The Slowfolks

(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.)

2006. Running grew as it became more democratic. More runners were bigger, more were older, far more were female. The average race pace slowed as the field grew the most from midpack on back.

Just as road races opened up to every type of runner, the Internet and its websites democratized writing. Anyone can write anything in today’s chat rooms and blogs, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The writer in me appreciates and encourages these efforts. But as a reader I’m more selective than ever before.

I used to read almost every line written about running. No longer, and not just because of the sheer volume makes that impossible. Some runner-writers spew unedited criticism and sarcasm, usually from behind a curtain of anonymity.

They attack other runners, often friends of mine, by name. These writers are free to say whatever they want, and I’m free not to read them. They can only upset me if I let them.

One online article grabbed my attention in 2006 and wouldn’t let go. It attacked no one personally but took on a whole class of runners who are friends of mine. This piece kept eating at me, and the only way to make it stop was to answer it.

It appeared in widely read Slate.com. Its title told most of what you need to know about writer’s theme: “Running with Slowpokes – How Sluggish Newbies Ruined the Marathon.” It was signed by Gabriel Sherman, credited there as “a staff writer for Conde Naste Portfolio.”

Sherman described himself as “an avid runner with six marathons under my New Balance trainers.” As you’d expect from his article’s attitude, he was younger (at 27) and faster (2:56 PR) than most of today’s marathoners.

The provocative title perhaps wasn’t his but an editor’s. The views that followed were surely his own.

Sherman made just finishing a marathon, at any pace, sound as easy as “joining a gym and then putzing around on the stationary bike. We feel good about creating the appearance of accomplishment, yet aren’t willing to sacrifice for true gains.”

He ended with, “It’s clear now that anyone can finish a marathon. Maybe it’s time to raise our standards and see who can run one.”

By this he apparently meant running a faster marathon. He implied that slowpokes are slow because they don’t try hard enough.

So they must try to overcome the genes that didn’t grant them a fast-runner-like body? Try to shed decades of age? Try to ignore a history of injury or illness? Try to have fewer kids and an easier job?

I’ve spent my running and writing lives fighting against the views expressed in “Slowpokes.” I side with folksinger Woody Guthrie, who wrote:

“I hate a song that makes you think you’re born to lose, no good to nobody, no good for nothin’ because you’re either too young or too old, too fat or too thin, or to ugly, or too this or that. I’m out to sing songs that’ll make you take pride in yourself.”

I hate a story that makes you think you’re too slow. I’m out to write stories that will make you take pride in yourself.

Gabriel Sherman suggested that slowness is shameful. He didn’t define “slowpokes,” so who are they?

How many of us slowpokes does Sherman knows personally and did he talk to about their histories, motives and training? Not many, I’d guess.

I know these people from coaching them, as well as now being one of them. We aren’t a nameless, faceless blob of unfit laziness. To say we aren’t trying is wrong.

For the sake of discussion here, let’s draw the “slow” line at a five-hour marathon. That’s twice as long as the average winning time for U.S. races (a little more for men, less for women, but close enough as a talking point).

I know exactly how it feels to finish just over five hours. I know too that about a quarter of the runners on my marathon teams take at least that long, and they aren’t slacking in training or putzing on race day.

Let me introduce some friends of mine whose marathons usually take five hours or more. There’s Bob Dolphin, who in his 70s ran about two dozen marathons a year and soon would reach the 400^th of his life. There’s Cathy Troisi, well into her third round of running marathons in all the states.

There’s the late Paul Reese, whose marathon PR was 2:39 but who took more than twice as long in his last one – at age 85. And there’s the late Fred Lebow, who finally ran his own New York City Marathon, while weakened by terminal illness, in the high fives.

From my training groups I could tell about Max and Gregg, Emily and Katie. They all started in the fives but graduated into the next lower hour.

Paula and Susan, mothers of 10 young children between them, ran 5½ hours together. Andy and Matt took much longer to finish, while carrying lineman-like weight. Joyce and Al ran-walked their first marathon at ages 66 and 67.

I looked these teammates in the eyes every Sunday for four months and told they should feel proud what they’d done. I dare anyone to tell them to their face that they’ve ruined the event.

Yet that’s exactly what the title of the Slate.com article told these people en masse. I would send them the opposite message: How Slowpokes Made the Marathon.

We make possible the 400-plus U.S. marathons each year. We’re the critical mass that lets the young, skinny and fast call themselves “elite.”

Walt Stack, a tough old San Franciscan who was slow before he had much company at that pace, gave the best answer to the anti-slowpokes: “Be nice to us turkeys. We’re the ones who make you look good.”

Later. Marathonguide.com shows no marathon results for Gabriel Sherman from 2007 and later. Cathy Troisi and Bob Dolphin completed dozens more marathons in those years. Better to run a slow one than none, I say.

(Photo: Cathy Troisi is among the “slowpokes” who have made the marathon deeper and richer.)

[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 Return

(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.)

2006. Once upon a time I ran marathons regularly, twice most years, sometimes more often. Then suddenly I stopped trying them at all.

While I never used the R-word (retired), this looked more likely with each passing year. Those had stretched to nearly six when 2006 began.

It’s no coincidence that I found other roles to fill a void left by not going this distance myself. In those marathon-less years I did more talking to, coaching of and writing for marathoners than ever before.

I attended Jeff Galloway’s and Dick Beardsley’s camps with marathoners, formed a marathon team to train runners and signed on as a columnist for Marathon & Beyond. The less distance I ran, the more support I was free to give.

Yet I never stopped wanting be an active marathoner at least one more time. I didn’t want my latest marathon, at Napa Valley 2000 where little went as it could and should have, to remain forever my last. I needed to run at least one more, no matter how long it took me to get to it and through it.

My next starting line was a long time coming, six years. And finishing it took almost the longest time to date.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY. We runners think in numbers, talk in numbers, define ourselves and each other by numbers. The numbers I put up at the Yakima River Canyon Marathon weren’t notable, yet they didn’t go unnoticed.

There’s nowhere to hide as a marathoner anymore. You could look up my time, anyone’s time, on the web, so I’ll save you the trouble. It was 5:01 at Yakima, a minute shy of my slowest ever.

A friend asked at the finish line, “Does it embarrass you not to break five hours?” It wasn’t a harsh question. He knew I’d once run more than two hours faster, he knew that I’m a little more visible than most five-hour marathoners, and he was concerned about my feelings at that moment.

No, I told him, this time carries no shame. If slowing down bothered me, I would have stopped running marathons after the first few. Or I would have chosen one now where no one knew me, then run in disguise under an assumed name.

A time goal wasn’t what brought me to this marathon. The final time was the least of what I took away from it.

Running a race is not all about, or always about, a finish time. Other numbers meant far more to me at Yakima, and are why I chose this marathon on this date.

We runners like giving special meaning to otherwise random numbers. Three of mine marked times measured not in hours but in years.

The first of those, naturally, was six years since my last marathon, Napa Valley 2000. The other numbers were 48 and 62.

Forty-eight years had rushed past since my first race, on another April Fool’s Day in 1958. This was my first chance to celebrate the anniversary with a marathon.

It had to go better than that first race – of just one mile – when I’d started too fast and not finished. I didn’t view this anniversary as a bad omen, but instead took comfort from sticking around long enough to wear the race number that Yakima reserved for me: 48.

A final number carried meaning only to me: my 62 years of age. Compared to the 50 States marathoners staging their quarterly reunion at Yakima, plus the 100 Marathon Club members and Marathon Maniacs who ran here, my lifetime marathon count was puny. It averaged less than one per running year.

But I’d already run them in my 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. I joked during a brief talk at the pasta dinner, “After doing this first one in my 60s, I can re-retire until age 70.”

MORNING AFTER. Checking into my Yakima hotel, I’d been handed an oversized greeting card. It read, “Since we can’t be here in body, we’re here in spirit.” It was signed by runners from my marathon team.

A column I’d posted on my website at a dark hour of marathon morning was addressed to coaches. It ended, “Teach by example. Ask your runners to do no training or racing that you wouldn’t do (and haven’t done, or are doing) yourself.”

I did that training and race, and now was back in Eugene, watching and handing drinks to and cheering for the latest team as it reached 15 miles in training. I now understood these runners – and all marathoners – a little better, and respected them even more.

After walking stiffly to their starting line, I told them, “I can teach you to walk this way the day after your marathon.”

Later. I didn’t wait until my 70^th birthday to try another marathon, but only two years after Yakima. At Napa Valley 2008, I celebrated my 50^th running anniversary with another finish. This marathon took even longer, at 5:11, than the one before.

I expected this PW to last only until my next marathon. That one turned out to be a long time coming, now into my 70s. And it would take longer than I’d ever before imagined it could.

(Photo: If a five-hour marathon at Yakima disappointed me, you couldn’t tell it from this photo at the finish.)

[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 Pacesetter

(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. Many of my best friends in this sport are older than I am. Hal Higdon was the first of these, George Sheehan was the closest, and Paul Reese was the longest-lasting. 

I look up to them as pacesetters through life, in running and other arenas. None of us can grow younger, but we all can find leaders who show how to age actively and slow gracefully.

No one I’ve known has packed more activity into his upper years than Paul Reese. He ran across the United States at age 73, finished crossing the remaining states at 80 and published three books about these experiences (and left another book unpublished).

No one I know has approached his own finish line with more grace than Paul. Evidence of that will come later in this story, but first I need to tell how he lived and how I joined his ever-widening circle of “best friends.”

Paul was a Marine by choice, a schoolteacher in his second profession and a communicator by nature. He phoned often and wrote long and well – in books, articles, journals, and especially in letters and email.

I’m not overstating to say that Paul became my second second father. He took over that role in 1993 from George Sheehan, who’d first played that role after my own dad’s too-early passing.

Paul and I met at the 1967 Santa Barbara Marathon. On our first day of racing together I finished a little ways ahead of Paul. This began years of good-hearted competition between us.

He would beat me at marathons and beyond (especially beyond, where he shone and I stunk). I’d usually outrun him at shorter distances, where my background in speed trumped his endurance.

He would start every race fast. I would begin timidly, often catching and passing him near the finish. He took to accusing me of “stalking.”

The last time we ran a race together was 1992 at the Avenue of the Giants Marathon. Paul was 75 years old by then. I was, in his term, “a marathon of years younger” – his junior by 26, that is.

As usual I started slower. He gauged his lead each time we met on the double-out-and-back course.

As usual I passed Paul near the end. His reaction, muttered with grimness on his face but goodness in his heart: “Damn you, you sneaky runt!”

We finished about a minute apart in our final race together. This symbolized the closeness we felt from the first day we met through the final days of his life.

My first column in Marathon & Beyond spoke of Paul Reese. “The grandest old man of the roads,” I called him. He was 87 then.

Paul responded to the column as I would have expected: “Cutest old man, most handsome old man, most dashing old man – all these, while appropriate and applicable, are quite a few notches below ‘grandest’.”

This would be my last personal note from Paul. I’m glad he saw that tribute, because he was grand and because he wouldn’t see another column in M&B. He told in that same letter about facing surgery for a defective heart valve.

“I’m attempting to hold out until January [2005],” he said of that operation. “I want to emerge from the surgery and recovery, and to get back to healthy living – Krispy Kreme donuts, In/Out hamburgers, pizza and all such! “

Paul’s condition couldn’t wait until the new year. His surgery was moved to October 2004.

“The good news is that I’m still here to tell about it,” he wrote the next week in a group letter to friends. Complications followed. He wrote again to us friends in late October, with a good-bye of sorts.

“One thing you learn as you sift through life is that the most precious gift of all is love, and I’m blessed to have a generous share of that. Of course, it could be argued that I am such a splendid person, what other choice is there but to love me!”

Paul died soon afterward. He was the third older running hero I lost that year, after Jack Foster and Johnny Kelley. This is the chance you take, and one well worth taking, when you look up to your elders.

Later. Paul had ended his first book, Ten Million Steps, with this line: “One of the secrets of aging gracefully is always to have something to look forward to.”

His runs across the remaining states followed, then two more books – Go East, Old Man, and The Old Man and the Road. He left behind a fourth, the unpublished America on Foot.

Paul also left another long trip unfinished. In 2003 he’d crossed Montana (with wife Elaine, as always, driving their motorhome) on what was intended to be a multi-stage passage from the Canadian to the Mexican border. This wasn’t a bad way to go – still looking toward doing more.

This career Marine would scoff at me describing him with lines from a protest singer. But these words by Bob Dylan say who Paul was:

“May your hands always be busy,

may your feet always be swift.

May you have a firm foundation,

when the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful,

may your song always be sung.

May you stay forever young.”

Stay busy, keep moving, stand firm, stay positive, die young as late as possible. That’s how Paul Reese lived, and why he became a pacesetter of mine.

(Photo: Paul Reese would set the example for prostate cancer treatment and active recovery.)

[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.]