Paul Reese

(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 May 1992.)

REESE’S PIECES. The most remarkable thing about Paul Reese’s journey of national and personal discovery was what he didn’t do. He didn’t try to break any records or raise any money. He didn’t act as a paid spokesman for seniors or cancer patients. He didn’t run to draw attention to himself.

Reese kept his intentions quiet partly to protect himself from doubters who would have said, “It can’t be done at your age,” and from friends who might have said, “It shouldn’t be done in your health.”

The Auburn, California, runner would turn 73 the week his journey was to begin in spring 1990. An article of faith in this sport is that recovery from big efforts slows down with age. Yet Paul planned to run a marathon a day for four straight months.

He also was just coming off a health scare. A cancerous prostate had been diagnosed less than three years earlier, and apparently had been treated successfully with radiation. But you could never tell what chain reactions the stress of this run might set off.

So he plotted the journey quietly. He organized it without sponsorship, without a support crew other than his wife Elaine and without seeking any publicity.

He didn’t tell me, and I’ve known Paul for 25 years and we’ve raced hundreds of miles together. He knew I couldn’t be trusted with his secret, so he kept it to himself.

I didn’t learn what he was doing until he’d done it. Even then the news didn’t come from him but from a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Herb Caen wrote on August 21st, 1990, “Tomorrow 73-year-old Paul Reese of Auburn will become the oldest man ever to run across the United States. He started April 21st, knee deep in the Pacific Ocean near Jenner [California] and finishes in the Atlantic at Hilton Head, South Carolina.”

Paul had averaged his marathon a day. He’d totaled 3192 miles in those 124 days. He’d succeeded in keeping his experience of a lifetime quiet until the very end.

Another year passed before I learned that Paul had accomplished two feats of a lifetime at once. In the same four months he’d written a book about this run.

Each night he captured the thoughts and observations from his hours on the back roads of America. He meant this only as a personal journal.

“I wanted to record the heat of battle, and not write it later and have the actuality changed by reflection,” he told me.

He made me work to get a copy. “Just don’t advertise it,” he warned. “I don’t want to get into the book-supply business.”

The manuscript somehow found its way to people who are in the business of producing and distributing books. They’ve taken serious interest in publishing a slimmer version of his journal that retains all the immediacy and intimacy of the diary form.

This is much more than a book about running and for runners. “People have missed the whole point if they see it as a jock thing,” says Paul. “I’m not saying, ‘Look at me, Mr. Genes, Mr. Macho.’ “

He also isn’t saying, “Boy, look at me! I had cancer, and I’m a tiger now. The early detection is a tribute to modern medicine, not running.”

So why did Paul Reese run? For the “enjoyment,” he says in an interview with Mike Tymn for National Masters News.

“Enjoyment like the pioneers who walked, rode a horse or traveled by wagon across the country. Enjoyment of lessons learned from studying firsthand the varied geography and people of our country. 

“Also, enjoyment with Elaine in injecting some adventure and more variety into our lives, in departing from routine and in together meeting a somewhat difficult challenge. And, yes, the sheer enjoyment and deep gratitude of being mobile at my vintage.”

UPDATE. WRS Publishing released Paul Reese’s book, titled Ten Million Steps, in 1993. Paul and Elaine continued their adventures with treks across all other states not covered on the original journey. This resulted in two more books, The Old Man and the Road, and Go East Old Man.

Paul’s prostate cancer never recurred. He died at 87 of complications from heart surgery.

[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.]