People & Pages

Many moons ago, in another lifetime, I began writing stories about stock car drivers. This was in the late 1960s. I was just out of college and working at a daily newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania. My college roommate, who had been the sports editor of our college paper, came along with me when I took the newspaper editor’s job. Within a year, however, he had moved from his sports editor job to become assistant public relations director at the fledgling Pocono International Raceway at nearby Long Pond. When I visited him one day, he handed me a letter from a Dr. Dick Berggren, northeastern editor of something called Stock Car Racing magazine, requesting a story on the new Pocono racetrack. My former roommate didn’t have time to write the story, so I did.

That started a long association with “Dr. Dick,” who periodically assigned me to write profiles of race-car drivers—local champs, primarily: Bobby Bottcher, Buzzy Reutimann, guys like that.

Eventually the editorship of Stock Car Racing magazine opened up, and I took the job. My first move was to change the editorial focus from races and the mechanical side of the sport to the people side. We began carrying more stories on the drivers, mechanics, race officials, track owners—even the fans.

It was my feeling that the races and the mechanical innovations were fine, but people drove the sport.

Today stock car racing on television is second only to the National Football League. Fans are still interested in the cars and the races, but it’s the drivers who… well… drive the sport.

There are parallels to long-distance running beyond the fact that a NASCAR Nextel Cup race can last more than four hours, during which a driver can lose 15 pounds of body weight to sweat loss.

Marathons (and to a lesser degree ultramarathons) are no longer run in the shadows; they are big news. The New York City Marathon closes in on 40,000 participants; is covered start to finish on TV; draws millions of spectators; features pit stops (known to us as aid-station stops) where liquids splash all over the place; can last four hours or more and often does; and on a hot day, runners lose pounds of body weight through sweat loss.

But as with stock car racing, it’s the people who make the sport what it is: the runners, the also-rans, the race directors, the sponsor reps, the volunteers, the fans, the families, and the friends.

We carry runner profiles on a regular basis in this magazine. Unfortunately, there are too many worthy stories and too few pages available. So

we decided, as a fitting way to close out our first decade of publishing Marathon & Beyond, to make this a people-heavy issue. In typical M&B fashion, that doesn’t mean only current people who run long distances. In keeping with our philosophy that our readers benefit greatly from a historical perspective of whose footprints they run in, we’re also carrying some classic profiles, such as 1936 Olympic marathon champion Kitei Son.

We’re also very pleased to give our readers a first glimpse at the childhood memoirs of our dear friend and this magazine’s special correspondent, John J. Kelley, 1957 Boston Marathon winner. Johnny has shared with our readers many of his classic marathon races over the past decade, but this little story of his first race is special. It’s an opportunity to share with Johnny afew days of his childhood—a childhood not too unlike our own, not too unlike the childhood stories the master storyteller Jean Shepherd used to share with radio listeners.

Itis people who make our sport tick; it is people who drive all aspects of the sport, whether they are running at the front of the pack or bringing up the rear, running the 110th Boston Marathon or an ultra recently conceived while a race director was on a long run that burned up way too many brain cells.

The strange, the unexpected, and the outrageous are aspects of this sport that make it colorful, challenging, universally respected and reviled, and endlessly appealing. What sport, after all, offers this kind of range: from a

40-yard sprint to an around-the-world run?

As I write this, Dean Karnazes is about to embark on his demented 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days odyssey. His quest begins September 17 at the Lewis & Clark Marathon in Missouri and ends at the New York City Marathon on November 5.

Some runners within the ultrarunning world have been critical of Dean and of Pam Reed for what they consider self-promotional efforts by the two. Pam Reed won the Badwater 135 outright two years in a row. Dean published his autobiography, Ultramarathon Man, and promoted it with an ambitious public-relations blitz. The two of them established a rivalry to see who could be the first to run 300 miles without stopping. They have appeared on all sorts of national radio and television shows. Some runners think these efforts are tasteless and belittle the sport of ultrarunning.

The resentment of some people is fueled by jealousy, for others by discomfort with such radical attention-getting changes coming to the ultra world, and for still others by possessiveness that includes keeping news of ultramarathoning from the outside world so it can be kept clannish and cultish.

It’s not too different, in its way, from the hoary veterans of the Boston Marathon who resent the B.A.A.’s softening the qualifying standards. If I had to run a 2:50 Boston qualifier back in 1983, runners today should be held to the same standards. Unfortunately, with the aging of the marathoning crowd

and the less-than-vigorous training of some runners, the size of the Boston Marathon field would revert to what it was in the late 1950s.

Personally, I’m all for ultrarunning getting some long-overdue attention. And as someone who was crazy enough to run from Badwater to the peak of Mount Whitney and back, I’m always fascinated by ultrarunners who have taken leave of their senses to try something truly ridiculous. If Gordy Ainsleigh hadn’t subbed for his lame horse in the 100-mile Tevis Cup back in 1974, not only wouldn’t we have the proliferation of 100-mile trail runs these days, we would barely have any trail tuns at all. Back in those days, almost all ultras were run on the roads.

My hat is off to Dean Karnazes— and to Pam Reed—and to Scott Jurek— and to anyone who tries the outrageous or the seemingly impossible.

And, to be quite frank, I’m thrilled that Dean and Pam and Scott are our representatives to the outside world. As those who have dwelt within the ultra world know, our patently crazy sport could be disastrously represented by any number of nut cases who live there; we would rather not allow some of those people to get within 100 yards of a microphone or television camera.

I certainly don’t envy Dean Karnazes. He has taken on a monumental challenge and in the process has put tremendous pressure on himself. As you all know, all it takes to short-circuit a planned marathon is a twisted ankle ora recurrence of that twinge in the middle of the right calf muscle. Think of the

paranoia that will infuse Dean every night as he goes to bed nursing aches and pains and harboring doubts and worrying about airline connections to get him to the next day’s marathon—not to mention that running two marathons in two days goes against every training principle we’re known to cherish, much less running 50 of them in 50 days.

It is true that we as long-distance runners feel we come from a common mold, that we are solitary animals, running for the sake of running, fulfilling the bred-in-the-bone need of our ancient ancestors to move, to enrich the blood, to buoy the spirit, to steam clean the brain, to allow the muscles to realize their physiological potential. We also feel that so much sweat-purifying effort washes us clean of aggressiveness, belligerence, and pride. That is why many marathoners despised Alberto Salazar when he moved up to the marathon and “bragged” in advance of his marathon debut that he was going to break the record for a first-marathon performance. He was stepping outside the self-satisfied mold that long-distance runners had fantasized for themselves: sprinters strut and preen and boast and play mind games; marathoners are modest and withdrawn and thrive on the “loneliness of the long-distance runner.”

Bunk. Although marathon runners and ultramarathoners are generally helpful to their fellow runners and supportive, when the gun goes off, the most mild-mannered runner becomes an assassin. Think of good guys like Bill Rodgers and Amby Burfoot and John J. Kelley and Don Kardong—wonderful

guys until you pin a number on them. It’s the same with female marathoners and ultrarunners: they are wonderfully supportive of each other, but once the sound of the starter’s gun rends the air, all bets are off—auntil the race is over and everyone is once again warm and wonderful.

So from us here at M&B: Good

luck, Dean. Good luck in Europe this fall, Scott. Go for it, Pam! Move the sports of marathoning and ultrarunning to new heights and widths. It’s flexible enough that it can stand the stress. In fact, like the classic stress + rest = performance, the sport will come back stronger than ever thanks to these cutting-edge efforts. On the matter of long-distance, running-type people, it has been a banner year for biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs.

In some sort of a lapse from its usual line of training books for runners (many of them ably done by Hal Higdon), Rodale Press spewed forth a glorious array of books about runners. We should all take advantage of this bounty by adding several of these to our library, because the chances of scoring such a wonderful array of biographies again any time soon seems unlikely.

The biggest of the books is Kenny Moore’s exhaustive Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, atome that took Kenny years to research and write. Bowerman, of course, was the coach at the University of Oregon at Eugene and cofounder of Nike. Kenny ran for Bowerman, as did Nike cofounder Phil Knight and

Steve Prefontaine, the James Dean of running. Kenny had access to all of Bowerman’s papers and makes excellent use of them. Most important, Kenny is an old-school journalist (he spent most of his career writing about running for Sports Illustrated) who does his research and reports on what he finds. In this case, although he obviously revered Bowerman, he presents him warts and all.

Some of the most fascinating chapters of the book (and of Bowerman’s life) cover his service in the army in World War II and his battle to rein in the craziness of the Indian spiritualist Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his cult followers as they attempted to take over a section of Oregon near Bowerman’s hometown of Fossil. The book is fascinating and provides an inside look at what most of us heard about only vaguely through news reports, and Kenny Moore proves that a good journalist can cover any story, whether it’s within his usual bailiwick or not.

Obviously, Bowerman and the Men of Oregon is of most interest to runners who were active during Bowerman’s era; for the casual reader, the book, at 432 pages, may be too much of a good thing. What raises it above is Kenny Moore’s ability to tell a story well and his attention to the little details that bring the characters alive.

As narrow as the focus is for Kenny’s Bowerman book, 26.2 Marathon Stories by wife/husband team Kathrine Switzer and Roger Robinson is allinclusive. The book is, in all respects, beautiful. The printing is superb, the

photographs are outstanding, and the 26.2 stories about marathoning and marathoners are fascinating and inspiring and are told wonderfully well. The stories begin with the legend of Pheidippides and the first marathon in 490 B.C. and runs the legs off every major long-distance tale since then. If you want inspiration, buy the book and save it for the last 27 days of your training program toward your next marathon. Read a chapter each night to be inspired to jump out of bed the next day to put the finishing touches on your training program.

Duel in the Sun is John Brant’s expansion of his long article on the Alberto Salazar/Dick Beardsley battle at Boston 1982 that he wrote for Runner’s World. The duel, of course, has become the thing of legend. Salazar and Beardsley battled each other from the start of that hot Boston race, showing no quarter, as they keyed off each other, threw in surges, and tried to psyche the other out until the showdown in the final mile where Salazar pulled ahead to win by two seconds—and in the process to set a new course record on an impossible day. Brant does a good job setting the scene, following both runners as they prepare for the race, taking us along with them through the race, as well as giving us insights to what happened to both of these talented runners in the wake of the race. Neither of them ever ran that well again, and the lives of both Salazar and Beardsley took bizarre turns right out of Greek tragedy—except that both of them were so focused and dedicated that

they wrote their own third acts to their lives and today are safe and successful in their own skins.

Pam Reed needs no introduction to ultrarunning fans. She twice won the grueling Badwater 135 race in Death Valley against all comers, and she continues to notch outstanding performances at any distance, from the marathon on up. Her autobiography, The Extra Mile, is astonishingly frank and honest; there is no ultra from which Pam will shrink, and there is no topic in her life that is big enough to cow her. Her writing style is similar to her speaking style: simple, direct, engaging, and honest. Pam and Harry Truman would have gotten along just swell.

The most interesting chapter in the book to me is “Desperate Housewife?” where Pam explains, once and for all, her intentions in running, her nonrivalry with Dean Karnazes, and the character assassination that can be perpetrated on you when you let a journalist with less than Kenny Moore’s pedigree do a major magazine feature on you—especially when the story is essentially written before the first interview.

Pam Reed has earned a place among not just the great women of ultrarunning like Eleanor Adams, Ann Trason, Sandra Kiddy, and Sue Ellen Trapp but among the greats of all time, regardless of sex.

The last, but far from least of Rodale’s biographies, is Dave McGillivray’s The Last Pick, as in spending a childhood always being the last person picked for whatever game the gang was playing because you’re too small, too

slow, or just too damned horrible at the game. Dave’s malady was being too short. He had two choices: give up or get tougher and try harder. Dave is the guy who organizes the Boston Marathon each year, and he has run across the United States. So guess which option he picked.

Dave is like the Energizer bunny, the Tasmanian devil, and Speedy Gonzales all rolled into one. And, to mix a metaphor, like a planet, he draws others into his orbit and inspires them to play on his team, where he creates an environment in which they all think Dave picked them first.

Rodale isn’t the only publisher that turned out running biographies in 2006. Breakaway Books, which publishes plenty of running books (including Roger Robinson’s fascinating Running in Literature a few years ago), issued American Miler: The Life and Times of Glenn Cunningham by Paul J. Kiell. With all of the well-deserved attention to Roger Bannister over the past several years in the wake of the 50th anniversary of his breaking the four-minute mile, many other milers faded into the background. Cunningham nearly lost his life ina schoolhouse fire at age 7 (his older brother died in the fire) and was severely burned on the legs. In spite of that, he began racing in high school and progressed to become one of America’s premier milers—and an inspiration for a young fellow Kansan, Jim Ryun, many years later. Cunningham was shy, retiring, and a true gentleman, and his story is compelling and inspiring.

Running has benefited from a cast of colorful characters. On the West Coast, we had the larger-than-life Walt Stack, who every morning ran across the Golden Gate Bridge bare chested no matter what the weather; on the East Coast, folks had Tommy Leonard, host of Boston’s Eliot Lounge, the runners’ hangout, and founder of the famed Falmouth Road Race. Tommy was one of the greatest promoters of health, fitness, and running you are ever likely to encounter. He was for decades one of Boston’s primary spark plugs and the guy who knew everyone in running and everything about running. His story is told in what has to be the most awkwardly worded book title of the year: [f This 1s Heaven,I Am Going to Be a Good Boy by Kathleen Cleary (iUniverse Books). Tommy certainly wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth; when he was 6, his father dropped him off at a mission for children of the destitute. No problem. Tommy made a life for himself—a life that continues to glow, a life filled with more friends than he knows what to do with. “Life without dreams would be intolerable,” wrote Anatole France—a sentiment that Tommy took as his guiding principle of life.

Our Life on the Run by Marlin Keesler (Our Life Publishing) is the story of Marlin’s mission to run a marathon in all 50 states and how he turned the adventure into a family affair of careful planning and execution with his wife and two children. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific state, with information of how the trip was put

together and what the family saw and experienced, followed by a summary of how the run went. It is a very quick and easy read, a very pleasant family experience.

Women Who Run by Shanti Sosienski (Seal Press) is a compilation of the stories of 20 women who run—including average running-around-the-block women; running pioneers (Bobby Gibb); Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife, Kristin; and extraordinary age-group athlete Shirley Matson. Every runner has a story of how she got into running and what it means to be a runner. These women have all been touched positively by their dedication to the sport and lifestyle of running, which comes across quite nicely under Shanti Sosienski’s pen.

A fascinating compilation for the mature runner is Running in the Zone, edited by Canadians Steve King and Dan Cumming, two accomplished runners and now noted editors. It is published by Trafford and consists of excerpts from writings dealing with masters runners; it features contributions from people you’ ve heard of (Bart Yasso, Roger Robinson, Bernd Heinrich, Don Kardong, Joe Henderson) as well as folks you will be interested in meeting. The book is broken into what the writers call the zones of a runner’s world: the preparation zone, the inspiration zone, the perspiration zone, and others. It’s a terrific compilation of the practical and the inspirational. None of the excerpts is too long or overwhelming, and the book can be read in small bites by reading one excerpt per day until all the lessons are digested and a better runner comes out the other end.

Human Kinetics continues to be the foremost publisher of hard-core running books and sports participation books in general, and two of its 2006 titles are worth noting. The first is Stretch to Win by Ann and Chris Frederick. OK, right up front, I have to admit it: I don’t stretch. Never have, never will. Of course, I can see how it might be helpful to an athlete. But I can also see how it could hurt someone who doesn’t do it exactly correctly. Way back in 1977 when I returned to running, I used to watch people stretch before races, and I noted that the more that runners stretched, the farther back in the field they finished, so I didn’t bother stretching and managed to get a little better each week. There are, of course, some people who stretch moderately and who run well. For those folks, this is the best book since Bob Anderson’s Stretching came out in the 1970s. The Fredericks move the whole art of stretching into the 21st century by keying it to the actual movements required by various sports. If I were going to stretch, this would be the book I would use, because it treats stretching logically and scientifically, not as though it’s a religion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. We’re marathoners and ultrarunners, and we don’t want to run short or go to the track. Yeah, right. If we want to become better marathoners, we need to run shorter races and go to the track to train our legs to move faster. In fact, it would behoove some of us to take a year off from marathoning and concentrate on shorter races so that we could come back the following year to run marathons better. If you want to incorporate shorter races (5Ks, 10Ks) in your training, Brian Clarke’s 5K and 10K Training, also from Human Kinetics, is the book for you. Clarke ran for Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon back in the ’60s and is today one of the top coaches in Hawaii. He dedicates this book to the legendary coach Arthur Lydiard, at whose feet Bowerman worshipped. The best chapter in the book is chapter 5, Balancing Effort and Fatigue, a topic that was dear to the hearts of both

Lydiard and Bowerman and which is integral to any training program—and which was totally misunderstood by most high school and college coaches in the ’60s and ’70s. Run yourself into the ground, and it’s an early grave for your running. Although the book is aimed at 5K and 10K racing, the principles Clarke espouses are just as applicable to marathon training. This one is highly recommended.

Whew. Quite a year for producing good books for the running public. And some very good choices for Christmas presents for your running buddies. Or for yourself.

—Rich Benyo

ON the ROAD WITH JOE HENDERSON

This | Believe

National Public Radio » doesn’t go with me on = my runs. That’s when

_. I still resist listening to

anything but live sounds.

But NPR’s morning news

is the last voice I hear before running and the first afterward.

At those times, I often hear a segment in the ongoing series titled “This I Believe.” Hearing these five-minute highly personal essays, I think: I could write a book on that subject.

Then I remember: already did that. It was titled Long Run Solution, was serialized in Marathon & Beyond in 2002 and 2003, and now appears in full on my Web site (address at the end of this column).

That book was an extended version of what I believed while writing the book 30 years ago. The timing is right for an updated and condensed version.

This column is my last for “On the Road.” It was never intended to be any writer’s permanent home. The scheduled stay here for past columnists had been a year, and I’ve more than doubled it.

Next issue I’ll happily yield to Don Kardong, and then move to a new and more compact column titled “Joe’s Journal,” at the back of the magazine. Before vacating this space, I’m moved to do some summing up.

So here, in 100 words or less, is everything I believe about running—a hundred per topic, that is, while totaling a couple of dozen of those. This I believe…

EXERCISE ISN’T ENOUGH

Kenneth Cooper’s formula—two to three miles, three to five days a week, at a relaxed aerobic pace—is enough running for an exerciser. “If you run more than 15 miles a week,” says the Aerobics author, “‘you’re running for reasons other than fitness.” There’s more to running than fitness. Running only to train your heart, lungs, and limbs is as incomplete as eating only to exercise your jaws. Training to race and running for relaxation and meditation begin where the exerciser leaves off. The early miles are warmup steps leading to the best part, the second half hour.

RUNNING IS ADDICTIVE

This is a positive and natural addiction. Necessary activities, which running was for most of human history, are made pleasant so we’ll keep coming back to them. The new runner’s first goal is to reach the addiction point, the 3-3-3 level. This means promising to run for three months and to build toward three miles, three days a week. Runners who go this far are likely to

continue—and to seek out the attractions of running beyond meeting the basic need for aerobic fitness. Running then shifts from an obligation into a habit, from a trial into a reward.

STARTING IS HARD

And not just for a new runner overcoming inactivity for the first time. Longtimers also wage a daily battle against inertia. One of its laws is that a body at rest wants to keep resting. The hardest step in running is the first one out the door. The toughest mile is the opener. You can trick yourself into starting by saying, “I’ll try a single slow mile and see how I feel then.” Get through that trial mile, and you almost always keep going—at a better pace—until the day’s planned run is complete. Another law of inertia has gone to work: a body in motion tries to keep moving.

RUNNING IS EASY

No one can run long and hard, or short and fast, every day without paying a toll in pain and exhaustion. In distance running, you must run less than your best most of the time. Nine miles in every 10 or all but a day or two every week must be easy. An easy pace is one to two minutes per mile slower than you now could race the same distance. An easy run is one lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. Hold your running to less than one hour a day, on average. Beyond that time, this hobby starts to feel like a second job.

RUNNERS ARE ANIMALS

Animals, primitive humans, and children show us that the most natural ways to run are fast for very short distances or slow, with many pauses for long distances. Long, slow distance (LSD) running, walk breaks, and short, fast interval training have history on their side. Racing a long distance fast is an unnatural act. We also get in touch with our inner animal in other ways by becoming a little less civilized for an hour a day. Real runners learn to let their sweat flow freely and to spit, blow their noses with their fingers, and discreetly relieve themselves outdoors.

WALKING IS WORTHWHILE

Walk breaks can work wonders. They can make a long run longer or short segments of a fast run faster—without increasing the apparent effort. Or these pauses can make an easy run easier or make a recovery run (after an injury or illness) safer. Walking isn’t cheating. It’s moving as we’re designed to move, at varying paces and efforts. If you don’t like the word “walk,” think of it as interval training for the longdistance runner. Mix one-minute walks, early and often, into a long run. This is long enough to feel like a break but not so long that you tighten up.

RUNNING IS BEST

Don’t be attracted too much to activities peripheral to running. These include stretching, weight training, form drills, and cross-training, as well

as nutritional magic seeking. Better to warm up by slow running or even fast walking than by stretching (which has value, but not as a warm-up). Better to run an extra mile (because you get better at running by running) than to spend those minutes other ways. Better to lose a few pounds (if you’re above ideal weight, as most of us are) than to add an imagined “missing ingredient” to the diet. Better to run a little hungry than to eat too much, too late.

TIME IS RIGHT

Training by miles (or kilometers) means you must plot a course, then measure it, and then remember to follow it as designed. A simpler choice: ignore miles and run by minutes. You can run anywhere without thinking about the distance or the route, and time will pass at the same rate. And logging “41 minutes” is more exact than noting “about five miles.” By-time running also helps regulate pace, especially on easy days. You tend to push a known distance to finish it sooner. Minutes can’t be rushed, so you tend to settle into the right pace—not too fast or too slow.

REST IS NEEDED

Weekly mile counting is the most misleading—and potentially damaging—figure in running. It can lead toa leveling of daily mileage, causing you to run too much on days that should be easy and leaving you unable to do enough on days that should be hard. Weekly mile totaling penalizes you

the most for what you might need the most: a big zero from a rest day. If you insist on counting miles (or minutes) by the week, take the math a step further. Calculate daily averages. Add up the amount of running, then divide only by the number of days run. This erases the rest-day penalty.

INJURIES AREN’T ACCIDENTS

They usually are self-inflicted by running too far, too fast, too soon, or too often. Oncoming injuries can be minimized when caught early. If pain grows during a run and causes a limp, stop. If soreness eases and doesn’t change your form, keep going—cautiously. If you can’t run, train in other ways that most closely resemble running. If walking doesn’t aggravate the problem, walk the same places and for the same times you would have run. If you can’t walk, bicycle. If you can’t bike, swim or “run” in water. Move back up that activity scale as you recover.

RUNNING ISN’T ROUTINE

We think and talk about the whats and hows (especially the how fars and how fasts) of running. But the wheres seldom come up, beyond where the next race might be. Yet you spend dozens to hundreds of hours on your home courses. This isn’t to say they grow old, routine, or boring after the 99th repetition. Even as you run the same place and the same pace, a course never looks quite the same way twice. The combinations of weather, season, light, feelings, and thoughts that you

find there are ever changing. Each new run has the potential to surprise you.

TRAINING IS SIMPLE

Life is complicated, so run to escape the complexity instead of adding to it. Keep your training simple, low tech, and low key. Training simply balances three needs: long, fast, and easy. Train long enough (but at a slower pace) to prepare for your longest race, fast enough (but at a shorter distance) to match the speed of your shortest race, and easy enough (many days of this) to recover between your hard runs. Limit the hard days to one a week—be they long, fast, or races. This is all that most

of us can tolerate or can fit into life’s schedule.

RACING IS “TRAINING”

The best type of speed “training” is regular racing. You can’t duplicate the race-day experience as well with tempo runs or intervals. You can’t match the racing effort (or the excitement) when running by yourself. The best type of “training” this way is at half your main race distance. That’s 5K for a 10K runner, 10K for a half-marathoner, half-marathon for a marathoner. Don’t take these races as seriously as your main event, and don’t schedule them too close to that one. Remember that even training races take a toll. Recover as long as you would after a big race.

DISTANCE IS INDISPENSABLE

In marathon training, the long run means the most, by far. Take it and nothing else but easy runs and rest days, and you’ll do fine on marathon day. Run daily, sometimes fast but not very long, and you’ll do poorly. A big mistake of marathoners is increasing all the runs—tong, fast, and weekly distance—all at once. As the long run goes up in length, the other runs must come down—in length, frequency, and number—to compensate. Long runs are best taken every other week or even three weeks apart toward the program’s end. Recovery takes that long.

SHORTER IS ENOUGH

You don’t need to “finish” a marathon in training. Leave the final miles unexplored until race day. There are two ways to run long before a marathon. One (which works best for a faster runner) is to build up to the marathon’s projected time but to train at a pace one to two minutes per mile slower. This means covering three to six miles less than 26.2 while still seeing how it feels to be on your feet for the full race time. Another way a marathoner can train (this works best for a slower one) is to run at projected marathon pace but to stop three to six miles short of full distance.

SPEED IS LIMITED

A little bit of speed training goes a long way, and too much of it leads to dead ends of injury and disappointment. Limit the interval-training sessions

of a road racer to 5K of fast running and the pace to that of a SK race. The simplest way to improve speed is by running 1-1-1: one mile, one minute faster than your everyday pace, one day a week (with a mile warm-up and another mile to cool down). Another simple way to train for speed is with out-and-backs, such as going out for 15 minutes easily, then coming back in less than 15. This teaches you to finish faster or run negative splits.

RACE DAY IS MAGICAL

The prerace anticipation and anxiety, the crowds running with you, the cheers for you, the splits, the drinks, the amplified announcements and music—they all combine to fire up your adrenaline. This has a magical effect on your running. You can run up to a minute per mile faster than you would go the same distance by yourself. Or you can double the distance you would run alone at a particular pace. Two cautions here: (1) adrenaline poisoning can lure you into starting too fast, and (2) going farther and faster than normal will demand a longer recovery time afterward.

PACE IS PATIENCE

The Bible says, “Run with patience the race that is set before us.” Pay special attention to the first two and last two letters of “patience.” Start at a cautious pace, and let the impatient runners sail ahead without you. You’ll likely see them again later while passing them in the late miles, where it’s much more fun to be the passer than the passee.

This will happen if you pace yourself evenly. You’ll feel even better by running negative splits—the second half faster than the first. That word “‘negative” is amisnomer, because racing this way is positively delightful.

RECOVERY IS SLOW

“You can’t think of running another marathon until you forget how bad the last one felt.” Frank Shorter said that. This truism can apply to any race. Recovery doesn’t happen overnight. It goes through three stages—muscle, energy, and mental—each taking more time than the last. A good guide for recovery is to not run another race (or even to train long or fast) until one day has passed for each mile of the race. One day per kilometer is even better if the race was really hard or you’re into your masters years (as recovery slows with age). Treat racing as a prescription item, best taken in small, well-spaced doses.

WINNING IS PERSONAL

“Winning is doing the best you can with what you’re given.” George Sheehan

said that. Also, “Winning is never having to say ‘I quit.’” Winning is also running up to your own standard of success—be it improving your distance or time, running better in this race than your last one, racing farther or faster than you would alone, or simply being in the running and finishing what you started. Winning is not automatic. You risk a loss whenever you race, but the only one who can beat you is yourself.

RUNNING IS VARIED

Complete running combines three different experiences: contemplation (runs alone where you take the time to think), conversation (with a partner or small group where you have the chance to talk), and competition (in a race crowd where you cooperate more than compete). Running is also evolutionary, as interests change over the years. Runners typically begin with fitness goals, reach them and graduate to chasing racing goals, and then finally advance to a goal of running to keep running. Fitness and racing aren’t abandoned at that final stage but become byproducts.

IMPROVEMENT IS LIMITED

You can expect PRs to improve for five to 10 years after your racing begins. This happens no matter your age at the start. You can extend that improvement for another five to 10 years by switching to a new type of racing—such as from short track events to midrange road races or from those to marathons or ultras. Eventually, though, your PRs go from targets to monuments. Don’t let the old times haunt you. One way to do that is to write a fresh set of age-group records at five-year intervals. Or settle into running in races for their social side without really racing them.

RUNNERS ARE FRIENDLY

Running is better when shared: as a teammate, a pacer, a coach, a volunteer, a fan. What you remember most, in the end, aren’t the fast times run or the honors won but the people met and the friends made. You already know a lot about the runners you’ve never met. When you meet one on a run, give a “Hi,” a wave, a nod, or at least eye contact and a look of recognition. You never run alone, even when you appear to be by yourself. There with you is everyone who ever advised, inspired, or supported your running.

YOU ARE GOOD

Running is too valuable to leave to the best runners (which, inaccurately,

usually implies the fastest) runners. If you want to run, you are good enough. There are no “bad” runners, only slower ones. And you’re never the slowest. Look behind you at the people you can’t see—because they either dropped out or never started. You don’t need speed to outrun them, only starting power and staying power. No matter your pace or distance, you are a runner. You aren’t a “jogger.” The J word is used only by nonrunners to describe us unflatteringly. Edit it out of your language.

RUNNING IS LASTING

Speed drops, PRs become permanent, medals tarnish, photos fade. Your past is a nice place to visit in memory, but you can’t live there. All you can really hold onto is today’s run. Make it a good one, make sure you finish wanting to and being able to come back for another, and tomorrow’s run will take care of itself. The running life is a pacing exercise, just as a run or race is. One day in the life of a runner is like one step in a marathon, a year is like a mile. Don’t do anything in the short term that puts this long run at risk. All that lasts in running is the lasting.

You can contact Joe and read other columns on his Web site, www. joehenderson.com.