How | Became Gary Fanelli

And got myself to the ‘88 Olympic Marathon. Part 2 of 4.

Games after I watched the Mexico City Olympics on TV when I was 17;

1 was truly inspired! I had run track on my CYO [Catholic Youth Organization] team from ages 10 to 13.1 worked hard at running, and little by little I improved. But the focus of a young fellow in the 1960s and 1970s, especially one with a yen to see the world, can get a little fuzzy—especially if it is influenced by sex, drugs, and rock ’n ’roll. 1 had worked hard to stay away from the draft yet found myself being lured into enlisting, with the promise that I would get to run on the Army’s track team. Alas, it was not to be, and I was let go by the Army, so 1 was on the road again.

Back home, I got in my daily run and I hooked up with my old girlfriend Dotty; we hung out listening to good music like Bob Dylan. We got high. I was kind of happy but not 100 percent launched into my running although I was running a few miles every day.

In the autumn of 1970 I got a job as a landscaper, which involved lots of heavy manual labor. I was quite tired at the end of the typical day but would still tun. I eventually quit the heavy labor job and landed another job picking up and delivering photographs; my route was from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, York, and Gettysburg. I was driving a few hundred miles a day five days a week. I enjoyed the work, and it allowed me to run.

But 1970 turned into 1971. I quit my driving job in March of 1971 and hitchhiked to Florida. I was there with a bunch of friends. We stayed in Daytona Beach during spring break. It was a riot of parties. We slept just near the beach and sand fleas ate us alive. We moved on down to Fort Lauderdale and found better digs—an all-night movie theater featuring the three-hour-long movie documentary about Woodstock. The theater was like one big party, too.

Thitchhiked back to Philadelphia in April because I was scheduled to be an usher in a friend’s wedding. I kept the rented tux and hitchhiked back to Florida,

| s a young lad, I developed the dream of someday running in the Olympic

landing in Gainesville. I stayed at a college housing place and got to run every day and was happy. I even got to see Frank Shorter out on the roads as I did my morning run. I began running twice a day. I often used the University of Florida track for my P.M. workouts.

Jimmy Carnes was putting on all-comers’ meets at the university. Jerry Slaven was there fairly often. One day I entered the mile and many of the Florida Track Club members, including Frank Shorter and John Parker, were scheduled to run it. That day Frank ran 4:06, a PR. I turned in a 4:26, also a PR. Word was that Shorter had run 10 miles that morning. He was really fit, and it was a hint at what he would do later in the year in Munich.

I began to feel that little by little 1 was becoming a better runner, but in order to find out, I needed to keep my focus. Things were not easy both economically and socially what with the whole hippie culture and the revolution going on. And it tended to sway me.

As May came on I decided to hitchhike west. I left with a new friend I had made in Florida. His name was Tom, and he was a Vietnam vet who was originally from St. Louis. We ended up having a lot of adventures on the road. There were times we had to run for our lives from hostile drivers and passengers who didn’t take well to hippies in the Deep South. We felt like we were in Easy Rider or something as we traveled through Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I was still lugging around my heavy Army duffel bag filled with clothes and food. I had become a vegetarian back in 1968, so I had my special food needs.

We stopped in St. Louis to visit Tom’s family before heading west to Colorado. When we reached Denver, I got the urge to be on my own. I pushed on to Boulder and began camping in the mountains outside of town. It was fabulous. From there I headed west through Yellowstone, which was truly wonderful.

On to Seattle

The NCAA Track Championships were to be held in Seattle. I wanted to go so T hitched in that direction. The championships were fabulous, and I was further inspired to become a good runner. I got to see Pre for the first time, and Jim Ryun was there sitting in a row in front of me. He was my hero, but I was so intimidated I couldn’t even bring myself to say hello. It was like he was a 100-foot giant. I did take his photo.

l attended a clinic that was offered on campus in conjunction with the meet. The next week the AAU Championships were scheduled down the road in Eugene. I decided to go there as well. It was once again an inspiring few days. I got to see Pre on the campus and actually said hello to him in the cafeteria. I stayed on campus and got to meet several great athletes whom I had seen on TV and read

Courtesy of Gary Fanelli

<4 Here | am, the hippie guy in 1970.

about in Track & Field News and Sports Illustrated. \t was incredible fun, and I was inspired. I studied everyone.

So the next stop on the track circuit would be the following week in Berkeley for the 1971 Kennedy Games, also billed as “USA versus the U.S.S.R. versus the World.”

Thad gotten to know Mark Winzenreid and Pat Matzdorf from the NCAA and AAU. They were at this meet, and it was full of protests. Mainly it was “save the Russian Jews.” Pat Matzdorf set a world record in the high jump at this meet. I got to congratulate him. It was a fun meet and memorable. Pre won the 5,000 meters. I spoke to Pre during his warm-up as he was trying to find his way back into the stadium. He asked me for directions.

After the meet I hitched my way down south through Los Angeles to San Diego. Thad been subscribing to Browning Ross’s publication, Long Distance Log, and I knew there were road races along Mission Bay on a regular basis. I got there, and the next day I ran a four-mile race on Mission Bay. I think Bill Gookin put it on. I received a blue ribbon and was happy I had another race under my belt.

Then it was off to a cave in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, where my brother had stayed a few years earlier, in a hippie commune of sorts. It was really fabulous.

Then off to Yosemite and Lake Tahoe. I knew the 1968 Olympic Trials had been held there [at Lake Tahoe] at a ski resort known as Echo Summit. I paid a visit there; the track was gone, to be reinstalled at South Lake High School in Lake Tahoe. There was an all-comers’ meet there, and I was in the mile, and I think I won that race and remember being very exhausted from the high altitude.

Icould see I was more and more interested in running and had an increasingly better focus, but I was still on the road and was still quite unsettled. I continued to hitch my way around that year, living on the road for months at a time.

I went into Canada, eventually ending up in Maine in late August and went back home to Philadelphia, where I was back home, training and hanging out with my friends.

In September of 1971 I saw Jimi Hendrix at Temple Stadium, and a few months later he was dead.

A change in image

On October 24, I turned 21. I continued running and stopped all drug use. I cut my hair. In the spring of 1972 I got another landscaping job, which I soon quit so I could attend the Penn Relays. I joined a track club called the Philadelphia Pioneers.

At the University of Pennsylvania that spring we had our Mid-Atlantic AAU Track and Field Championships. I ran in the mile and was still delusional from drug use, and I thought I could make a qualifying time for the 1972 Olympic Trials. I don’t know what I was thinking. I went out way too fast, something like 61 seconds for the first 440, and I ran out of gas and dropped out of the race. That incident had a real sobering effect and helped me get more realistic about myself and about life. I was suddenly motivated to run and to train and to be on a good diet and keep clean.

I landed a job at a sporting goods store. I would usually run the five miles to work and then run home from work at the end of my shift. I was getting seriously fit. | watched the US Olympic Trials at home on the TV and was further motivated.

In September of 1972 I joined the US Merchant Marine. I signed up with the Seafarers Union. I had to go to school in Piney Point, Maryland, for six weeks before I shipped out. While I was at school the 1972 Olympic Games were taking

place in Munich. I watched it all on TV. It was such a mixed bag, especially with the massacre of the Jewish athletes by the Palestinian terrorists.

After my schooling ended, I shipped out from Wilmington, North Carolina, aboard a US Navy ship that was contracted with the Merchant Marine. It was a huge oil tanker, almost 300 yards long, named the USNS Maumee (named for the Maumee River in Ohio). It had a reinforced hull, about which I would learn more later.

As a true greenhorn I knew virtually nothing of on-board protocol.

There was a long gangway leading from one “house” on the ship to the other. One was at the front of the ship, where the captain and his mates worked. Being the dedicated runner that I was, I decided I would do my workouts running back and forth on the almost 200 yards of gangway. It seemed safe since it bisected the middle of the ship. Well, there I was out at sea and racing up and down this gangway. Finally a mate came out of the forward house and asked me if I had “seen a ghost or something.” Then he ordered me to stop running on the gangway—it was for walking only.

I felt crestfallen. I quietly moved my running indoors by running in place in my room.

That night I was the laughing stock of the whole ship. Everyone was telling stories of the new guy running up and down the gangway like he had seen a ghost. The mate who had told me to stop approached me in the dining hall where I worked and told me that people don’t run on board a ship.

It was a rude awakening for me in that regard. I had a Frank Shorter poster on my wall in my room. I took a blanket, folded it up, and would run in place on it to soften the impact from the hard steel floor.

That’s how I did my daily run while aboard ship in the Merchant Marine. It went on for months, and I had to roll with it when the seas got stormy and the ship was rocking. Can you imagine me in the deep hold of a ship running in place on a blanket in the middle of the Pacific?

Any time we pulled into a port, I was most happy, always going out to explore and doing my run while checking out whatever country we were in.

One time we pulled into the docks at the Lagos oil depot in warm and sunny Aruba. I was excited. Off the ship I went, no shirt, the sun shining brightly, just my running shorts, my Nikes, and me. The guard at the gate didn’t like this and ordered me to put on a shirt and said, “We are civilized around here.” I was a bit stymied, but if I wanted to run I had to oblige, so back to the ship I went, put on a T-shirt, and out the gate I went. Just on the other side of the gate I stopped and took off my shirt, much to the chagrin of the guard.

The run was awesome and memorable. Many people could never understand why this tall, skinny white boy whom they had never seen before was running in a tropical country. Perhaps they too thought he had seen a ghost.

Around the whole world

We traveled all over the world picking up and delivering oil: London, Virgin Islands, Aruba, Venezuela, Panama, New Zealand. We even delivered oil to the explorers in Antarctica, to a place named McMurdo Sound. I got to do runs in the area of the South Pole. That was spectacular: barren and beautiful; it was like running on some desolate planet, and it was very, very cold, like the dark side of Mercury.

Our ship finally pulled into Carteret, New Jersey. I got off and went home with a big pocketful of money. I saved my money and wasn’t a gambler or partier. It was April of 1973 and life was good. I was a dedicated runner then, but a thought began coalescing in my mind: where to next?

I saw an ad in Track & Field News about the Santa Monica Track Club welcoming runners for training and coaching. In June I decided to hit the road and go west. My first stop would be in Hayward, California, where I would get fitted for rigid orthotics from the running guru of sorts at the time, Dr. Steven Subotnick. Then I hitched to Bakersfield to watch the National AAU Track & Field Championships. Then it was off to Santa Monica for the summer.

Joe Douglas was our coach. He was intense and we did a lot of speed work, which was a system that didn’t work so well for me. Coming into Santa Monica with a 4:26 mile PR, I couldn’t break 4:40. I always felt tired and played out. At

the all-comers’ meets we would go to at Pierce College or Whittier I would always run a 4:42 or 4:43 mile. It was frustrating. I was trying to improve and felt I was going backward. I really enjoyed our distance-run days at Santa Monica, and my system seemed to really adapt well, and I preferred this type of run, and my body responded much better to it than to so much speed work.

Joe Douglas learned his system from Mihaly Igloi of Hungary, who emigrated to the United States during the Cold War.

On one occasion we went to Santa Barbara to UCSB (in Goleta, California) for the AAU One-Hour Championships, held on the track. I ran more than 10 miles that day, and it was a breakthrough of sorts for me. Later that day I was the volunteer lap counter for Jacqueline Hansen, one of the country’s—and the world’s—top marathoners at the time. She probably ran way more than me that day, but from my experience that day I could see I wasn’t much as a miler, but maybe I could do well at the longer distances.

Icame back home to Ardsley, Pennsylvania, that fall. | was running daily and inspired by Frank Shorter’s marathon win in Munich, and I felt I had the support of the running publications at the time, all of which suggested people run more. Publications like Long Distance Log, Runner’s World, Track & Field News all encouraged it. Browning Ross (publisher of Long Distance Log) and others were putting on low-key races (with 50-cent entry fees) in Philadelphia, and there were also open track meets around us as well.

Thad a good diet, was not getting high anymore, and was getting more focused and disciplined. I was a vegetarian and had heard of this vegetarian society in nearby Malaga, New Jersey.

Off to Malaga

I decided to move there in December of 1973 and give it a try as a co-op worker.

It was fun, quite pleasant in Malaga, in South Jersey near Vineland. I enjoyed the quiet, carefree country roads.

I began to formulate a plan to run a marathon. It was 1974 and it was the Penn Relays Marathon that I wanted to run.

Thad tried the Philadelphia Marathon in the fall of 1973 and dropped out after 17 miles as I hit the proverbial Wall. My longest run for this marathon had been only eight miles. I didn’t know what I was thinking; I was obviously very green at that point, and I’m not talking vegetarian green here.

At the 1974 Penn Relays Marathon I ended up in 10th place with a 2:43, not too bad but also not all that respectable. I felt I could run faster.

T hitched back out to California and rejoined the Santa Monica Track Club. I got a job and a room and declared myself a distance runner to Joe Douglas so he would let me run my distance instead of doing so much speed work on the track.

Many of the runners at the Santa Monica Track Club were once again entering the AAU One-Hour Run. I caught a ride up there with club member Orville Atkins. When they arrived in an old Volkswagen, Ron Larrieu was with Orville. I was introduced but I had never heard of Ron Larrieu. I had heard of Francie Larrieu. They told me that Ron had run in the Olympic Games. I was honored to be riding up to UCSB with him.

lended up running 11 miles, 478 yards. I was elated and later learned that the performance ranked me 37th in the whole USA. I really felt I was becoming a good distance runner and still felt this tug to one day be in the Olympic Games.

This was the big breakthrough in my running career. It was memorable and a real pivotal point. I was actually starting to get somewhere toward realizing my dream.

My running was going well, and I started to gain some confidence in my talent.

I went to the Charleston 15-Miler, a rather big race on the scene at that time. Iran very respectably there and felt I could count myself as one of the top US distance runners—in the top 50, anyway. This was the direction I was hoping for.

I worked very hard at my running. I was with the Philadelphia Pioneer Track Club then, which held a lot of organized workouts at the University of Pennsylvania. My teammates were mostly Penn graduates and all of them were very

SG ‘So = &

fast—faster than me. But the hard workouts were bringing some extra out of me.

Into 1976, I was seriously working at my running and I was racing well. In April a friend of mine was entered in the Boston Marathon. His name was Russell Becker and he lived nearby. I volunteered to help with the driving up and back. I was just going to watch the race, but upon arrival, I got all caught up in the groovy vibes of the place, and I decided to run the race unofficially—from the back, no number.

As we waited in the Hopkinton gym, a man approached me and asked if I was a doctor. I replied, “Why yes, I am.” I recognized the man: he was the famed author Erich Segal, who wrote Love Story, and who ran Boston every year. He asked if I could give him his physical exam (which was a requirement for running in the race back in those days), so I took his pulse and regarded him with a very serious look plastered on my face. I asked him: “Are you nervous or something? Your pulse is way up there.” He got panicky (all of this as my friend Russell looked on in great disbelief). Segal emphatically assured me that he was OK, and could he please run in the race? I relented and sign his little form as “Dr. Fanelli.” Patient Segal walked away very pleased.

Iran in my first Boston Marathon, unofficially, turning in a 2:26. (I did not cross the finish line so as not to mess up the timing system.) I was ecstatic at seeing my time. I calculated that I finished in about 75th place. It was a nice PR for me and buoyed my confidence all the more.

Off to Utah

I had managed to hold a job longer than usual. My job was to deliver drafting paper and supplies to businesses around the Philadelphia area. I held that job for eight months, the longest I had ever held any job. I was proud of myself. The previous record for holding down a job had been three months.

So what did I do? Imade the mistake of reading an issue of Runner’s World that reported on a high-altitude camp near Parowan, Utah, that was called “Runner’s Mecca.” It had a work program there and it sounded awesome, so Lup and quit my job and headed west.

<4 At the Runners’ High-Altitude Training Camp in Parowan, Utah. Left to right: me, Paul Thatcher, Mike Fanelli, John Hessenthaler, and Russell Becker.

But I didn’t go alone. My brother Mike, Russell Becker, John Hessenthaler, Paul Soprano, and I all piled into Russell’s van, and we turned its nose west and headed to Utah. It was late May, and as we pulled into a pancake house in Wichita, Kansas, we spotted a newspaper box with the headline “Steve Prefontaine has died.” We are all totally stunned, crushed, in disbelief. We were all just totally sad.

But on to Runner’s Mecca. We were put up in a Swiss-style ski chalet since this place worked as a ski resort in the winter. To pay for our stay, we were put to work peeling the bark off of fallen birch trees. We were given a crude steel instrument for the peeling process. I calculated in my head how many logs I could peel in an hour, how much I was being paid to do this, and the price of staying in the camp, and it just wasn’t practical. We were the only people there outside of one other person. I decided this was not working, so I stayed there a mere 10 days, enjoying the experience of running at altitudes as high as 10,000 feet.

I knew by nearly memorizing the track and field schedules that the NCAA Track and Field Championships were being held on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah. I felt myself pulled there so I split from the camp and later had no regrets for the decision, as the NCAAs were fabulous. I was able to attend some coaching clinics, and I learned a lot. I met dozens of top athletes, and I feel that I was really in my element.

Lalso went to the AAUs in Eugene. It was just after Pre died. I felt compelled to go there, kind of a pilgrimage. My brother Mike had also hitchhiked there, coming in from Utah.

After the meet was over, I hitched down to Santa Monica Track Club and stayed with friends and trained there for a while. But by July I was again restless and felt I wanted to go back to Philadelphia. I once again hitched my way across the United States. Back home, I resumed my training, averaging around 100 miles a week, one week going as high as 120 miles. I was really feeling good and felt motivated to make an attempt to qualify for the Olympics at the 1976 US Olympic Marathon Trials.

In October of 1975 I ran in the Rice Festival Marathon in Crowley, Louisiana. Icame in eighth with a big PR of 2:23:22. I missed my goal of 2:23 flat by a mere 22 seconds, which meant I was just outside the qualifying standard for the 1976 US Olympic Marathon Trials. I was happy with the nice PR but felt I could do better. I was disappointed I just missed the B standard for the Trials.

Back to Philly

My training with the Philadelphia Pioneer Team was going well. I was training with Penn grads Karl Thormton (3:57 miler), Denis Fikes (3:55 miler), Julio Piazza, and George Lokken, who was also near four minutes for the mile. We did a lot of hard, fast work on the roads and on the track at Penn.

<@ Here | am (right) with , Julio Piazza at the Belmont Plateau, home of the AAU X-C Championship in 1976.

once again to Malaga, New Jersey, with the American Vegan Society, where I was once again a co-op worker. I still went into Philly to race and to train.

Thad already started the Philadelphia Vegetarian Society at the behest of the American Vegan Society. At one of the meetings of the Philadelphia Vegan Society, I met a woman named Terry McFadden from Broomall, Pennsylvania. She was there at Malaga when I arrived; she was also a co-op worker.

Three weeks later Terry and I were married, hippie-style, with bare feet, jeans, and white T-shirts in a ceremony in the backyard of the American Vegan Society. Three weeks after our marriage, Terry conceived our first daughter, Celeste.

I bought tickets for the 1976 Olympic Games to be held in Montreal. In August of 1976 I went to my first Olympic Games. It was amazing and I was very inspired. For my training while I was there, I was allowed to use the park area where all of the Olympic distance runners were training. I got to see Lasse Viren, John Walker, Rod Dixon, Bill Rodgers, and many other great distance runners. I got to train alongside them. It was great fun.

The Games were fabulous. Many of my Philadelphia Pioneer Team teammates made the US Olympic team—-sprinters like Herman Frazier, Steve Riddick, Hasely Crawford; all three won gold medals in various events.

When I returned to New Jersey after the Games, the vegan society owner there wanted Terry and me to leave, mainly because she was pregnant and he didn’t want another mouth to feed. We moved back to the Philadelphia area. I scrambled for a job. I started working in a health food store in downtown Philly. I liked the work, as I was already a vegetarian and very diet conscious and took many supplements. I was enthusiastic and helpful with the customers.

While working there, I came across a flier for a supplement called bee pollen. It came from England, and I saw a photo of my teammate Steve Riddick endorsing it.

I quit my job and start distributing bee pollen and other products to other health-food stores. I also started my own bee-pollen mail-order business.

I was running well but really struggling financially.

The spring of 1977 arrived and I entered the Boston Marathon. I placed 28th in 2:24:55. My now 3-week-old daughter Celeste was with us, along with my father and my brother. I felt I was on my way to realizing my dream. I was still running a lot of track races and I had my mile PR down to 4:11.

I was also getting road PRs: 24:19 for five miles, 50:32 for 10 miles.

In November I ran a two-mile indoor at Lehigh University, turning in a big PR of 9:00.4.

But two days later I hit a rock underneath some leaves while out training, and I severely sprained my ankle. OMG, was I bummed out!

I was feeling quite stressed at this time: low pay, now I was a parent, injured but still trying to run really well. This was definitely not the most fun time in my life. But I got through it all and I learned a lot.

I won the race in 25:10. It was a start. A few months later, on the same course and on a cooler day, I set a five-mile record on the standard racecourse on Philly’s Kelly Drive. I ran 23:56 in a hotly contested duel with Bob Varsha of Atlanta.

I also managed to knock down a two-mile indoor PR of 8:58 at Lehigh University. Mp

Courtesy of Gary Fanelli

A The 1977 Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot in Washington, D.C. Me (right) with Alex Hershaft.

Part 3 will appear in the next issue.