The Hell’s Gate Canyon where the “Ferryman” rafts race participants across the Smoky River, alias “River Styx” on raceday.

P.S. DidI mention that Ilove Dale Tuck?

PPS. Finish time: 22:56:38 (5th of 8 women, 36th of 73 solo runners, 51 of whom finished the course).

And What | Learned From It

ou can’t judge a racecourse just by distance and elevation gain andloss. What makes the Death Race so tough is the trail surface.

Be prepared for very changeable weather in mountain regions. | returned

as a relay runner for the 2002 Death Race. There was a heavy snowstorm the

day before the race (August 2), and race organizers reported three-foot

snow drifts at the top of Mount Hamel. | learned to be prepared for really unexpected weather.

Running by myself in the dark in a wilderness was much easier than | thought. The anticipating and fretting were worse than the F thing | feared in the first place. ‘

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2 ee _— —

a Just Call

Me Jock

LLL SR SC TT SSS SATS LIE

Part 4: Walter Brown Steers Me Right, and Young John Kelley Runs to the Front.

by Jock Semple with John J. Kelley and Tom Murphy

Chapters 1 through 6 appeared in our last three issues.

CHAPTER 7

“John Kelly, sir,” he said. And I said to myself as I thought of Fred Brown: say hello to the new generation.

I’m standing here in white shoes Jimmy Connors pulled off his feet and gave me one day, white pants, and a white t-shirt. I look like a dentist, except for the sweat. That I owe to you boys. Everything else I owe to Walter Brown.

Walter Brown set me up at the Boston Arena with my first clinic. Without the break Walter gave me—he paid for all my equipment—I never would have made it in sports after my running days had passed. I had no education at the time, past a couple of years in high school, and my carpentry abilities had earned me no more than $20 a week during the Depression. Without Walter, I might have lived after age 45 as I had before: hand to mouth. Walter took his rubdown from me after his hard days upstairs in the office and I remember his telling me once that he hoped to live long enough to see a BAA runner win the Boston Marathon. I didn’t say anything to him then, but I never forgot it.

After the clubhouse was sold to Boston University in 1933, club offices were moved across the street to an entire floor in the Lenox Hotel. Even that proved too expensive and Walter, who had become BAA president, moved the office—note the absence of the plural—to the Boston Arena on St. Botolph Street, where he was general manager and president. By that point Walter had set me up with a physiotherapy clinic in the Arena and that room became BAA Central. After a fire destroyed the Arena, we moved everything over to the Boston Garden, including my clinic which became not only BAA Central but Marathon Central.

The troops had thinned by the late 1940’s; besides Walter and myself, the members could be counted on one hand. They included Will Cloney, the current president and BAA Marathon director, longtime officials R. H. Kingsley Brown and chief timer Ellery Kock, and Walter’s brothers, Tom and George.

Will became marathon director in 1947 as a favor to Walter. I became codirector, but Will has always been the more diplomatic member of the team. Contrast our two reactions to Rosie: while I was screaming, “She’s a cheat ’n afraud ’na thief!” Will calmly called a hundred witnesses. Will is a gentleman, much the way Walter was. For years Will worked as a sportswriter and college professor. He was chairman of the English and Journalism departments at Northeastern. Later he became sports editor of the Boston Post, where he remained until that paper folded in 1956. Keystone Custodian Funds snapped him up, and before long Will became a vice-president. He gets great credit for helping to keep the marathon alive. He and Walter funded the marathon with proceeds from the BAA track meet at the Garden. That meet succumbed to financial problems in 1971, at which point Will worked out an arrangement with Prudential Insurance Company. Today the Boston Marathon finishes in front of the Pru. When asked why he had given so much time to the race, Will once said, “I think somewhere along the line in life you have to try to be helpful.” He didn’t tell that reporter but I know Will took the job to lighten the load on Walter, a man we all loved, and like everyone else on the committee, Will never took a dime.

My BAA team continued to improve. Before long I was attracting the good young college kids. Enamored of Emil Zatopek’s training techniques, the kids were engaged in mild rebellion against the training programs imposed by their college coaches, and I would get them up in my clinic when they wanted training tips. The Czechoslovakian Zatopek, who was that era’s most rugged individualist, had struck a chord with some of my young runners after World War II. Zatopek employed no coach. He invented his own workouts. Reportedly, he even ran with a telephone pole on his back. This appealed to these kids, who, though they did not look like beatniks, nevertheless shared a certain affinity for anti-establishment types of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I had a team, one that was improving all the time, but I did not have a “star” as yet, arunner who could take the lead, both in a race and as a model for the others.

I want to tell you about Johnny Kelley (the Younger) since so much of the joy I’ve had in life comes from urging Johnny along toward success, sometimes against his will.

IT employed a standard approach in my recruitment efforts in the 1950’s. I sought out a man’s wife or girlfriend first. While the men were out on the course during a race, I’d take the lady aside. “The great advantage to having a

man run for the BAA is that my BAA boys come home tired after I’m finished with them,” I said. Usually this elicited a polite nod, but little interest. “After men get out of work . . . you know the diversions that exist for a man,” I repeated each weekend in towns such as Haverhill, Belmont, and Somerville. “Some men don’t come home at all. Soon after they get married they discover the gin mills, and the elbow-bending, and soon their wives have to trek down to some dark men’s bar in their housecoats. Never my BAA boys. They come home every night, very tired.”

If I got the ladies hooked on the elbow-bending, I didn’t have to say anything more. I gave them an application, which they asked for, and by the next race I’d find myself ready to fire the gun, while a dozen women would run up to me with completed forms for their husbands or fiancés. I always wore the biggest smile in those days as I loaded the gun and turned to glance at Fred Brown, who had interrupted an extended, if fruitless, pitch for his North Medford Club. “Good day for arun, isn’t it, Fred?” I’d shout as the North Medford Club firebrand glared at me.

I was down in Fall River, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1948, when I met my “star.” I didn’t run that day. I went down to officiate—and recruit for the BAA, as always.

Vic Dyrgall had been invited, so we brought down the best runners from Boston for the 15-kilometer road race, billed as the last major contest before Old Kel, Teddy Vogel, and Oli Manninen were to leave for the London Olympics. Dyrgall had a rep as the best 10,000-meter man in America and nobody really expected him to get beat. That is, until the race started and two high school kids shot out into the lead with Dyrgall, one on either side of him. The tinier of the two kids wore paper-thin track flats, the toes of which he had wrapped with adhesive tape after removing the spikes.

Neck and neck the two kids ran with Dyrgall until the tape on the one kid’s shoes began to unravel, and soon the shoes themselves disintegrated. Still, the boy ran as the shoes dropped off his feet in pieces, and by two miles he was running barefoot on the pavement under a 100-degree sun. By mile four his feet had worked themselves into bloody pulps.

I rode behind the lead group in my car watching as the two boys stumbled to the side of the road, the tinier one dropping first. He was sitting in a ditch, picking pebbles out of his bloody blisters when I stopped to ask if he wanted a ride.

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” he said. He was the most polite kid I had ever met in all my years in the running game. I was looking around for his girlfriend when I asked him what his name was. “Johnny Kelley, sir,” he said. And I said to myself as I thought of Fred Brown: say hello to the new generation.

“I stood waiting for the 10:09 local for Boston. | was only seventeen, and | missed my father. But | knew | had made a friend.”

Johnny Kelley remembers:

| first met Jock one July evening in 1948 when, as a 17-year-old, | won both place and time prizes in the Haverhill Sons of Italy Ten-Mile Handicap Road Race. This was greeted with incredulity by most old-timers who could not fathom a 17-year-old’s winning the first race he ever completed; and as such, | relied on Jock’s intercession to save me the prize.

“Haverhill! Haver’ll! Station stop is Hav’r’l!” the grizzled conductor twanged, dropping letters as the venerable coal-burning Boston and Maine locomotor decelerated.

The train screeched to a halt. Seconds later, | stood on the depot’s cement platform as steam hissed from the idling engine, and sulfur dioxide belched in tropical blasts from the stack.

| had run two other road races in my life, finishing neither. A year earlier | had run at Littleton, Massachusetts, after traveling interminably on a bus with my father and my friend, George Terry. At that race we met Johnny Kelley (the Elder), and | remember the glow that suffused my father’s face, whose name was John also, as Mr. Kelley turned to me before the starting gun and told me, “You’ve got runner’s legs, kid.”

Runner’s legs notwithstanding, | did not finish my second race, a tenmile run in Fall River, a week before the Sons of Italy race. At Fall River, George and | decided we would have nothing with strategy and we began the race by sprinting to the fore. | ran shoulder to shoulder in scorching heat with Vic Dyrgall until my shoes came unraveled. Then | ran barefoot and bloody. | had sent away for legitimate shoes from a mailorder house, but they had not arrived. So | had taken a pair of my track flats, removed the spikes, and wrapped them around and around the toes with adhesive tape. First came the blisters, then came the unraveling tape, and finally the shoes burst. Soon | was relegated to a ditch before a kindly official picked me up in his car.

On the day of the Sons of Italy, George remained home in New London wearing an apron instead of a racing number. His supermarket boss loved sports, even profitless road racing, but Tuesday was always a big day in meats and greens. And business, as his boss was wont to remind George, was business.

| was lone also because my father, who, with his 57-year-old little boy enthusiasm, had made that crazy, eight-hour-one-way expedition to Littleton with us the previous Labor Day, had died of viral pneumonia in December without even having seen me finish a road race.

Nevertheless, George and my poor dead Pop stepped along Haverhill’s unknown streets with me as the sun started its decline on Tuesday, July 14, 1948.

The outsized Rexall special wristwatch | had bought with the last of my paper route money jiggled at the end of my skinny arm. | held it to my ear. “Tick, Tick .. .” Five after four.

| thought about never having travelled so far from home alone. Had it been no more than four years since a spoiled 13-year-old had run away to Springfield where his Pop had come in the night to rescue him from the terrors of the city jail?

Soon | overtook two other fellas toting gym bags. They were older than |, and wiser by the looks of them. “You guys runners?” | asked.

“Sure are, kid,” said the darker-haired one, a guy with a George Raft face. “What’s your name?”

“Kelley,” | answered.

The other one, light-haired, raised a brow. “You sure picked a good name for this business.”

“Didn’t you ever hear of Johnny Kelley?” asked the first.

“| am Johnny Kelley,” | said.

The “real” Johnny Kelley, the man who had won the Boston Marathon in 1935 and 1945, had left that week on a boat for the 1948 Olympics.

Young Johnny Kelley (left) had a friend and confidant in Jock (right).

Jock Semple JUST CALL ME JOCK ® 133

“Well…” Raft said, “if you’re not playing a game with us on names, I’ll tell you truthfully: I’m George Waterhouse, and he’s George Pike. | run for the North Medford Club. Pike runs for Semple’s outfit.”

“And, believe it or not, we’re friends,” Pike added, clarifying nothing. What was “North Medford Club?” What was “Semple’s outfit?”

“Now,” Raft-turned-Waterhouse concluded, “since you‘re Johnny Kelley and you’re not with the Olympic Team In London, you must be… .”

“\.. another Johnny Kelley?” Pike scooped him, the two of them having a lot of fun.

“Yeh, | guess so,” | ventured.

“Kid, in Massachusetts, you’re either going to have to change your name or run like greased lightning,” Waterhouse laughed.

“Probably too late to change my name,” | said.

The second-floor hall swarmed with “real” runners. | might have shorted out on the sight, had not an electronic miracle transpired. In the far corner, mounted on a little stage, a bright picture box flickered and changed its image continually. It’s magical revelation of a baseball game being played by the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Senators 40 miles away momentarily blinded me to the splendor of 80 vaselined feet and wintergreened calves.

“You won’t run far watchin’ that thing all night,” a voice behind me chided.

| turned to face a man with thinning brown hair and water-blue eyes. It was the same man who had cheered me up after blisters had forced me out of the Fall River Race. All my memory bank had on him was his bandy-legged shuffle and his unicorn-emblazoned jersey.

Yet he seemed to know me. “Find yourself a chair an’ get dressed,” he urged in a Scottish brogue so rich | found myself being entertained by it at the expense of his meaning.

“Where’s yer sidekick?” he asked. “The other fella that put the scare into Dyrgall?”

“Terry?”

“Yeh, | guess so,” he said. “All Connecticut names sound alike. Teirry, Ke-illy . .” He smiled.

“George had to work.”

“Work?” he asked, incredulous. “I didn’t now runners worked.” He leaned close, thumbing over his shoulder in a stagey confidence, “Most o’ the’ one | know are bums.”

The object of my benefactor’s scorn, aman with a balding head, spun around. His words were loud, “Speak for yourself, Semple.”

“I’m talking to this young fella, Fred Brown. Speak when you’re spoken to.”

A runner nearby exclaimed, “Uh, oh, it’s Semple and Brown. They’re at it again.”

Somebody across the hall yelled, “It’s OK, Jock and Fred. We love ya both.”

Semple (was it?) lost his fire as quickly as he had flared. “Listen,” he told me. “I’m goin’ to see Schena, the race director and tell him this is your first race. What the heck? You still haven’t finished one, have you? Ooh, | don’t mean that as criticism. It’s just that, in these handicaps, y‘have to take advantage of every little assistance. Wait right here.”

Soon he was back, handing me my competitor’s number. “| got you five minutes. It should ha’ been eight, but with Kelley, Vogel, an’ Manninen gone to London, everybody’s been shoved down some.” He pinned the number to my shirt. “Waterhouse and Pike’ll be on scratch.”

“What’s ‘NLOC’?” He pointed to my shirt.

“New London Olympic Club,” | said, pride mixed with embarrassment.

The worried blue eyes twinkled. “Well, there’s nothin’ like settin’ your sights high.”

He passed me the shirt, and as | pulled it over my head, he elbowed me. “Don’t you think one Johnny Kelley in the Olympics is enough?”

For answer, | just shrugged. “ Of course you’re a bit nervous,” he said. “But when you finish this race, you’ll feel a lot better. And, believe me, there are goin’ to be a few surprised faces on that finish line tonight.”

“Yeh, mine especially.”

“Oh, cripes sakes! Those two races you dropped out of were just. . . dress rehearsals. Tonight’s your big performance.”

Down on the street, Mike Schena blew his whistle, the hall emptied with many a clump and whoop and holler, and we were off.

The instant finished | knew | had won both the time and place prizes. Somehow when you do something right, you know it. Even if you have never quite accomplished anything of that magnitude before.

So there | walked, chest puffed out, while all around me a carnival spun. It was common in those days to finish races at the center of an amusement park. In this case we finished at the tiny charity carnival on Washington Street. | wondered whether all the kids who jumped about could imagine why we pain-faced guys in numbered underwear staggered about coughing, wheezing, and swaying with our hands on our hips. The kids stared at us, while they continued to lick cotton candy or cadge a coin from their dads for one more ride on The Whip.

Handicap races were notorious for producing the slowest computation of race results imaginable. The Haverhill Sons of Italy would have been no different; that is, had not Jock intervened.

The boom of his voice came after 20 minutes of official hemming and hawing. One of the judges wanted to award the coveted Hamilton watch to Hawk Zamprelli, the veteran Somerville racer who had started on scratch. Another wondered whether George Pike had rightful claim to the watch. A third seemed to be trying to juggle the corrected times to drop my name lower in the ranking, where, he opined, “the kid” belonged.

Until that point, Jock Semple had simply watched the proceedings. But when his voice thundered, it cleared the July air.

“For cripes sake!” he roared. “This man (he clapped a fraternal/ paternal palm on my shoulder) is unquestionably your time prize winner.”

“What? The boy?”

“Use your noggin, man. Your head isn’t just a hatrack. If he didn’t win the time prize, how the hell did he start five minutes ahead of your scratch man and finish seven minutes ahead of him? Answer me that.”

A moment later, | wore the watch.

The prizes were awarded right on the carnival grounds, under a square of a hundred or so 60-watt bulbs, while the merry-go-round went omm-pah-pah and tired, cranky kids gooed up their cotton candy while their mothers and sisters tugged exasperatedly at their sticky hands.

Yet for me this was an Olympic ceremony. Mike Schena stood straighter than Avery Brundage when he presented me with my two prizes, a huge trophy which | had undeniably won (no one could argue that | had not crossed the line first), and the Hamilton watch time prize, which, though more coveted, would have been denied me but for the grace of Jock Semple.

Later that night | paused on the cement platform at the train station, much as | had stood hours earlier. This time, however, | stood on the other side, possessing a trophy and a watch which indicated to me that | had crossed a new line, and in the dark | realized | no longer feared things as | had then.

Not only had | finished a race, | had won it. | had beaten the best of those who had remained after the very best had left for the Olympics.

There would be other days. Semple had told me that.

| stood waiting for the 10:09 local for Boston. | was only seventeen, and | missed my father. But | knew | had made a friend.

CHAPTER 8

Editor to reporter: “Go on up there. A kid named Kelley’s running a marathon. See if you can make it interesting.”

“Marathon” still meant “dancing” to most Americans in 1963. The Boston Marathon had drawn fewer than 300 runners that spring as a group of editors at one of New York’s daily newspapers sought to fill a hole on the Monday morning sports page. This recollection of events is a personal favorite of Jock’s and if the years have diminished the accuracy of the quotes as they were passed along to him, well so be it. Time does not diminish the pleasure that comes with vindication.

“T’ve got 11 inches to fill,” said the sports editor, as time and again he and his reporters passed over a particular press release.

“Here’s one, I keep getting copies of this release every other day. From some guy, calls himself the coach-slash-trainer of the Boston Athletic Association marathon team.”

“Coach-slash-trainer?”

“Yeah, also the father-slash-confessor, according to him. Name is Johnny Semple.”

“Semple? I remember a Semple. A plodder, during the 1930’s. I think he was the New England Champ three years.”

“What’s a plodder?”

“A marathon runner. Bill Kennedy brought this guy around to Portchester, as I recall it. I remember one time Semple clipped a fire hydrant with his car while looking for a short cut to a road race. A wild man. Drove over the damn sidewalk.”

“Semple says his BAA team is running in the National Championships at Yonkers Sunday and one of his kids, something Johnny Kelley, the ‘Younger,’ I guess he calls him, is going for his eighth straight National Championship. I didn’t even know they had national championships in that kind of running.”

“Yeah, let’s get the horse guy on it.” He signaled across the room to a reporter in a rumpled suit. “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow at 8 a.m.?”

“I was going over to Belmont. Check the action,” the reporter said.

“T’ve got action for you in Yonkers. The two-legged kind.”

“Yonkers?”

“Go on up there. A kid named Kelley’s running a marathon. See if you can make it interesting.”

“T’ve got one problem. In terms of making that interesting.”

“What?”

“Where’s the drama?”

Jock picks up the story:

Anyway the paper sent the horse guy to Yonkers to cover the National Championship marathon. Johnny Kelley (the Younger) had won the National Championship seven years in a row, an unprecedented achievement that has yet to be equaled. The paper figured something must be happening in this sport which formerly had attracted only thick-necked lumbering types, or so the general conception went.

The reporter, new to road racing, got lost and did not arrive at the start until two minutes after the gun had been fired. Quickly, he flagged the first official’s car he could find, in this case an Oldsmobile with a handmade official’s sign taped to the front windshield.

Ilet the man in and seated him beside Jerry Harvey, one of my BAArunners who had a sore throat that day. I had relegated Harvey to a job keeping oranges cut in quarters for Johnny.

The driving I left to myself.

At one point, I rolled down my window to respond to a police officer who blocked the car at an intersection. “Get out of my way, pleeeze,” I shouted. I wasn’t mad, but I lagged behind schedule for meeting Johnny with a wet towel at five miles. Whether the cop heard or not, the reporter did. He saw too, for that afternoon chicken feathers flew and pedestrians scurried for shelter as I skidded my Oldsmobile around obstacles trying to get to Johnny at the 10, 18, and 22-mile marks.

Johnny won.

“Kelley Wins Eighth National Championship In A Row,” the New York Times headline read Monday morning. “. .. But OHHH! What a Ride.”

“Jock’s a larger than life character,” said Bill Rodgers, who ran for Jock’s BAA team for two years before his American record-setting breakthrough at Boston in 1975. Still, being the best never insured immunity for anyone on the phone.

“T called Jock’s clinic one day before Boston in 1975,” Rodgers said. “I guess he didn’t recognize my voice. He said something like, ‘Get yer application, gotta qualify, and it’s gonna be harder for ya to get in next year, so I don’t want any more of yer guff .. .’ Slam! And he hung up.”

Rodgers met Jock in 1973. Newly returned to running after college, he was introduced to Jock at a local race. “I didn’t have a team to run for, but Amby Burfoot told me to mark BAA on the entry,” Bill said. “Anyway I got third and I guess somebody went up to Jock, and said, ‘Hey Jock, your guy got third.’ The next I knew this fella in a Scottish accent was talking to me. ‘Who are you?’ Jock asked. He told me that if I ever got an injury I should come see him at his Garden clinic.”

Rodgers had laid off running for two years between 1971 and ’73, and it did happen that he got some kinks after starting again. He decided to give Jock a call.

“I went over to the Garden one day,” Bill said. “I expected to find, you know, aclinic. Someplace that had carpet and enamel sinks. That kind of thing. Someplace to match Jock Semple’s reputation as a famous former runner.

Bill knew the Semple legend. He knew that Jock, DeMar, Johnny Kelley (the Elder), and a host of other greats from the 30’s used to ride in cars out of “The Untouchables” as they hiked up and down the East Coast to races. He knew all this, vaguely.

At first Rodgers couldn’t find the room. “I think I walked around in a maze of dark corridors for about an hour. I expected to be knocked over by Jock’s clinic. Instead, I found him in a tiny, tiny room way in the back of the Garden. He was working in an old tee-shirt.”

It was a normal day for Jock: he teased his clients about being overweight and they kidded him that he was getting rich off them. Rich? Jock told one corpulent customer he was going to charge him for a man and a half.

The phone kept ringing. “Guys hopped in and out of the steam bath,” said Bill. “Jock moved others from the rubdown table to the whirlpool to the shower. Around and around.”

All the time the phone kept ringing, which sent Jock scurrying to answer it. “Ts there going to be a Boston Marathon this year?” one caller asked.

“There was a Christmas this year, wasn’t there?” Jock said. And he hung up.

Jock turned to Rodgers, who stood in the doorway surveying the history on the walls.

“Tt was all up there,” Bill remembered. “Many famous runners, and I stood in awe looking around it all.”

“Yeah?” said Jock.

Rodgers had encountered the Semple tone for the first time in a personal way.

“JT met you at the Silver Lake Dodge race a couple of weeks ago,” Bill said. “Amby Burfoot introduced us. I got third, right behind Amby. You said I could join your team, that I should come see you. You said…”

“JT said come right over, didn’t I?” Jock flashed a robin’s-egg blue-eyed smile.

“What?”

“J said come right over, not wait three weeks. Get on a table here. I’Il move one of my men. Mickey, get up there willya? This fella ran third at Silver Lake Dodge. Climb on, lad. Let’s see what legs you have attached to ya. I’ve been bettin’ people you’ ll be the next Johnny Kelley.”

Each year Bill Rodgers and Johnny Kelley passed and greeted one another at the start of the Boston Marathon, but they had not talked at length since 1973 when Johnny and Jessie had invited Bill over to their house in Mystic. That was a year and a half before Rodgers set the American record at the 1975 Boston Marathon. His was the latter of two great modern performances that broke ground at Boston and advanced the marathon in America. The other performance, of course, was by Kelley, who won the 1957 Boston Marathon and cracked the foreign domination of the event.

The day the Kelleys had Rodgers to their home, Johnny and Bill trained with Amby Burfoot in New London. “Gutwrenchers,” Amby called his workouts, a succession of all-out miles and three-mile runs, designed to test mettle on a level that would have made Zatopek proud.

Amby is a key connection here. Kelley taught Amby in high school and coached him on the track team. Burfoot roomed with Rodgers at Wesleyan University and enticed Bill to try the marathon distance.

In November, 1980, long after Bill had become the marathon’s golden boy, Johnny and he sat down at Bill’s store in Boston to compare the era in which each competed, and to reminisce about the contribution Jock made to each of their careers. Around them, customers at the Rodgers Running Center in Cleveland Circle bounced on one foot testing shoes. Sweatsuits were pulled off the rack and replaced. At one point, a baby was dropped into Bill’s arms from behind, as the tot’s ever-proud mother sought to solicit a Rodgers smooch for her tiny charge. But before that:

Rodgers: When | first ran for Jock on his BAA team, | took rubdowns after my workouts. I’d lie on the table as Jock started telling stories about the Boston Marathon. He’d be working on me in that tiny, tiny room of his in the Garden when suddenly he’d rave about the clowns. He’d be furious. Jock hates imposters and frauds, you know. He only likes what he calls the “real” runners. Some guy would have worn a cowhead or something, and that would get him started.

| ran for Jock for nearly two years. The BAA runners were scattered about Boston when | joined Jock’s team, so | trained with runners out near Jamaica Plain. When the Greater Boston Track Club was created, many of those runners joined Greater Boston, and | left the BAA to join the new team also. | don’t think Jock minded. We’re still really good friends. He told me he understood. He’s got a big thing about going for the opportunity, you know, and that’s what he told me. Jock has always been very supportive of me. | remember | was in the car with him one time. We had Charlotte Lettis in the car. Jock started to defend himself. He told her he didn’t really hate the women. | was new, | didn’t know him very well, but he was trying to convince me that he wasn’t evil.

Kelley: Making the comparison, Bill, you say you took your rubdowns from Jock, and that he offered you encouragement when you were brand new to the marathon. That was the case with me back in the 1950’s. There were times when | lived apart from him, but | found even then that Jock exerted a very strong influence over distance. | had the feeling he was there, even when he wasn’t.

Rodgers: Jock was an influence on me too. He was also a great influence at the races. I’ve always been a big fan of Jock’s. Sometimes I’ll meet people who say that he creates havoc at the start of the Boston Marathon, you know, when he waves his arms and shouts. But | always say, “That’s his charisma. He is a great former runner, and he loves the game still.” I’ve seen Jock do some amazing things at the marathon. | once saw him take a guy at the starting line who wasn’t supposed to be there. The guy was in his 30’s wearing a very high number, and Jock was about 70. He picked the guy up and threw him back. Pretty amazing stuff. But I’m happy to have Jock do that. The runners have to be honest, you know, and if you haven’t qualified, then you should go to the back of the pack. You have to go where you feel you can run and everything, but don’t get up with the top runners where you’re just going to have trouble and maybe cause a collision and get people hurt. Everybody’s got to work together on that.

Kelley: Jock is sort of the enforcer.

Rodgers: Right. But sometimes a lot of the top runners won’t say something to someone who is out of place. | Know | won’t. If | have a tenyear-old kid come up next to me or some runner with a number that doesn’t belong there, I’m hesitant to say anything. But not Jock.

| remember another funny story. | saw Jock jump into the Boston Marathon during the middle of the race. | was running at the front and some guy on a bike came in close to me and Jock appeared. Well, he took the handle bars and drove the guy right back into the crowd.

After the race in 1975 when | won Boston, he called me up to his clinic. He said he had a special award for me from the Mexican team. | went over there and he presented me with a block of wood about six inches by six inches with a plaster of paris dog’s head on top of it. It was the most bizarre award | had ever seen in my life. From the Mexican team or something. But that’s the type of award or memento he has scattered around in that room of his.

In 1975, Jock ran out beside me in the last stages of the Boston Marathon to offer encouragement. | remember that. He said, “Get goin’, lad. They can’t catch ya even if they had roller skates!” When | finished, an AAU official came up to me and told me that had Jock given me water

or anything, | could have been disqualified. It was so backwards, just six or seven years ago. But | remember that official really coming down on me. Saying that | had received coaching during the race.

Kelley: That was true in my time as well, Billy. The AAU has always had that rule. But Jock had a defense: he told them he wasn’t helping just one runner, he was helping everybody. And he did. He never held water back. He gave water to his runners, but he gave it to the guy next to you also. He told me this year, though, that he could no longer do it. | don’t know whether he meant he could no longer do it officially, or whether the crowded conditions prevented him.

Rodgers: Probably the crowds. Was it easier, less crowded, in your time?

Kelley: Well, here’s an interesting thing, Billy. | always remember Boston as being immensely crowded. But recently | went up to the attic to dig out a box of old clippings from the year | won. And | found somebody had taken a photo of the start from a roof and | couldn’t believe the difference. Maybe a million people stood on the sidewalks watching that day, but we had only 140 runners in the race in 1957.

Rodgers: As a front runner, of course, you wouldn’t notice that. | mean you wouldn’t notice the difference, I’m sure.

Kelley: | think it’s true that you always run against the people you know are at the top competition. It isn’t really the numbers; you’re right. But you have an uncanny ability to tune all that out and just run your own race. | mean the crowds. | think if | had to compete at the top level today, I’d go sneak off in the woods to cope with the pressure. | felt the pressure.

Rodgers: Didn’t you have the feeling though that you wanted to get to the finish line just so you could hear again?

Kelley: | wanted to get there, but | didn’t get there in two hours and nine minutes the way you do.

Rodgers: You went to the front, though. You didn’t hang back off the pace and wait for the others to collapse. You battled them right at the front.

Kelley: In my time.

Rodgers: But all times are slowly coming down. That will be true for me also.

Kelley: How do you think Jock feels about all the changes in running, Billy?

Rodgers: He’s been at it a long time. Phew!

Kelley: How about the money?

Rodgers:!’ll tell you an interesting story. In 1975 | got an invitation to Holland. | had just started getting expense money. As you know, you have to make a breakthrough before you get anything—money, gas, anything. So | had an opportunity to go to Holland and get expenses. “Go for it,” Jock told me. “Take the money.” | think Jock understands. In a way | think he wants the runners to make money. He was a great runner himself, and he understands what it means to be an athlete. But he’s got the tradition to think about at Boston. There’s talk now about a Grand Prix, you know, with races all over the world. But Jock doesn’t want to be pressured. He and Will Cloney will not bend to pressure. They want to develop things on their own and when they make their final decision, they’ll do it their way.

You know, | think of Jock as a Muhammed Ali type of character. He’s great with the press. He’s a good talker and a good speaker. He’s still so excited about running. That’s how | think of Jock, as somebody who will always love running.

Kelley: No matter how much the game changes.

Rodgers:It’s amazing how things have changed. And keep changing.

Kelley: The times change, but Jock changes also. Yet never changes. | was talking to someone who ran for him in the 1930’s on his Lynn Y team. To listen to the guy tell the stories, it was the same Jock | knew. That you knew.

Rodgers: And Patti Catalano knows today. He’s helped her tremendously. She told me that | should start taking rubdowns again. Jock promised to take two minutes off my next Boston time. I’m thinking of going up. (Chuckles) Two minutes! Phew!

| was always meaning to ask you. Were you out of college or in college in 1957?

Kelley:| was out, Billy, | had graduated in 1956.

Rodgers: So you were what, about 23?

Kelley:No. | had been in the army and come back out to finish my last few college courses. | was 26 when | won, Billy.

Rodgers: That’s good. (Chuckles) | don’t want anybody too young. | mean isn’t that bizarre? When someone is only 22-years-old like Salazar or Seiko. And they win New York and Boston.

Kelley: Of course when you’re 33 and you’ve done it as you have done it, when you have proved yourself as long as you have, that’s the great trick. A kid can come along at 22, but there’s no telling how long he can maintain that pitch. Can he do it for ten years? | don’t know. | had guys like that. They burst on the scene and | was threatened by them, but

then they’d be gone. We’d never hear from them again. | think that’s the challenge, to stay at the top, and you’ve proved that.

Rodgers: One last question, John.

Kelley: What?

Rodgers: What was your weather like in 1957?

Kelley: (Chuckles) Perfect.

Rodgers: Not too hot? | hate the heat.

Kelley: Perfect. Sunny, with a breeze. And 60 degrees.

Rodgers: Hey, what’s this? Is this a baby? Where did this baby come from? Is this baby for sale in my store?

Jock may have changed with the years, but he’s not mellowed. For instance, consider this 1971 column:

Jock Thins Marathon By Intuition

By Tim Horgan Boston Herald American April 13, 1971 The telephone rang and Jock wrenched his fingers from Boston Bruin John McKenzie’s pelt and leaped to answer it.

“Hey!” yelped McKenzie, “Jock get back to work. I’ve oot aplayoff game tonight.”

But even the Bruins run second to the BAA marathon this week, five days before the 1971 race, at least in that rumpled corner of the Garden known as J. Semple’s Salon de Rubdown and Bunion Removal.

This, as usual, is Marathon Central. The phone screams incessantly, grown men in short pants trot in and out, regular customers lie fallow on the rubbing tables and the maitre d’ himself is everywhere at once.

“This is the worst it’s ever been,” said Jock for the oe year in succession. “It’s those bloody 10-milers.”

Just in case anybody here is NOT running in Monday’s marathon, the entry rules have been changed somewhere since time. To get into the act, a chap must either:

1. Have run a marathon in 3 1/2 hours or les sometime or other. (One of this year’s entries last did it in 1955.)

2. Or have run 10 miles in 1:05, 15 miles i in 1:45, or 20 miles in 2:30 within the past year.

“YOU couldrun 10 miles in 1:05,” Semple accused one of his customers. “But it would take you 10 YEARS to run another 16. Yet we’ve got to take these guys in, even the halt and the lame, as it says in the Bible.”

/ continued on page 147

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In his role as screener for Boston Marathon entrants, Jock relied on facts and his own intuition.

Some people think the BAA has become too discriminating, that the fame of this race lies in the garden variety of its field. Semple is not among them. And since he’s also in charge of weeding out the unqualified, it’s no wonder Monday’s starters will total only 900, compared to last year’s 1112.

IBM and Honeywell reportedly are vying for rights to Jock’s method of screening applicants.

How do you do it?

“First | read RUNNER’S WORLD to get the results of races these guys claim to have run in,” Jock said.

Then?

“Then | use my intuition.”

“Easy. | get suspicious. If someone says he ran 3:29 | get suspicious. That’s how | caught three kids lying.”

Jock peered around the room and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial bellow. “They were from Notre Dame, shame on them.” Jock peered skyward, looking for thunderbolts.

But there was a chap from Australia who claimed he’d run three marathons Down Under within the prescribed time. Semple couldn’t verify it; but he let the guy in anyway. How come?

“| could tell he’s honest.”

“He LOOKS honest,” said Jock, who’s never laid eyes on the bloke.

Nonetheless, Monday’s field will be the usual representative one, led by No. 1 John Kelley the Elder and No. 2 John Kelley the Younger, who’s now 40. There will be the two Finns, five Central Americans and an Englishman for foreign flavor. And there’ll be what Jock terms a “literary battle” between authors Erich Segal (Love Story) and Hal Higdon (On the Run From Dogs and People).

Jock also let in two priests shortly after he tossed out the lads from Notre Dame.

The race itself, however, is a mere formality. “There’s no doubt who’ll win,” said Semple. “Pat will. Pat McMahon.”

This is the 29-year-old Lowell school teacher from County Claire, Ireland. How can he lose?

Can any American-born entry win?

“Oh, sure,” said Semple. “He can win first American.”

Astirring from the rubdown table: “Has the game started yet?” mumbled McKenzie. “I’ve got the playoffs tonight.”

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Big Sur

International

Marathon Got Super Scenery, Got Terrific Organization,

Got Good California Vibes—Got Hills—and Music to Smooth Them.

(© BIG SUR INTERNATIONAL MARATHON / DAVID J. GUBERNICK.

[x THE two editions of the deceased and muchmissed Ultimate Guide to Marathons, authors Dennis Craythorn and Rich Hannarated the Big Sur International Marathon at 100 percent—the pinnacle of marathons. Of course we know that perfection is impossible, but once you’ve experienced the Big Sur International Marathon, you’ll agree that it comes pretty darn close, even if you have to negotiate one of toughest course profiles of any wellknown road marathon. Even during “bad” years, Big Sur has its charms. One year excessive rains washed away part of Highway 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway), so the race was run out-and-back from the usual finish line in Carmel. Another year the race was run in the face of a vicious storm whose headwinds were strong enough to make small children airborne, but the race went on nonetheless. On

os — i ee ge ee

_ – Cl

PHONE: 831/625-6226

FAX: 831/625-2119

E-MAIL: — info@bsim.org

WEB SITE: www.bsim.org

RACE DIRECTOR: ally Kastner

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1986

SANCTION/CERTIFIED: USATF

START TIMES: 7:00 a.m. (marathon and marathon relay)

COURSE RECORDS: Open men: Brad Hawthorne, 2:16:39, 1987 Open women: Svetlana Vasilyeva, 2:41:34, 1996 Masters men: Brad Hawthorne, 2:28:23, 1997 Masters women: Suzanne Morris, 2:52:24, 1999

PRIZE MONEY: For male and female open, 1st $2,500; 2nd $1000; 3rd $500; 4th $250; 5th $175; for male and female masters, 1st $250; 2nd $100; 3rd $50

TIE-IN EVENTS: Marathon Relay, 21-Mile Power Walk, 10.6-Mile Walk, 9-Mile Walk, and 5K

NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS: 2,000+

MARATHON FINISHERS IN 2002: 2,518

MALE/FEMALE FINISHERS: 62% males, 38% females

COURSE MARKINGS: each mile

WATER STATIONS: 12 along the course (every two miles) and at finish FUTURE RACE DATES: always the last Sunday of April

ENTRY COST FOR 2003: $97

AREA HOTELS: The Monterey Marriott (350 Calle Principal, Monterey, CA 93940; 831/649-4234) is the official race hotel; special rates for marathoners, although a two-night minimum is required.

GETTING THERE: The Monterey/Carmel area is served by the Monterey Peninsula Airport (race sponsor United Airlines is a carrier, as are American

November/December 2002 BIG SUR INTERNATIONAL MARATHON 151

and America West). Both the San Francisco and San Jose airports are also within a two-hour drive. Monterey and Carmel are along scenic California Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway), which is accessible from major Highway 101 by taking either Route 156 from Prunedale or Route 68 from

Salinas.

a good day, which most of the Big Sur race dates have been, the course does flirt with perfection.

The race had what can kindly be described only as “humble beginnings.” Judge Bill Burleigh put together the race in 1986 as a way of sharing with other runners the joy of running in such gorgeous scenery. The inaugural event managed to attract 1,800 runners, but the fact that they faced fierce headwinds combined with the generous helping of hills (especially Hurricane Point near the 10mile mark) may have accounted for a decline in entrants in its second year.

The second year, however, was marked by perfect conditions and one of the most extraordinary marathon runs ever by an American. Oakland, California’s Brad Hawthorne, who was no stranger to hills, unleashed a remarkable 2:16:39, which still stands as the course record. Considering Big Sur’s infamous hills, it is almost impossible to theorize what Hawthorne’s performance would have translated to on a gentler course. (Hawthorne returned to the course in 1989 and for the six years after that dominated the winner’s circle.)

Bill Burleigh’s efforts to secure sponsors for the race—and his efforts

were Herculean—seemed to be going nowhere. Buoyed by the course’s spectacular scenery, marathoners increasingly wanted to do the race, and the numbers grew steadily. One of the big draws was the entertainment along the course that helped distract a runner’s consciousness from the unrelenting hills. For 1989 the race committee arranged to have a 26piece orchestra perform atop Hurricane Point, a sure magnet to soften the runners’ efforts to top out.

A MAJOR SPONSOR APPEARS

A significant turning point for the race came in 1990 when Runner’s World magazine came aboard as a major sponsor. Suddenly the Big Sur International Marathon had credibility and clout within the world of running, which made it easier to lure other sponsors. The race filled to its 3,000 capacity and added 1,000 walkers. In 1992 a 5K race was added.

The marathon has successfully weathered whatever the fickle weather that roars in off the ocean has thrown at it. In 1995 storms wiped out the Carmel River Bridge about 200 yards from the finish line. At the 11th hour

November/December 2002

Must See/Must Avoid

MUST SEE

Monterey Bay Aquarium (886 Cannery Row, Monterey, CA 93940, 831/ 648-4888, www.montereybayaquarium.org) is famous throughout the world for its spectacular innovations in presenting undersea life while also serving as a major research center. Among the most fascinating exhibits are the million-gallon aquarium, the three-story tall kelp forest, sea otters, and jellyfish. Hours of operation are 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. from Memorial Day to Labor Day and 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. the rest of the year; it’s closed on Christmas. It is advised that potential visitors order tickets in advance for holiday seasons as the place is usually sold out far in advance.

17-Mile Drive at Pebble Beach is as scenic as much of the marathon course but not quite as dramatic, as it’s closer to sea level. Famed for its world-class golf courses, the drive is breathtaking. Along the drive you’ll see the Lone Cypress, the community’s symbol, as well as Seal and Bird Rocks, Fanshell Beach, Spanish Bay, Cypress Point Lookout, Point Joe, and Carmel Bay. There is an $8 fee for entrance to the drive, which can be accessed at five different gates of the Pebble Beach Resort. Once inside, though, you can drag the drive out as long as you want. You can buy a gourmet picnic lunch at the Pebble Beach Market next to The Lodge at Pebble Beach.

Cannery Row Antique Mall (471 Wave St., Monterey, CA 93940, 831/ 655-0264, www.antignet.com/canneryrow) features 175 dealers in 21,000 square feet. If you like to take something of an antique nature home with you as a souvenir of your marathon weekend, this is the place. Professional Antique Mall magazine named Cannery Row Antique Mall “antique mall of the year.” It’s open seven days a week, 10:00 to 5:30 Monday to Saturday, and 10:00 to 5:00 on Sundays.

National Steinbeck Center (One Main Street, Salinas, CA 93901, 831/ 796-3833, www:steinbeck.org) is the hub of Steinbeck events in the Monterey County area. When Steinbeck’s books came out, the citizens of Salinas would have loved to hang him from a convenient telephone pole in payback for the way he portrayed his neighbors. But Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and as his fame grew the area decided to capitalize on his local settings for his novels (including In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, Travels with Charley, East of Eden). He would get a big charge out of how he is portrayed today, February 27, 2002, marked the centennial of his birthday, and the county held yearlong celebrations. Even though the celebrations

will be over by the time of the 2003 vacihen there will still be plenty to enjoy for Steinbeck fans.

MUST AVOID

The region is so tourist oriented and much of it so upscale that there isn’t much to be warned against—just monotonously delightful diversions around almost every corner.

aone-lane Bailey bridge was set up to accommodate the runners. In 1997 gale-force winds battered the course. Wally Kastner, a retired marine lieutenant colonel, was hired as race director in 1998 and was immediately presented with a welcome-to-Big-Sur challenge when El Nifio rainstorms all winter long knocked out major sections of Highway 1, simply washing them down into the sea. Nature along the continent’s western shore is

anything but benign. Kastner came up with an out-and-back course with the turnaround coming at the famous and scenic Bixby Bridge.

By 2001 marathoners had become used to signing up while expecting anything to happen to them. But 2001 was a disappointment for the pessimists. It turned out to be about as perfect a day as a runner could want: everything ran like a well-oiled machine. The 2002 race suffered a simiNovember/December 2002

lar fate, except that one of the pylons for the start banner fell as the race began.

THE COURSE ITSELF

So what’s this infamous course actually like? Is it as draining as everyone says? In two words: you betcha!

It begins among the redwood forests near Pfeiffer State Park, 26 miles south of Carmel along Highway 1. The start area is tight and confined because at that point Highway 1 has left the open expanses of grazing land above the ocean and has twisted itself along the shoulder of the rugged mountain range above the ocean.

Runners are bused to the staging area at the state park maintenance area while it’s still dark. Buses leave the Custom House Garage in Monterey and the Carmel Middle School beginning at 4:00 a.m., and they leave the Embassy Suites Monterey Bay and the Monterey Marriott at 4:45 A.M.! It is surreal to ride the buses south along Highway 1 in the dark, the scarlet taillights of buses in front forming an eerie, serpentine glow.

Once dropped off at the start, however, runners can only wait and shiver in the cold. Some runners suggested that the buses leave later from Monterey and Carmel to get runners to the start; others suggested erecting tents to keep runners warm until the start. Still others resented the fact that runners who arrived later got to line up in the front, pushing back early arrivals.

November/December 2002

The start area has no space for parking vehicles. In fact, to turn around, the buses need to overshoot the start area to reach a restaurant parking lot down the road that is large enough to accommodate their wide turning radius.

The start is 300 feet above sea level, and runners lose 200 feet of that within the first five miles as the two-lane road drops through quaint motel and campground areas, the road occasionally undulating a bit but generally plummeting toward the more open and sweeping areas beyond the fringe of the forests. As the course

Rio Road

24.9 miles 24 miles

San Jose Creek Point Lobos

Yankee Point € 22 miles

Soberanes Point ( 19 miles

17 miles 15.6 miles

Garrapata Bridge

Rocky Point Palo Colorado Canyon 75 miles Bixby Bridge [73.1 miles

Hurricane Point \ 12 miles

Little Sur River Bridge @ 9.8 miles Point Sur 9 miles

Molera State Park

Pfeiffer State Park

Big Sur Village } 2.5 miles

BIG SUR INTERNATIONAL MARATHON @® = 155

comes out of the trees and into the open, runners reach a small hill as the ocean vista presents itself like a panand-scan film suddenly morphing to wide-screen letterbox format.

Between 5.5 miles, where the course flattens, and Point Sur at 9 miles (175 feet elevation), some minor rises become molehills when placed against the upcoming challenge between 9.8 miles (Little Sur River Bridge) and Hurricane Point at 12 miles. The course dives toward the Little Sur, and as soon as runners cross the bridge they begin the ugly climb to Hurricane Point. The Little Sur River Bridge is at 40 feet; Hurricane Point is 560 feet. The math speaks for itself. The uphill grind serves only to build additional awe at Brad Hawthorne’s 2:16 course record!

DISTRACTIONS ABOUND

Fortunately, all sorts of entertainment is provided along the course for distraction, although one Colorado “music critic” complained that too much of it was provided by middle school bands. Other runners loved the entertainment. “Music for every taste, from classical to jazz,” wrote a Saratoga, California, runner.

After Hurricane Point, the course is overall downhill but rolls over smaller hills to get there. The famed and scenic Bixby Bridge, where Jonathan Lee plays a grand piano for

your musical entertainment, is at 275 feet elevation and marks the halfway point of the course.

From there on, the course features long rolls up and down long hills, but the trend is always down to the lowest point on the course: San Jose Creek at 24.9 miles, which is 10 feet above sea level. From there the course climbs again to 90 feet as it crosses Ribera Road at 25.2 miles and then drops to 25 feet as it finishes on Rio Road.

Many runners complained about the extreme camber of the road, worse between miles 22 and 24 in Carmel Highlands, something difficult to avoid in engineering a paved road with Highway 1’s many curves. Others would like to see the relay done away with so that marathoners won’t have to suck the exhaust fumes coming from the relay race buses squeezing past.

The finish area is about as well organized as that of any other marathon in the world. After the runner has crossed the finish line, it’s an easy right turn into Marathon Village, where race sponsors have huge tents to service the runners with everything from food and drink to sweatbag pickup to massages to meeting areas.

A constant cycle of buses arrive to take tired, but happy, runners back to Carmel or Monterey where they boarded the buses a seeming lifetime ago. For those who stayed in Big Sur on Saturday night (and who got to sleep in well beyond those who comNovember/December 2002