John Bingham

(This piece is for my latest book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from September 1998.)

MEET THE PENGUIN. The Runner’s World writing staff is not a big, happy family. We aren’t unhappy either, but aren’t a family at all. Some of us hardly know each other.

The wonders of the computer age let most of us writers live anywhere, and we’re everywhere: Hal Higdon in Indiana, Don Kardong in Washington, Liz Applegate in California, Marc Bloom in New Jersey.

The closest we come to a staff meeting is leading the RW Pacing Groups at one or two marathons a year. I’ve visited the home office in Pennsylvania only twice, and never in the past 10 years. I meet the other writers one or two at a time at races, if at all.

I’d never run across our newest columnist until this summer. I knew John Bingham only as the “The Penguin,” the persona he has adopted in his column.

In two years of appearances in the magazine he has gathered a huge following. He’s now making his second cross-country tour to meet and entertain his fans. 

Last summer he traveled for two months by motorcycle. This year he’s driving a car and staying out longer, 12 weeks in all.

One stop – between San Francisco and Salt Lake City – was Jeff Galloway’s camp at Lake Tahoe. I happened to be there too.

I knew nothing more about him than his name and nickname, and how he spends his summers. I’d seen only one picture of him, a group shot that revealed little. I expected from The Penguin a brash young pup in his 30s, somewhat outsized in height and bulk.

Up walked an almost-50-year-old with a graying mustache and round glasses that give him a look of surprise. He introduced himself by his given name, not the acquired nickname.

John Bingham is unimposing physically, at 5-8 and 140 pounds. He once was 100 pounds heavier, this during his career as a professional musician and then a Ph.D. student.

His running started at age 43. He now has dropped to part-time teaching of music at Middle Tennessee State University and risen to a starring role in the Second Running Boom. Besides his Runner’s World column, speaking tour and heavily visited website, he has a book in the works with Simon & Schuster.

When John steps in front of an audience, the quiet-spoken college prof disappears, and he becomes The Penguin. He doesn’t lecture or converse on stage. He performs.

Running writing, and by extension speaking, can use more humor. The Penguin supplies it, especially when he performs live.

His is one of the most hilarious acts I’ve ever seen on the running circuit. This is standup comedy worthy of the Improv. His listeners don’t giggle or titter politely, but double over with laughter that brings happy tears to their eyes.

The Penguin is no buffoon, though. Behind his humor lies an invitation to everyone, of any size and speed, to fit as comfortably into this sport as he did at his start.

He says that much more unites the fast and the slow, the skinny and the heavy, than separates us. We can be one big, happy family when we get to know each other.

UPDATE. In 1999, John Bingham published The Courage to Start. It quickly became one of the best-selling books in the sport.

He has graduated from Runner’s World to become an business unto himself: writing, speaking, announcing at races. You can visit him at his website, johnbingham.com.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Memory Laps, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]