Beginning Again

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1987.)

LOVE CAN come when you stop looking for it. It can come in the form of someone you already know as a friend but haven’t thought of as the future love of your life.

In late 1987, I wasn’t looking. I was scrambling to support two households, and failing. I filed for and was granted bankruptcy.

My divorce now final, I was a single dad to my two older children (who lived with me for school reasons) and had the third with me every other weekend. I’d turned in my only car when its lease expired and couldn’t afford another.

I’d had a couple of flings with local women since my separation, but these hadn’t led anywhere. I’d had a long-distance relationship with a much younger woman that had lingered for years, but we now were seeing that getting together mostly by phone would lead us nowhere. She needed to move on.

That Thanksgiving, which the kids spent with their mom, friends invited me to dinner without telling me that the woman of this couple was hatching a plot. She’d also invited Barbara Shaw.

I knew Barb casually. We had met at a University of Oregon journalism class 18 months earlier, when she was a grad student and I a visiting speaker.

When I started teaching there, we often met and talked in the hallways. She told me about her son, a runner, and I talked of my children. Neither of us guessed that the other was available.

“You seemed so married,” Barb would tell me later. I thought the same of her. I guessed that her husband would join us for Thanksgiving dinner.

She missed that meal, where I learned that she had no husband. The hostess, Karen Myers, made sure during our dinner that I knew this… and that Barb had missed her flight back from Hong Kong where she was visiting her son… and that “we’ll get together with her soon.”

Karen wouldn’t let this be an indefinite “soon” that might never come. She would check back with me about a time and place after my return from the Honolulu Marathon.

Honolulu was another down time. A monsoon drenched that weekend, further dampening my already low spirits.

I traveled alone to one of the worst places to go alone. I stayed in a top-priced hotel room, which was comped, and wondered if I could pay for meals, which weren’t covered. My speaking ended that Saturday, so I took a midnight flight home and missed seeing the marathon.

By then I’d almost forgotten about the makeup meal with Barb Shaw. But Karen Myers wouldn’t let it slide.

She called to ask, “Does lunch with Barb and me on Friday work for you?” It did. She also remembered that I was carless and said, “I’ll come and pick you up.”

We ate, we talked, then Karen made some excuse for not being able to drive me home.  “Can you take him?” she asked Barb. This too was part of the matchmaker’s plot to put us alone together.

We talked during the short drive about my being between cars. Then she volunteered, “I have a van that mostly sits in the driveway. Would you like to use it?”

This led to another visit, officially to look at the old Dodge that lacked a back seat. Looked fine to me, so Barb handed me the keys.

“As a thank-you, let me take you to dinner,” I said. This happened the weekend before Christmas. Neither of us called it a “date,” but it was.

We had taken 18 months from meeting to first date, and 18 hours until the second. (Thanks to my children for an assist on this. They were at their mom’s for the holiday, leaving me free to go out two nights in a row.) From then on we would be inseparable.

OUR FRIENDSHIP took its sweet time growing into a romance. But once Barb and I became a couple, we acted quickly.

In March 1988 we moved in together, along with my older two kids. She’d raised her own son Chris and stepdaughter Megan into independent young adulthood, and thought she was done with that part of her life.

Now she was willing to start over with my 14-year-old Sarah and Eric, 10, plus a handicapped frequent visitor Leslie, then five. We talked about really starting over, by having at least one child together, but wisely decided against it after projecting ourselves as parents of high school graduates while in our 60s. 

Money-wise Barb insisted that I dig out of my financial woes. This took awhile but finally succeeded (also thanks in no small part to the remarriage, in late 1987, of my first wife Janet).

By fall of our first year together we found a way, despite my blown credit, to buy a house. To prove to myself that I was solvent again, I soon bought a well-used Honda of my own to replace the van that I’d borrowed from Barb.

We celebrated one year together by taking our first joint vacation: to Hawaii. I couldn’t have hoped for a bigger, faster turnaround than mine since the last solo trip to the islands. My new travel partner made all the difference.

Photo: How (young) we looked the year we met.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, 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.]

Teaching Writing

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1986.)

A SMALL nudge can become a big direction-changer. My latest one began with an inch-long ad in the Sunday newspaper’s classifieds:

“University of Oregon School of Journalism seeks part-time instructors in advertising, public relations, radio-TV and magazine writing. Professional experience in subject area required. Submit resume’ to Ken Metzler, associate dean, at…”

My academic credentials were slim – a college minor in journalism, no advanced degree in any field – and I’d never taught a class. But I had attended the University of Experience for two decades and now needed another job. Income from the usual sources was shrinking.

I’d survived a scare at Runner’s World a year earlier, when Bob Anderson’s sale of his magazine Rodale Press left most of the staff jobless. I’d made that cut but was kept on now for reasons more historic than journalistic. I wrote little for RW, and heavy editing rendered much of the original copy unrecognizable.

My latest book, the Running Handbook, was the fifth financial flop in a row. I was running out of publishers willing to take on a new project with me. Races still wanted to pay me to come and speak, but I already spent too much time away from the two kids now living with me.

Teaching at the university might be a way to boost my income locally. I applied, and Ken Metzler called to arrange a job interview (my first in 20 years).

Metzler, the associate dean, said, “You look well qualified to teach magazine writing. But before giving you an answer, I’d like to see you in action at one of our classes. Can you give a guest lecture next week?”

Not only did I pass inspection there. I also talked briefly with a student who would become the new love of my life, though I wouldn’t recognize Barbara Shaw as such for another year.

From the start in this class, I played to my strengths (experience as an writer-editor) instead of working on my weakness (inexperience as a teacher). I treated the classroom as a magazine office, acting as an editor who assigned and critiqued the work of student-writers.

We went light on the lectures, heavy on the writing and revising. This would be learning by doing. I couldn’t teach talent, but could show how to train for writing and how to master the rules of this game.

Teaching journalism would lead eventually to something even better: teaching running classes, which then would lead to coaching marathoners. The approach would be the same as with the writers: learning by doing rather than listening, training to get the most from talent, mastering the tricks of the running trade.

Photo: Ken Metzler introduced me to college teaching, and to my future wife.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, 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.]

Trading Bosses

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1985.)

IT’S HARD enough when a parent says good-bye to a child voluntarily, such as when the kid leaves home for college. It’s much harder when the parting isn’t by choice, as when being forced to give up the child for adoption.

Runner’s World was Bob Anderson’s baby. He conceived, birthed and then nurtured his magazine through its late teens. Now came time for a parting that he didn’t seek.

Bob’s personal secretary called me in early 1985 to announce a company meeting. “It’s mandatory for the office staff and strongly recommended for you,” she said.

This was one of very few command appearances since I’d gone on contract with the magazine eight years earlier and had moved away from its home city. “We’ll book flights for you so you can come down that morning and fly back to Eugene the same day,” said the secretary. This sounded serious.

The meeting was rather bizarre: buffet lunch at a country club, swimsuit models (from Bob’s new business called Ujena) parading, then a speech by the boss himself, dressed in one of the three-piece suits that were his business uniforms at the time. He spoke at length, betraying emotions that he usually kept well hidden, about the hard choice he now faced.

Bob faced a divorce from his wife Rita. She owned half of the business and wanted cash for her portion. The only way that he could raise that money was to put his “baby” up for sale.

He wasn’t ready to name the bidders but said “there is interest.” The staff grew increasingly somber, if not stunned.

“I hope to stay with the magazine in some capacity,” Bob said. “And I’ll do whatever I can to keep as many of you as possible working here.”

I didn’t hear about the sale from anyone in the Runner’s World offices but from a point man for the buyer. Chuck McCullagh called from Rodale Press in Pennsylvania.

“We have a verbal agreement to buy RW and will be out in California to sign the papers in a couple of weeks,” he said. “We want you to stay on our editorial team.”

He told me that Bob Anderson would have no future role. Only a pair of editors from Mountain View, Marty Post and Bob Wischnia, would move east. Amby Burfoot, my contract-writer counterpart on the East Coast, would continue in that role.

“Have you named an editor?” I asked. Chuck said, “We’re hoping it will be you. Interested?”

Not if it required relocating, which it did. “I’m now a single father to two children who live with me, and I have the third here every other weekend,” I told him. “Their mom wouldn’t think of them going across the country, and I couldn’t stand being separated from them.”

Chuck said he understood, then made the backup pitch that he’d already expected to use. “Well then, how about you staying with us under the same terms as before?”

Done, just like that. Only later would I see how lucky I’d been to get this call at all, at a time when most jobs at the magazine had ended abruptly.

TWO EVENTS in 1971 introduced me to the Rodales. First, Rodale Press sent me its newest magazine, Fitness for Living. It was born prematurely, before enough readers craved this type of publication, and died young.

That same year company founder J.I. Rodale, 73, was taping Dick Cavett’s TV interview show when Rodale said something like, “I’ll live to be at least 100.” Then he collapsed of a heart attack and died right there on the set.

Rodale’s son Bob took over the company and set about expanding it. He tried in 1983 to buy Running magazine, but Nike chose to let it go under instead of selling. Then in 1985 Runner’s World became available, and it joined Rodale Press’s growing lineup.

I first met the new boss soon afterward. Rodale Press called its first RW meeting at a downscale hotel in the Bay Area. He wore khaki pants and a blue shirt with no tie or jacket.

He let a junior officer, Chuck McCullagh, conduct the meeting. New Bob mostly listened.

When he spoke, it was to ask a question or to take a philosophical stroll that no one could quite follow. His dress, his wispy beard and his cerebral manner would have better fit a college professor than the former Olympian (1968, in shooting) and ultra-successful executive that he was.

Yet Bob’s beliefs and practices made Rodale Press all that it had become – a company not just selling publications but on a mission to save the world’s environment, as well as the individual’s health and fitness. Not everyone in the United States would practice what he preached. But most Americans now would agree, “That’s a good idea.”

In September 1990 Bob traveled to Moscow to export his ideas in the form of a Russian-language edition of New Farm magazine. Before leaving home he had said to one of his editors, “What worries me about this trip is the driving over there. It’s quite risky.”

His worries were almost over as he rode to the airport in a hotel van for the flight home. A city bus swerved across the centerline of a highway and struck the van head-on. Bob Rodale, 60, died in the crash.

Bob Rodale is gone, but his good work survives him. That’s the best one-line obituary that anyone could hope to receive.

Photo: Bob Rodale brought Runner’s World (and me) to the company that bears his family name.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, 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.]

1984 Headliners

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1984.)

RACES AREN’T just won and lost on race day. They are as surely decided in the spaces between races, by the right and wrong moves made then.

This is never more true than before an Olympic Trials. I happened to see the fastest marathoner out training in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, before the first qualifying race for women in 1984.

The sturdy little figure clad in a dark blue jacket and tights slipped onto the bike path two steps ahead of me without noticing I was there. I said nothing to her, preferring to watch rather than talk this Monday morning.

What I saw was heartening. The runner put two minutes between us in one mile. And she didn’t hint at a limp.

Ten days after knee surgery, one week after returning to running, a few days after feeling hamstring pain, Joan Benoit was back. I was happily eating my published words that she wouldn’t be recovered in time for the Trials. She looked ready.

Joan’s race against time didn’t begin on the morning of May 12^th but the evening of April 25^th. Still drugged with pain-killers after her arthroscopic surgery, Joan asked coach Bob Sevene, “Can I start tomorrow?”

Meaning could she begin running. Sevene said a firm no, but they agreed that she could pedal a redesigned exercise bicycle with her arms.

This makeshift training continued until the following Monday. Joan ran that day: 45 minutes in the morning, 55 more in the afternoon. She totaled 80 miles for the week but at the price of a sore hamstring from favoring the knee. That injury was treated by spending most of her waking hours under an electronic muscle-stimulation device to speed the healing.

One final test before deciding whether or not to run at Olympia: a 17-mile run on the Tuesday before her Saturday race. She passed it.

“I’ll be running strictly to make the team,” she said at a pre-race news conference in Olympia. “I’m aware of my problem, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could handle it.”

Handling it meant going right to the lead, dropping her final challenger in the 23^rd mile. Joan ran on alone from there, and not easily.

After averaging 5:38 miles through 20, she slipped to 6:11s for the remaining distance. She looked a bit wobbly at the finish, and more relieved than joyous.

“Cardiovascularly I felt great,” she said. “But my legs just wouldn’t go, and I was lucky to hold on. I knew with six miles left that if the pack came on me I was in trouble.”

Three months later, I would watch the Los Angeles Olympics from home, less than a mile from where I’d seen the rehabbing Joan Benoit in May,  as she broke free of the pack early in the first Olympic Marathon for women. Catch me if you can, she challenged the field that included world record-holder Grete Waitz. No one could.

YOU NEVER want to hear news like this. You never expect to hear it first as a national news bulletin.

The noon report on my car radio led off with: “The man who wrote the book on jogging has died while jogging…” Two names flashed across my mind before the reporter could give a name: George Sheehan and Kenneth Cooper.

“Fifty-two-year-old James Fixx…” Then came sketchy details about the heart attack that had killed Jim as he was on vacation in Vermont.

He had told me when we met eight years earlier that he never expected to earn anything more than that modest amount of upfront money for the yet-unnamed book. When The Complete Book of Running came out a year later, it made Jim Fixx rich and famous beyond his imaginings. It seemed to put him on easy street, in a neighborhood where he would never have to work again.

The trouble was, he wanted to keep working. He didn’t want to let fame and fortune change his life. But they did anyway.

We talked at the 1978 Boston Marathon. He shook his head at all the fuss being made over him, and complained that writing this book about running had taken away his time to write and run.

His time was never again completely his own. For the next six years Jim was forced into a celebrity’s life.

He took a bemused view of it in his book Jackpot, but you could read some pain into those pages. He claimed to have slipped quietly back into obscurity after his books fell from the best-seller lists, but that wasn’t true.

Jim Fixx, a private man perfectly suited to the solitary existence of a writer/runner, remained a public figure who died a celebrity’s death. He would be remembered for many of the wrong reasons.

Photo: Joan Benoit will always appear first on the list of women’s marathon winners at the Olympics.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, 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.]