Jacqueline Hansen

(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 May 1984.)

TRIALS AND DENIALS. Long before this day arrived, Jacqueline Hansen knew April 16^th, 1984, would be important to her. Long after it passed, she would remember the day with emotions more mixed than she could have imagined.

Hansen had been in a race against time, and time would run out on April 16^th. That was the final day of qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials. Jacqueline felt she must qualify for the later event that she helped make possible.

She once held the women’s world record at this distance. But injuries, one requiring surgery, and kept her from running the required 2:51:16 qualifying time between the last Boston Marathon and the latest one. Boston, on April 16^th, was her last chance to gain entry to the first such trials.

No one had played a greater part in securing a place for women marathoners on the Olympic program than this woman who lives just off the Santa Monica portion of the 1984 Olympic course. She spent most of 10 years on this project, often at the expense of her own running.

Marathon approval didn’t satisfy Jacqueline Hansen. She said, “We were after parity with men – the whole package of 5000, 10,000 and marathon.” One out of three isn’t bad, but it isn’t enough.”

Hansen worked on, arguing that “acceptance of the marathon is all the more reason why the 5000 and 10,000 should be on the program. The women now have a 39,000-meter gap between their two longest races.

“Those who fall into that gap must make the unfair and drastic choice between stepping down to a very short distance [the 3000] or up to a very long one [the marathon] -- a choice that male runners don’t face.

“It is all very fine that these distances are now recognized as world-record events for women, but the 10,000 won’t be a World Championships event until 1987 or an Olympic race until at least ’88. At this rate, the 5000 won’t be added until the 21^st century.”

Hansen couldn’t accept this dawdling pace of “progress.” She sought and got approval from dozens of world-class women athletes to sue for their right to run the five and 10 in the Los Angeles Games. She enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union to file the suit, charging sex discrimination.

ACLU attorney Susan McGreivy characterized the Games as “a very, very expensive restaurant where a dinner costs thousands of dollars.” Few people can pay that price, she said but no one who can afford it should be denied access. “In the same manner, qualified women should not be denied participation in the 5000- and 10,000-meter events.”

Seven months later, the 82 women runners (from 26 nations) signed by Hansen as plaintiffs in the case had their day in court. That day was April 16^th, 1984, when Hansen’s loyalties were divided.

She knew she belonged in the Los Angeles courtroom to hear the judge’s decision. But she also knew she had to make one last run at qualifying for the Olympic Trials.

The day in Boston was miserable, particularly for a Californian. Marathoners ran into a wind gusting to 30 miles an hour. Rain fell, making the temperature feel colder than the 40s.

Hansen gave the marathon all she had, and it was enough. She ran more than three minutes faster than required, and finished in the grip of hypothermia.

Meanwhile, back home in California that same afternoon, a U.S. district judge handed down his decision on the lawsuit. Jacqueline heard the news by phone: “We lost.”

Although the judge David Kenyon expressed sympathy toward the women who had no event to run in the Games, he said no pattern of discrimination could be demonstrated.

Hansen told a reporter on the evening of April 16^th, “I just qualified for the Trials and feel very high about that. Then after the race I got the phone call that our suit was denied. I feel very low about that.”

The suit was not a total loss, however. It gained these women something they didn’t have before: the attention of the sport’s rulers, who traditionally have been more indifferent than hostile.

The time is coming soon, as it did with the marathon, when the women of the 5000 and 10,000 will win the friends they need in the sport’s governing bodies, and everyone will agree to the rightness of these events. Thanks to Jacqueline Hansen, women won’t have to wait until the 21^st century to run events that men have had almost since the 19^th.

UPDATE. The women’s 10,000 joined the Olympic program at Seoul in 1988. Runners in the 5000 debuted at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Jacqueline Hansen didn’t mention the women’s steeplechase in this piece, but her prediction that full parity with the men wouldn’t come until the 21^st century came true. That event finally joined the Olympic program at Beijing 2008.

Hansen ran the 1984 Trials less than four weeks after qualifying at Boston. Her recent memoir is well titled: A Long Time Coming.

[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 Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, 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.]

Miki Gorman

(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 April 2001.)

MARVELOUS MIKI. Precious few runners can win without the special dispensation of age-group racing. For a year or two after turning 40, a very few can still run with the best of any younger age.

This happened a few times before anyone thought to call these runners “masters” or (internationally) “veterans.” Jack Holden of England was 43 when he won the European Championships and Empire Games Marathons in 1950. American Clarence DeMar won his final Boston, in 1930, at age 41. Johnny Kelley made the 1948 U.S. Olympic team at 40.

More recently 41-year-old New Zealander Jack Foster ran to a marathon silver medal at the 1974 Commonwealth Games while setting a long-standing masters record of 2:11:19. Priscilla Welch, 42, of Britain won the overall women’s title at New York City in 1987.

For all Priscilla did as a master in open competition, she wasn’t the first woman to win this way – or the most decorated. That honor goes to Miki Gorman, who did her best racing in the 1970s.

The Road Runners Club of America has elected Miki to its Hall of Fame, class of 2001. She is the first woman selected to this Hall since 1997, and as the country’s most successful master ever at beating the youngsters she’s overdue for induction.

Miki won twice at the New York City Marathon (1976 and 1977) and once at Boston (1977) after turning 40. She PRed shortly after her 41^st birthday with 2:39:11 at New York City. That time stood for 15 years as an American masters record.

Like Priscilla Welch, Miki Gorman was a latecomer to the sport. Both adopted it in their mid-30s after leading interesting but unathletic lives until then.

Priscilla had served in the British Navy. Michiko Suwa was born in China of Japanese parents, then emigrated to the U.S. as an adult, took the nickname Miki and married an American.

Miki came at marathoning from the wrong direction, or at least the non-traditional one. Instead of starting in short races and working up, she began with ultras and came down.

After finishing her Los Angeles club’s 100-mile run – on an indoor track – she began training with coach Laszlo Tabori’s group that included future world record-holder Jacqueline Hansen. Miki set that record first, running 2:46:36 in 1973.

The following spring she won Boston at age 38. Then she took time out to have her only child before returning to do more winning as a master.

Now 65, she is single again and lives with her daughter Danielle in Los Angeles. Miki has returned to running after taking more than a decade off.

“My last marathon was in Japan in 1982,” she tells Jim Oaks of the RRCA. “I didn’t run too much after that until about five years ago when I started back – this time to lose weight. Even though I ate mostly rice and vegetables, I was still eating a lot of junk food.”

Her Hall of Fame selection lets a new generation of runners get to know her. Miki Gorman is now in the company of other women’s running pioneers – Roberta Gibb, Kathrine Switzer, Nina Kuscsik, Jacqueline Hansen – where she has long belonged.

UPDATE. Miki Gorman died in 2015 at age 80. She remains the only American, woman or man, ever to win both the Boston Marathon and New York City as a master.

[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 Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, 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.]

Jacqueline Gareau

(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 November 1996.)

REAL WINNER. You might think that with all my travels through the sport for all these years, I would have bumped into most of running’s big names. Not so. I’ve missed more of these athletes than I have met.

One who got away until this fall was Jacqueline Gareau. We finally talked at the Royal Victoria Marathon, where she was a featured speaker and the honored guest at the pre-race dinner.

She was once the most immediate victim of the sport’s most notorious cheater. But she rose far above Rosie.

It was Jacqueline who crossed the Boston Marathon finish line in 1980 behind the woman whose name we still can’t utter without gagging. Jacqueline was honored belatedly as the first, and still only, Canadian woman to win at Boston.

She comes from Quebec, taught herself English as an adult and now speaks the second language fluently, but still is shy about going public in it. She came to her Victoria talk armed with a thick stack of index cards, carefully printed and color-coded so the words would come out right.

She then talked easily about her running life, seldom glancing at the cue cards. She told of starting to running for exercise (at age 24) and making a marathon her first race (finishing in about 3:40). She would improve by more than an hour.

Jacqueline ran in the first World Championships Marathon for women, placing fifth. But her three Olympic attempts brought frustration and then joy.

She dropped out with an injury at the Los Angeles Games. Three Canadian women ran faster in 1988 and bumped her off the Seoul team. She was training for a final Olympic attempt in 1992 when she learned she was pregnant for the first time at age 39. She says of her now four-year-old son, “He is my gold medal.”

Jacqueline Gareau is the Joan Benoit Samuelson of Canada. The country’s most successful woman marathoner, yes, but also a ground-breaker.

Today’s U.S. women marathoners honor Samuelson for making this road easier for them to take. At the Victoria dinner honoring Gareau, a speaker asked “all you Canadian women who are running the marathon tomorrow, please stand and applaud this woman who made it easier for you to be here.”

About 100 of them stood and cheered. Jacqueline responded, “My heart fills with love for you all.”

UPDATE. I saw Jacqueline Gareau one other time, again at the Victoria Marathon. By then she was competing as a triathlete, working as a massage therapist and coaching distance runners in Quebec. Her website address is jacquelinegareau.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 Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, 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.]

Jeff Galloway

(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 July 2002.)

JEFF’S JUDGES. Jeff Galloway showed up seven hours before the Edmonton Marathon’s start. His fans and followers wouldn’t arrive until later, and for now he was helping to pitch a tent and set up tables and chairs for the day.

Jeff would answer questions and hand out advice and encouragement for hours. No question would be too trivial or repetitive for an answer, and no runner would be too humble for a tip and a good wish.

Watching him in action, you couldn’t imagine a less likely candidate for controversy. A more-interested-in-runners, more-dedicated-to-running guy you’ll never meet.

Jeff Galloway is one of the wise elders of the sport. But a certain group of critics can’t seem to forgive his success in attracting a following. Or for not living in his Olympian past by advising only would-be Olympians. Or for saying it’s okay to be slow and – gasp! – even to walk.

The critics usually haven’t gotten to know Jeff, haven’t read him and haven’t heard him speak. I’ve done all three, which is why the attacks annoy me so.

Jeff is almost a second brother to me – one I see more often than my own brother. And I feel another type of kinship with him.

In the early 1970s I felt some of the wrath that he’s feeling now. My booklet LSD (short for long slow distance) dared to recommend slower, easier training. I never claimed this was the one best way for everyone, only an option for some (like me) who had run into speed traps.

Critics who didn’t know me and never read the booklet cried “heresy.” Some still say that LSD was a plague from which the sport hasn’t fully recovered.

Jeff faces much the same criticism, but more so. With hundreds of times more runners now than I dealt with in the early 1970s, there are that many more potential critics. Some of their comments are more harsh than any I ever heard.

Honest disagreement is expected and encouraged. But when it turns too personal, it must be exposed and answered.

Speaking out recently in a widely read publication was Robert Johnson. With twin brother Weldon he fills the LetsRun.com website, but this time Robert wrote for FootNotes, the RRCA’s magazine. He is its new “State of the Sport” columnist.

He devoted six of his first 12 paragraphs to Jeff Galloway. This wasn’t an expression of devotion.

Johnson’s column began mildly: “Before I rip him to shreds, let me first give him some high praise. Galloway has helped more people finish a marathon than anyone in the history of the world, and for this he should be commended...

“My problem with Galloway is that he promotes the notion that finishing a marathon with walking breaks is the same as running the entire thing. It is not.”

A difference of opinion; fair enough. But then Johnson shifted from slamming Gallowalks to shredding (his term) Galloway.

“It’s disgraceful,” he wrote, “that a former U.S. Olympic distance runner is dumbing down the sport we all love. Where’s the admiration and respect for the elite competitive athletes who train their butts off and actually run the entire race?”

I’ve appeared with Jeff at races and camps dozens of times. He’s consistently admiring and respectful of hard-training competitors. He simply spends most of his time advising never-to-be-elites.

The term “dumbing down” irritates me. This favorite of certain critics carries the unsavory connotation that anyone who doesn’t aspire to eliteness, or doesn’t advise runners to train and race like the elite is ignorant.

That thinking is doubly wrong, both divisive and untrue. Calling recreational runners harmful to the pros is like saying rec-league basketball hurts the NBA.

Wrapping up his Galloway critique, Robert Johnson turned sarcastic: “I hope the tens of thousands of Galloway disciples don’t have heart attacks if they learn that Jeff actually ran the entire 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials 10K.”

Jeff is perfectly capable of answering the critics himself. But have you noticed that he rarely responds, even to the most wrong-headed and mean-spirited attacks?

Nor does he ask his many friends and followers to defend him. We do it anyway because we believe in him even more than in his methods.

After reading Robert Johnson’s column, longtime Gallowalker Cathy Troisi wrote to FootNotes: “Admiration and respect for the elite competitive athletes who train their butts off has not died. It’s alive and well – at the back of the pack.

“Those of us there, with our longer clock-time performances, have 100-percent appreciation for those who run the entire race. In no way do we minimize what they do and how they do it. We respectfully request that they do the same for our efforts and accomplishments.”

Start with those of their leader, Jeff Galloway. He better than anyone knows the wants and needs of both groups.

UPDATE. More than a dozen years later, not much has changed in this story. Jeff Galloway and the Johnson twins still disagree, while continuing to thrive in their own ways. Jeff’s marathon training plan is one of the most widely followed, and LetsRun.com site is one of the mostly avidly read.

[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 Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, 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.]