The Word-wizard

(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.)

2005. Dr. George Sheehan reached his final finish line in late 1993. Soon afterward a favorite race of his was renamed and moved to his old training course.

    

The next summer I walked to the start of the George Sheehan Classic in Red Bank, New Jersey. A young runner ahead of me turned to another and said, “This is a cool race. But who is this Sheehan guy, anyway?”

   

He said “She-han,” not the proper “She-un.” At that time and place this was like asking who that Kennedy was with his name on a New York City airport.

Every runner should have known George Sheehan by then. Or so his friends and fans liked to think, though he himself knew better.

   

Others built up his bigger-than-life legend, and he sometimes felt the need to knock it down to size. The two of us once walked away from the adulation that always greeted him at the Boston Marathon. He shook his head in amazement, then added, “Two blocks from here I’m just another skinny old Irishman.”

    

For all the fame heaped on him in his later years, he didn’t take all of this too seriously. Being famous was a phase that started in his late 50s, when the practices of his lifetime were pretty well set and wouldn’t change much the rest of his days.

   

As long as I knew him, which was 25 years, he wore the same blue(jeans)-on-blue(shirt and sweater) uniform while greeting crowds of runners. He drove the same little well-used cars, VWs and Hondas, that doubled as his mobile locker-room.

    

He spoke and wrote his last words in 1993. Which means that many of today’s runners can be excused for asking: “Who’s this George Sheehan?”

Many Marathon & Beyond readers came into the sport after George left. They never had the pleasure of hearing, reading or knowing him in life.

     

George Sheehan once stood taller than anyone in this sport. (Put John “Penguin” Bingham on Jeff Galloway’s shoulders, and you get an idea of George Sheehan’s stature at his peak.) No one to come along since has given better speeches to runners or written finer literature on running.

     

George was an accidental author. He wasn’t trained as a writer and had practiced medicine for half his life before publishing his first article at age 50. His medical career was winding down when he wrote his first book seven years later.

    

By then he’d settled into his distinctive style of writing: personal, philosophical and padded with quotes from great thinkers from outside of sports. The Sheehan Style would come to be widely mimicked (and occasionally satirized) but never matched.

     

His first book, Dr. Sheehan on Running, sold well among his Runner’s World readers, but the wider world wasn’t yet ready to buy running books. That would happen soon afterward.

    

During one amazing month of 1978, three different books for runners ranked among the top 10 in national sales – for all topics. Each book took a different look at the sport.

Jim Fixx’s Complete Book of Running profiled people who ran and what it meant to them. Bob Glover and Jack Shepherd’s Runner’s Handbook advised how to run. George Sheehan’s Running & Being examined why he, and we, ran.

     

George’s book, along with his previous and later ones, gave voice to what other runners thought but couldn’t express. They embraced him for this for the rest of his life, and beyond. They loved him all the more as he wrote as openly about his final life test as he had about other subjects.

     

In 1986 George was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that had spread into his bones. His doctors told him to hope for another year but to plan for less. He lived seven more years – good years, mostly.

Later. Who was Dr. George Sheehan? The best way to introduce yourself to him now, or to renew acquaintances, is to read one of his books.

I worked with him on all but one of those books. He never once, in almost two decades of writing them, named one as his favorite.

    

“These books are my babies,” he said. “I could no more single out one than say which of my own children I like best.” His kids outnumbered his books, 12 to seven.

    

Once you’ve read any of them, you’ll want to read more. Once you read him, you’ll know him and won’t forget him.

(Photo: Good as he was as a writer, George Sheehan was even better as a speaker.)

[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 Man-cancer

(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.)

2005. Old people, sometimes to the irritation of the young, talk often and long about their physical ailments. Runners don’t wait until they age to do that, though the years give us more to discuss.

Three men whose ages averaged 65-plus sat at a Napa Valley Marathon dinner in 2005, detailing their prostate health. The eldest, a world record-holder for his age, told of his successful surgery. The next was healthy himself but said, “I know 15 runners who are dealing with prostate cancer.”

To me, the third man in this conversation circle, the topic was disturbing. I asked questions of the others but didn’t tell them about my imminent biopsy. I hadn’t told anyone except my wife Barbara, who spent most of 2004 dealing with breast-cancer treatments.

(If you think this is a men-only story, substitute the word “breast” for “prostate,” and “mammogram” for “PSA.” Prostate cancer is for men what breast cancer is for women – a scourge from which our fitness seems to give little protection.)

I’d delayed the biopsy for the 2005 trip that brought me together with the two tablemates. A routine physical exam that week had turned up a high enough reading on the prostate-cancer screening test, the PSA, to warrant a call from the doctor.

“We need to biopsy you right away,” he had said. “With this reading, the chances of it being cancer are one in three. Can you come in tomorrow?”

I couldn’t, but promised to be checked right after the weekend trip to Napa. The wait for results was more painful than the doctor’s needles.

Eighteen years earlier, Dr. George Sheehan’s week-long wait had ended with the worst of verdicts: prostate cancer, spread beyond the reach of surgery and other treatments. The day in March 1986 when George Sheehan broke the news to me, I asked him if it was too personal and painful for him to make public.

“No,” he said, then repeated one of his favorite lines. “For a writer there are no bad experiences. There are just good stories.”

He found the good in his experiences to come, and kept no secrets. Nothing was too personal for a writer like him to make public. He would have expected no less from me.

Later. George was Irish. It’s fitting, then, that the verdict on whether or not I harbored “George’s disease” would come on St. Patrick’s Day.

A nurse called, which I took as a good sign. Wouldn’t the doctor himself be reporting a bad result?

The nurse said without any preliminary chit-chat, “You have good news. All 10 of your samples were benign.” That last word has to be one of the most beautiful in our language.

I’m pleased to follow in some of George Sheehan’s big footsteps, to carry on some of his work, sometimes even to be compared with him. But I was even more pleased, in 2005, not to follow George this way. Not yet, anyway.

(Photo: Dr. George Sheehan pictured in 1993, the year he lost his long fight against prostate cancer.)

[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 Graduation

(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.)

2005. I can’t think of an emptier end to marathon training than to come to the race alone. Teaming up for our first event, the Newport Marathon, meant that no one had to finish this way.

We trained as a team. Then on marathon weekend everyone saw the support team that helped the runners get there. Spouses, parents, children, grandkids, partners and friends came to Newport on the Oregon coast. Many of them met each other for the first time at our own pasta dinner.

The largest number came in support of Paula Montague. She uses the name “flyingmama” in her email address. Paula is the mother of three daughters, “and my 16-year-old sister is like a fourth.” Those four, and Paula’s own mother, were in Newport.

A few weeks after the marathon, Paula would undergo a medical procedure (she wouldn’t call it “surgery”) to correct a non-life-threatening heart irregularity. Her concerns were more immediate: knee pains that had all but stopped her since our longest training run.

As I mother-henned the team on the course, the last to pass my spot at three miles was Paula. I asked about her knees. She grimaced, shook her head and asked for the tube of Biofreeze that she’d left with me. We next met up at 11 miles. This time she smiled, shouted “I’m better now!” and stopped for a hug of mutual relief.

Our next runner ahead of Paula at that point, Michelle Martin, appeared fearless. She’d started boldly, given her condition.

On our first day together back in January, the runners filled out an information sheet. I asked if any physical condition might affect their training. Michelle had written, “Can discuss later,” then added a smiley face.

In April, Michelle announced that she was pregnant. I might have urged her to postpone the marathon for a year if she hadn’t already rejected that idea. “My doctor gave me permission to keep running,” she said, “if I keep my heart rate below 140.”

I was never clear if she mentioned “marathon” to the doctor. Michelle wore a watch that beeped when she was scheduled to walk for a minute. Only sometimes did she heed it.

Into her fourth month on race day Michelle still didn’t look like a pregnant woman – or run like one. She passed my spot at 11 miles, running a minute per mile ahead of her pace goal, seeming worry-free.

But the marathon wasn’t yet halfway finished. It was Michelle’s first, just as this would be her first child. A lot could happen in the second half, of a marathon as with a pregnancy, some of it unpleasant to anticipate or to experience.

   

A first marathon is like a first love. No matter how beautifully or badly it goes, you will never forget it. I can’t recall my breakfast menu this morning or much about the run that preceded it. But I can recount in loving detail my first marathon day. And that was at Boston, in 1967.

    

That first marathon day can change you in ways that you couldn’t have imagined before running the race. I had intended to finish the one marathon and then retire to fun-and-fitness running. But this one led to dozens more marathons plus a few ultras – and finally to coaching my first team of marathoners.

   

After their graduation exercises at the Newport Marathon, I wrote to the runners, “I’ve never been prouder of more runners on a single day. Each of you gave me chills for your own reasons as you hit your finish line at Newport – in a race that didn’t start at seven o’clock this morning but four months ago in your first training run with this Team.

“Even if you didn’t run the time you’d hoped for, remember that veteran marathoners say the same thing about their races as pilots do about their landings: any that you can walk away from is a good one. All 16 of you finished and can walk away proudly.”

   

The greatest benefit of this program wasn’t the training plan or the coaching. It was the support that these runners shared for these months of Sundays.

“You helped each other do what you might not have done alone,” I told them. “Ultimately that is what you’ll remember most about this marathon.”

Later. Our final finisher that day, Paula Montague, sobbed with the greatest joy and relief that her knees had allowed this. Her heart procedure two weeks later would bring even more success, and relief.

Michelle Martin lost her time goal to the long lines at the potties but finished the race. She would deliver a healthy daughter that fall.

Ten of our 16 runners were first-time marathoners. One of them, Laura McClain, ran like a pro. She alone on this team paced herself to negative splits.

    

“I had never been on a team of any kind, nor did I participate in sports in school,” Laura told me. “I was too shy and scared. This group was the first organized sports thing I’ve ever done, at almost 40.

“I was so extremely nervous the first couple Sundays I thought I would throw up. It wasn’t so much the running I was scared of, though I was definitely scared of not keeping up, getting lost, wearing the wrong thing, tripping or looking foolish somehow. Finishing the marathon was as big of an emotional breakthrough for me as it was physically.”

You never forget anything about a breakthrough this big. It changes how you choose your next test, face it and then graduate from it.

(Photo: Our second marathon team, for Portland 2005.)

[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 Team

(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.)

2005. It’s instructive what you can hear while running when you aren’t too busy talking and don’t have recorded music or news talk plugged into your ears. Here’s what I heard one morning:

Two runners came up from behind. One did most of the talking, his volume growing as the gap between us shrunk. The first words I caught were “... new marathon training program.” Then “... only run long every other week.” And louder, “They only go over 20 miles once, peaking at 21.”

They passed me with a small wave from one and a nod from the other. They didn’t know me, or that I’d overheard them. The gap between us grew again. The last words I heard were, “... not enough training.”

Says who? Themselves, from their marathon experiences? Another writer whose schedules they’ve read? They weren’t reading my writing. And their experience didn’t match mine.

They were talking down a training program being adopted for the first time locally. That was my schedule, written for the marathon team that I was coaching. The runners whose critique I heard were right in their description. But they were wrong, I have to think, in their conclusion.

Yes, the long runs would come every other weekend, going up by two-mile steps from 11. (A pre-training program built to 10 miles, testing if runners could or wanted to continue.) Yes, the distance would peak at 21 miles, the only training run above 20. And yes, these runs would be long enough for most runners. (The most common cause of breakdowns in training that I’ve seen is too many too-long runs with too little recovery between.)

These ideas weren’t wild guesses at what might work in marathon training. I didn’t make any of this up lately just to sell books to thousands of shortcut-seekers. This type of training has a long history, starting with my own entry into marathoning in 1967.

Ten years later, readers first saw an early version of this program.  The latest incarnations of the schedule appear in the book Marathon Training, now into a second edition.

I hear from very few of the book’s readers, which isn’t a bad sign. You know how we runners are: We don’t quietly swallow our disappointments. Anyone who felt led far astray by Marathon Training would have let me know quickly and vociferously, yet these complaints are rare.

An earlier column in Marathon & Beyond told how my approach came about. It silently answered the early-morning talkers who’d concluded, “not enough.” A better rebuttal would come in June 2005 at Newport, Oregon, when my first marathon team reached its graduation day.

Later. Writing training schedules in books is the easy part. They go to an unseen audience, to take or leave, and then I walk away. I rarely hear who took or left this advice. Acting as a coach for months of Sundays, getting to know the runners as individuals, is harder than writing a schedule – and immensely more satisfying. Also more nerve-wracking.

A coaching truism: Credit all goes to that athlete when everything goes right. Blame goes to the coach when something bad happens. I promised myself, when the direct coaching began in January 2005, to give the credit and take the blame. My first and biggest responsibility was more medical than technical: to keep these runners healthy enough to get where they wanted to go. Not all did.

You can’t judge the worth of a training program by counting only the marathoners who finished the race. You must account too for any training casualties. During this training cycle I lost three runners to injury.

I take the blame for not spotting their trouble early enough to help them get past it. Few of the remaining 16 runners eased through the training trouble-free. I listened to all the physical complaints, from head (colds) to foot (plantar fascia). I-T band pain became the injury of the season.

Everyone survived these scares, and the team of 16 reached Newport intact on marathon weekend. But their troubles, real or imagined, weren’t over yet. By race eve pre-marathon neuroses had kicked in, with almost everyone now suffering from some race-threatening malady. Worry exaggerates the severity, and their worries multiplied by 16 for me.

I’m not a doctor but played one while coaching the marathon team. The irony here was that the group included an emergency-room physician, Tod Hayes. The Sunday of our final training run I’d said to Tod as he was leaving, “Stay away from sick people this week.” He had laughed at this absurdity.

That Friday night I saw Tod as we checked into our hotel. His voice sounded raspy. “I caught a cold this week,” he noted with a resigned shake of his head. I asked him questions, then gave advice. Only later did I see what I’d done: play doctor to a real doctor. I felt responsible for his health too.

(Photo: Our first team shares a group huddle moments before the 2005 Newport Marathon start.)

[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.]