Browning Ross

(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 June 1998.)

FATHER ROSS. I didn't want to believe the news when it reached me third-hand. But the source was too good a reporter to pass along an unfounded rumor this terrible.

Browning Ross was dead. A cop found him in his parked car after his usual morning three-mile run near his home in Woodbury, New Jersey.

A heart attack was blamed for his death a day after his 74^th birthday. He died doing what he had lived.

If asked to name the fathers of modern U.S. road racing, I’d think first of Browning Ross. He was a terrific runner himself. He ran in two Olympics, 1948 and 1952, as a steeplechaser... won the 1951 Pan-American Games in the 1500... placed second in the steeple and fourth in the 5000... won a national cross-country title and more on the roads than he could remember.

A runner only works for his own good, though, and Browning worked for the good of all who ran. He never sought glory for his publishing and organizing, never was widely celebrated for it, and probably never realized the breadth and depth of his contributions.

In 1957 he started a magazine. Long Distance Log was the first to link the small and scattered band of road racers. Without his LDL there might never have been a Runner’s World, because he showed the future publisher and first editor what was possible. The Log faded out, with never a bitter public word from Browning, as RW found its legs in the early 1970s.

In 1958 he arranged a meeting in a New York City hotel room that led to formation of the Road Runners Club of America. There would have been an RRCA without him, but it wouldn’t have arrived as soon or had the voice that his magazine gave the fledgling club.

He served as chairman of the AAU long-distance committee. He championed women’s running at a time when the AAU’s geezers wanted to keep the sport all-male.

I saw him at the 1970 national convention in San Francisco. He chaired the meeting at which an official called women’s marathoning “a lark for housewives with too much time on their hands.” Browning rolled his eyes at that.

Mainly, though, Browning Ross acted locally. He coached at high schools, he operated a running store, and always he organized races.

He might hold the world record for number of events conducted. From his 20s through his last days he averaged at least one race a month.

The May 1998 issue of Runner’s World honored him, for his ongoing race directing, with its Golden Shoe Award. This was one of the few times his picture ever appeared in the magazine to which he could claim parenthood.

In spring 1998 the South Jersey Athletic Club gave him a tribute dinner for lifelong contributions. Somehow his teammates knew that it was time.

Sadly my tributes were posthumous. I carried his initials on my cap bill in my latest marathon. I dedicated my next book, Best Runs, to him.

You see, he wasn’t just a father of the modern sport. He was one of my own running fathers.

His magazine, which I first read in 1959, turned me toward longer running. My first words in a running publication appeared as a 1961 letter in Long Distance Log.

He offered me, someone he’d never seen and had talked with only by mail, a job at his summer camp and a place to live in 1964. I’ve always regretted turning him down.

He greeted me at my first marathon, Boston 1967, and introduced me to Tom Osler. Browning promoted Osler’s mini-classic, The Conditioning of Distance Runners, that same year – which inspired my booklet, LSD, a term I lifted from the pages of the Log.

I owe much to him. We all do, and can make partial payment by remembering him.

UPDATE. Breaking into Long Distance Log took no writing skill or experience. All I needed in the winter of 1961 was a envelope and stamp for mailing a handwritten note.

It began, “I am 17 years old and a senior in high school. If it is possible, could you include a few articles about the training methods employed by such great runners as Johnny Kelley, Deacon Jones, etc., to give boys like me an idea of what it takes in training to be a good long-distance runner.”

Browning Ross printed this letter, not because it said anything special but because it helped fill space. That was the beauty of the Log. Anyone, writer or runner, could break in there.

The other magazine of the time, Track & Field News, was different. It had high standards even then, both editorially and in the performances it listed.

T&FN told of running at its best. The Log covered all of us – and I do mean all, right back to the last finisher and often even the DNFs.

At its peak the Log attracted about 1000 readers. Browning knew most of us personally, and we often knew each other because our names went to everyone else whenever we ran a road race.

We read to see our own names (though we’d committed the times to memory months earlier) and to see how our friends were doing. We read for their letters... and for  tidbits on training... and for articles duplicated from other publications, exactly as printed originally... and for Browning’s own sly and wise comments.

Browning Ross logged out as a publisher in 1975. To honor him as co-founder of the Road Runners Club of America, that organization now makes a complete set of Long Distance Logs available on its website, rrca.org.

[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.]

Henry Rono

(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 August 1995.)

SLOW HENRY. “Slow” is in the eye of the beholder. Each of us has times to look down on from whatever peaks we have climbed. Each has a pace below which we won’t let ourselves fall – at least not in public.

And no place is more public than a track meet. There’s nowhere to hide here, as you can in a road race that disappears into the neighborhoods or countrysides.

I’m an old trackman who doesn’t run much on the track anymore. When I go to meets, it’s usually only to sit and watch.

While watching the Hayward Classic masters meet in Eugene, friends who were running asked again and again, “Why aren’t you out here?” My answer was always the same: “I’m too old and slow now.”

The “old” was a joke. Runners with enough years to be my parents competed here. The “slow” was no joke.

I’ve never been truly fast, and no one else cares that I’m now slow. But I care. Running minutes slower than my old track bests and being lapped repeatedly would have been embarrassing.

So I sat and watched. One runner in particular left me embarrassed about feeling embarrassed.

That was Henry Rono. If anyone should shy away from this track meet, it would be Rono. The last person you’d expect to last this long would be Rono.

The same drives that make runners great also prevent them from settling for less than their old level of greatness. You don’t see many ex-record-holders competing as masters, because their past comes to haunt them. To them, anything less than the fastest time anyone ever ran looks slow.

Rono has one of the sport’s greatest pasts. Between 1978 and 1981 he set world records in four events – 3000 meters, 5000, 10,000 and steeplechase.

Back then he ran some of his finest races at Hayward Field. The best I ever saw was a 1982 win over Alberto Salazar when both came within 10 seconds of the 10K world record.

This past might have haunted Rono. So too might have the sad years that followed: his problems with drinking, his habit of appearing at races (at their expense) out of shape.

He stopped showing up at all as his name lost its sales value. I hadn’t heard about him in years, and sometimes wondered how and where he’d ended up.

Suddenly here he was, unannounced in the publicity, at the starting line of a little-known meet for masters. He must have come on his own, because this event paid no fees or expenses.

I could have imagined Rono losing himself in a road-race crowd. But this was track, where he had nowhere to hide.

He might have run the mile, where the laps are fewer and the comparison with his past isn’t as direct. But he chose one of his record distances, the 5000.

Always well-rounded from the waist up, Rono was now even more so without looking obese. But from his beltline down, he still looked fit. He stride retained much of its old grace.

The old speed was long gone. In Eugene he ran almost 4½ minutes slower than his 5000 world record. He was almost double-lapped by the winner, whose PR would have left him a lap behind Rono at his best.

If this performance shamed Rono, he hid it well. What he did here shamed me for having petty concerns about looking bad.

“I’m getting slower,” a friend in his late 60s told me after he ran in this meet. “But if slowing down doesn’t bother Henry Rono, I shouldn’t let it bother me. The important thing is just to be out here.”

That’s the true spirit of masters running, even on the track where the slowdown is plainest to see. Henry Rono has that spirit. He escapes the shadow of times past and still gets out here.

UPDATE. Henry Rono tells his own story in the memoir titled Olympic Dream. You can also read more him, past and present, on the website team-rono.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, 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.]

Bill Rodgers

(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 August 1998.)

AMBASSADOR BILL. Bill Rodgers’ grand entrance was well orchestrated. Officials at the Fifth Season 8-K in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, asked him to pass through the starting crowd from back to front as the announcer shouted his praises.

Bill went along with the plan, as he agrees to almost anything. The crowd respectfully parted to let him pass, but stayed close enough to shake his hand and pat his back as he jogged forward.  

This scene illustrates the phenomenon that is Bill Rodgers. He receives royal treatment at races, yet retains the common touch.

This helps explain why he remains so popular, even among runners whose memories don’t reach back to his prime racing years of 1975-80. These admirers don’t come to see him for what he once did but for who he is now.

His hosts in Cedar Rapids arranged for him to give away hats carrying a “Bill Rodgers Running Center” logo. He signed hundreds of them, and the recipients couldn’t have been happier if he had handed them $20 bills.

He spoke briefly on two occasions, saying little that bears repeating here. His message didn’t matter. He could have spoken in Urdu, and his audiences would have been just as pleased to have him with them.

Bill isn’t at his best on stage, but no running celebrity does better one- to-one. He puts each runner at ease and makes each one feel important.

His almost-namesake Will Rogers said he “never met a man he didn’t like.” Bill Rodgers seems never to meet a runner who doesn’t like him.

The Cedar Rapids event was just another stop on his endless road. He has done this a thousand times since the 1970s and couldn’t be faulted for just going through the well-rehearsed motions.

But he doesn’t. He still genuinely enjoys his work, and the runners he visits can tell.

Bill has collected several nicknames over the years. They don’t quite fit anymore.

“Boston Billy” is too regional for someone whose fame and efforts span the country. “King of the Roads” makes him sound too regal and distant from the rest of us.

We might call him an “elder statesman” of the sport. But that makes him sound older than he is.

The term that fits best is “ambassador.” He spreads through deeds and words the news of what’s good and right about running.

Bill is one of the world’s most youthful 50-year-olds but not ageless. The mileage lines around his mouth and eyes have deepened, and his running times have slowed.

But his “slow” is still the envy of runners 10 or more years younger. He ran 26:02 in the Cedar Rapids 8K and beat all masters.

Bill’s competitive fires haven’t gone cold. He still talks about breaking records for his age group, still talks about staying ahead of the first woman in any race, still talks of competition with his contemporaries (such as almost-50-year-old John Campbell of New Zealand).

But he is just as likely to downplay his times to cut the apparent distance between himself and his audiences. He’ll let dozens of local runners say they “beat Bill Rodgers,” as happened in a Cedar Rapids fun-run while playing his diplomatic role. No one does it better.

UPDATE. Since this writing Bill Rodgers has endured two rounds of treatment for prostate cancer, and his Boston running store has closed. Yet he still travels far and often on the race circuit, his status as an ambassador undiminished.

[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.]

  

Paul Reese

(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 May 1992.)

REESE’S PIECES. The most remarkable thing about Paul Reese’s journey of national and personal discovery was what he didn’t do. He didn’t try to break any records or raise any money. He didn’t act as a paid spokesman for seniors or cancer patients. He didn’t run to draw attention to himself.

Reese kept his intentions quiet partly to protect himself from doubters who would have said, “It can’t be done at your age,” and from friends who might have said, “It shouldn’t be done in your health.”

The Auburn, California, runner would turn 73 the week his journey was to begin in spring 1990. An article of faith in this sport is that recovery from big efforts slows down with age. Yet Paul planned to run a marathon a day for four straight months.

He also was just coming off a health scare. A cancerous prostate had been diagnosed less than three years earlier, and apparently had been treated successfully with radiation. But you could never tell what chain reactions the stress of this run might set off.

So he plotted the journey quietly. He organized it without sponsorship, without a support crew other than his wife Elaine and without seeking any publicity.

He didn’t tell me, and I’ve known Paul for 25 years and we’ve raced hundreds of miles together. He knew I couldn’t be trusted with his secret, so he kept it to himself.

I didn’t learn what he was doing until he’d done it. Even then the news didn’t come from him but from a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Herb Caen wrote on August 21st, 1990, “Tomorrow 73-year-old Paul Reese of Auburn will become the oldest man ever to run across the United States. He started April 21st, knee deep in the Pacific Ocean near Jenner [California] and finishes in the Atlantic at Hilton Head, South Carolina.”

Paul had averaged his marathon a day. He’d totaled 3192 miles in those 124 days. He’d succeeded in keeping his experience of a lifetime quiet until the very end.

Another year passed before I learned that Paul had accomplished two feats of a lifetime at once. In the same four months he’d written a book about this run.

Each night he captured the thoughts and observations from his hours on the back roads of America. He meant this only as a personal journal.

“I wanted to record the heat of battle, and not write it later and have the actuality changed by reflection,” he told me.

He made me work to get a copy. “Just don’t advertise it,” he warned. “I don’t want to get into the book-supply business.”

The manuscript somehow found its way to people who are in the business of producing and distributing books. They’ve taken serious interest in publishing a slimmer version of his journal that retains all the immediacy and intimacy of the diary form.

This is much more than a book about running and for runners. “People have missed the whole point if they see it as a jock thing,” says Paul. “I’m not saying, ‘Look at me, Mr. Genes, Mr. Macho.’ “

He also isn’t saying, “Boy, look at me! I had cancer, and I’m a tiger now. The early detection is a tribute to modern medicine, not running.”

So why did Paul Reese run? For the “enjoyment,” he says in an interview with Mike Tymn for National Masters News.

“Enjoyment like the pioneers who walked, rode a horse or traveled by wagon across the country. Enjoyment of lessons learned from studying firsthand the varied geography and people of our country. 

“Also, enjoyment with Elaine in injecting some adventure and more variety into our lives, in departing from routine and in together meeting a somewhat difficult challenge. And, yes, the sheer enjoyment and deep gratitude of being mobile at my vintage.”

UPDATE. WRS Publishing released Paul Reese’s book, titled Ten Million Steps, in 1993. Paul and Elaine continued their adventures with treks across all other states not covered on the original journey. This resulted in two more books, The Old Man and the Road, and Go East Old Man.

Paul’s prostate cancer never recurred. He died at 87 of complications from heart surgery.

[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.]

Steve Prefontaine

(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 May 1995.)

PRE THE PERFORMER. Distance runners tend toward undemonstrative introspection – a shy wave to accept cheers, a self-effacing comment to reporters.

Steve Prefontaine wasn’t typical, which is why he would be remembered so well for so long after his last race. Prefontaine was a performer.

There would be faster runners, but none so skilled at exciting crowds. A performer needs a stage and a crowd the way an artist needs paint and canvas, and Prefontaine had the ideal place and people in Eugene. Nowhere in this country is our sport as major as here.

Janet Newman Heinonen’s early career as a Eugene-based writer paralleled Prefontaine’s as a runner. She knew him better than other writers and could penetrate his brash shield. One of her articles about him started this way:

“The image-makers have been hard at work on Steve Prefontaine, as they are on all athletes needing simplifying and classifying. The picture they paint of Steve is one of a cocky kid running around with a large chip on his shoulder, daring anyone to knock it off.”

This interview showed a quieter and more thoughtful Prefontaine. He talked of himself as a stage performer:

“I think I have rapport with the people here in Eugene because being out there by myself I’m an actor in my own way. If I make a good performance and the people appreciate it, I appreciate their support.

“It’s a two-way thing. If someone likes a painting on the wall, they smile. If someone likes what I did, they’re going to smile or clap or respond.”

The Eugene crowds responded to him with near-mania, but the people there also knew him as a fallible individual. “I like to talk with people and have them accept me as Steve Prefontaine, the human being who lives in Eugene, Oregon – as compared to Pre the athlete, the person who runs.”

On May 29^th, 1975, the Eugene crowd came to watch him perform again. He was 24 years old, still not peaked as a runner. He brought out the best in the crowd, and they from him, by coming close to his American record for 5000 meters.

The next morning, his people and the rest of us woke up to the news that he was gone. We may never see another runner like him.

UPDATE.  Steve Prefontaine became bigger in death than he’d ever been in life. He was featured in a biography (Tom Jordan’s Pre!), three films (“Fire on the Track,” “Without Limits” and “Prefontaine”) and many a Nike ad.

A tiny city park, called “Pre’s Rock,” marks the spot where he died. But to me the two memorials that honor this runner best are the annual Prefontaine Classic track meet, which draws the world’s top athletes, and Pre’s Trail, which he had conceived and was built and named after is death.

The meet draws sellout crowds each year. The trail gets heavy use each day.

[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.]