Forward Thinking

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

March 1997. It comes with age. The older we get, the greater the shift in proportions from life ahead of us to the living behind us, the more we look back and the less ahead.

These days writing sometimes overflows with backward thinking... No, that doesn’t sound right. Make it nostalgia.

You might think from reading these pieces that I’m ready to take up residence on a bar stool, and from there to bore people with how great things used to be and how they’ve gone to hell since then. But I haven’t sunk that low quite yet.

Blame some of what you see on these pages on my chosen profession. Journalists mainly write about the past. It’s the nature of our work to review what already has happened rather than anticipate what’s to come.

But runners can’t live in the past. Once we quit looking ahead, we become ex-runners. So let me count the ways that I still look forward:

Waking up to the first two hours of each day, which usually are my best two in every 24… Starting the day by writing a new diary page (where this piece began)… Greeting the first light of day with a run – or  on rest days, with a walk.

Running in outlandish weather – be it windy, rainy, snowy, cold or hot… Running in the sunshine in the normally wet Oregon winter… Running in a downpour in the normally dry Oregon summer.

Running with my dog, the best training partner I’ve ever had… Running long on the trail that honors Steve Prefontaine in the best possible way… Running fast on the track at Hayward Field, the “Carnegie Hall” of our sport.

Going out for one hour, my favorite length of run… Taking one-minute walking breaks on long runs… Picking up speed while timing a single mile, my favorite distance to go fast.

Buying freshly baked bagels on the way home from a morning run.. Eating breakfast, my favorite meal, while reading the morning paper after a run… Shaving and showering after the post-run breakfast, while listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

Taking a day off after earning it with a good run… Returning to running, hungry for it again after a good day off… Getting over an injury and getting back to normal running.

Going on the road to talk with runners at a race… Coming home from a road trip with a fresh set of memories.

Racing a 5K, my shortest distance now… Racing a half-marathon, my longest without needing and taking special training.

Planning and training for the next marathon… Surviving the latest marathon with no serious after-effects.

Visiting the Drake Relays, my ancestral home in this sport… Watching high school and college cross-country meets… Watching any track meet at Hayward Field.

Reading anything by my favorite running writers, Kenny Moore and Don Kardong… Reading Track & Field News, the purists’ publication… Reading the online Race Results Weekly, my quickest sources of news… Receiving letters, calls and emails from runners and readers

The list of joys-to-come could run much longer. But it’s long enough already to show that I don’t spend all my time looking backward. The past is a nice place to visit, but we can’t live there.

2018 Update. Twenty-one years further along, I have that much more to see behind and still more to anticipate ahead.

[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, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

The True You

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

March 2002 (retitled in the magazine). Running is a fundamentally honest sport. Runners as a group are basically honorable people.

You run a certain distance in a certain time, and that’s the runner you are that day. Shortcutting the distance to improve your time is cheating, and for most of us this is unthinkable.

Cheaters creep out of hiding occasionally. When caught, they make news because they’re so rare.

At the New York City Marathon last fall, 99.99 percent of finishers competed honestly. A deviant tried to “finish” a race he hadn’t run in full, but he was caught.

We shook our heads in disgust as this “runner” (I can’t bring myself to remove the quote marks) pulled a “Rosie” (so named for the most infamous of cheaters). There’s no greater sin in this sport than trying to steal someone else’s prize – and in this case, prize money.

Keith Dowling was the potential victim. The would-be thief attempted to run off with Dowling’s $4500 as the true fifth-place American at New York City. In sixth, Keith would have earned nothing.

This was no harmless prank. It could have been prosecuted as a criminal act.

No charges were filed (or ever have been in such cases, as far as I know). But the perpetrator didn’t get away unpunished.

He forever branded himself as an outlaw against all that’s honest in the sport. May he never again have the gall to show his face at a race. Exposure and exile will stop his cheating, if not make him repentant.

Our best defense against cheating is a healthy conscience. Most of us couldn’t live with ourselves for a fraudulent race result.

My longest race was meant to be 100 miles. It ended at 70, which still was my longest though I can’t claim it as anything but a DNF.

We ran that day on a multi-lap course with an out-and-back stretch at one end. I joked to fellow runner Peter Mattei, “Let’s cut off this section each time we come around. It’s dark out here, and no one would see us. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

This was no joking matter with Mattei. “I would know I’d only run 97 miles,” he said, “and I’d never forgive myself.”

Cheating is unimaginable when you think this way, as most runners do. But cheating has broader definitions than claiming a fraudulent finish.

We sometimes commit lesser sins without fully realizing they are sinful. I confess to having cheated in most of the ways below, and maybe you have too:

Exaggerating times. The older some runners are, the faster they were. Did I ever tell you about my marathon PR, set in the last century, of about 2:40 (meaning I once barely broke 2:49:59)?

Running as an unregistered bandit. Sure, it’s a public road. Go ahead and steal the services paid for by the number-wearers.

Wearing someone else’s number. I heard recently of a man “borrowing” a woman’s number, winning an award and sending a young girl up to collect it “for my mother.”

Starting ahead of the starting line... or before the official starting time... or farther forward than your ability warrants. You avoid congestion these ways. You also run less than the full distance... or mess up the results... or interfere with faster runners.

Entering a race “for training” while never intending to go all the way.. or jumping into midrace to pace someone... or recruiting such a pacer for yourself. Planning to run less than full distance, or encouraging others to do so, cheats against the spirit of racing.

Shortening the course by crossing lawns or cutting through gas stations at corners. Cutting the tangents of the road is fair; that’s how courses are measured. Shortcutting the prescribed route may lead to PRn’ts – fast times for substandard distances.

Confession to these and other past transgressions helps us to live with them, and to go and sin no more. All are attacks on the basic self-policing honesty of the sport, and all are insults to the vast majority of runners who follow the honor code of the road.

That is: Be true to yourself and the runners around you. True winners never cheat, and cheaters never truly win.

2018 Update. Technology has done what shame couldn’t. Chip timing has largely eliminated the worst sin in races, not running the full distance. Some of the lesser sins remain with us.

[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, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Tears for a Winner

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

March 2000. My columns and talks are like my runs. No matter how well planned they seem, I never quite know where they’ll lead. All take surprising turns on the way to their finish lines.

When I stood up last fall to speak at the Royal Victoria Marathon, I didn’t expect to sit down wiping away tears. They were good tears for a great friend. They show he’s still much missed but also well remembered.

The theme at the pre-race dinner in Victoria was masters running, which has less to do with winning races and setting records after age 40 than with slowing and aging gracefully. The talk started lightly enough and was meant to stay that way. Fidgety runners don’t need a heavy message on race eve, but only a few laughs and a little inspiration.

I told of a Canadian runner in his 80s, Whitey Sheridan, who’d run for almost 70 of those years. He advised me on my 40^th running anniversary, “Hang in there, kid. You’re just getting started.”

This led to talk of winning by surviving. A survivor is the best that most of us can be. If we can’t outrun people, we can at least outlast them. I’ve outlasted Olympic champions and world record-holders while adding up the years of modest efforts.

So far the Victoria talk had stayed on safe emotional ground. But I was about to step into territory where tears lurked. I told of looking up the most to runners who have lasted the longest. The greatest of those heroes is George Sheehan, whose definitions of winning survive him.

Smiling through tears, I wrote a biography of George called Did I Win? The title came from one of the last talks he ever gave to runners. Someone from the audience, knowing George’s condition, asked, “At this stage of your life what is your biggest concern?”

George was stumped for a moment. Then he put his hands together, looked up in mock prayer and answered, “Did I win? Have I done enough? Have I been a good enough runner, writer, speaker and doctor? More importantly, have I been a good enough father and friend?”

He didn’t think so. That’s why he hadn’t retired to “watching the waves roll in and out” from his home on the Jersey Shore. That’s why he ran for as long as he legs would allow, then walked, then swam.

And that’s why he kept writing columns and worked to finish one more book. That’s why he surrounded himself with family and friends right to the end.

One of the last races George ran was the Crim 10-mile in Michigan. He ran along in last place with another man, a younger one who was injured. That runner turned to George and complained, “You know, Doc, we used to be good.”

George came right back with, “We’re as good as we ever were. We’re doing the best we can with what we have.

“You have an injury, and I have an illness. But we’re still out here, giving our all. No one can do more, or should do less.”

George Sheehan redefined winning for us. One definition was to “do the best you can with what you are given.”

I liked another one even better. The summer after he died, a race was renamed the “George Sheehan Classic” and moved from the neighborhood where he’d lived to the hospital where he’d worked. This was his noontime running course in Red Bank, New Jersey.

As I exited the finish chute, a medal was draped around my neck. One side bore George’s likeness. Seeing that, I recalled in the recent talk, I almost broke down. Then I turned the medal over, read one of his lines and totally lost control.

Just then I looked the Victoria crowd and saw a woman who had dealt with a serious illness of her own this year. She had lowered her head and was mopping her eyes with a dinner napkin.

Tears are contagious, and hers set off mine as I sputtered out the Sheehan line from the medal: “Winning is never having to say I quit.”

I caught my breath, wiped my cheeks and added, “He never did, and neither should we.”

2018 Update. This year is the 100^th anniversary of George Sheehan’s birth, and the 25^th of his passing. I still sometimes tear up when talking about him.

[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, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

For Women Only?

(This is 50^th anniversary of my first article in Runner’s World magazine. All year I post excerpts from my book, This Runner’s World.)

MARCH 1996 (retitled without the question mark in the magazine). Women once protested, picketed and petitioned their way into “men’s” road races. They found widespread support for their cause, with much of it coming from the male runners who welcomed these women.

Twenty-five years later, women have events all their own. A few men now want to enter these races, and they charge “sex discrimination” when they’re turned away as unwelcome party-crashers. These men draw little sympathy for their cause, either from women or men.

So why are women-only races okay if men-only events aren’t? A tough question.

        

This issue reared up most prominently in Minneapolis last fall, where a male runner’s lawsuit led to cancellation of a women’s 10K race with an 18-year history. Similar incidents with less serious consequences have occurred recently in other U.S. cities.

These crusades for equality are misplaced. They fail to recognize that road running is at once a traditionally democratic sport and inherently unequal.

Running opened to women before Title IX forced other sports to do so. When the first pioneers arrived in our sport in the 1960s, they had nowhere else to run but with the men. There were too few women then to support races of their own.

Women-only racing began with the New York Mini-Marathon, Bonne Bell and Avon series of the early 1970s. No one complained then about “special rights.” Men applauded the women’s sport for growing up enough to stand alone sometimes.

The growth led eventually to separate Women’s Olympic Trials, Races for the Cure and RRCA Women’s Distance Festivals. But the women still haven’t caught up completely with men. In numbers and speed, maybe they never will.

Women are still outnumbered in any open road races, typically accounting for one-quarter to one-third of the total field. And given the inequities of gender genetics, a woman almost never finishes first overall.

These two factors can make the women’s division of a mixed race seem less important than the men’s. In theory, the sexes don’t compete directly with each other, but the competition remains unequal. Top men race only against each other, while the best women see mostly men around them. More glory typically goes to the man out front than to the lead woman lost in the crowd.

Women can’t always run apart, and probably wouldn’t want to if they could. But they deserve some of what men have always had: chances to run among themselves, to race only with equals and to cross the finish line first.

Road racing has a proud history of openness. Our sport doesn’t discriminate by age, race, class, creed, speed, size or sex. Everyone has the opportunity to race somewhere – but no one gets to race everywhere.

Sometimes the vast melting pot of running becomes overwhelming in its size and diversity. We occasionally need to split off from the mass, into smaller and more specialized groupings.

This subdividing is also in the best tradition of the sport. We’ve created many new options for selected runners while leaving most opportunities available to all. We have races like Boston and the Olympic Trials that are limited to the fast, we have races limited to kids and to masters, we have races limited to corporate and relay teams.

Women-only races serve the same purpose by making up for the sport’s inherent inequities – past, present and perhaps future. Races of their own give the women something extra while depriving the men of nothing they couldn’t find somewhere else that same weekend. This is affirmative action at its best.

2018 Update. Last week I talked on stage with one of the first women of distance running, Joan Benoit Samuelson. One of her post-Olympics promises was to bring more people into running, regardless of gender. This has happened, especially with women.

[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, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]