A Finished with the main Loowit loop, McQuaide and Kardong shake hands before heading down the last mile and a half to the parking lot.

The steepest climb to the trail’s highest point—4,885-foot-high Windy Pass—is next, and though so far we’re past 20 miles at this point, it doesn’t seem so bad. We’re buoyed by what has been revealed to us, and our steps are lightened by what the ranger told me about the last nine miles. Down the other side of the pass and across the flat Plains of Abraham, the ranger seems to have it pegged.

With about six miles to go, however, just past Ape Canyon, we round a bend, and there it is, the first of the interminable canyon crossings, this one across the Muddy River. An hour later, after maybe the fourth crossing, Don captures our mood perfectly.

“T feel like I’ve been doing this my whole life,” he says wearily.

But 45 minutes after that, at the June Lake Trail sign that means we have completed the Loowit circle, we’re elated and marvel at what we have done and what we have seen. Over almost 30 miles that included 6,600 feet of elevation gain, we have experienced every Northwest landscape there is—rain forest, desert, alpine meadow, snow, and river—along with a bunch unique to a recently erupted volcano. It’s a Cliffs Notes version of the Northwest with a special section on volcanology.

Don and I shake hands and prepare for the truly downhill June Lake Trail and the car. But before we leave the Loowit, I stop.

“Do you want to go around again?” I ask Don. i

“Maybe tomorrow,” he answers.

Photo by Liz Reap

Dialog With Don

Don Kardong Was Inducted Into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame. What’s He Got to Say About That?

n the weekend of the 2005 Utica, New York, Boilermaker 15K, running legends Greg Meyer, Bob Schul, and Don Kardong were inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame. Don Kardong is famous for finishing fourth in the 1976 Olympic marathon, missing the bronze medal by three seconds (in a PR of 2:11:16). He is a founding member and past president of the Association of Road Racing Athletes and past president of the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA). He founded the Spokane Lilac Bloomsday 12K Run that today attracts 50,000 runners, joggers, and walkers. He is a contributing editor for Runner’s World. After the ceremonies, Bob Kopac had a chance to interview Don Kardong and get his reflections on his induction and on his running career.

Bob Kopac: This is the first time I cut to the back of a line [to be the last person so I can interview Don]. Since you are a Monty Python fan, what is your name? What is your quest? What is your favorite color?

Don: I don’t have a favorite color. But if I had one, it would be green because every place I run that I love is green . . . except the Grand Canyon.

Bob: When you learned of your induction into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, what was your first impression?

Don: I think of all the great athletes in here, and I was just kind of humbled. Really, because the people that I have admired my entire running career are in here. To be mentioned among them is a little overwhelming.

Bob: How did your family take it?

Don: They thought it was great. Actually, they had an announcement at the [2005] Boston Marathon that I could not go to, at a luncheon there, a media announcement. But my daughter goes to Boston College, and she thought it was totally cool that she got to get up and say a few words on behalf of her dad. So, it’s great, they love it.

» Don Kardong receives his National Distance Running Hall of Fame award in Utica in 2005.

Bob: Did you ever think youwould achieve an honor suchas this? Is it something you expected?

Don: I never thought I would pursue arunning career. It just sort of happened. It sounds weird, but I went from just running in high school, almost quitting after high school. Then I got reinvigorated when I got to my freshman year in college. And then I always thought I would stop when college was done. By the time I got to the end of college, I was close to making the Olympic team. I thought I could take a serious shot at it. And it has just gone on like that, ever since then. And eventually it just got to be part of my nature. I just can’t imagine not running anymore if I have the ability to run. To have imagined at the beginning either going to the Olympics or being in the National Distance Running Hall of Fame—no, it just was never in the strategy of my life.

Bob: Now that you have gone through the Utica weekend and gone through all the events, what are your impressions about the weekend?

Don: Well, I’ve been out there before, so I’ve seen it, and I think it’s a really high-class operation. They do things first-class, and it really feels like a special honor as a result.

Bob: When did you realize you could compete at an elite level? Was there a particular moment you said, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this” ?

Don: The first year, my sophomore year in high school, was 1964. At the beginning of the season, I had been doing no running. So, as we got into the competitive part of the season, each race I kind of moved up. And so I began to think that this was a pretty good sport for me. Then, toward the end of the season, we had a city Catholic meet that I won. And I think when I won that race, I really felt like distance running was where I really belonged.

Bob: What coaches were instrumental in your running career?

Don: In high school, Coach Larry Eason was very instrumental. Marshall Clark was my Stanford coach from sophomore through senior year. Then, after I got

Bob Kopac

out, I hooked up with Tracy Walters. He was Gerry Lindgren’s coach back in high school, and I had known him even before I started training in Spokane. But when I moved to Spokane and right before the Olympics, I would ask him to help me out on some of my workouts.

Bob: What people besides coaches have influenced your running career?

Don: That first year [1964] was kind of a special year. I probably didn’t realize that until I looked back on it many years later. In 1964, we had Bob Schul winning a gold medal [in the 5,000]. It was the year Gerry Lindgren had some of his greatest races; he won the 10,000 at the Russian-American meet. And then Billy Mills running in the Olympics and winning the gold medal in the 10,000. Those guys all set the tone for me, although I didn’t really know it at the time. But looking back at how it all got started, they made it clear that Americans could compete on the world stage in distance running. That was kind of a new thing.

Bob: In your opinion, what are your two best running accomplishments? I assume one would be your fourth-place finish in the Olympic marathon.

Don: I think that was probably number one, just because I ran my PR at the Olympics and almost got that medal. And everything just went right that day except for the final mile and a half, when I slipped from third to fourth. [Laughs] But it was a great time for me and kind of a culmination of just a wonderful Olympic experience. So that is number one. The other race of mine that stood out was a race against [Steve] Prefontaine and [Frank] Shorter in 1974. It was at Hayward Field in Eugene, and it was a three-mile race. I hung in there for most of the way, and then Shorter and Pre got away from me in the final two laps. But I still managed to run 12:57.6, which was at the time the fifth-fastest time ever by an American and about a 20-second PR for me. That was a great race for me.

Bob: Ona lighter side, what were your most embarrassing running moments? Don: One thing was really embarrassing. I ran in 1975 in China as part of the U.S. Track and Field delegation. We had pretty big crowds all the way along. And the final event was in Beijing. I was running a 5,000 and thinking of it as a three-miler, and there is a half-lap difference. So I sprinted over what I thought was the final 200 meters and would have won the race, except that the race was another 200 meters long. [Laughs] I pulled up at the finish thinking I had won, and then everybody went by, and I suddenly realized I had a half lap to go. It was very entertaining for what I remember as being 50,000 Chinese in the stands. Number two probably was the first time I was beaten in a race by a woman, in Bermuda. I was still running at the elite level, but I didn’t have a great run that day. I think it might have been a 10K road race. I sort of slipped off the main pack and was having a lot of trouble. And this little girl named Grete Waitz beat me. It was a shock! [Laughs]

Bob: Were you a male chauvinist back then?

Don: No, I just wasn’t used to being beaten by a woman. [Laughs] Later on, it became pretty common.

Bob: You are famous for your running, but also for your writing. Sports Illustrated called you “the only spiritual descendant of Mark Twain ever to bring his unsparing eye and antic voice to running.” When did you start writing about running, and why did you start?

Don: I had taken a slew of English classes at Stanford, and had more credits in English than in my major of Psychology. Then, a year after I graduated, I went back to school at the University of Washington and got an actual bachelor’s degree in English. Along the way I had always been interested in creative writing, I just didn’t think I would pursue it as a career. When I went on that trip to China in 1975, Joe Henderson asked if I wanted to write a story from the runner’s point of view and send it to Runner’s World, which I did. So I did it kind of as a lark, but it went well. I was asked to do another one for a book that Runner’s World did after the 1976 Olympic Games. So I wrote a kind of final story of that, and it just kind of grew from there. It started as just something I did for fun on the side, and eventually it became something I did full time.

Bob: Did you have any embarrassing writing moments?

Don: That’s a good question. Actually, the way I got started writing was a little weird. Before that 1975 China trip, I wrote a letter to the editor of Track & Field News, and it was a tongue-in-cheek letter. So I signed it Kelly Walters. Kelly was the son of Tracy Walters [Don’s coach]. I thought it was a nondescript name so that they wouldn’t know it was from me and they wouldn’t guess that it was a made-up letter. They printed it. Kelly, who was 13 years old, thought I had gotten a dig at him. So, without telling me, Kelly sent Joe Henderson a story he had written and signed my name. I found that out when Joe first wrote to me and said, “I like your writing style, but I can’t use this particular story.” I was sort of appalled, because I thought, } a “My God, Joe thinks I write like a ae

13-year-old!”

So I wrote him back A Don delivers his acceptance speech in Utica.

to explain, but before he got my explanation, he had sent a follow-up letter and said, “We really would like to use a story if you would write a story about your trip to China.” So that was kind of an embarrassing way to get started, based on the writings of a 13-year-old. [Laughs]

Bob: You said you had gone over a space of seven months without running?

Don: About this time a year ago, I developed a sharp pain in my right knee. It turned out to be a meniscus tear. I had a similar although not quite so acute pain in my left knee. So I had the first one done, and I thought maybe I could kind of scoot by the second one for a while. However, it started to bother me. So I had the second one done. The first one was in September [2004]; the second one was in December. Altogether, it has been a year since I went cold turkey. I started running

days a week and where my longest run is eight miles. And so the Utica Boilermaker 15K affected my legs like a marathon; I can barely walk today. [Laughs]

Bob: That’s good for other people who struggle through this to know. When you were training for the Olympics, how many miles did you run and how many days?

Don: Iran every day, and I did a second workout at least five and sometimes six days a week. I was probably getting 12 or 13 workouts a week. My total mileage in my top week ever was 144 miles. I could tell that was a little too much. I eventually settled between 105 and 115 miles per week. And that included some pretty good speed work too.

Bob: Do you think that is something people should do as a matter of course for a marathon?

Don: I think that if you are an elite-level marathoner, that over the course of five to 10 years you should steadily build the total mileage you run. Especially in the off-season when you are building a base, I think that is very important. I think for a lot of years, people did not do that. But you really have to if you want to run a quality marathon, or even a quality 5,000- or 10,000-meter race, or any road race of any distance. The kicker, of course, is some people get hurt as they try to get to that mileage. So, it is always a balance. But if you can do it, that should be part of what you do to build that strength over a number of years. It does take a while to get to that level. I don’t think I went over 100 miles ever until I got out of college. By that point, I had been running for eight or nine years. But I did get real good results with high mileage. The only thing is, you can’t just do mileage. You have to keep the quality in there.

Bob: I asked some running club members if they had any questions for you. One question was, now that the marathon is available for everyone—runners and walkers—what is your opinion on that?

Bob Kopac

Don: I think it is fabulous. I think if we can get people motivated to run through any means, it is a good thing. As long you don’t strain your volunteers by having them out there too long, I think five and six hours in a marathon is a good accomplishment. It gets a lot of people moving. I wish those people would also do 5K, 10K, and other race distances, but some of them only seem to want to do the marathon. I don’t get that at all. I do think it is a really good thing that people are in there. I also think that, as we get large numbers of people who are running those slower times, I don’t want to forget that it is a race. And up front I would like to see it be a legitimate race, with people coming into the marathon trying to do it to the best of their ability and doing the training to get to that level.

Bob: That leads to the second question from a club member. Where are the new world-class American runners going to come from? What is being done and what should be done to develop them?

Don: Well, I’m actually sort of encouraged at what we are doing right now, where we have these training camps where some of our top people are getting real good coaching and real good advice. And a solid lifestyle so they don’t have to worry all the time about money. And we probably can credit the fact we got a silver medal and a bronze medal in the marathons—men’s and women’s—at the last Olympics, to those programs. Because they really now have been around four or five years, and they are starting to have some impact. So we are seeing better performances. When we have talented runners, we are trying not to lose them. It still is kind of hit-and-miss. I think we are doing better now than we have done in a few years. I think we should keep those efforts going.

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A Hall of Fame inductee Greg Meyer (left), a running fan, and Don (right) after the ceremony.

Bob: Another club member asked if you have any Prefontaine quips.

Don: I wrote a story about Pre in my book Hills, Hawgs, and Ho Chi Minh. I put that story and a few photos of Pre on my Web site, so your clubmate can read it there at the Attp://www.donkardong.com Web site.

Bob: I noticed on your Web site that people can book you as a speaker for their event. I interviewed Bill Rodgers a couple of years ago, and he said part of his career is running at races for a fee. Do you do that also?

Don: I don’t run fast enough to come in and run for a fee. But I go to some races. I have a pretty good slide show—45 minutes to an hour—that covers the Olympics and some of my running adventures. So I do that a little bit. I don’t have as much time now that I am the Bloomsday race director since last August [2004]. That is a full-time job. So, it is only about this time of year [summer] that I sometimes go out and do the slide show, up to about September or October.

Bob: You mentioned that you would be at the office from 9 to 5. What do you do in an office from 9 to 5?

Don: [Laughs] I’Il give you an example from today. Along with stuff like opening the mail and seeing what messages I have, we are still wrapping up this year’s Bloomsday Run. We have correspondence, bills; we wrap up our fiscal year the end of July. At noon today, we had a meeting with our online provider and our own data-entry people to talk about how things went this year and how to improve that. There is paperwork to fill out for record keeping, there is planning for next year, what we want to do differently. If we want to make changes, we have got to start talking now, otherwise we run out of time to implement them. We are looking at a big change in where we finish the race. If we decide to do that, we will need to decide before the end of the summer and kind of get cracking on how that impacts all the rest of the event. All that being said, the summer is pretty slow, but it is mostly time to catch up on things and wrap up things. We start talking to sponsors in August. In September and October, we get into producing entry forms and what color T-shirts. It is kind of amazing because it seems like there would not be too much to do. But there is a surprising amount. One year, we had somebody who contacted us right after the event and said, “That was really fun! Can you organize another one for next weekend?” Man, you have to believe it takes a whole year to get all the pieces in place.

Bob: That explains your office job. What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

Don: I don’t feel it is just my accomplishment. Seeing this race grow from zero to as many as 60,000 entrants is something that is amazing to me. It was my idea originally, but I had certainly a much smaller idea, with maybe 2,000 runners at