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.]