Bernd Heinrich’s book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us About Running and Life has received a great deal of attention, as it should. Heinrich, a biologist and champion ultrarunner, examines how and why we are the great running animals into which we have evolved.

Then there’s our friend Dick Beardsley’s truly inspiring Staying the Course: A Runner’s Toughest Race. The book reads as excitingly as Dick speaks when he addresses running audiences.

We’ve also enjoyed Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas’s Advanced Marathoning.

The pile of excellent running books from recent years is several feet thick and growing. The variety is stunning. It’s nothing like the predictable titles that flowed freely in the early 1980s. The new breed of running author has taken the sport and lifestyle and spiced the whole enterprise with a variety not seen before.

At this time of year we like to add to the torrent with our annual Summer Reading Gold Mine issue, which is heavy on long long-distance stuff that’s easier to read about than to do but serves as an inducement to take your long-distance running one ortwo steps farther.

We have once again tapped the talents of that grizzled marine Paul Reese, who has written three books about his running road-trip adventures and who in this issue reviews books

10 MH MARATHON & BEYOND

about transcontinental runs. He also investigates what may have been a bogus transcon walk/run and then details the slowest-ever transcon “run.

We had such a positive response last year to Chuck Kastner’s tale of Ed “The Sheik” Gardner and his adventures at the 1928 C.C. Pyle Bunion Derby that we invited Chuck back to fill us in on what happened in the second and last Bunion Derby in 1929.

Clay Shaw and Karen Mitchell take us to North Africa for the unique Sahara Marathon. Our buddy Joe Prusaitis from Austin takes us through the Rocky Raccoon, and young Ian Torrence reports from Hong Kong on the Trailwalker 100K championships.

Roger Robinson’s fourth installment of “Running in Literature” brings us up to the modern era and sets the stage for next issue’s pick of the best dozen running novels of all time.

Oh, yes. We should also point out that this is the largest issue of M&B ever published. It’s a PR for which we can thank our dedicated readers and advertisers.

It just goes on and on. We are being spoiled by a cornucopia of good things to read about running.

It dawns on me that I should stop babbling about all the fun-to-read things in this issue and let you get on with it.

There comes atime when it is wise to just hush and let an issue speak for itself. That time is now.

—Rich Benyo

JulyfAugust 2002

On THE Road

WITH Ellen McCurtin

A RUNNER’S WORST FRIEND

I have read a lot about the dog-mauling case in San Francisco in which 33-year-old Diane Whipple was killed in the hallway outside her apartment by one of her neighbors’ dogs.

The first day that I read about it, I was stunned and compulsively read all that I could find, fervently hoping that there would be a conviction and that this case would not be swept under the rug. I was appalled by the savagery of this young woman’s senseless, excruciating death. I think itresonated with me because I felt such a keen sense of her vulnerability (she was about my age, height, and weight and also was an athlete) and her helplessness in the face of the attack. Bane, the dog that attacked, completely overpowered her. She never stood achance. Although I can’t know this for sure, my strong feeling is that the dog’s owners knew their animal was a potential danger and did not take responsibility for it. (On March 21, 2002, a jury convicted the husband and wife, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, who owned the dogs, of manslaughter and of second-degree murder as well as manslaughter, respectively.)

Shockingly, two days after the attack that killed Diane Whipple, national class ultrarunner Bonnie Busch

was attacked by two Rottweilers while she was out fora6:00 A.M. run in Davenport, Towa. € Fortunately,a © passerby came to her rescue, drove the dogs away from Busch with a shovel, and took her to the hospital. The dogs weighed 140 pounds and 110 pounds, respectively, and they dragged Busch for half a block before she was rescued.

The wounds required surgery, and after a night in the hospital, Busch spent two weeks on home IVs, another two on oral antibiotics, and months learning to do things like write or use her keys to open the door. The dogs severed her forearm muscle and caused serious nerve damage that limits her hand movement. After the attack, Busch received a call from the owner who was concerned about her health, but maintained the dogs were friendly. (Others later testified to this in court as well.) As the saying goes, ifpeople tell you their dogs don’t bite, don’t necessarily believe them.

If anything positive could come of these horrible situations, I hope that somehow another person would be spared. I hope that it would heighten awareness among dog owners that the responsibility for the

ON THE ROAD WITH ELLEN MCCURTIN @ 11

animal lay with them. While the cases involving Whipple and Busch were nightmares and most run-ins with even very aggressive dogs do not remotely rise to that level of severity, most runners have been terrorized or chased by an unleashed dog at one time or another. Generally, the dog is harmless and may just be mischievous or playful.

I don’t like this because I don’t want to get tripped up by a dog. Lalso don’t want a dog running loose in the road, vulnerable to passing cars. Sure, accidents do happen, but I believe most could be prevented.

Along these lines, a great invention from arunner’s perspective is the electronic pet containment system that allows a dog toroam its yard but stops it from leaving the property. The dog wears a battery-powered collar, anda cable buried along the perimeter of the property emits a slight shock or a high-frequency pitch that acts as adeterrent to crossing the boundary. These systems are so common around my area that when I see a dog standing in his yard, barking and working himself into a lather over a passing runner, I usually don’t think too much about it.

It is a rare case around here when the dog is not contained somehow. (There are problems with these gizmos, however. They aren’t failsafe, and dogs can cross the barrier and then be afraid to go back. Also, if the battery in the collar dies, the dog will not get the usual warning and will be likely to leave its normal confines.)

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Unfortunately, one of those rare cases happens to be about one and one-half miles from my house.

One nice summer morning I headed out on a nine-mile loop. As I turned a corner and started down the hill toward the golf course, I saw a Rottweiler snarling andrunning down his driveway toward me. I was startled but not worried yet. He didn’t stop, though, and I slowed down because I suddenly began to wonder whether he was controlled by an electronic fence.

He was not. Snarling, he bounded across the road and took my arm into his mouth. I froze, terrified—so terrified that I could manage only a pathetic whimper as I imagined my arm being ripped open. His owner came running down the driveway toward us, imploring me, “Don’t scream! Whatever you do, don’t scream.”

It was clear that he had little control over his dog, which terrified me. The dog ignored him until he gotright up to him. He got the dog and apologized. I felt like I was going to faint and started to cry. I told him he had to keep his dog under control because I was going to keep coming by the house on my runs. (Since that day I have gone by maybe three times; I feel so stressed out when I approach it that I prefer to just avoid it.)

I did not report the incident to the police, although in hindsight I think I should have. I hoped that what I perceived to be a close call would bring it home for the owner that he needed to do something to prevent this from