Aiming Low

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 2000.)

YOU CAN’T fake a marathon. Maybe you can run a 10K without training for it, but not a marathon.

I wrote those opening lines so long ago that I now had trouble remembering them. Memory failed me in midrun at the 2000 Napa Valley Marathon.

I’d gone there without thinking of running that far. I wasn’t ready, having run no longer than an hour since a half-marathon race almost two months earlier.

My thought was to run the first 10 miles or so with Jan Seeley, the publisher of Marathon & Beyond. Rich Benyo, M&B’s editor, co-directs Napa Valley. He insisted I wear a race number even if not planning to finish.

The sport’s great thinker George Sheehan once said, “When you pin on a number, you pledge to do your best.” I didn’t consciously take this oath but now wore the evidence of having done so.

At 10 miles I told Jan, “I’ll run a few more.” At 13, “I’ll keep going as long as you do.”

Jan was running 16 miles that day to prepare for a later marathon, and she stuck to her plan. As she stopped, I told her, “I’ll go a little farther and then catch a ride.”

More miles down the road, no ride could be found. I was told, “You can wait for the sag wagon, but it might be another hour before the last runner gets here.”

Rain had started to fall. Running mixed with walking seemed a better choice than standing and waiting. This later became walks mixed with brief runs.

I finished. It wasn’t pretty, but my time wasn’t a PW – a personal worst.

Another truism of marathoning: The less you train before the race, the more you suffer during and after (and usually vice versa – more training equaling less suffering). My hurting was mild on race day compared to the after-effects that would strike later. I wouldn’t try to go this far again for another years.

SELDOM IF ever has my destination so far exceeded my travel plan as it did at that Napa Valley Marathon. I’m not quite ready to tell you to aim so low; that would sound anti-athletic. But let’s at least look at goals from another angle.

In an earlier Napa Valley Marathon, 1995, I ran the first few miles with Jeff Hagen. Since then, Jeff has taught me a lot.

First he has guided me through a medical condition that we share (vertigo episodes, unrelated to running). Later we learned that we share views on goals.

Both of us like to think of them as floors to spring from instead of ceilings to bang against. Instead of pointing to the highest target we’d like to reach, we try to see how far we can exceed certain minimums.

Jeff’s minimum standards are immensely higher than mine. He’s an ultrarunner who does especially well in track races that last a day or more.

Now living in Yakima, Washington, he wrote in his club newsletter, Hard Core Runners News, “In the dozens of ultramarathons that I have run, my basic approach has been simply to go out there and have fun. I do stick to a race strategy, in order to run as efficiently as possible, but I have always steered clear of setting lofty race goals.

“For some reason, setting modest goals seems to work better. With lofty goals comes pressure, and if any little thing goes wrong – which is almost a certainty in any ultra event – one can easily become demoralized. This translates to poor performance.

“By setting goals that are more achievable, I find that even if things don’t go exactly as planned, there may be a chance of meeting my original goal. And if things happen to be going well, I sometimes adjust my goal upward during the second half of the event.”

Before you conclude that aiming low is a sure recipe for setting PWs, let me share another Jeff Hagen story. He went into a 48-hour race, in 1999, aiming high.

“This was one of those rare times when I had a specific, and lofty, goal in mind – the North American record of 213 miles for men 50 to 54.” Before the race began, the course and weather conditions relieved him of that plan.

Jeff told his wife, “Well, that takes the pressure off. I’ll just enjoy the race and forget about the record.” He totaled 216 miles.

For my first marathon, I aimed low. For Boston 1967 my longest training run had been 20 miles at eight-minute pace. Holding that same pace for the extra 10K seemed a reasonable minimal goal.

I started as planned but steadily nudged up the pace. To my shocked delight I averaged 6:30 miles in that marathon. The new goal became that pace or better, which I never averaged again.

Goals can be stopping places. You either reach them and stop because you’re satisfied, or you don’t reach them and stop out of frustration.

By setting high goals, you set yourself up for high pressure and a high probability of failure. Low goals lead to low pressure and surprising results.

Instead of reaching for the highest point you might touch, see how far you can exceed a minimum standard. Instead of straining to make things happen, relax and let them happen. Instead of thinking of goals as the most you might achieve, consider them as the least you will accept.

Photo: Jan Seeley led me into my unplanned Napa Valley Marathon. Later we would work together on her magazine, Marathon & Beyond.

[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, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Necessary Worries

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1999.)

YOU NEVER know how a marathon will go. After about four dozen of these races, in four different decades, you’d think I would know. But I was no more comfortable facing the unknown this time than anytime before.

Feeling like a second-class marathon citizen, I went straight to the back of the yellow school bus that would carry runners to the start of the 1999 Las Vegas Marathon. Sitting in the last seat was a tall Latino man of maybe 30. He stood up and let me squeeze into the window seat.

I could hear him worrying that his long legs would cramp, and he wanted to stretch them into the aisle. I got him to talking so he would fret less.

He introduced himself as Manuel and said, “I ran a 3:45 marathon in December and am shooting for 3:15 today.” No wonder he looked scared.

We arrived at the starting line two hours before race time. Manuel bolted from the bus, as did most of the other adrenaline-overdosed passengers. Shadowy figures warmed up on the desert road. Lines formed at the porta-potty forest.

I stayed on the bus, reading a book I’d carried just for this purpose. This didn’t mean I had no worries, only that I’d learned not to let the fear start me running two hours before race time.

Little was at stake for me here. I’d run this far dozens of times before, and had no time goal today.

Still, I suffered from PMS – pre-marathon syndrome. In the last week before the race every little twinge in my legs and tickle in my throat magnified. This defines PMS.

My current problem started much earlier. A hip-groin injury popped up during my longest training run and almost crippled me late in those three hours. Otherwise I’d felt quite spunky in the long run.

I decided to enter the marathon despite the injury, hoping that three weeks of babying it would bring relief. They didn’t. Even while running nothing longer than an hour, and usually only half that long, my left side didn’t feel anywhere close to right.

Whether I finished it or not was already determined by what I’d done to and for my hip and groin in the past few weeks. It was too late to change anything. All I could do now was go out and learn what this day’s answers would be.

My worries ended soon after the race started. The hip-groin problem melted away in the first half-hour, leaving the normal challenges of a marathon that were tall enough.

Afterward I was left hoping no cure is ever found for pre-marathon syndrome. It’s a necessary part of the experience – the mind’s way of getting the body ready for what lies ahead.

BARBARA AND I aren’t Vegas types, being too cheap to gamble hard and too straight to drink heavily. But the February timing of the race was right, and the desert vacation afterward was appealing to us soggy and chilled Oregonians.

Anyone knowing my history of marathon times and counts might wonder, Why bother? Why repeat what I’ve done dozens of times before, and now take an extra hour or two to finish? Why not just skip the race and go right into the vacation?

I didn’t ask myself any of this, and here’s why. Days like this are too rare to miss. In 15,000 days of my running life to date, marathons had only occupied fewer than 50 of them – or 0.3 percent of the total. These few days helped fuel the many others, by giving higher goals and supplying greater memories.

I’ll spare you a mile-by-mile account of my leisurely, walk-punctuated Sunday morning on the old desert highway, leading toward the high-rises of the Las Vegas Strip. It’s enough to say that the day brought all the effort and elation, familiarity and surprises that marathon days always provide – and few others ever do.

Which meant that the marathon was well worth my time. All 4:25 of it. This time confers no bragging rights. It’s nearly double that of the race’s leader, someone I never saw and whose name I’m not moved to look up.

We ran the same course but in different worlds that day. The time was my second slowest, but slower no longer means lesser. Each marathon has its own struggles and rewards.

Now I owned a shirt from the Las Vegas Marathon. I wore it proudly, on special occasions only, while looking forward to the next day like this.

Photo: That year’s Las Vegas Marathon began far out in the desert, then ran toward the Strip.

[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, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

The Races

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1998.)

DON’T BELIEVE everything you see at the movies. There’s more to Flint, Michigan, for instance, than shown in the documentary “Roger and Me.”

Beverly, a volunteer at the Crim Festival of Races, drew the early shift. She was making her first airport runs at six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and I was the first weekend guest to be escorted away from Flint.

We talked about the recent divisive and depressing two-month strike against General Motors that had Flint at its epicenter. We didn’t talk about the city’s image that took a beating in Michael Moore’s film. This portrayal is still a sore point with the city’s loyalists.

As we pulled into the airport, Beverly said, “When you talk to people about Flint, tell them we’re nice here.” And they are.

By 1998, I’d traveled here for 11 of the Crim’s past 13 runnings, and had never met with anything but niceness. This even extends to the residents who have nothing to do with the running event.

One year I ran through one of the poorer neighborhoods. From a porch I heard the shout, “Run, white boy, run!”

The shouter was African-American, as were all of his neighbors. I’ve gotten lots of mileage from this story in years since.

But in fairness to Flint, I note here that the comment was jovial, not menacing. It didn’t lead to an adrenaline-charged upping of pace or quick retreat to a paler part of town.

Flint has always welcomed this runner, even where he’s in the minority. And the Crim Race has long embraced runners of all nationalities and shadings.

This year I walked into the hospitality room at the Radisson on race eve. The faces there were mostly dark, and the dominant language was Swahili. I felt again like someone from a minority group, but not unwelcome here.

Kenyans accounted for the top eight men and top three women at Crim 1998. The previous year’s leading male was Moroccan, and a Mexican had won here in recent years. Asians will eventually arrive.

This points out an oddity of U.S. road racing. While the elite runners are multiracial, the overall field is quite white.

Talk of “racism” rumbled through the sport in 1998 when certain events allegedly tried to limit the number of Kenyans. But the bigger problem went unaddressed in that discussion. That is how to diversify the rest of the pack.

Some racial and ethnic minorities in this country fight an everyday battle against messages telling them they can’t keep pace because they look, talk, act or pray differently from the dominant culture. Everyone needs to find ways to win.

Running in races is one of those ways. Go the distance at whatever pace you can handle, and you can feel like just as big a winner as the person who finishes first.

“Everyone can win” has become a cliché in running. But it’s still a rare concept in sports and rarer still in life at large.

This running mantra has yet to reach all cultures. So far, the racing that made superstars of black Africans – as well as Arabs, Asians and Latin Americans  – hasn’t transferred widely enough to Americans of similar descent and lesser ability.

U.S. road running resembles a party to which only one ethnic group was invited. This was never the intent but still is the result.

Both sexes now run together, as well as all ages and every ability (and disability). The American sport’s continuing need is to embrace every race. We runners, like the good people of Flint, all need to put out the word that we’re nice folks who welcome everyone to our parties.

Photo: Runners of all abilities – and many nationalities and ethnicities – flock to Flint, Michigan, each summer for the Crim 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, Miles to Go, 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.]

Asian Work-ation

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1997.)

BUSINESS TRIPS don’t have to be all business. They can be working vacations, with emphasis on that second word, though I was slow to learn this.

As a runner and later a speaker I traveled to perform, not to party. I arrived just in time for the performance, left right afterward.

I took the stage only briefly, but the worry about it, preparation for it and recovery from it dominated the whole trip. I saw little more than the airport, a hotel room and an arena.

Old ways die hard, even when no longer needed. The paragraph above still pretty much defined my travel style in the late 1990s. It couldn’t have been much different than my wife Barbara’s.

Barb has traveled to dozens of countries, on most of the continents, since her first big trip, to India during college. After graduation she traveled through Europe and into the Middle East, often as a hitchhiker.

She hasn’t slowed much since then. Her thinking is that a U.S. trip that doesn’t last at least a week, or internationally a month or more, is hardly worth taking. I get antsy for home and office if I’m away more than three days.

When offered the chance to visit Japan in 1997 (this a first Asian trip for me), we compromised. We would fly over together, then I would stay (gasp!) a full week. She would linger in Japan for another week, then move on to round out her month abroad by visiting her son Chris in China.

Our Japanese hosts asked little from me and gave much. I’d do no speaking here, only some consulting at Mizuno headquarters for one day, and with Runners magazine on another, plus a ceremonial appearance at a marathon.

Otherwise we would be tourists, on a paid work-ation for which Mizuno and Runners spared no expense. All travel (first-class), all hotels (luxurious), all meals (amazing) were covered. A translator was always available.

The night we landed in Osaka, Satoshi Takai from the magazine guided us to our hotel. At the front desk he asked me, “Can we have a short meeting after you take your luggage to the room?”

Barbara fell into bed, while I returned downstairs. The host then led me to a meeting room where a dozen men in identical dark suits greeted us.

Bowing while extending a sheet of paper in both hands, one man handed me the week’s business and social agenda. I was to learn that the two are inseparable here, where business is conducted sociably and social events are business-like.

Another man handed me a fat envelope and instructed, “Count, please.” Inside was a shockingly large number of new U.S. bills with Ben Franklin’s face on them.

We hadn’t discussed any consulting fee, and I expected nothing more than the expenses for the two of us. I asked myself: What can I do to earn this?

The answer was the same then that it would be afterward: Not enough. This week in Japan would be too little work and too much vacation.

OLYMPIC TRACKS are the shrines of our sport. Unfortunately we must leave the U.S. to visit any of them. The sad fact is that all three tracks used for the Olympics -- St. Louis, Los Angeles and Atlanta -- weren’t considered important enough to preserve.

To see an Olympic track in near the end of the 20^th century, I had to travel to Tokyo. This wasn't the reason for visiting Japan but was to be the highlight of that trip.

1964 was the high point for my track-watching fanaticism (also my best year of track racing). The Olympics came to Tokyo that year, to what the Japanese now call "National Stadium."

That October I stayed up much of the night to catch as many events as possible on television. But the best one slipped past me.

My dad woke me with the stunning news of Billy Mills, who went in as third-fastest on the three-member U.S. team, winning the 10,000. Americans Bob Schul and Bill Dellinger later went 1-3 in the 5000.

Peter Snell won his second Olympic 800, plus the 1500. Abebe Bikila won his second marathon.

I later got to know Mills. I've corresponded with Schul and heard him speak, and I live in the same town as Dellinger.

I've met Snell since he became a U.S. resident Ph.D. in exercise physiology. I saw Bikila in a wheelchair at the Munich Games shortly before he died.

But until this fall I'd never visited the place where they ran at their best. And I almost missed the chance.

Tokyo's traffic spooked the small-town boy in me. But my Los Angeles-born wife Barbara insisted that we go to the stadium by taxi. "You may never get this chance again," she said.

Once there we found it seemingly locked tightly. "Let's just walk around the outside to get a feel of the place," I said.

Barbara then spied a tiny doorway and went over to peek inside. I held back.

"We can sneak in here," she shouted. I swallowed my fears of a trespassing arrest and followed her inside.

Here I walked a lap. The stadium appeared empty except for the two of us.

But in this shrine I could sense the ghosts of Mills and Schul and Dellinger, Snell and Bikila when they were young, these seats were filled, and this air was supercharged with sound and emotion. My Japanese trip peaked in the 10 minutes here, when memories from long ago and far away came together briefly with here and now.

Photo: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics peaked for Americans with one of the biggest surprises in track history, Billy Mills victory in the 10,000.

[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, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]