The Unretired

(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. Speed is fleeting. Enjoy it while you have it, because it won’t last long. 

For most runners, racing speed peaks in our first 10 years or so, then slowly erodes. Then our PRs become memories instead of goals.

Paces that we once held for a marathon become those of a half, then a 10K, a 5K, a single mile. If we keep running races, they become slower than our easy training runs used to be. If that prospect depresses you, consider the alternative: full retirement.

I can’t speak for you, but I’d much rather be a slow runner than no runner. I had my allotted decade of improvement and a little more. 

My PRs first started falling at age 14, and the last big one fell at 25. Which means I’ve gone without any new ones for a growing majority of my running life.

If you run long enough, this will happen to you. Then you’ll look back at all your fastest times, and look ahead to... what? 

That’s what you’re about to hear: that there’s life after the last PR, and that it’s a good and active and satisfying life. You won’t just hear from me but from someone who had much more speed to lose.

You can pick no better model for slowing gracefully than Bill Rodgers. I’ve watched it, and have taken inspiration from it.

Few Americans have ever raced better and faster than Bill: a total of eight victories within five years at the Boston and New York City Marathons, first American to break 2:10 (which he did twice, with 26 more sub-2:15s). Those are his memories now.

The first time I ran the same race with Bill, I “beat” him, but so did everyone else who finished the 1977 Boston Marathon. He dropped out.

He said that day, “The marathon can always humble you.” But it also can make you proud of whatever you’re able to do under current conditions.

The second time I chased Bill at Boston, in 1979, he won the race, lowered his own American record and – not that he noticed – beat me by more than an hour. I paid no more attention to him that day than he did to me. We had our own races to run, and we both came away with our own special blends of pride and humility.

Bill’s time that day, six years after his first marathon, would forever remain his fastest. He would announce his retirement from racing that distance in 1993. Only later would I see that Boston 1979 would be my last marathon to run as a race.

Then what? Did we stop running? Of course not, but only eased our distance and pace. 

Stop running races? Not that either, but only changing what we raced and how.

Few sports define retirement as running does, where few athletes ever retire totally or permanently. Bill Rodgers hasn’t, nor have I, nor should you.

If you have the itch to race, scratch it. It matters not if you race fast or slow; race long, short or in between; race from the front, in the middle or at the back – only that you give your all to the race. Keep racing until you don’t need it anymore.

Later. Bill Rodgers can't leave the races behind, no matter how wide the gap between who he once was and is now. I saw how wide when we met again in Cedar Rapids on July 4^th weekend of 2005.

Bill hadn’t recovered completely from breaking a leg two years earlier. “I have thin bones,” he told me when we met to give our speeches. “My mom has osteoporosis, and I might have inherited the condition from her.”

He suggested on race eve, “Why don’t we run together tomorrow?” I laughed at the silliness of this idea. 

“No, no,” he protested. “I can’t go fast anymore. Most of my running these days is at about nine-minute pace.”

   

I thought he exaggerated. Maybe he did slow down that much to poke along with people like me on his recovery days, but his competitive fires surely would flame up in the weekend’s race.

   

To my surprise, and some sadness, I saw Bill early and often during this 8K. This isn’t right, I thought at first sighting, less than a mile into the race. He ran with the inefficiency of someone backing off too much from his normal pace.

Bill favored his bad leg. He tried and only partly succeeded in finding soft running in the grass strips beside the road.

At about three miles I had to pass him. Instead of giving him an encouraging word and a condescending pat on the back, I veered to the opposite side of the road and sneaked past, saying nothing.

He soon passed me back without noticing. We went back and forth this way through the final mile before he eased ahead at the end. 

Bill could have excused himself from running that Fifth Season 8K. He could have played a purely ceremonial role by firing the starting gun and then stepping aside.

But he didn’t. His ego isn’t so large that he can’t let a thousand runners pretend to beat him. None of us, of course, ever will.

(Photo: Bill Rodgers has slipped back into the pack, but  he’s second to no one as an ambassador of the sport.)

[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 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.]