Running Bio - Part 1 Becoming a Runner

The Early Years:  1974-1977 While I’ve been on the metaphorical injured reserve list with a prolonged case of PFPS (patella-femoral pain syndrome), I’ve had time to reflect on what I’m missing.  Part of that reflection has been to look back on the experiences and lessons learned in over 35 years of competitive running.  A shelf full of training diaries covering most of those years has provided some real data to ground my rosy recollections. Road racing in 1975... I was pack fill in most races. Here I'm chasing to rejoin the peleton after being dropped yet again on a hill.  How I Became a Runner.  I missed out on athletics in high school and college.  There was no tradition of sports in my family and I had no reason to believe I might have some talent for endurance sports.  My entry to sport came after college with a Schwinn Varsity ten-speed I bought for transportation in 1970 while living in Atlanta, GA.  Cyclists I met on group rides with the local bike club encouraged me to do a Century Ride.  Soon an imported road bike replaced the Varsity and a good friend talked me into trying a road race.  That led to many more road races and time trials, working in a bike shop and in the summer of 1974, moving to Auburn, AL to manage a bike shop.  I did my first running in the fall of 1973 and winter 1974 in a test of running as off-season cross training for cycling.  That low-key approach to running changed later in 1974 when one of my cycling friends challenged me to join him in running a marathon.    Marathons in the 1970s.  Frank Shorter’s gold medal win in the Munich Olympic Marathon in 1972 is frequently credited as the catalyst of the 1970’s running boom.  Of course, it was bigger than just Shorter’s gold medal… at Munich in 1972 Kenny Moore finished 4th and Jack Bacheler was 9th.  And four years later at Montreal, Shorter finished 2nd and Don Kardong finished 4th.  America seemed to own the marathon in the 70s.  Millions of Americans were inspired by these heroic feats and thousands of them took up the challenge of the marathon.  Over time the marathon would morph into the mass migration charity runs that we know today.  In the 1970s there were relatively few marathons and the fields in each were largely limited to serious runners.  Finishing on the track at the 1974 Peach Bowl 42k. Not owning any running gear, I did the race in cycling shorts and jersey. My first marathon was the 1974 Peach Bowl Marathon.  The race time limit was 4 hours and when I finished it in 3:42, I was near the back of the field of 122 finishers.  The next year, when I finished in 2:55, I was the 53rd of 119 finishers.  For comparison, the same time in the 2010 Atlanta Marathon would have placed 15th overall of 2155 finishers! The Boston Marathon introduced its first qualifying standard in 1970 to limit the field size.  When I ran Boston in 1976 and 1977, the 18-34 qualifying time was 3:00 and was further dropped to 2:50 in 1978 (today it’s back up to a much easier 3:10).  The 1976 official results from Boston only list the 1131 men and 28 women who finished in under 3:30.  In 1978 the official time limit was extended to four hours and the record book lists 2219 men and 102 women as official finishers.  The small number of women finishers reflects the fact that women were not allowed to enter the Boston Marathon officially until 1972 and, until the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the longest women’s race in the Olympics was the 1500-meters. How did so many marathoners in the 70s manage to break three hours?  My theory is that it mostly had to do with our goals and expectations.  If you were a young man running marathons in the 70s, your goal after the first one was to break three hours.  It was an achievable challenge and would qualify you for Boston.  Some of your running friends had probably already done it or were also trying to do it.  You expected to be able to do it and were willing to do the training to make it happen. Road Races in the 1970s.  It is perhaps a little dangerous to generalize from a single year and a single city but I found a 1977 Atlanta Track Club Road Race Schedule in my files.  For March through December, the schedule listed 20 events, most with two or more race distances, but without even one 5k among them.  Instead the schedule offered a eclectic mix of race distances, many of which are not available today:  4 miles, 5 miles, 6 miles, 10k, 7 miles, 8 miles, 9 miles, 15k, 10 miles, 20k, half marathon, 25k, 30k and 20 miles.  Race entry fees were $1 except for the July 4th Peachtree Road Race. I ran in the 1976 edition of the Peachtree Road Race.  That year the race hit the big time (as befits a premium $2 entry fee).  When most races in Atlanta had only a few hundred runners, Peachtree had 2,300 and Olympian Don Kardong won.  The following year the field swelled to 6,500 and in 1980 the entries had to be limited to 25,000.  Note:  Unlike today, almost all of the road races available to a runner in the 1970s were promoted by track clubs to provide sporting opportunities for runners, not to raise money for a charity.   Eight Weeks to a First Marathon.  As I mentioned above, in 1974 one of my cycling buddies challenged me to join him in running the Peach Bowl Marathon in December.  During the summer cycling season my running cross training averaged only 5 to 7 miles per week.  After a final bike race at the end of October, I had only eight weeks to get ready for the marathon.  At it turned out, when you have an endurance base built in four years of cycling and you’re 29 years old, it can be done.  My weekly mileages for those eight weeks before a race week taper are listed in the table below.   Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Miles 16 31 32 60 57 51 59 66 Despite the minimal running mileage, my first marathon was fairly easy to complete in 3:42 and left me wanting to do another one with better preparation.  Two Sports, Two Seasons.  As shown in the accompanying chart, through the winter and spring of 1975 I continued running about 20 miles per week as cross training while my cycling increased to about 200 miles per week in March and to the 250-300 range for the primary summer racing season.  The diversion to run the first marathon in the fall of 1974 and the running cross training continued through March appeared to help my cycling.  My race performances were at least equal to those of 1974 and I set personal bests in 25-mile time trials in May and again in early September. I then successfully shifted almost completely to marathon training… going from 0 to 85 miles per week in eight weeks and continuing to average 85 miles per week for the eight weeks before the 1975 Peach Bowl Marathon.  I ran 47 minutes faster than the year before (2:55:16 for 53rd out of 119 finishers).  Totals:  8,933 miles cycling; 1481 miles running As can be seen in the graph, it is quite possible to have strong racing reasons in two sports in one year.  And, if you come out of the cycling season at a high level of aerobic fitness, you can run a fast marathon on only 16 weeks training... 8 weeks to build up to an adequate weekly mileage and 8 more weeks to get race fit. Running Takes Over.  The 2:55:16 finish in my second marathon did three things:  1) got me into the top half of the field, 2) qualified me for the Boston Marathon and 3) hooked me on running as my primary sport.  The lure of running Boston kept me running through the winter and early spring of 1976.  I backed up the Peach Bowl result with a 2:59 in the hilly Stone Mountain Marathon in February.  At Boston, it was over 90 degrees at the start in Hopkinton and, in hindsight, I feel pretty good about the 3:02 I ran that day.  I then had a final and abbreviated 15-week cycling season before again ramping up the running in early August.  After a rapid build up, I averaged 86 miles per week for the eight weeks before the AAU National Championship Marathon in Crawley, LA where I set my all-time marathon PR with a 2:50:08 for 50th place of 411 finishers.  Totals:  3,060 miles cycling; 3031 miles running Training without a Plan.  In the beginning about all I knew about training for a marathon was one simple fact:  the top guys ran well over 100 miles per week.  One hundred miles in a week takes just over 14 miles per day assuming no days off.  Running was considered to be 8 minute pace or better.  If you went slower, that was jogging and you didn’t want to be called a jogger. So my basic routine evolved… run every day, frequently running twice a day to get in enough miles each day to stay on schedule to complete 90 to 100 miles each week, doing every run at the same pace and working hard to get all of those miles under 8 minutes per mile.  Speed work came from shorter races run every couple weeks.  Easy days or rest days had no p;ace in the routine… I cut back only when forced to by fatigue, illness or injury. For Want of a Coach.  When you love something, it is all too easy to overdo it.  Over the eight weeks between the National Championship Marathon and the Peach Bowl Marathon I ran five races while still maintaining an average of 85 miles per week.  Those races weren’t controlled workouts; I ran personal bests for 10k, the half marathon and 20 miles.  By the time I got to the season-ending Peach Bowl Marathon, I was well past my peak and had to dig deep to get through the race in 2:53:55, a slight improvement on the year before that came at a high price.  A coach would have insisted on my taking a couple of easy weeks after the National Championship Marathon and would have held me out of the 20 mile and half marathon in favor of being fresh for the Peach Bowl Marathon.  Doing so might have saved me from the physical and mental burnout that came in the spring of 1977. The End is Near.  My recovery after the Peach Bowl race was slow and incomplete.  My log shows that I eventually got my mileage back up into the 80-100 mile range but the comments I wrote at the time revealed a story of deep fatigue and a lingering malaise.  I remember to this day how bad I felt and how hard it was to complete runs that had been a joy to do a few months before. In the spring of 1977, I did three long races and a highly memorable relay.  In February, without any specific training or strategy for running beyond the marathon, I started my first ultramarathon.  Everything that could go wrong did and I dropped out at 35 miles, having bonked and been hobbled by aching muscles and bloody socks.  It would be four years before I again attempted an ultramarathon. In March while on a trip to Los Angeles, I ran the Los Angeles Marathon, finishing 45th in 3:05:41.  In April I again ran Boston.  That year the weather was only comfortably warm, not the oven-baked feel of the year before.  Running mostly on fumes and muscle memory, I just managed to get under three hours. My Favorite Relay.  Back in the 70s before Runner’s World was sold to Rodale, then publisher Bob Anderson came up with a bizarre idea that took off:  “Let’s do a 24-hour relay, 10 runners to a team, a mile at a time in a set order, seeing how many miles we can total.”  Teams came together in almost every state and gave the new, made-up event a try.  High school and college teams found it remarkably effective for team building.  Clubs put together teams and found it was great fun.  Results were reported to Runner’s World and records for each state were kept.  As I recall, ten distance runners at an Olympic development camp set the “world record” of 295 miles, 269 yards. In May, I had the good fortune to be one of ten men on a team of Auburn area runners who set out to break the existing Alabama record.  The basic routine was: 1) run a hard mile (sub-five for the horses on the team, sub-six for the rest of us), 2) rest or snooze fitfully for less than 50 minutes, 3) return to step 1.  Weird things happened in the middle of the night… hallucinations, runners starting their miles half asleep and running like it.  Despite the challenges, we had a great time and easily set a new Alabama record with 258.4 miles.  That’s a 5:34 average pace for 24 hours. Just as the marathon has changed since the 1970s, the 24 Hour Relay gradually morphed into the non-competitive charity events put on by the American Cancer Society and Easter Seals.  And, because the era of competitive 24-hour relays predates the World Wide Web, the records of those races exist only in the memories of those who were there. The End of Part 1.  In June 1977 I followed my wife to Los Angeles, CA when she accepted a terrific job in that city.  For practical purposes, the move put my running career on the back burner for several years.  Stay tuned for Part 2 next month.