Talkathons

(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.)

April 2001 (retitled in the magazine). Two of the best reasons to run have little to do with staying in shape or with training to race. These attractions are thinking and talking.

They aren’t opposites but companions. Team running lets you talk freely with friends, while solo running allows a heart-to-heart talk with yourself. Both opportunities are scarce in a world long on loud noises and short on calm voices.

Running alone with my thoughts is my choice most days. This hour a day is all mine – time away from the phone, radio and computer that share my office, time to clear away the mental clutter so the good thoughts can bubble up. I don’t carry pen and pad, but usually come back from run with ideas begging to be captured on paper.

George Sheehan, one of the sport’s all-time great writers, said he did his best “writing” away from his desk – while running. He treasured the solitary times “when I’ve been able to withdraw from the world and be inside myself. Such moments can open doors impervious to force or guile.”

Talk with runners fills the rest of my day, so I feel little need to run with them. If I worked outside the sport, I’d need to talk my way into a partnership or group.

Something in the act of running – the rhythm, the sweat, the common purpose, the stripping of outer roles and inner restraints – loosens up one set of muscles above all others: those that operate the jaws. Listen in on two or more runners talking, and you’ll never again believe that long-distance runners are a lonely breed.

Dr. Sheehan balanced aloneness with togetherness. He once wrote that talking on the run “frees me from the polysyllabic jargon of my profession, removes me from the kind of talk which aims at concealing rather than revealing what is in my heart.

“For me no time passes faster than when running with a companion. An hour of conversation on the run is one of the quickest and most satisfying hours ever spent.”

Two of the best reasons for running, according to George, are contemplation and conversation. His third reason: competition, which he defined not as competing against others but joining them to bring out better work than we could ever do alone.

A race is as different from a daily run as a private chat is from a public lecture. Conversing is easy, as taking a casual run is. Speaking before a group is as hard – and as fearsome – as racing, but the audience brings out the speaker’s best words just as a race crowd brings out the best runs.

I’ve always enjoyed talking casually with almost anyone about almost anything. But the prospect of speaking in public used to tongue-tie me with fear. I went through college hiding behind the tallest student in class to avoid being called on to comment.

Soon after graduation I was forced to take the stage at running events and later was doing it voluntarily. Now I look forward to facing friendly crowds. The butterflies in my belly are now an expected and accepted part of the warmup, as they are before any race.

Even George Sheehan, perhaps the most skilled speaker this sport has known, paced and stewed before his lectures. Once onstage he spoke calmly and beautifully.

No hour passed faster than one at a Sheehan talk, and he left the listeners wanting more. They clustered around him for another hour before letting him leave the hall.

He drew his largest crowds and longest ovations at the Boston Marathon. One year there, after George had signed his last book and answered his last question, we left the room together.

“That was quite a show,” I said. He agreed that it was, but added, “at times like this I have to remind myself that a few blocks from here I’m just another skinny Irishman.”

I don’t have to go even that far to look like just another gnome in glasses. Running talk tells me I’m more than that.

Talking with the people who know you best and care about you most – and sometimes just having a good talk with yourself – tells you who you really are. No time is better spent.

2018 Update. Little did I know at this writing how much social life was about to change. Talking directly with runners would grow enormously as I started teaching university running classes, which would lead to coaching marathon and half-marathon teams. Those all continue today, and our “alumni association” numbers more than 1000.

[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.]

Competition at Its Best

(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.)

April 2000 (retitled in the magazine). Forty track seasons have raced past since I first hit my stride as a runner. Stumbling onto the right combination of speed, distance and consistency led that spring to my first state high school title in the mile. That season gave another prize far more lasting – a first lesson in what competition can be at its best.

This story has its prologue in Chicago, where I spent the 1960 summer running races with the elders of the sport, grizzled vets in their 20s and 30s. Until then I’d viewed competition as me-against-the-world.

I didn’t hate my competitors, but did fear them for what they tried to take from me. I didn’t care to cozy up to them between races.

Hal Higdon would find fame as a writer, but at the time he was an Olympic hopeful. Gar Williams would later serve as Road Runners Club of America president, but then he was a runner almost as talented as Higdon.

The two of them warmed up together for their races. Imagine that, competitors acting like friends.

Arne Richards was an early prototype for today’s road racer, compensating with enthusiasm for what he lacked in talent. He offered to pace me in my first track race longer than a mile. Imagine that, competitors cooperating.

I took their lessons back to school in the fall. My senior year was to be a race against the stopwatch now that all serious competitors from the past season had graduated. I hadn’t counted on creating a rival.

Don Prichard, a half-miler from another school, told me, “I’m thinking of stepping up to the mile. Would you be willing to give me some training advice?”

This is the nicest question one runner can ask another: “Can you help me?” I happily handed over some tips.

Don would repay the favor by locking us in a season-long contest between runners who liked and respected each other. We worked together without giving an inch to the other in competition.

Don, like me, now trained through the winter. Almost no one else in our state did at the time, so we shared a big head start.

He followed my old plan of mixing modest distances with regular speed training. I tried something new – the longer, slower base-building suddenly in vogue since Arthur Lydiard’s New Zealanders won two Olympic races in Rome.

Don’s training worked better than mine, at least at first. He won the first mile he ever race, while I lagged 10 seconds behind.

We raced three more times leading up to the state meet. Don won twice, and we tied once.

In a panic to recoup lost speed I raced mostly half-miles that season. My time at that distance led the state.

I could have dodged Don by skipping the mile in favor of the shorter race, but that would have cheapened both of our victories. We’d come this far together and now had to finish our high school careers in tandem.

As fastest qualifier at State, Don took the pole position. I started to his right as second-quickest.

He offered a clammy hand, and I took it with one equally wet from worry. “I hope we both get it,” he said with a pained smile. He didn’t have to say what “it” was – at least under 4:21.2 for the state record, and at best a sub-4:20 mile.

“Good luck,” I said with an almost-grimacing grin. I really did wish him well, because his luck would help determine mine.

The day didn’t go quite as well as either of us had hoped. I missed the state record by a measly second – mainly because Don’s kick failed him and wasn’t there at the end to pull or push me.

Bent over at the finish line, hands on knees, we gulped back the oxygen we’d spent in the past few minutes. “Good... job,” Don said on his chest-heaving exhales.

“Sorry... it wasn’t... closer,” I gasped. I wished we could have tied... well, maybe been inches apart with equal time.

The epilogue to the story is that Drake University recruited both Don Prichard and me. Our next race would come that fall as teammates.

In a way, we already were. Team effort had carried us higher than either could have climbed alone.

2018 Update. Don Prichard has done well for himself. After service as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, he returned to architecture school and then established a thriving practice in Indiana. These days he co-authors published novels with his wife Stephanie.

[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.]

Ten-Year Tenure

(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.)

April 1999. Joan Ullyot first told me about the 10-year rule. It might have originated with her – a medical doctor, a pioneering woman runner and the author of Women’s Running.

“No matter what your age when you start racing,” said Joan, “you can expect about 10 years of improvement. That’s how long it takes to learn the game.”

This is true, she added, whether you start at 15 or 35 or 55. The 10-year clock clicks on whenever we start to race.

Some runners cheat it, but usually not by much. Through the guile of one with medical training, plus a last big upping of her training, Joan herself stretched the timetable and PRed (with 2:47) in her 12^th year of marathoning (at age 48).

The best-known beater of the 10-year rule was Carlos Lopes. He had raced for almost 20 years when he won the Olympic Marathon and shortly thereafter set a world record. But his clock had stopped for many years during that period for injuries.

For every Ullyot and Lopes who exceed the 10-year improvement norm, others fall short of it to correct the average. Jack Foster and Priscilla Welch both began racing in their mid-30s, and both set long-standing world masters marathon records seven to eight years later.

As an average figure, 10 years seems to work well. I like quoting this rule of thumb because it fit me perfectly.

Long before I knew Joan Ullyot or realized that improvement wasn’t indefinite, I ran out of room to run faster. I’d started racing shortly before my 15^th birthday. My last PR of note came at 25.

Once the improvement warranty expires, then what – quit? Some runners do, but not many.

Climbing to a peak in this sport doesn’t mean that, after arriving at the top of our game, we suddenly fall off a cliff. More likely there’s a high plateau up there, where many runners camp for a long time before starting a gradual decline.

Others set off immediately to climb new and different peaks after reaching the first one. This was my choice.

My first decade held the Fast Years. Permanent PRs came during this period in races as brief as 100 yards and as lengthy as the marathon (with the first and fastest coming in the last year of that cycle).

The second 10 were my Long Years. More than half of my lifetime marathons, and all of my ultra attempts, fell into these years – as did my most career-threatening injury.

Then followed 10 Lean Years. Family and job complications sent me into semi-retirement – where races were few and generally slow, and runs were regular but mainly short.

Running and racing revived in my fourth decade. These have been the Mixed Years of balancing long runs (marathons again after a long lull), fast runs (races as short as a mile) and easy days (often taken as voluntary rests, which I’d resisted in all earlier cycles).

This latest cycle was due to end in 1998 and a new one to begin. I don’t know yet what changes might come in this fifth decade, but I’m eager as ever to find out.

All of this warns you that your years of running fast times are limited. And assures you that the good years roll on long after your PRs run out.

2018 Update. The biggest takeaway here, much more obvious now than 19 years ago, is that running and racing do NOT end with the last PR. Our lead subject here, Joan Ullyot, remains active in her late 70s.

[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.]

Let Running Be Running

(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.)

April 1998 (retitled in the magazine). Occasionally – okay, make that often – I come across an article I’d like to have written myself. One such, by a writer I don’t know, appeared in a magazine I don’t normally read that covers a sport I don’t practice.

Bill Gray wrote this piece in Tennis magazine. With a few word changes its message fits running.

“I don’t know about you,” it begins, “but I’m through apologizing for Our Game because it isn’t a mass-consumption sport and doesn’t have a Tiger [Woods] in its tank to fuel it into 21^st-century mega-popularity. And I’m weary of the outside mass media crowing about Our Game’s ‘demise’.”

Gray decries attempts “to make Our Game more like the other games... We’re not like the other games. What team-sports fans and the outside media that obsessively cover other games don’t understand is our unique culture. In tennis we’d rather play Our Game than watch it lying down like the team-sports couch potatoes.”

The same could be said for Our Sport. We need to promote running for what it is instead of apologizing for what it isn’t. It isn’t and might never be a high-ratings media attraction, but its strength is in its numbers of participants. Our tribe keeps growing, whether the outside media choose to pay any attention or not.

I’m not saying not to watch the mass-consumption sports. I casually consume several of them myself.

If nothing else, this viewing reminds us of how different those sports are from ours. We see that Our Sport attracts us for all that it does not have in common with the others:

No balls or sticks. No one hits or throws anything. Here the action centers on people, not objects.

No timeouts. Once a race starts, it doesn’t stop for commercials or any other excuse.

No overtime. A race ends at its finish line, with no one ever asked to go the extra mile to settle a score.

No scoring. Racing results aren’t figured by points but are a simple matter of time.

No substitutions. A weary runner can’t call for relief, and an eager but less talented one doesn’t have to warm the bench.

No cuts. Runners are never told to clean out their lockers and not to come back because they aren’t good enough.

No teams. There’s no one to hold you back when you’re running well, and no one to carry you when you’re doing poorly.

No sex-separation. In football and baseball the men play and the women cheer. In running they all race at once.

No referees. At least none in striped shirts who can blow a whistle during a race and assess a penalty on the spot.

No rules. At least none more complicated than filing an entry, starting at a scheduled time and place, and staying on the course for the full distance.

No fighting. When was the last time you saw two runners stop in midrace and settle an argument with their fists?

No stadiums. Spectators don’t sit in box seats. They stand beside the streets.

No ticket sales. Spectators don’t pay to watch road runners. Runners pay to entertain the fans.

No crowds. Boston and New York City Marathons aside, rare is the road race where the fans outnumber the runners.

No booing. People who watch our sport from the sidelines don’t act on the urge to verbally abuse a runner they don’t like.

No betting. Las Vegas publishes no “line” on our events, and no office pools ride on the results.

No off-season. We never have to wait six months for the races to start again; there’s always one next week, somewhere.

No one winner. When winning means meeting personal standards, a race has as many potential winners as it has entrants.

No clear losers. When losing means falling short of personal standards, the first finisher can “lose” and the last one can “win.”

No retirement. Runners never need to quit as they grow older and slower, and rarely do. They can always feel young again within a few years by graduating into a new age-group.

2018 Update. Still not fully retired. And I’m guessing that any of you who read this piece 20 years ago aren’t either. Running still gives us this way to win.

[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.]