The Grief-Giver

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2007. My college coach, Bob Karnes, died this summer. I’m glad I had the chance to apologize to him in print for the grief I gave him at Drake University, and to thank him for not writing me early off as a recruiting mistake and a lost cause. “Coach” (which I called him to the end, never “Mr. Karnes” or “Bob”) let me stumble around to find a way that differed from his.

I could write a month’s worth of tribute columns to Coach Karnes. But here I’ll limit his praises to a few brief tales that tell the type of man and mentor he was.

NOVEMBER 1960. Before my name had popped up on any other college coach’s recruiting radar, Bob Karnes from Drake University spotted me. He was the first – and only – coach to visit my hometown in a remote corner of Iowa.

This scored big points in my recruiting game, as I looked for a college that both wanted me and I, it. After that there was little doubt where I’d go – and not just because his would be my only full-ride scholarship offer.

MAY 1962. A scholarship isn’t a free ride. Athletes work hard and long for it. The school expects a payback for its investment, and a runner can feel pressure to perform.

I failed to perform. From one May to the next my mile time slumped by almost half a minute. I hit the low point of my still-brief running life and wanted to quit the school, quit the team, even quit the sport.

As soon as Coach Karnes’s team training ended for the summer, I stopped running for the first time in almost four years. For all I knew or cared at the time, this was an early and permanent retirement.

For a full month I didn’t run a step. My only exercise was recreational swimming. I spent the early part of that summer wasting time with friends and trying not to think about what might come next.

JULY 1962. Stranded at the pool without a ride home, I started walking those two or three miles. The walk broke into a slow run, then a faster run, which led to a plan that would echo through my running (and writing) for a long time.

I would start a “second career,” with a whole new set of records. I would never again let running be the job it had been the past year. I would run for myself, by myself and compete against myself.

The problem was working up the nerve to present this plan to Coach Karnes. He could appear intimidating with his gray crewcut, hawklike nose and the stern bearing of the Navy Reserve officer that he was. Now I had to tell him about my plan to reject his training system and give up the scholarship he’d bestowed, then beg to remain with the team on race days.

“Can I talk to you?” I quaked from the open door of his cramped office. He waved me toward the only available visitor’s chair and said, “What’s on your mind?”

Out rushed my ideas. I wanted to lay them all on the table before he could mount an argument. To his everlasting credit, he heard me out.

Coach Karnes could have shouted, “Out! I never want to see you again.” Instead he said, “Here’s my offer. You can try it your way, though I don’t give it much chance of succeeding.

“The deal is, you must run every one of our time trials. If you do well enough, you’re on the team for the next meet. If not, you stay home.”

Later. Over the next three years I qualified for almost every trip. My times were good enough to contribute to the Drake team’s results and to repay Coach Karnes for his kindness.

At graduation time he said to me, “Do you know what your problem is? You like to run too much. Losing doesn’t bother you enough. Your attitude will keep you running for a long time, but you will never compete up to your potential.”

He was right on both counts. I’ll always thank him for giving me the chance to find that out.

(Photo: Drake coach Bob Karnes tolerated my independent ways that diverged from his.)

[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, 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.]

The Generations

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2007. If we’re lucky and live long enough, we look in the mirror each morning and see a parent’s face staring back at us. I see my dad’s, more in the mannerisms than the features that he willed to me. I see an older version of him, since he never reached my current age.

Dad didn’t live long enough to see his children become parents. He died at just 54, which seems more youthful to me each year.

He never met my first serious girlfriend. I lived on the West Coast and he was in Iowa when Janet and I became a couple. She never met him, and we couldn’t afford two plane tickets to his funeral.

When we became engaged soon after that service, I told my mom, “I’m sorry we weren’t able to tell him.” She assured me, “He knew this was coming.”

Dad missed many of the events that a parent should experience during a full lifespan: the weddings, the announcement “you’re going to be a grandpa!” the baby’s arrival, the first steps and first words, the babysitting, the school, the games, the concerts, the graduation, the dating and (if really lucky) the start of yet another generation.         

I’ve experienced what Dad missed: my wedding and those of my two sisters, the births of my three children (and their growing up and all that goes with it), plus two children for Emily and three (gained by marriage) for Anne. I later divorced, remarried and became stepdad to Barbara’s son Chris Hazen.

Chris, my son Eric and daughter Sarah married in consecutive years of the early 2000s. Chris and Cindy gave us two granddaughters, Paige and Shaye, then Sarah and Mark the first “Henderson” grandson, Noah.

In January 2007, I wrote newborn Noah Samuel Friesen a letter that he might or might not read someday. (Readers will always have that power over writers.) It read in part:

Dear Noah: You’re less than two weeks old as I write this. Your weight just crept above the minimum requirement for winning your release from the hospital. You have moved home with parents who already had shown, even more than most mothers and fathers do, how much they wanted you.

You are a “miracle child.” Every new child is a miracle, of course, but you even more so. Every child is lucky to be here, but that’s especially true for you.

Without huge assists from medical science – before conception, then again late in pregnancy, through delivery and beyond – we never would have known you. You were a slow starter on your path into this world, then a fast finisher.

You weren’t due until Valentine’s Day. Thank you for letting us all fall in love with you six weeks early.

Later. With his early passing, my dad was also spared the premature death of his first child, my brother Mike. He outlasted our mother by less than a year as both died in 2004.

Dad didn’t have to suffer (as Mom did) through the heartaches of two grandchildren, plus an adopted granddaughter, born with handicaps. He didn’t live to see the failure of my first marriage.

Sarah and Eric divorced, but both have found new life partners. Leslie lives in a group home with her second family of sorts.

Dad’s three great-grandchildren – we don’t use the word “step” – grow and thrive. At this writing, Paige is almost 16, Shaye is 14, Noah is 12. All live in our home state of Oregon.

The girls are in Eugene after spending seven years in their mother’s native Hong Kong. Paige competes in track, and Shaye excels in ballet. They are fluent in two Chinese dialects as well as English.

Noah’s mom and dad share custody in the Portland area, and he was too young when they split up to remember them as a couple. He’s a natural triathlete with swimming, biking and running among his favorite outdoor activities.

(Photo: All my grandkids –Paige, Shaye and Noah.)

[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, 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.]

The Fall

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2007. The Boston Marathon is the Olympic Trials of the less-than-elite. You must run a fast marathon before you can run “The Marathon” (that’s how Bostonians think of it, as if no other marathon counted). You have to qualify far ahead of this race itself, and this can happen as long as 19 months earlier.

This means you’re still only halfway to Boston when you better the required time. After you get in, life still has plenty of time to block you from getting there. Consider all that happened in one year to a runner friend from my hometown.

One minute Sandy Itzkowitz looked up a clear road stretching far into a future filled with exciting possibilities. The next instant an unseen obstacle crashed her hopes and dreams.

Sandy was a special-education teacher in Eugene, Oregon. She also was a dancer and a walker-turned-runner-turned-marathoner and ultrarunner.

In winter, before running her first marathon at Napa Valley, she trained with the team that I coached. She came within two minutes of qualifying for Boston, without knowing the time she needed to run for her age, then 52.

Sandy began training for a late-summer 50K, which she finished. Three weeks later she called me on the eve of the Portland Marathon.

“I hear there are still a few spots available for tomorrow’s marathon,” she said. “Do you think I should run it?”

My answer was evasive: “You’ve certainly done the long runs. You decide if you’re recovered enough from the 50K.”

She said she was. The team DVD from that marathon opens with her photo, lighting up the gloomy early morning with her smile while standing with the starting line in the background.

Sandy ran 3:59 that day, punching her ticket to Boston and now knowing what a big deal that is. This was one of her proudest days ever.

Her worst came two weekends later, when her life and plans changed in seconds. She was riding her bicycle in midday light, in clear weather and with no traffic threatening her. No one witnessed what happened, but apparently Sandy hit a pothole, flew over the handlebars and landed head-first.

The results of such collisions are often catastrophic, especially when the rider risks going unhelmeted. Sandy’s helmet sacrificed itself in the fall, or we might be talking about her in the past tense.

Her first memory after the accident was waking up on the road, looking into a woman’s face. By comforting coincidence this first person on the scene was another runner who had trained with Sandy.

Sarah McCarthy, who’d also qualified for Boston two weeks earlier, now happened to be walking in the area. Sandy’s first words: “You look like an angel.”

The first medical report, which flashed quickly among Sandy’s circles of friends, sounded grim. She could feel almost nothing from the neck down.

The news improved, slightly, in the first few days. Her spine hadn’t been damaged, and surgery had eased pressure on it. Some feeling had returned, but doctors warned that they might not know for months how quickly or how far she could climb back.

Sandy started climbing – with strength, stamina and spirit that amazed the therapists who dealt with such cases all the time. She graduated quickly from the ICU, to her own hospital room, to the rehab wing.

I visited her there on the sixth day after the accident, taking along my handicapped daughter Leslie as a stand-in for Sandy’s students (who hadn’t yet been able to see her). Her room was empty.

A nurse told us, “She’s in the dining room having her first meal there.” We found her sitting at a table in a wheelchair, her back and neck so stiffly braced that she couldn’t turn to see us.

Other than the brace, the only visible sign of an injury was a scraped cheek. She looked tired and red-eyed, but her smile was sincere and serene.

We’d been warned not to wear Sandy out, to stay no more than 15 minutes. Lifting the fork to her mouth appeared to be more tiring than talking with us, so we overstayed the limit.

“My fingers still tingle,” she said. “It’s as if they fell asleep and are just starting to wake up.” She added that some feeling had also returned to her legs, but little ability to move them on demand.

That day she’d been placed on the parallel bars and told to take as many steps as she could manage. “I made six,” she said. “It was the happiest day of my life.”

Sandy knew then that she hadn’t lost everything. At first Sandy measured her progress in steps, then in feet, then in laps around the hallways. Little more than a month after the accident she moved back home, in time for Thanksgiving.

Later. Two months post-crash I greeted Sandy Itzkowitz at a year-end holiday party. She walked in unassisted by a person or a cane, and wore only a soft neck brace for support.

She still couldn’t drive, but reported walking to the bus stop alone and riding to therapy sessions. These were her training now, but she was advancing toward more familiar ground.

“I just received the best news,” said Sandy as that year ended. “My doctor told me I could soon start taking my first running steps.”

Life had dealt her a big detour. Now she was working her away slowly around this obstacle. Maybe she wouldn’t get as far as Boston, but she was going in the right direction again.

(Photo: Sandy Itzokowitz climbed back well from her serious bike accident.)

[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, 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.]

The Humorist

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2007. We can’t see a Golden Age while it is happening. We can’t spot the greatness of an era until we’ve seen how far it stands above the years that followed.

Given a generation’s perspective, we now see the 1970s as the Golden Age of U.S. men’s marathoning at the Olympics. We can say the same for U.S. running writing, and in two cases the names of runner and writer overlap.

Look at all the Seventies yielded, and no later decade has: in Olympic running, Frank Shorter’s gold and silver medals at Munich and Montreal, plus the fourth places of Kenny Moore and Don Kardong. In best-selling writing (for all topics), the running books of Jim Fixx, George Sheehan and the Bob Glover-Jack Shepherd team.

These authors earned their success. They wrote well and delivered the right message at the right time, as running and running bookselling boomed together.

But I’d argue that Fixx, Sheehan and Glover-Shepherd weren’t the only great writers the Seventies spawned. For quality and durability of their work, I’d name Moore and Kardong.

They have more in common than their near-misses at the Olympics. Moore and then Kardong, a few years later, were Pacific Northwest-born, both ran for Pac-8 (now Pac-12) colleges and were world-class in track before turning to the marathon, where both peaked in the 2:11s.

And both broke into running writing in a magazine that I edited at the time. Moore first appeared there in 1970, and Kardong five years later.

How Don tells stories distinguishes him from his fellow fourth-placer. One isn’t better than the other; they’re just different.

When I first talked to Kenny Moore about rerunning his article, he was studying for a graduate degree in creative writing. He was in training for the career to come.

When I asked Don Kardong to write his first article, about his 1975 trip across the newly opened borders of China, he was working as an elementary schoolteacher. A career as a writer? You can’t be serious.

His apparent lack of seriousness, or at least inability to take himself and the sport too seriously, would distinguish his writing and endear him to readers. With Moore, you expected to be impressed by his thoughts and observations. With Kardong, you expected to be amused by his experiences and misadventures.

This isn’t to say that Don writes the way a slapstick comic performs. He’s no buffoon. His relaxed style features a gentle jibe here (often aimed at himself) and a clever turn of phrase there.

The writing appears to entertain Don as much as it does his readers. It seems to be his break from the serious contributions he makes to the sport and to his community.

He helped professionalize running as a co-founder of the Association of Road Racing Athletes (now known by the initials PRRO). He served as long-distance chairman of USA Track & Field and as president of the Road Runners Club of America.

Don’s writing pace has slowed of late, and not just because of competing obligations. Curiously, Runner’s World stopped assigning articles to this longtime favorite of its readers.

Now, finally, Don is back writing for a national audience. His column has appeared in each issue of Marathon & Beyond since early 2007.

Readers can again smile and laugh along with this runner-writer from the Golden Age. His work still glitters a generation later.

Later. At home in Spokane, Washington, Don Kardong launched and later served as fulltime race director of the Bloomsday 12K race before retiring this year. His writings are again absent from national running publications.

(Photo: Don Kardong ran with great speed, wrote with great style and directed with great skill.)

[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, 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.]