Class Acts

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

November 2001 (retitled in the magazine). An early dream of mine took 40 years to come true. My high school coaches guided me so well that I wanted to grow up and be just like them.

Teaching the next generation, and if you’re lucky the one after that, is one of the highest callings in life. Watching students take what you teach and make it their own is one of life’s greatest joys. Coaching is simply teaching by another name.

My career path took a detour into journalism during college. I never coached – not in the formal, face-to-face sense, anyway, but only indirectly and impersonally on the printed page and the speaking stage.

Never coached, that is, until this year when I received the offer of a lifetime: to teach/coach running classes at the University of Oregon. I’ve learned more from the students than I’ve taught them.

These students are from running’s forgotten age. They’re too old for kids’ runs and have left high school competition behind, and they’re too young for the fitness running and road racing that their age group generally thinks of as old-people’s activities. Their parents and grandparents who run view the young as uninterested in following their lead – lazy, even.

I’ve learned otherwise. Most of my students are traditional college age, 18 to 22 or so. They run for the same reasons we elders did then.

They want to get fitter and faster, and to learn how to do that. They delight in their improvement and despair of their setbacks.

These students care about their running, and more of them want to run at the University of Oregon than the classes can accommodate. They don’t care who their teacher is, at least not at the start.

They come the first day without knowing who I am. They come as they would to any class, wondering, “Will he teach me anything to make this hour worth my time?”

Some students think not. After one first-day talk a young man said, “Your program sounds too easy for me. I’m training for marathons and triathlons.”

Yet sticking with me was a runner named Brian who’d already qualified for the Boston Marathon. Another, Liz, had run four years for the local university team and now was its assistant coach.

Abilities range widely in these classes, as do body types. Matt, a student in my racing class, ran well under 20 minutes for 5K... at 247 pounds. I’ve never seen anyone so big run so fast.

I try not to play favorites based on ability. But I can’t help feeling partial toward a woman who goes by the nickname of Max.

She joined the basic-running class in the winter and continued with introductory racing in the spring. She never finished anywhere but the back in our test runs.

Her first was an 11-minute mile, which she worked down into the low eights. She ran her first 5K race last winter, then 10K in the spring and a summer half-marathon, and she has a fall marathon in her sights.

During their track sessions, the students mingle with hotshot young athletes who finish their morning runs by striding the straightaways at speeds that brings gasps from the neophytes. The speedsters sometimes act amused by our pace and sometimes act annoyed when a beginner moves out of their way too slowly.

I’d rather work with a Max than the speedsters who think she doesn’t belong on the same track (or even in the same sport) with them. How many of them can improve their mile time by three seconds, let alone almost three minutes, in three months? How many still feel as excited as someone first finding out how much better her legs can work?

I encourage students to gauge success not by their speed or finish position but by their improvement. Runners improve dramatically at college age, by minutes at a time in distances as short as a mile or 5K.

This is a joy for me to see, even while knowing that their times would drop no matter whose training they were doing. I’m flattered that they’ve chose to try mine for a term.

My teachers/coaches were more successful than they ever knew. They taught me what I needed to know to get along without them.

The final exam for each of my students comes after the class ends. Its one question: “Will you continue running when attendance is no longer required?” If the answer is yes, we’ve both succeeded.

2018 Update. My stay in the UO P.E. department lasted 18 school years, ending only last spring. The satisfactions continue as I still see many former students on race days, on the streets and trails, and on social media.

[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, Next Steps, Pacesetters, Running with Class, 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.]

Filling the Great Gap

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

November 2000. One Sunday morning this spring I watched a marathon start in Penticton, British Columbia, then drove to the airport in nearby Kelowna. Passing through that town an hour and less than 50 miles later, I saw another marathon getting underway.

A marathon was run that same day in the neighboring province of Alberta, and one across the border in Washington state. Apparently we have enough marathoners now to let this many races co-exist.

But in darker moments I think about how marathon mania has almost entirely erased a set of perfectly fine events. The natural stepping stones leading up to the marathon – the 15- and 20-mile, 25K and 30K races – now stand nearly bare.

Road racing is polarizing as race distances move to very short or very long. The fastest-growing events on the U.S. roads are 5K’s at the one pole and marathons at the other. Fives are logical starting points for newbies and serve as speed tests for vets. Marathons are glamorous survival tests for all.

Eight-, 10- and 12K’s remain numerous and attractive. We can still find enough races of 15K, 10-miles and half-marathon.

But between the half and the marathon lies... well, not much. This 13.1-mile gap is the black hole of running.

The only nationally known races to survive in this void are the Old Kent Riverbank 25K in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the 15-mile Charleston Distance Run in West Virginia. A gem of a Canadian race is the Around the Bay 30K in Hamilton, Ontario, which happens to be three years older than Boston.

Around the Bay also happens to be my last “gap” race, run in 1998. I would run more of them if more could be found.

During my best racing years in the 1970s, the Northern California calendar alone offered a 25K in Golden Gate Park, a 15-mile in the Gold Country, a 20-mile in Sacramento and another 20 through the Coast Range, a 30K and a 17-mile on the Monterey Peninsula. I ran all of them, almost every year.

Most of these events are gone now, and this trend repeats itself across the country. The gap races are too hard to sell to runners who seem to prefer races much shorter or the marathon itself.

My suggestion for refilling the gap is to use the marathon as a sales tool for these races. Build them into marathon training.

Many of the runners I met at Around the Bay were using the 30K as training for a spring marathon. So was I, with Vancouver coming up five weeks later.

A pet belief of mine is that the best training for racing is to race. You can’t push as hard alone as you can with company on the course, and drinks, splits and cheers dealt out as you go.

This is the most enjoyable way to “train.” In fact, in my fastest racing years I did little long or fast training but ran a race almost weekly at a wide range of distances.

To work this way, the race must resemble the one you’re training for in distance and pace. When the great gap goes unfilled, we’ve lost an opportunity to train for a marathon with the support from a crowd and all the other racing amenities.

A half-marathon race isn’t long enough to serve this purpose (as I’ve learned the hard way from trying to make that long leap upward in recent years). Starting a marathon with plans to drop out after 15 or 20 miles (as I’ve also done) feels a little like failure.

Memo to marathon race directors and marathon training-group leaders: Install races of 15 and 20 miles; 25, 30 and 35 kilometers, or 16.2 miles or 26 kilometers (both about 10 miles shy of a marathon) as stepping stones to the big event. Don’t try to make them as formal or frill-filled as the marathon itself, but give runners a chance to go these distances and set PRs under official conditions.

Memo to runners: Enter these gap races when they’re offered. They’re great distances in their own right, great preparation for the realities of marathoning and great places to stop before the full reality of that distance catches you unprepared.

2018 Update. I had the misfortune and good fortune to do most of my road racing before the half-marathon was “invented.” This deprived me of chances of run that distance when most fit for it. Yet I also had abundant opportunities to go the “gap” distances, few of which still exist as races.

[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, Next Steps, Pacesetters, Running with Class, 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.]

Running's Health

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

November 1999 (retitled in the magazine).  My local newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard, reacted curiously to the return of the national track championships to Track Town USA. The sports section lavished as many as six pages a day on the meet. Yet the front page on Sunday led off with a negative story headlined “Popularity of Running Tails off, Slows to a Walk." This demanded and received the following rebuttal from me, which our paper published:

Most of my mornings start with a run. I follow this with another favorite morning habit, reading your newspaper.

Imagine my surprise to pick up Sunday’s paper and learn that running is a dying, damaging activity. The anecdotes and statistics seem to support these claims, but they are misleading. I say this as one who has run for 40-some years, writes about the sport for a living and travels the country meeting with runners.

Your article props up the tailing-off theory by reporting a decline in the number of runners and in the sales of running shoes. I’ve read the census figures and offer a different take on them.

Most of the drop has occurred among marginal “runners” who had only one foot in the activity anyway. They ran less than three times a week and no more than a mile or two at a time. Those who run more and more often are more likely to keep running.

Interpreting the shoe-sales figures: As many as half the pairs sold aren’t worn by runners. Blame changes in footwear fashion, not a dwindling runner count, for the decline in these sales.

Better measures of the running population are the numbers of magazines and books sold. Only true runners buy them.

Circulation of the largest magazine, Runner’s World, topped 500,000 for the first time last year. Books on the sport are more numerous and sell better than ever before.

“The difference between a jogger and a true runner,” said the sport’s finest writer George Sheehan, “ is an entry form.” Entries at U.S. road runs in 1998 exceeded the previous high by nearly 10 percent, according to the national Road Running Information Center in Santa Barbara. Some 419,000 Americans ran marathons last year, exceeding the previous record by more than 30,000.

True, the number of road runs in Eugene has slipped. These events haven’t disappeared, though, but just moved north to the Portland area.

More than 12,000 runners entered the annual Portland Marathon and its shorter companion events on one day last October. More than 20,000 tried the five-kilometer Race for the Cure in Portland last fall.

As for the suggestion that running is inherently bad for the legs, it’s interesting that your article mentions Eugenean Janet Heinonen. She has run at least 35 miles a week for 35 years, and her knees and hips still work just fine.

Runners do get hurt. These injuries usually result from training mistakes – too far, too fast, too often.

The problems nearly always ease if the error is detected and corrected. Very few injuries need be retirement-provoking.

Running is basically health-giving, and running’s health activity is undoubtedly sound. It’s true nationally and here in Eugene, where the movement took its first steps almost four decades ago.

2018 Update. I was well into my think-locally, act-locally stage of life when three arrivals coincided midway through the new century’s first decade. Their combined efforts made Eugene running more vibrant than ever. 

First came ace promoter Vin Lananna to the University of Oregon, which landed four straight Olympic Trials. Next, event organizer William Wyckoff brought his Eclectic Edge here, quadrupling the number of available races. Finally, director Richard Maher returned a major marathon to Eugene after a 20-year absence here.

[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, Next Steps, Pacesetters, Running with Class, 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.]

Remembering George

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

November 2003. If you've run less than 10 years, we can't expect you to know the name Dr. George Sheehan. But if you started running – and reading this magazine – before 1993, we can assume that you'll never forget him.

I never will. George was the best friend I've ever had in this sport. He was my confidant, mentor and model for the writing and speaking roles that we both played, and was almost my second father.

We were teammates. He was the essayist and I the editor from his first Runner's World appearance in 1970 until he finished his last book 23 years later. I had the honor of seeing his columns before any reader of the magazine did, and to hear the private stories behind these public gems.

The most dramatic of those stories began in 1986, when George stood at the top of his many games. His books had made best-seller lists, and his columns were the best-read feature of the magazine.

He also was one of the best-known speakers on the running, fitness and sports-medicine circuits. He was one of the country's best runners for his age, 67 at the time.

Then came the type of medical exam that he'd ordered for his own patients hundreds of times. Back came the chilling report on himself that he'd delivered to others: "We have found a growth..."

He had cancer of the prostate, and the disease already had spread into his bones – beyond the reach of surgery. His first reaction to this diagnosis was to surrender. "I planned my will and turned down speaking engagements," he wrote. "I wasn't sure I'd be around in three months to fulfill them."

He also stopped writing and dropped out of racing. But he soon realized that waiting to die was no way to live his remaining time.

"There is nothing more certain than the defeat of a man who gives up – and, I might add, the victory of one who will not," he wrote at the time. I know that Robert Frost was right. I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

George resumed his full menu of activities. While fighting the disease to a standstill for the next six years, he delivered hundreds more speeches, ran scores more races, wrote dozens more columns and published two more books.

More importantly he patched up his personal life. He ended a long separation from his wife, Mary Jane, and eased the resulting strains with their 12 children.

By his own admission he became less self-absorbed. He was quicker to say his thank-yous and I-love-yous.

"I am still under sentence," he said, "but I have been given a stay of execution. Time to set things right and achieve what I was sent here to do."

That time stretched many more years than his doctors expected. They were good, happy, productive years before his disease finally took its inevitable course.

Even after the cancer went (in his words) "into fast forward" in 1992, forcing him to quit running and then speaking, he kept writing. His journal-style essays became a frontline report on his final battle.

These writings combined into the most intimate of his eight books, and the most inspirational. He wryly referred to Going the Distance as "my death book." But he was wrong. It's full of life well lived.

"There is a healthy way to be ill," Dr. George Sheehan had long advised his patients, readers and listeners. His final book, completed in his final week of life, tells how well he took his own advice.

Its publication now commemorates the 10^th anniversary of his death, on November 1^st, 1993. I choose instead to celebrate the 85^th anniversary of his birth, four days later. As long as his writing is read, a part of George Sheehan lives on.

2018 Update. This column is posted on the 100^th anniversary of George’s birth, November 5^th. His words still live in me, most visibly in my office in this framed quotation: “Winning is doing the best you can with what you are given.” 

I was also given prostate cancer at about the same age as George’s diagnosis. Thanks to detection and treatments unavailable to him, I do my best with it at the age didn’t quite reach, 75.

[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, Next Steps, Pacesetters, Running with Class, 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.]