The Endless Summer—& Beyond

In the tradition of many magazines before us, our July/August issue is our Summer Reading issue, which means we save a lot of longer, more casually-paced features for this issue. It is also our annual Adventure Running issue, which means that we also save a lot of the more outré stories for this issue. Combine the two, and this issue contains a lot of longer, more off-thewall stories than our usual issues do. That means that the stories are usually easier to read because they don’t dwell all that much on the scientific side of running, but they take longer to read because they typically have an enormous number of words.

I’m something of a sucker for such special issues because they harken back to somnolent summers as a kid, where we would spend the mornings doing a few chores, then play some pickup ballgames, and when the day began to swelter we would crawl down into the borough’s big, cool, damp drainage pipes and read comic books and The Hardy Boys before emerging later in the day to put in our several hours working on the Mauch Chunk Bakery Company delivery truck for 25 cents an hour… which allowed us to buy even more comic books and more Hardy Boy books and expand into Rick Brant Electronic Adventure novels.

Summers in those days used to spool out to forever. They had a beginning: the last day of school. But until they slipped right up against September, June/July/August was like one big month swollen with warm breezes and sweaty chests and knocking around doing nothing that amounted to lots of little things stitched together to complete a typical day.

As we age, of course, some evil spirit creeps up behind us and extracts a day out of each month so that months flit by as though they were weeks and the once-magical month of June/July/ August is gone in a minute. That is why we have Summer Reading/Adventure Running issues: to slow down the forced march of months toward New Year’s Eve so that as we cut our running training back to accommodate the hotter days, we have something to fill the void. The fact that some of these stories involve racing in the summer is beside the point; they just happen to be Summer/Adventure Running Reading, the kind of stories that raise the question of whether we could do such a thing. It’s never whether we should do such a thing, but whether we could do such a thing: like running in Death Valley in the middle of summer, or running across the country during the winter, or running 51 marathons in 50 states

in 50 days. Or, on more of a fantasy level, racing across the United States from Los Angeles to New York, as Tom McNab had his characters do in Flanagan’s Run, the serialization of which commences in this issue. Flanagan’s Run was first published in the United States in 1982 by William Morrow and Company. It takes the perennially popular Bunion Derbies of 1928 and 1929 and moves them into the Great Depression era to increase the motivation of amateur runners to cross the dusty United States in order to save their families from economic disaster. Of course, the original Bunion Derbies were peopled by mostly poor amateurs who weren’t benefiting greatly from the Roaring ’20s era of excess before the Great Fall occurred. The original Bunion Derbies, promoted by the scalawag C. C. Pyle (sometimes referred to as “Cash and Carry Pyle’), were originated in part to promote the then sort-of-new Route 66 (the Mother Road) that ran from Los Angeles to Chicago. Today most of Route 66 is a thing more of legend than of reality; in 1928, most of it was dusty dirt roads scratched into reluctant earth that turned to quagmires when it rained and that choked the lungs with gritty particulate matter when it didn’t. Tom McNab is a man who knows his stuff, so even though he moves the running derby several years into the future, the details and the characters he creates are based (pretty much) on real runners of the time, one of whom was still alive when Tom was doing research for the novel and who spent time

relating to Tom some of the particulars of doing a stage race across a muchdifferent-from-today United States. Tom was a brilliant English coach who enjoyed Olympic success, he was the technical director of Chariots of Fire, and he is an inspiring author. (Roger Robinson, in his Running in Literature, ranked Tom’s novel Fast Men as the best running novel ever written. Roger ranks Flanagan’s Run as the fifth-best running novel ever written. Some experts on such matters claim that Flanagan’s Run is the bestselling sports novel ever written.)

We hope you enjoy sharing some of your summer days with our authors and that their stories inspire you on to greater—and crazier—things in the future. And we hope that you manage to somehow squeeze more out of this summer than you otherwise would by spending some laid-back, high-quality time with our writers.

M&B publisher Jan Seeley and I had an opportunity in late March to do a little dog and pony show for attendees at the SOth annual Road Runners Club of America convention in Chicago. The presentation involved 50 things in running that have changed dramatically over the past half century. It was a lot of fun to put together the 50 areas, which included everything from running shoes to personal portable-entertainment devices (from listening to your own heartbeat to BONEfones to Sony Walkmans to iPods). We managed to go off on enough tangents that we didn’t

get through all 50 of the areas. We’re considering expanding the PowerPoint presentation and putting it on our Web site. Stay tuned.

One byproduct of researching and unleashing the presentation was the realization of how far long-distance running has come over the past half century and of what a significant role the RRCA has played in that progress.

The RRCA began as a result of the sometimes benign but often belligerent neglect the higher-ups of the AAU laid on long-distance running participants. The long-distance runners were the pariahs of the running world, the orphans, the oddballs, the losers, the “ham-andeggers,” as they were referred to in the early days of the Boston Marathon.

Even as late as 1977, when I returned to running, the AAU was adamant that runners of road races join the AAU even though none of the membership money was used to improve the lot of road races and road racers. The money generated from road racers who were AAU members was pumped back into the elitist track and field sports—this in the face of the enormous and turbocharged increase in road running participation. Fortunately, as the AAU morphed into TAC and later into the USATF, a great deal of the gulf between track and field athletes and officials and those organizing and participating in road races was bridged until today there is genuine cooperation between the two groups.

It is impossible to understate the importance the RRCA has played in the growth of our sport.

Certainly the organization has had its ups and downs. One of its lowest ebbs came less than a half-dozen years ago when it looked as though there was a good chance the RRCA would become moribund. The executive director refused to move from the Boston area to the D.C. area to physically work in the RRCA offices, the finances were a shambles, and competing groups were gnashing at the limping carcass of the RRCA. But through unrelenting work, dedicated leadership, and some hard decisions, the RRCA today is financially sound and healthier than it has ever been. It boasts more than 780 member clubs and events, has a dozen programs in place (including the Roads Scholar and Run@Work programs), a membership of over 180,000, and plays a significant role in American running.

If you are not familiar with the RRCA, it would be worth your while to visit it at www.rrca.org. The quarterly journal, FOOTNOTES, is posted on the Web site, and updated information on its programs is available. If you don’t already belong, consider joining. And if you already belong, consider taking an even more active role in growing the RRCA and in growing our sport.

* Eo * As I write this, the 111th Boston Marathon is a mere 10 days away. At M&B we just finished up with the May/June issue, which went to the printer at the end of last week. This is the last major piece of editorial content that I need to send in to the Champaign, Illinois, office for the July/August issue. I don’t have

my baggage packed yet for my flight to our headquarters in Champaign, where I get to drive the van with M&B’s Boston expo materials to Beantown. And what plops into my mailbox this past Monday like a bombshell that’s preventing me from washing my underwear so I can pack my bags for the Boston trip but Kathrine Switzer’s newest book, Marathon Woman.

Need I tell you how little essential work is getting done this week because I can’t stop reading the book? But in true marathoner/delayed-gratification mode, I’m dedicating mornings to cleaning and packing clothes, finishing up deadlines, getting issue planning finished, and working on my own next book so I can leave afternoons open to devouring Kathrine’s book.

I’ll be indelicate with it right up front: this is the most important running book of the last decade, at least as far as putting the sport and lifestyle of running in perspective. And what makes it doubly significant is that it’s a damned good read, so good that the pages nearly turn themselves.

People just getting into running— people from both sides of the sexual divide—have no idea of the growing pains that long-distance runners went through over the past half century, not just technologically, but politically and socially: from long-distance road racers trying to wring some respect and recognition from the stiff AAU, to women trying to make their way in the running world, to the country—and eventually the world—accepting postcollegiate adults running around the countryside in their underwear for the good of their hearts, their heads, and their physical self-esteem.

It is propitious that Kathrine’s book comes out the same spring the Road Runners Club of America celebrated its 50th anniversary. Kathrine’s career and the RRCA parallel each other to an extent that is almost preternatural.

For those of us who were there for some or all of the territory Kathrine maps and dissects, our reading of her book had best be in private, because an observer watching us nod our heads vigorously or laugh for no apparent reason

would call the boys in the white jackets for a trip to the local loony bin.

Marathon Woman is Kathrine’s story, and a very personal story it is—and one in which she spares no dark alley or wrong turn—but it is also the story of an era, a struggle, a journey at once difficult yet enormously fulfilling. If struggle builds character, in several years of her life, Kathrine used cinder blocks instead of bricks. She is brutally honest about the turns she made in her life, the anguish and doubts she faced at certain crossroads, and the exhilaration of just being alive enough to experience all of it.

The struggle of women to make their place in the running world was so intimately woven with Kathrine’s life that halfway through the book I tried to come up with a suitable term for the character I saw as Zelig with gravitas. You’ll remember Zelig as the Woody Allen character who turned up on the edge of virtually every important event in history. Look at a photo of the Yalta conference, and there was Zelig in the background; see Willie Mays go twoout-of-three in the last game of the season in his to-the-wire batting title battle with Richie Ashburn in 1958 (Ashburn went three-for-four), and Zelig is sitting in the stands behind home plate. Kathrine was there for all of it but wasn’t merely an observer of the evolution of women in running (and in sports in general), she was one of the spark plugs, from taking up running as a young college girl, to practicing with the Syracuse University men’s cross-country team, to pirouetting out of the way of a charging Jock Semple

at the 1967 Boston Marathon—and beyond… way beyond.

The title of the book is apt. Marathon Woman, indeed. Following Kathrine’s full-time job, her volunteer work on behalf of running, and her hard training on top of that are simply exhausting—even if you’re sitting under a tree sipping a beer. Her dedication and enthusiasm and passion leap out of every page, as does the lesson: when you encounter someone on a mission, get on board or get out of the way.

This is a book that will inspire runners and that will put them in awe of the cadre of dedicated personalities, of both sexes, who moved long-distance running so far, so fast. It will also help put an end to some of the insidious revisionist history that has been injected into running discussions over the past several years that claims that women like Kathrine had to battle Neanderthal attitudes in male runners. “Again and again in interviews and appearances, I tried to defuse that story and explain that we had a lot of homework to do to educate the powerful decision makers,” Kathrine writes. “Yes, it was true they were all male, but most men, particularly the runners, were strongly in support of us.”

And we still are. But we singleminded guys are even more in awe of that multitasking thing women seem to be able to do. This could well be a textbook on the definition and proper execution of multitasking.

Oh, yes. And the good news: Kathrine’s book takes us up to only 1984, when the first women’s Olympic

marathon was held, which means a second volume is still to be written. Let’s hope it won’t come dashing in on the heels of Marathon Woman, because we need time to recover from this first long run before attempting a second.

Appropriately, the book makes its debut at the 2007 Boston Marathon, exactly four decades since Jock Semple made the mistake of messing with the wrong broad.

Eo * * Fortunately, if you’re depleted on several levels after reading Kathrine’s book, another female pioneer is standing by to help bring you back around to stasis, at least as far as your dietary needs are concerned.

Nancy Clark, one of the pioneers of dietary applications for active people, has a bright, easily accessible new book out titled Nancy Clark’s Food Guide for Marathoners. This is an evolution of a similar book Nancy published a few years ago, brought up to date with the latest information on where carbohydrates stand as a fuel in the marathoner’s arsenal, how important protein is, why pasta is often overrated, and how marathoners can lose weight or gain weight, depending on which is necessary and appropriate.

The new edition of Nancy’s book is published by Meyer & Meyer Sport, the German-based book publisher that has released a slew of books by the always-energetic Jeff Galloway.

Meyer & Meyer does a wonderful job of creating graphically pleasing and

easy-to-access books. The book is rich with color graphics, is laid out in an easy-to-follow format, and is extremely reasonable at $16.95.

Of course, the meat of any diet book—sorry, couldn’t resist—is the substance, and Nancy’s book has plenty of that.

Probably the most important chapter in the book for marathoners is chapter 5: Carbohydrate Confusion. “While carb-bashers have long established sugar as a dietary demon, starches have also gotten a bad rap thanks to Dr. Atkins and his high-protein diet,” Nancy writes. “Some marathoners, who had been happily enjoying bagels, pasta, and pretzels as the foundation of their sports diet, are shunning these excellent sources of muscle fuel. Instead, they choose egg whites, cottage cheese, soy shakes, and protein-based foods. They also experience needless fatigue due to poorly fueled muscles.”

Nancy puts the whole controversy into perspective and performs a tremendous service for newbie marathoners who, like trusting pilgrims, put their faith in the first prophet who comes down the pike—a prophet often steeped in the arcane and the obscene and deficient in the practical and workable.

When it comes to tweaking and customizing your diet to fit your marathon lifestyle, keep Nancy’s new book in your gym bag the same way you keep your owner’s manual in your glove compartment. Trust her in this; she knows of what she speaks.

—Rich Benyo

GUEST EDITORIAL

Time and Distance: An Argument in Favor of Measurement

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.”—Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907)

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“Run by time, not by distance;” “run by time or distance, but never both;” “to truly enjoy your running, leave your watch at home and measure nothing.”

These and similar measurementrelated adages have been put forth by popular writers, including some here in Marathon & Beyond. With the increasing number of new marathoners, these bromides have become more pronounced in recent years. Although usually slanted toward novice runners, the advice is also often presented as a one-size-fits-all rule for the rest of us to run by. The counsel is rarely questioned; it’s merely accepted by many as the only worthwhile running method.

We run for many reasons: just for enjoyment, to be able to reach the finish line at our races, to improve or maximize our racing performances, or to be competitive against others. The minimal-measurement approach may indeed fit the needs of those who run only for fun or who enter races only to finish them. But is the approach best for the rest of us as well?

I don’t think so. I believe in measurement. I ought to; besides my forays into running and writing, I am a software metrics consultant. This means that I measure and report on various aspects of computer software, so I may be somewhat biased (some would say anal retentive) when it comes to measuring things. Many runners, perhaps most, keep training logs. They know that these can be extremely useful tools. My point is that we need to record more than just time or distance. At least during important training periods, at least when we really care about the results, we need to track both.

CONSULTING LOGS

ALLOWS US TO ADJUST Training logs are important because of the principle of feedback. Our brains

are wired to take what information is available and then make adjustments in order to improve. What type of feedback? For us runners, it’s mostly about time and distance. These are the essential pieces of data that you ought to track in your log. With this information, you can tell how your current runs compare with those of last week, last month, and last year. You can use the information for analysis and to make adjustments; if you find that your pace is slower than that in the past, the reason may also be in your log. Best of all, you can use the information to plan your future training and pacing.

Can we have too much information? Absolutely. We all know runners who can’t run at all without some device whirring, beeping, chirping, or lighting up to tell them the time of day, heart rate, elapsed time, elevation, phase of the moon, horoscope, and so forth. Information overload is counterproductive. You need just the right amount of information, and you need it at the right time.

Two principles are at work here: continuous improvement and measurement versus management. Continuous improvement is the concept that we should always have the attitude that we will improve. Applied to running, it means running faster or longer as compared with some point in the past. Of course, we can’t continue improving forever; all world-record times experience periods of stagnation, and likewise, all individual runners eventually reach plateaus, setbacks, and ultimately, decreasing performances.

But continuous improvement is a state of mind. It’s the ideas that you can improve and that you’re always working toward your goal. It applies whether you just ran a personal-best time or if all of your PRs are well in the past. It applies whether you’ve been running well lately or if you’ve been ina slump. Setbacks and slowdowns occur all the time. But so can improvement.

If a process can’t be measured, it can’t be managed. This is the principle of measurement versus management. Applied to running, we would say that a runner’s training can’t be managed if it isn’t measured. And the reason to manage running is so that improvement can occur. This doesn’t mean that someone can’t run well without measuring time or distance. I know excellent runners who track little or no information about their running. But they, as well as anyone, can run better if they manage their training through measurement.

This, then, is the argument in favor of measurement. The approach generally begins with determining your current level of fitness and then seeking to improve it. This is done through careful measurement and tracking time, distance, and often heart rate as well. Let’s take a closer look at improvement of fitness level.

IMPROVEMENT

Do you want to improve? You do? OK then, what are you willing to do to achieve it? It’s safe to assume that most of us want to improve. Now comes

the hard part. There are two major ways to improve your fitness level as it relates to running: run more or run faster. Doing both is even better but also increases the risk of injury or simple burnout. Some of us, however, may not be willing or able to increase either volume or intensity. This is fine; there are other alternatives: Losing weight may be effective, up to a certain point. Cross-training, while generally helpful for overall fitness, won’t bring your running times down nearly as much as more-specific, running-related training. Moving to a higher altitude or purchasing an altitude tent may help. Generally, though, if we want to improve but aren’t willing or able to do what’s necessary, then perhaps we really don’t want to improve so badly. You may already be as fast as you want to be, and if you’re slow and don’t care, there’s certainly no shame in that either.

Unquestionably, we need to be smart about running more or faster. Following a plan to incorporate training basics, including proper rest, is essential. With this in mind, if you are willing and able to run more and/or to train faster, please read on.

THE HISTORY OF RACING, PART |: EACH OF US RUNNING OUR OWN RACE

Racing is where improvement is demonstrated. Whether it’s a tune-up for a marathon or the real thing, a race lets us prove our level of running fitness. Racing is among the most basic of sports. In its most fundamental form,

it’s strictly about who gets from point Ato point B first. This means that there can be only one winner per race; all the rest are losers.

But this doesn’t seem fair. Road races are usually structured so that one event fits all competitors. If women and men compete in the same event, we ought to score the sexes separately so that women compete only against women and men against men. If older runners are also running in the same event with younger ones, we should score runners by age groups so that each participant now contends within a sex and age group. To be still more inclusive, race directors have also added divisions for wheelchairs and walkers and for those with other disabilities and higher body weight.

The concept of having many winners for a given race is relatively new. With some notable exceptions, such as the Boston and Olympic marathons, road racing itself is still fairly new, and ideas such as age-group and sex-division awards are even newer. As recently as the 1960s, most runners had never heard of winning an age group or even of being the first woman in a road race. The concepts have made road racing more inclusive, interesting, and fun. The Olympics still maintains the onewinner-per-race concept, but thousands of races around the world now have several scoring categories each.

Even with this expansion of opportunity, most runners will never win an award. So why bother? Why even enter a race if you know that you have almost no chance at even so much as an

age-group award? Answers may range from the social aspects of running races, to the ability to compete at the same venue with the best in the world, to the simple personal challenge of running well. The last is the most compelling for most runners.

Running well may mean completing a new distance, completing a race over a challenging course, or running a given distance or course in a certain time. Although conditions, fitness, and other factors play a major role, completing a race within a time goal is important to many of us. Along with age group, sex, and other divisions, time goals, including personal-best times, are also relatively recent. Running watches and chip timing have made race results more accurate and available. And like the additional scoring, time goals have been a great boon to the sport of road racing.

Runners still compete to be first across the finish line. Some compete to be the first woman. Many more compete to be the first within their age groups. And now, regardless of place, all runners can run their own

races by setting time goals and trying to achieve them. Now we can all be winners. Runners who set a time goal for a race know that they may not achieve it. This potentially makes a challenge of every race. Although there are many other notable racingrelated challenges, such as completing the distance, covering tough terrain or just showing up, meeting a time goal is one of the most common, and one of the most consternating.

Timing makes everyone a potential winner, because every runner in a race gets an individual time. Runners can now compare their performances against others, so improvement—or failure to improve—becomes much easier to measure and compare. So now we have measurements of distance, placement, and time. Chip timing has made things even easier since each runner now gets a net time that makes it even easier to compare efforts.

Someone who becomes aware that you ran a marathon may ask, “How did you do?” Although we may possibly be coy with the answer, we know that most of the time what is being asked is, “What

was your time?” No matter how much we may not like it, time matters.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND GPS DATA

At one time, the only measures of running were distance traveled and finishing place. Now there are many. Time and distance, of course, are two. Heart rate, elevation changes, and even stride rate and number of steps are others. Technology has made it all possible. We now have sophisticated pedometers, GPS devices, and heart rate monitors, not to mention other devices that provide combinations of these. For any given run, we can have a plethora of data. In fact, many of us would feel naked running without some of these gizmos. In addition to the information-apparatus explosion, we now also have an array of personal-entertainment devices to complicate our lives even more. Do we need all this stuff?

The short answer is that we can do fine without it. On the other hand, if toys such as these make us happy, why not? Just beware of too much information, however. Our brains, which do so well with a little feedback, tend to not do so well with too much of it. Some purists disdain this high-tech gadgetry, preferring to run with as little help from the modern world as possible. Placing one foot in front of the other and alternating is all that you need to do to become a runner. Those who do this faster or longer may be called good runners. Why complicate things further?

The dichotomy extends to coaching and running advice. Some coaches

require their charges to use a heart rate monitor or to cover certain distances in certain times. Other coaches and gurus recommend running by time only. Some of this latter advice is aimed at recruiting and retaining beginning runners, and why not? It’s when it’s intended for the rest of us that I take issue with it.

If you have a watch but don’t know the distance, running is pretty simple. Just keep track of how long youruneach day. Many runners, including some fast ones, track only the time on their feet. I don’t always know the distance for all of my runs, so sometimes I run by time. I then estimate the distance the best I can so that I can still track both. To improve fitness, the time-only folks can either increase the amount of time that they run or try to run at a perceived higher level of intensity. The problem I have with using this method exclusively is the word “perceived.” I often find that my perception does not match the reality when I am able to check. I would argue that even the fast runners who measure time exclusive of distance would improve if they measured both for at least some of their runs.

WHAT DO THE ELITES DO?

An aspiring national-class American marathoner was presented with a study that showed no physiological benefit to running more than 70 miles per week. When asked whether he would therefore ratchet down his current 140 miles-per-week training, he responded, “When I hear that the people I’m trying to beat run only 70 miles a week, I’ll consider it.”

Whom do you want to emulate—someone running just to finish or someone who is working to try to be the best? Do the elites carefully measure their running? Do they measure both time and distance? You bet they do.

Is it worth your time and trouble to follow in their footsteps? Is what is right for them right for you, too? The answer may be yes or no, but if you want to run better, it’s more likely to be yes.

RUNNING VERSUS TRAINING: THE ENJOYMENT OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER

Consider this scenario. You have trained hard for a long time, and now the season is over. You either have accomplished your goal or you haven’t. It doesn’t matter; you’re done. Now you’ve rested and can begin running just for fun. There are no goals to accomplish, no stress or pressure, and more to the point, there is nothing to

measure. Just go out and run for the pure fun of it. Is this joy? Of course it is.

The folks providing us with the antimeasurement advice often either strongly imply, or state outright, that running is more enjoyable if it isn’t measured. The reasoning is along these lines: if you become overly concerned with performance, running becomes too stressful and therefore less enjoyable. Certainly running is and should continue to be about enjoyment.

To keep this in perspective, however, we need to consider the distinction between running (for fun) and training. Running is what you do because you love to do it. Training is what you do because you want to get better at it. This is not to say that you can’t mix the two. Running can be done at any time, whereas training will be only for certain times of the year. Even when you’re in the midst of a training cycle, you can still run—most likely on a planned

easy day. You can even mix training and running during the same run: run hard for a while, and slow down and enjoy a nice long cool-down.

Here’s a different scenario. You are somewhere in a training cycle. You’ve been running hard at times, and you’ve been measuring time, distance, and possibly heart rate and other factors related to this effort. So now you go out for a hard training run (say a tempo run or an interval session), and there is certainly some amount of stress: Will you be able to run a certain number of miles in a certain time? How much will this hurt? With this pressure, can this run possibly be any fun? Is there joy in putting forth the effort? Of course there is.

The implication from the nonmeasurers is that running is enjoyable, but training is not. Icouldn’t disagree more. Running hard or fast or long in order to meet a goal can sometimes bring unique gratification that running for fun can’t approach.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO

Allrunners should at least consider the benefits of measurement. Think about these recommendations:

Keep a Training Log

This applies to all runners. If you measure nothing at all, at least write how you feel about each day’s run.

Track Time and Distance for Your Runs and Put Them in Your Log

Or not. You may not want to measure both all the time. Some of us shouldn’t

measure both at all. But those who are training and who want to improve ought to do this for several runs each week. Other options include tracking time and heart rate or tracking time only. These are fine, and you can surely see improvement by tracking heart rate. But at some point, performance still comes down to time and distance.

Track Other Measurements and Nonmeasurements

Consider keeping information about the weather conditions, hills, weight, course, speed work, and (as noted above) how you felt.

Use Measurement to Improve

All the metrics in the world won’t help if they’re not used. Use the information for any particular run: how fast should I run this course today, and how fast did Irun it last week? Use it to develop a specific training plan. (Last year I ran 50 miles per week at mostly an 8:30 pace for 10 weeks. This year I should increase the overall mileage by 10 percent.) Use it to force yourself to run easy on your easy days—I’m not going to run more than five miles, or I’m not going to run faster than nine minutes per mile—and hard on your hard days.

That Said, Don’t Take It All Too Seriously

Yes, watch that mileage, but don’t let the numbers rule your life. Remember that you’re doing this, even your hard training, for your enjoyment.

ON the ROAD WITH DON KARDONG

It Was So Easy Then

The other day I bumped into arunning acquaintance of mine, and he told me he had recently completed his first marathon. It was a 4:12 effort. That may be a modest time to some, but he was proud of the

accomplishment, and justifiably so. Did I mention that he’s 70 years old?

It surprised me that he had waited so long to finally add a marathon to his running resume, which has included solid age-group performances at a variety of distances over many years. I guess I’ve always assumed that the lure of the marathon strikes early and that completing one becomes a goal before most runners know what hit. In fact, these days a marathon is many runners’ first race of any distance. That seems odd to most of us old-timers who worked our way through high school and college programs, racing the mile, two-mile, and other midrange distances before we were tempted, or allowed, to consider 26.2.

All this reminds me that my own experience with marathoning has been drastically different from most runners, especially most runners in the 21st century. And it also reminds me of how relatively easy, and certainly careless, my first marathon was.

The year was 1972. I had graduated from Stanford the previous spring

and had decided to stay in the Bay Area for a year, focus on my training, and see if I could qualify for the U.S. Olympic team in the 5,000 or 10,000 meters. I moved into a house with three Stanford students, one of whom was Duncan Macdonald, who had been my teammate at Stanford and would be my Olympic teammate in 1976. But that was still four years in the future. In 1972, Duncan was competing for Stanford, and I was steadily ratcheting up my training.

Both of us had Olympic aspirations, but not in the marathon. Duncan was a miler, and I had had success racing two and three miles. The Olympic 5,000 was on my radar screen, and I was also keeping the 10,000 in mind.

Olympic Trials five months in the future, 1 was bumping up my mileage to previously unthinkable totals as a way to build underlying strength. In the first week of that month, I reached an all-time high of 132 miles, including one workout where I ran 10 times a half mile on the golf course, with a quarter-mile jog between them. I didn’t record my times for those intervals, but I guarantee you they were fast. I was living that kind of running life.

Iwas also dabbling at indoor racing. The Olympic Trials were my season goal, but with five months to go before I would be tested in the 5,000 or 10,000,

I felt that indoor racing in February and March would maintain my leg speed, not to mention my interest. With that in mind, a week after completing that very hard week of 132 miles, I signed on for the two-mile at the Athens Invitational Indoor Meet in Oakland. I don’t remember much about that race except that I finished a half second behind the estimable Emiel Puttemans of Belgium, and I set a personal best of 8:34.6.

The next morning I ran my first marathon. So much for tapering.

It was, frankly, a lark. The marathon was organized by the West Valley Track Club, the group that most postcollegiate distance runners in the Bay Area belonged to. In those days, marathons were small, intimate affairs, and our club president, “Bonus Jack” Leydig, had urged me and every other club member to participate. He wanted a good turnout, regardless of how serious we considered it. It was hard to say no to Jack, and I figured I needed a long Sunday run anyway, so I ignored my tired legs from the previous evening’s race on the boards. I toed the line, having no idea what I was in for. So did Duncan and Brook Thomas, another former Stanford teammate. None of us had run a marathon before.

Leydig had set up the West Valley Marathon to cover a five-mile loop five times, with a final 1.2-mile section added on at the end to make the full marathon distance. I remember feeling really comfortable during the first couple of loops, with my breathing easy and no particular leg soreness to discourage me. The veteran marathoners in the lead pack, knowing I was a novice, were kind enough to offer a word or two of advice.

“Stay off the crown of the road,” one of them advised as we ran along. “Running ona slant will catch up with you over the marathon distance.” Grateful for the tip, I moved to a more level section of roadway.

Somewhere, maybe in the third loop, the lead pack I was in started catching and passing the tail end of the marathon crowd. Some time after that I found myself in the lead, still running comfortably. Completing the fourth lap, though, and about to start the fifth, I experienced, if not a wall, at least an insistent tug. The finish line was close by, but I was going to have to complete one last five-mile loop before I could cross it. That, as I remember, was a genuine challenge, mentally and physically. And when I finally completed that fifth loop and headed down the last 1.2 miles, I was amazed at how far, and acutely painful, a little over a mile could be. I was happy, not to mention greatly relieved, to reach the finish. Duncan finished a minute or two later, and Brook a bit after that. We three virgin marathoners had swept the first three places.

And my time, the morning after setting a personal best at two miles, was 2:18:05.6. I didn’t know much about the marathon, but I knew that was pretty good.

Recording an easy five-mile run the next morning, I wrote in my running log that my legs were “very, very sore and tired.” No kidding. By Wednesday,

though, they were already feeling better. And by the next Saturday evening, six days after winning the marathon, I was racing two miles again, this time at the San Diego Indoor. I lost that contest by a couple of seconds to Puttemans again but beat Frank Shorter, Gerry Lindgren, and a few other luminaries, in another personal record of 8:32.8.

So much for giving yourself plenty of recovery time after a marathon.

I related this youthful athletic escapade to my training partner the other morning, to which he exclaimed, “No one would do that these days!” He and Toften compare notes about what seems to be the reluctance of so many young runners today to really work hard, take risks, and lay it on the line against long odds. Caution, not ambition, seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Of course, this is how old fogies have always dismissed the young, so this kind of talk by a couple of aging plodders wasn’t surprising.

For me, though, that wasn’t really the point. I don’t think anyone, then or now, should run a marathon the morning after a hard track race. Or another hard track race a week later, when the legs are still smarting from 26.2 miles of pavement pounding. That way lies madness, or at least an increased chance of injury or burnout.

The point of my reverie, or at least the reason I feel compelled to relate the story, is much simpler and less critical than that. It’s just that it amazes me to have been able to do that—the miracle of youth, ignorant of what’s not possible. It was all so easy then.

In my running career, I’ve done nearly 50 marathons, and performancewise they’ve been all over the map. My fifth was the 1976 Olympic marathon, where I ran my lifetime best of 2:11:16, good enough for fourth place. Fifteen years later, I ran with Old Johnny Kelley during his 50th run of the Boston course, and that took almost six hours. I finished a fair number of marathons in between, and I broke three hours as recently as 1998. In 2001, I completed the New York City Marathon in 3:36 and change, one week after running 3:38 at Marine Corps. Those two marathons, the last two of my career to date, represented a kind of personal statement in support of cities that had just gone through the hell of 9/11.

When I completed New York in

the last marathon I would run. In fact, I remember thinking that running two marathons a week apart hadn’t been all that difficult. Even then, some difficult things seemed relatively easy.

But that was then.

had been a life virtually absent of surgery. I finally bowed to the unrelenting whine of knee pain and sent the doctor gardening with his arthroscopic tools. He repaired a faulty meniscus, and as I was recovering from that surgery, the other knee began to broadcast similar pain. The doc went digging again, this time on the other knee. Two surgeries within a three-month period.

And I’ve been struggling to recover from that double meniscus surgery ever since. The surgery, or maybe the long

layoff afterward, sent me back to square one or two on the running game board. Afterward, short jogs were a long time coming. A five-mile run was a major victory. Marathoning was banished from my thoughts. The frustrating limit of 10 miles—the point at which my right knee would begin acting up again—seemed insurmountable. When my knee wasn’t rebelling, one of my hamstrings would.

I managed to recover enough by

day Run, the 12-kilometer road race I founded and that I now direct, in my hometown of Spokane, Washington. Since the inaugural run in 1977, I’ve never missed running it. It was touch and go in 2005, but with a modest pace

and a little luck, I scuttled through the 12 kilometers in the princely time of 1:03:34, an 8:31 per mile pace. Afterward, I saw age-group star John Keston, who asked how my race had gone. When I told him, he grinned mischievously and said, “Don, an 80-year-old man beat you.” Who was, of course, John Keston. He had run 56:17.

My training inched forward week by week through the rest of 2005 and into the winter and spring of 2006, but with repeated setbacks. My mileage would build steadily and my pace would improve, but then something would give out, and I’d be back to easy jogging or worse. I clung to a goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon before my daughter—who was about

to finish her senior year at Boston College—departed the city, but that goal was slipping away in the face of the inevitable. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

Thad one major breakthrough in the fall of 2006, when my knee stopped hurting and my body seemed ready to embrace training of more substance. My long run started gaining ground; I got up to 16 miles. Once again, I started thinking of the marathon. I needed a 3:45 to qualify for Boston, and now that things were falling into place, how hard could that be?

But that was then.

As I’d push my long run toward what I felt it needed to be to prepare for amarathon, something would give out. And when the body wasn’t frustrating my plans, the weather would. Snow, ice, bitter cold, and a failing body all seemed allied against me. In October, my wife, Bridgid, had walked and jogged through her first marathon, in Portland, Oregon. At the end of the year, Thad to fess up to the fact that for the first year in our married life, she had finished a marathon and I hadn’t.

And that’s about where I am now, stalled just short of the training needed to complete a marathon. So, is it any wonder why I can’t help enjoying an occasional reverie about how easy all

this once was? There was a time when 132 miles ina week was strength building and a 2:18 marathon on the morning after a hard indoor race was simply a training run.

Of course, every once in a while I have to slap myself out of the reverie and revisit those years without the rosecolored glasses. Even back in 1972, things weren’t as easy as they seemed. About two months after that first marathon, I came down with mononucleosis. Not surprising, you might say, given the way I was treating my body. In any case, at the time it seemed to be the end of my Olympic dream. There wasn’t time enough to recover and rebuild for the 1972 Olympic Trials. I would have to look further down the road, regroup my forces, try again later.

And that, over three decades later, sounds eerily familiar. This is, after all, a sport of progress and setbacks. When I finally recovered and regrouped after mononucleosis in 1972, I jumped on a training wagon that eventually carried me all the way to the 1976 Olympic Games.

It wasn’t always easy then, but things did end nicely. And that gives me hope that somewhere here in the 21st century, there might be another marathon for me in the distance, somewhere down the road.

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