Mark Plaatjes

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from September 1993.)

PLAATJES WINS. Call it a victory for the United States if you wish. Say that the gold-medal drought for U.S. men’s distance runners, stretching back to Frank Shorter’s marathon at the Munich Olympics, ended with another marathon in Germany 21 years later.

This was a rare chance to exercise national running pride. But it was more than that, much more.

Above all else I call it a magnificent victory for Mark Plaatjes, the individual. His was a triumph of personal will over political obstacles and racial injustice.

Plaatjes grew up “coloured” in South Africa. His racial bloodlines are mixed, meaning that he was neither fully black nor white in a country where the battle lines between those races were firmly drawn.

He ran a sub-2:09 marathon there. Yet “in my country I was still a second-class citizen.” Worldwide he was a non-person, barred from racing outside his country.

Plaatjes missed opportunities in South Africa because of his skin tone. He missed them abroad because he was held accountable for South African racial policies, which discriminated against him.

His leaving home to live in the U.S. wasn’t opportunistic. He says of conditions that prompted his move, “South Africa was under a state of emergency, and people were being killed left, right and center. They were detained and disappeared.”

Plaatjes was warned he’d be killed if he continued to run races. “I couldn’t have done a thing in my life if it wasn’t for running,” he recalls. “They asked me to give it up, and that was too much.”

Mark, his wife and young daughter (they’ve since had a second girl) came to the U.S. in January 1988. This wasn’t his first time here, and the country hadn’t been too welcoming the first time.

He hadn’t adjusted well to the American South during his brief stay at the University of Georgia. Later he’d come to run the Boston Marathon, only to be denied entry at the last moment because of his nationality.

After his move to Boulder he ran more freely in this country. He won marathons in Los Angeles and Columbus.

But his appeals for early citizenship, which might have allowed him to compete in the 1991 World Championships and 1992 Olympics, were turned down. He was told to wait the customary five years to become a citizen.

His time for world-class racing was running down. He was now 32, and his PR dated from 1985.

Meanwhile conditions back home changed. South Africa returned to world competition.

Plaatjes could have decided to go back to his homeland. Either that or he could have retired and gone to medical school (which, as a practicing physical therapist, he’d considered for years.)

But he preferred to stay in the U.S. and to run internationally as an American. His citizenship papers came through less than a month before he was to leave for the 1993 Worlds in Stuttgart, Germany.

Other U.S. marathoners said no to this trip. The entire men’s 1992 Olympic team begged off, and the women went without a third runner.

Plaatjes wouldn’t have missed this chance. “It will be the end of a long journey,” he said before leaving for Germany. “It will give me a sense of belonging, a sense of identification. From 1988 to this July [1993] I’ve been stateless.

“You can never divorce yourself from the country you grew up in. But I’ve made my commitment to the United States.”

Some may say of his victory in Stuttgart, “Yes, but the best men weren’t there or didn’t finish.” Some may say of him, “Yes, he won, but he’s not truly an American because he wasn’t born here.”

I say that the runners who weren’t there were like those who dropped out. They lost by default.

I say Mark Plaatjes is as fine an individual as we could ever have representing this country. He chose to be here.

UPDATE. The ever-other-year World Championships are second only to the Olympics in quality of competition, and a close second at that – and clearly the best as a pure track meet rather than a political showcase and media extravaganza.

Yet world champions aren’t the gods that Olympic gold medalists are. That’s why you might not have been able to name the first U.S. winner of a world marathon title.

Mark Plaatjes remains in Boulder, working as a physical therapist and staying active in that city’s vibrant running community. He’s still the only American gold medalist in a World Championships Marathon.

[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.]

Tom Osler

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

UNSUNG GENIUS. Tom Osler is one of running’s unsung geniuses. A genius because of what he wrote in the modern sport’s formative years. Unsung because he never opted to become a star in print and on stage.

Tom prefers to be known as a mathematics professor. He teaches and researches the subject at Rowan University in New Jersey.

His running writing is almost 20 years behind him, but its influence lives on even if he doesn’t get or seek credit. He is, for instance, the father of the now-popular walking breaks, though he isn’t and wouldn’t care to be known as such.

The slim booklet Conditioning of Distance Runners, published in the mid-1960s by Long Distance Log, laid the foundation for bigger and better-known books to follow. None was better, then or since, than his own Serious Runner’s Handbook.

The Handbook contains more than 300 gems of simple wisdom. Tom doesn’t toy with a piece of advice for a chapter when he can dispose of it in a paragraph.

We recently caught up on our years out of touch with each other. He talked first about family and then his work. “My deepest interest at the moment it in mathematical research,” he said.

Tom put his running in its proper place, talking about it only third. He doesn’t write about the sport anymore but still lives it.

“I now run much less and much slower,” said the 57-year-old former ultrarunner. “I have not run an ultra since 1982 due to foot problems. I now run about 20 miles per week in the winter and 50 in the summer.”

The math man is proudest now of his own cumulative numbers: “I am now in my 44^th consecutive year of running and have completed more than 1550 races. I can’t run fast anymore, but I can keep adding to the years of running and the list of races. It’s kind of an old man’s marathon.”

A trace of regret shows when he says, “There was a time when I could coast through 50 consecutive seven-minute miles. Now I am straining after two seven-minute miles.

“I miss being able to go out the door and run endlessly with no effort. I only have memories of such effortless joy. But, oh, what memories!”

UPDATE. Tom continues to teach math at Rowan University and continues to add to his lifetime race count (which now tops 2000). His Serious Runner’s Handbook is still one of the best collections of advice I’ve ever 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, 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.]

Joe Newton

(This piece is for my 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.)

KING OF COACHES. The highest calling of an experienced runner is to pass the baton of knowledge to later generations of runners. The most coachable are the young who are new to the sport and ready to make sudden leaps in performance with the right guidance. Joe Newton confirmed both of these long-held beliefs of mine as we began the interviewing for the book that would become Coaching Cross-Country Successfully.

When asked to outline his long career, this king of high school coaches noted that “1960 was a very good year for me.” Me too. That was my senior year in high school, and I was publishing my first sports articles in a local newspaper.

But writing wasn’t in my career plans at the time. Coaching was, and I acted as a student coach that fall while the real one busied himself with football.         

I planned to study for coaching in college but settled for second best and became a writer.   Whatever “coaching” I do now is second-hand, by way of the printed page instead of direct instruction-giving, mistake-correcting and encouragement-shouting.

While loving my job, I envy what the coaches get to do. And none has done more than Joe Newton.        

His head-coaching career at York High School began in 1960. He has stayed at the same school ever since.

Joe took over a woeful team. “York started cross-country in 1939 and had never even won a conference championship,” he said by phone from Illinois. “They’d recently ranked near the bottom and had only eight or 10 guys on the team. There was no enthusiasm.”        

The new coach’s strength was his rah-rah spirit. He doubled the turnout  of runners his first year but kept their ambitions modest.

“Our goal was to win one dual meet and not to finish last in the eight-team conference meet,” he said. “We were 4-3 in duals and finished fifth in the conference.”       

Turnarounds can come quickly on a well-coached high school team. York qualified for the state meet the next year and placed seventh there.

“I remember sitting in the stands when the awards were presented,” Joe recalled. “The winning team from Highland Park was ecstatic.

“Its coach, Dick Ault [a former Olympic hurdler], was screaming and hugging his athletes. I thought: man, what I’d give to do that someday!”

He did it the very next year when York won its first state championship. Another 18 followed by the time we started work on Joe’s book.

His latest team settled out at 135 runners, Joe coaching them all without assistant coaches. The 135^th and slowest runner is as important to him as the first and fastest. He communicates this to each one each day in three ways:     

“First I take roll every single day and let that guy know that I know he’s at practice every day. Then I call everyone’s name out at least once during practice every day to let the kid know that I know he is running.

“Finally I make every guy come over at the end of practice so I can shake his hand to let him know that I appreciate his effort. I want to show the kids that I care about them as individuals.

“It’s not an act. If it were, they would see through me in a minute.”       

He added, unnecessarily, “I love my job and love the kids.” They know it without being told.

UPDATE. In the mid-1990s, as we worked together on a book of his, Joe Newton promised to retire when “we win our 20^th state cross-country title or I turn 70, whichever comes first.” Both came and went, and by 2004 he had retired only from teaching at York and from coaching track.

At 75 he still guided the cross-country team, which won its 24^th Illinois state title that fall. The count is up to 28 now, and Joe still coaches that team in his 85^th year.

Since working with him on the book, I have become a running coach myself. I try to greet everyone by name at least once every time the team comes together.

The slowest runner is no less deserving of that attention than the fastest. Joe Newton taught me that, and more.

 

[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.]

Mark Nenow

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from February 1991.)

LEAVING A MARK. Mark Nenow, fastest American in the track 10,000 and road 10K, is talking about retiring at age 33. Chronic hamstring problems have him doubting if he'll race seriously again.

I’ll be sorry to see him go. We all could use him as a model for simplifying our running.

I met Nenow at a running seminar in Houston shortly after he’d set his world road 10K best in 1984. He spoke without notes and answered questions with lots of “I don’t knows.” But his non-answers had much to say.

Nenow didn’t know his weight and resting pulse. He didn’t want his blood tested or his muscles biopsied. He didn’t use a computer to determine his training schedule.

He didn’t remember his times from recent races. He didn’t keep any records in a diary.

He said he entered competition with only the most general plan: “stick my nose in it and run with the leaders as long as I can. That way, I either make a breakthrough or die like a dog.”

Nenow was a refreshing throwback to a low-tech era. He certainly worked hard, running the high mileage at the fast pace needed to compete at his level.

But the way Nenow approached that training separated him from his contemporaries. He concerned himself only with the generalities of training steadily and racing hard, and let the specifics take care of themselves.

Such looseness required great faith that the instincts guiding him were the proper ones. Nenow trusted himself to do the right things without help from a team of coaches and scientists, and without the backing of elaborate plans and logbooks.

His way didn’t always work. He never peaked at the right time to make an Olympic team.

Yet he recovered quickly from disappointment. Failures were less devastating when expectations weren’t excessive, and successes were all the more satisfying when they weren’t planned.

Nenow said that all of his big improvements came as “surprises.” Because he didn’t set time goals, he also set no artificial limits on himself.

He once passed the midpoint of a track 10,000-meter race faster than his 5000 personal record. More number-conscious runners might have thought: uh-oh, I can’t keep going at this pace. Better slow down.

Nenow kept going, willing to risk “dying like a dog.” He didn’t die but improved his 10,000 time by nearly a minute.

In recent years Mark enlisted a coach and began training more traditionally. He listened to advisers who said that the marathon would be his best event, tried two of them, ran into injuries and never quite reached his old standards again.

At his best he may have been short on knowledge of running theory and statistics, but he was long on wisdom. Anyone with a little know-how can complicate something simple, but only the wise can simplify something complicated.

Mark Nenow’s lesson to us all was not to let the planning and analyzing get in the way of the doing and enjoying.

UPDATE. The new century began with Nenow still holding the U.S. track 10,000 record and the national best for the road 10K. His track mark didn’t fall until 2001, by which time he’d worked as an executive for several running-shoe companies.

The current (and much older) version of Nenow is Ed Whitlock, who ran well below three hours for a marathon in his early 70s and did 3:41 at 82. His routine is starkly simple: no intervals or tempo runs, no cross-training or supplemental exercises; just two or more hours a day at a relaxed pace, with frequent (and fast) races at widely ranging distances to build speed.

[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.]