Fred Lebow

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from April 1990.)

LEBOW’S EVENTS. Fred Lebow has a way of making things come out right. Even when his early prospects appear dim, the New York City impresario directs final acts worthy of Broadway.

I first met Lebow at the 1976 Boston Marathon. My first impression was that he talked oddly.

It wasn’t his voice, an accent brought with him from Transylvania, but his words. Fred spoke as a dreamer and schemer in a sport still conditioned to think small and to undersell itself.

Running hadn’t yet boomed in 1976. Jim Fixx said that same Boston weekend of a book he was writing, “I hope it will sell 10,000 copies.” (His Complete Book of Running sold 100 times that many.)

Lebow said of the marathon he directed, “We’re taking it out of Central Park this fall and running it through all five boroughs. In a few years this race could become bigger than Boston.”

Dream on, I thought. Even if the city allows such a disruption, who could dare run on those mean streets?

Bill Rodgers dared, for one. He won the first four citywide races, and in those years New York City not only outgrew Boston but all other marathons in the world.

Next Lebow noticed that as road racing picked up size and speed in this country, track interest waned. “If people won’t go to track meets,” he said, “we’ll take the top track athletes to the people.”

He proposed a mile race along Fifth Avenue. It won’t work, I thought. Milers will feel as far out of their element here as Olympic swimmers would in the Central Park Reservoir.

The runners adapted. The Fifth Avenue Mile worked so well that it spawned a worldwide series of imitators.

Last year Lebow said, “This country deserves a summer track meet like those in Europe.” He would direct the New York Games.

I thought Fred was out of his element this time. He knew the road sport, but track was a different game that required selling tickets and not just giving away sidewalk space.

His meet filled the stadium. And now the New York Road Runners, the club he heads, has landed the 1991 World Championships Track Trails.

Fred Lebow’s knack for directing successful finishes is now meeting its most serious test. Lebow isn’t dealing with an event this time but with his own life story.

Co-workers suspected a problem this winter when Fred began talking oddly. His dreaming and scheming didn’t alert them. That’s how Fred normally talks.

But it wasn’t like him to slur words and forget names. He checked into a hospital to undergo tests.

The early and ominous suspicion was that he had a brain tumor. Doctors performed a biopsy in late February.

While the 52-year-old Lebow awaited the results, he told Dick Patrick of USA Today, “I’m prepared for anything. I’ve had a fulfilling life.”

The first diagnosis was inconclusive but still heartening. No signs of malignancy had been detected.

Fred walked out of the hospital the same night he was examined. A week later he returned for a second biopsy, which confirmed the worst fears: a cancer of the brain.

It’s not good,” Lebow said. “But we know what it is that I’m fighting.”

Treatment started immediately with radiation. “All I know is that if it is treatable and can be cured, I will be cured. I’m going to fight the hell out of it.”

The fight will be uphill. But I’ve learned not to doubt Fred Lebow’s ability to dream or scheme up a happy ending, even when his odds seem longest.

UPDATE. Fred lived four years after this diagnosis, during which he ran his own marathon for the only time. His legacy includes that race, the Fifth Avenue Mile and the annual track meet at Randall’s Island. He is memorialized in a documentary film, “Running for Your Life,” and with a statue near the New York City Marathon finish line.

Only after his passing did I learn two facts about Lebow’s age. He had long understated it and was actually almost 58, not 52, at the time of this writing. And we shared a birthday, June 3^rd.

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