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.]