Alone

The loneliness of the long-distance runner.

For a generation of runners, the title of Alan Sillitoe’s novel of juvenile rebellion described and defined the person, usually male, who ran long distances over hill and dale or along lonely roads at any time of the day and sometimes at night.

It was a solitary figure, a loner, a sort of malcontent, running to his own beat.

This was repeated as though it were undisputed fact: that long-distance runners were introverts, antisocial, prone to long periods of silence. And that all of them came from the same mold.

Of course it wasn’t true. Except in those cases when it was, when a long-distance runner was actually introverted, antisocial, and prone to long periods of keeping his mouth shut.

Most of the long-distance runners of the 1970s and ’80s were sociable enough. Some 80,000 of them used to get together one day a year to run the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. And marathons grew large enough to boast tens of thousands of participants. And running clubs cropped up in every big city and many small towns.

Runners were sociable; they went to great pains to seek out other runners. And once women became involved in larger numbers, running became more sociable still.

The Greater Boston Track Club featured a dozen or so national-class

runners who worked out together. Women’s running groups formed up for Saturday morning runs. Corporate competition brought together disparate employees all proudly wearing the logo of their company.

More recently the tendency of people to train and race together has further escalated. There are charity running groups and computer-generated virtual-training groups, often tied in with major races. Everybody’s running with somebody.

The solitary runner backlit against the far horizon has become a rare sight.

And that’s unfortunate.

Especially these days when we are bombarded with communications of all sorts all the time. We are being smothered by communications, yet in spite of all the yakking, it’s the rare conversation that is truly riveting and memorable.

To escape the constant babble is to court sanity.

A solitary run can provide that escape and is a thing of beauty on two important fronts.

First of all, it gets you away from the distractions of daily life and encourages you to meet yourself and to become reacquainted with yourself.

By this I mean you voluntarily strip yourself of all distractions and distortions. You are, for the duration of

the run, free from the warped life perpetrated upon you by a world panting for your attention. No phone calls. No instant messaging. No lists of what’s “in” or “out.” No brand names vying for your attention and your dollar. No badgering or begging or cajoling or nudging.

It is only you listening to the in and out of your breath and to the beat of your heart. You, in sync with the basic rhythm of your own body. All things extraneous are stripped away. All complexities become simple.

Pounded and confused by a myriad of questions and decisions, all of them hypercharged and demanding an instant answer, the body and the mind stumble and become misaligned. Stripped of that constant assault of the senses, rolling along a quiet road, breath coming regularly and strongly, the mind slips into a primal gear where it confidently sorts through the dozens of questions and problems that have stymied you. Like a computer alphabetizing a database, it lines up the questions in a remarkably logical way, bringing only one topic forward at a time, stripping it of its nettles and disguising it until it stands before you, stark and accessible. The question that has dogged you for three days is solved in three miles. And you shake your head at how absolutely simple it was all the time, once the extraneous camouflage was shunted.

Then there’s the training effect—the purely physical side of the solo run.

When we run with others, we either set the pace or the pace is set for us. But it is never truly our own pace.

When we run alone, the pace we run at any one time is always the pace we choose. Do we want to pick it up to the next lamppost? Do we want to cruise over the next mile? Do we have an urge to turn off the road we usually run to explore a neighborhood we’ve never experienced before?

We need ask no one for permission.

We need only give in to ourselves.

We are for that precious time captain of our own ship. And for that time, our ship—inside and out—is improved by its shower of physicality.

We are once more renewed by a sacrament of sweat, a process we can accomplish only solo, in a sport where even in the middle of a 10,000-entrant race, we are alone.

But far from lonely.

As we bid a fond farewell to the year 2005 with this issue, we look forward to 2006 with excitement and more than a bit of apprehension as we make several moves to “grow” Marathon & Beyond and to expand its influence in the wonderfully wacky world of longdistance running.

Publisher Jan Seeley and I decided that our 10th-anniversary year would be the perfect time to fire a lot of guns at once, to make a lot of noise to celebrate, and to potentially put ourselves inthe nuthouse by adding to our current workload. I told her it goes against everything we preach in this magazine about pacing, but she seems to think we’re getting younger all the time, not

older and slower—and occasionally in need of anap. These young’ uns, ya just can’t keep ’em down, so sometimes ya gotta indulge ’em.

First of all, a word about this 10thanniversary stuff. Geez, where did the 10 years go? An old geezer’s lament: seems like only yesterday we were firing up this idea of doing a supremely specialized magazine for marathoners and ultrarunners, and now in the wink of an eye it’s a decade later. The thing that makes it all only too real is the bookshelf in the living room where all 54 issues, including the one you’re holding, are lined up neatly like a decade’s worth of used calendars.

Where to start when considering our 10th year?

Even discussing it at this point causes something of a time warp because magazines work on what is referred to as “long lead time’”—-sort of like training for a marathon. You begin the effort 16 or 18 or 20 weeks out from the date and gradually build toward it. As I write this, the charcoals from Labor Day picnics have barely cooled, and we are already well into projects that we won’t see in their final stages until well into 2006.

Two of the biggest things we’ re doing for 2006 are special issues, which means that instead of doing the usual six issues for 2006, we’ll be doing eight.

To help celebrate the 110th running of the legendary Boston Marathon, we’ve been working with the Boston Athletic Association to publish a commemorative anniversary book titled Boston Marathon & Beyond, which will

be M&B’s first full-color issue. Boston Marathon & Beyond willbe around 200 pages, will be inserted into the bags of each Boston Marathon entrant, and will also be sent as a special bonus issue to all of our subscribers. All of the editorial content is already finished; we’re going through photos and beginning the layout process and working with the companies and races that will be advertising in the special. And it has been a real pleasure to work with the good folks at the B.A.A. on this project. It has been especially fulfilling to work with the team of writers who contributed material for this special: Tom Derderian, John J. Kelley, Kathrine Switzer, Roger Robinson, Tito Morales, Hal Higdon, and Scott Hubbard.

The other special issue we’re doing is very similar to the Boston Marathon & Beyond book but is centered in the north woods: Grandma’s Marathon & Beyond. Grandma’s turns 30 years old in 2006, and to help commemorate that occasion we have been working with race director Scott Keenan and his wonderful staff to create a special one-shot issue that will be distributed to all marathon entrants as well as to all entrants in the Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon. Grandma’s Marathon & Beyond won’t automatically be distributed to M&B subscribers, although interested subscribers will be able to order it through the magazine. Marathon & Beyond will also host its seventh-annual open house at Grandma’s. Should be quite a shindig.

But that isn’t the end of our exciting news. For the last several years, Jan has served as the speaking engagement

manager for our good buddy Dick Beardsley at marathons and other races, corporations, and schools. Dick is easily the premier inspirational speaker on the running circuit. His story of triumph and tragedy easily puts to rest F. Scott Fitzgerald’s admonition that American lives have no second acts.

Jan has been so good at promoting Dick’s speeches that there isn’t enough of Dick to go around. So in 2006, Marathon & Beyond will launch the M&B Speakers Bureau, which will feature an impressive stable of speakers, in addition to Dick:

Helen Klein (see the cover story in the last issue of M&B) is world and American record holder at so many distances we don’t have space to list them all here. Her story of getting into running at the age of 55 and simply running away with the record books is inspiring and fascinating.

Bill Wenmark is a dynamo, a force of nature. A decorated combat corpsman in Vietnam, Bill built his career around providing medical aid to those who need it. He has also practiced preventive medicine through athletics. He is the founder and coach of ALARC (American Lung Association Running Club), the largest marathon running club in the United States.

Gerard Pearlberg, or “Coach GP” as he is known to his charges, is cofounder of RunningBuzz.com and the author of

Run Tall, Run Easy: The Ultimate Guide to Better Running Mechanics.

Patti Lyons Catalano Dillon, like Dick Beardsley, has a story filled with ups and downs that inspires anyone who hears it. At one time one of the world’s premier road racers, Patti’s life fell apart, but through iron will and great determination she was able to bring it back together. Paul Clerici did a marvelous job of telling Patti’s story in the March/April 2005 edition of this magazine.

Look for more info about the M&B Speakers Bureau in future issues of M&B.

To further commemorate 10 years of M&B, we’re also offering a 10th Anniversary performance shirt by New Balance. See the enclosed flyer for ordering information.

Phew! I’m exhausted just listing what’s coming down the road for 2006. Maybe it is time for that nap.

Looking back at the last decade, Jan and I would most especially like to thank all of those runners who have made the journey with us by buying and reading our little magazine. We refer to you folks as the M&B family. We appreciate your support and encouragement, and we hope to grow old together—and to continue to be divinely dysfunctional. In excess there is fulfillment.

—Rich Benyo

ON the ROAD WITH JOE HENDERSON

Making the First Team

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 last winter:

Two runners came up from behind. One did most of the talking, his volume growing as the gap between us shrank.

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 anod from the other. They didn’t know me or that I had 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 doesn’t match mine.

They were talking down a 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 of the

training. 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 pretraining program built to 10 miles, testing whether 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 in its second edition.

Ihear 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.

My column in Marathon & Beyond for March/April 2005 told how this approach came about. It silently answered the early morning talkers who had concluded, “Not enough.” A better rebuttal would come in June at Newport, Oregon, when my first Joe Henderson’s Marathon Team reached its graduation day.

EARLY RETURNS

My first lesson learned as a mentor of marathoners was that they don’t always listen. Given half a chance, they cheat on the program—rarely by doing too little but usually by running too much, too soon, too often.

These actions are a fitting payback to me. As a young runner, I was a handful for my coaches—second-guessing them at every turn, thinking I knew more at age 20 than they did a generation’s experience further along.

Now I’m a couple of generations along. Ihave to laugh when the younger runners “cheat” on me, especially when they get away with it as two of them did this spring.

Erin Bruce put pressure on herself and indirectly on me. She is a news anchor for a local TV station who went public with her marathon plans and training program by way of weekly on-air reports.

Erin chose to use the same training program as our Marathon Team, six weeks ahead of us for her race at Big Sur. If anything went wrong, most of our town would know.

She had problems: the flu, a foot injury from taking a “makeup” long

run and a race too close together, getting lost on a run and going 21 miles a month too soon. These glitches, all duly reported, showed that life happens during any program, threatening to end the training.

Erin’s efforts didn’t end early. She got to the starting line, which is most of the battle in marathons. She ran 3:58 on a hilly course known to run “slow” by 15 or more minutes.

“Tt was one of the most rewarding, glorious, difficult, and emotional experiences of my life,” she said on her final marathon telecast. “I was so blessed to get to share it with our viewers.”

Nick Brewe, the youngest member for our first Marathon Team at 19 when he joined us, is a second-generation marathoner. His father, Keith, is a regular qualifier for Boston.

This year Dad invited Nick to make the trip with him. Nick himself was training for a marathon debut in June. His race was almost two months away, and his longest run to date had been 15 miles.

Before he traveled to Boston, I warned Nick, “You’ll be so excited when you return that we’ll need two hefty runners to hold you back.” I should have recruited two on Boston Monday.

While still in Boston, Nick sent me an e-mail titled “Couldn’t Resist.” The spirit of the day had turned him into a bandit, joining 2,000 others (mostly college students like him) behind the registered runners.

He ran the whole way, finishing in a sedate-for-him 4:10. He told me later

that he considered Boston a training run for his real marathon of the spring, our team’s race in Oregon. I would have advised him to ease down in the last two weeks but knew this wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

He had a mountain, Rainier, to climb on one of those weekends. Nineteen-year-olds can get by with that, just as they can run Boston on a whim.

I told the Marathon Team, “Erin’s and Nick’s results should encourage you. If nothing else, they show you that the training doesn’t have to be perfect for the outcome to be OK.”

GETTING THERE

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 runners as individuals, is harder than writing a schedule—and immensely more satisfying. Also more nerve-racking.

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, 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. Ilistened to all the physical complaints, from head (colds) to foot (plantar fasciitis). [liotibial 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, premarathon 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 had 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 stuffy.

“T 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 had done: play doctor to a real doctor. I felt responsible for his health too.

FAMILY MATTERS

I can’t think of a more anticlimactic or empty end to marathon training than to come to the race alone. Teaming up for our event meant that no one had to finish this way.

We trained as a team, of course. 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. Many of them met each other at our own pasta dinner.

The largest number came in support of Paula Montague. She uses the name “flyingmama” in her e-mail address.

Paula is the mother of three daughters, “and my 16-year-old sister is like a fourth.” Those four, and her 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 anon-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 had 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 had started boldly, given her condition.

On our first day together back in January, the runners filled out an information sheet. I asked whether 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, but I do know that her monitored pulse consistently (and often considerably) topped 140.

Michelle also 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 she 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 or a pregnancy, some of it unpleasant to anticipate or to experience.

GRADUATION DAY

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 almost 39 years ago, at Boston.

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 I couldn’t stop at that one. It led to dozens more marathons plus a few ultras—and finally to coaching my first team of marathoners.

After their graduation exercises in Newport, I wrote to them, “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 last winter in your first training run with this team.

“Even if you didn’t run the time you’d hope 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 are good ones. 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 five 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.”

The first team ranged in age from 20 to 57 and in time from 3:25 to 5:24.

Youngest and fastest was Nick Brewe, who had left his teens since Boston and now PRed by 45 minutes. He recovered by climbing a 9,000-foot mountain the next day, as only a 20-year-old could or would.

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

Dr. Tod Hayes’s cold didn’t slow him. He had told no one of his subfour-hour goal until after he met it, by 25 seconds.

Michelle Martin lost her time goal to the long lines at the potties. This disappointed her momentarily, but she soon chose a new target: “to walk the Portland Marathon in October, hoping I don’t go into labor on the course.”

Ten of our 16 runners finished their first marathon. One of them, Laura McClain, ran like a pro. She alone on this team paced herself to negative splits.

“T had never been on a team of any kind, nor did I participate in sports in school,” Laura told me later. “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.

Joe’s second Marathon Team ran the Portland Marathon in October, and a third will train for Napa Valley. You can contact him and read other columns on his Web site, www,joehenderson.com.