men.”
With the race now behind them, Lundell said that he hopes that they make it an annual tradition, adding that he will always remember his friend gone too soon.
“When somebody passes away, we like to remember what they brought to this world and Hyrum definitely brought happiness.”
