AGING

NEW ZEALAND, December—The bottle of wine jumped right off the shelf and into my hands. I couldn’t believe the label—”Harrier Rise.” The wine was a perfect choice for a dinner party of discerning American runners who were visiting us in New Zealand.

The wine was brilliant in taste, too, another small, sparkling gem among the thousands of obscure boutique wines in New Zealand. You have to be there to experience it. Ten thousand miles away means it won’t be exported, and that’s part of the charm.

My Kiwi husband Roger Robinson examined the label and said the vineyard was located in the Waitakere Ranges, outside of Auckland, the same fabled hills over which Arthur Lydiard trained some of the world’s greatest runners. The 24-mile run over these hills still stands, more or less, as the definitive Sunday run for serious distance types in New Zealand.

I don’t suppose the vintner had Arthur—or even running—in mind when naming the wine, but it was magic for us all: a nectar of the gods offered from the very hand of Zeus himself. For if there is a Zeus of running, it surely must be Arthur Lydiard. Some may argue with my decision to place Arthur as the head of the Olympian gods (indeed, it may be that his place there is for my generation only), but there is little doubt that Arthur was both the prime mover behind the modern running boom and running’s most influential coach. In other words, if you started running in the last 35 years, Arthur Lydiard has affected your life. If he is going to be displaced as the icon he is now, someone will have to do something pretty profound to affect the sport as much for the next 35 years.

Besides, you cannot deny anyone who carries thunderbolts in both hands! When Lydiard moves—like a little barrel-chested, crackling hot dynamo—you see him glowing and scorching. Don’t stand too close! When he speaks, the thunderbolts sizzle and connect with each member of his audience. Lydiard is an intimidating, imposing figure; that is, until you stand close to him. And then you realize that he is actually quite short, with a great gentleness and kindness behind the thunder, a total generosity. He is a man totally beloved.

That sense of belovedness reached its zenith in New Zealand when Lydiard was honored with a sold-out testimonial dinner in honor of his upcoming 80th birthday. Organized by Colleen Mills, wife of Auckland mayor Les Mills (both former Commonwealth Games athletes), the black-tie affair showed that little New Zealand could hold its own in the glamorous gala stakes as well. Dinner tickets were as precious as those for an All-Black Rugby Final (the New Zealand equivalent of the Super Bowl). Champagne flowed, and the entire event was televised.

For the first time in my memory at a running event, eating the food was not the first priority. People jumped up and circulated, afraid to miss a chance to personally meet Arthur’s greatest athletes, including Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, Bill Baillie, Dick Tayler, and Barry Magee, among hundreds of others.

All of them spoke, including Arthur, but the highlight of the evening was watching old movie footage of these men in their early training days, and later the Movietone Newsreels of their world-record-shattering races. Seeing Peter Snell run a world-record 3:54.4 mile on a grass track in 1962 in Wanganui, New Zealand, was almost as impressive as his Olympic 800-1500 double in Toyko. I wasn’t the only one in the room imagining how fast those runs would have been on today’s tracks, in today’s shoes.

Lydiard’s genius is that what worked incredibly well for his elite athletes (who were his main focus) also spilled over into the general population and created a fitness revolution. His principle of long, sustainable running (running very long distances at a submaximal pace to create tremendous stamina) was adopted by joggers, who found a way to go longer and longer by slowing down.

While the LSD (long, slow distance) that roared into popularity in the 1960s and 1970s—thanks to Bill Bowerman, Ken Cooper, and Joe Henderson—is a bastardization of the tempo training that Lydiard espouses (“slow” is relative; none of Lydiard’s elites really ever runs slowly), the influence of this training principle has been profound. Average people have been able to make themselves into marathon runners and feel like heroes. And maybe most importantly, ordinary energetic kids everywhere were found to possess Olympic potential.

Remarkably, Arthur’s first three Olympic medalists—Snell, Halberg, and Magee—all got their medals a few days apart in Rome, and all lived just a few blocks from Arthur’s house. Neighborhood kids. This fact is not remarkable to Arthur, who says, “Talent is everywhere. It just needs the opportunity.” This was a refrain he repeated in his speech that evening. It is the credo he lives by.

But as innocent and inspiring as that statement sounds, it stung many long-standing New Zealand athletic administrators of the 1960s, who back then were probably both jealous and unmoved by Lydiard’s talent. You’re never less of a prophet in your own land than when that land is small and isolated, so Lydiard took his talents elsewhere. He became the national coach of both Mexico and Finland, where he had prodigious results, the most spectacular being Lasse Viren. Lydiard toured the world lecturing, increasing his renown, and was welcomed back to New Zealand, both by his always adoring public and by now even athletic administrators.

Years later, they are all crowded into an elegant banquet hall honoring him, hurts forgotten, triumphs celebrated, and hijinks relived. The scores of athletes—mostly male, mostly in their 50s and 60s—enjoyed reliving the antics as much as the races, and they talked about the old races on film as if they had just seen them run in the stadium.

I was also struck by how fit most of them had stayed, no one more than Arthur, who moved through the room like a young warrior, the eyes of strangers and disciples alike following him. For, indeed, Arthur attracts. Even now, at age 80, Arthur doesn’t seek runners to coach. They come to him. Whether they buttonhole him after a speech or travel around the world to show up stray and homeless on his doorstep or phone him all evening, long after he’s put down his thunderbolts for a soothing glass of merlot, Arthur listens, then advises. Everyone has talent.

BOULDER, COLORADO, December

For a number of years now, I’ve found myself wishing that I had more time to develop deeper friendships with some people in running that I’ve known briefly but admired for years. Recently, every year was bringing a sense of loss, as I allowed myself to be concerned with getting back from events to meet family or work demands rather than taking the time to get to know running friends better. These were not major tragedies, merely lost opportunities.

Those “same-time-next-year” friendships at Boston or London or New York or Utica are now moving on 20 and 30 years. With these friends I’ve shared some of my happiest triumphs and lowest losses and together ridden the various waves of our sport’s history. I now realize that all this deserves more than an hour every year at the awards ceremony following the race.

But let me hasten to contradict myself by also saying that one of the greatest things about running is its temporary homogeneity. We don’t have to get too close. You know this when the only thing you have in common is the sport and the lively banter afterwards. A lawyer, a farmer, and a dry cleaner aren’t expected to rush off and become soul mates.

Maybe this sense of loss has to do with getting older. Who am I kidding? Of course it does. And being childless by decision is also a factor. As Richard Harteis notes in his book Marathon, at a certain age, if you’re not going to have any children, you’d better be sure to get a good circle of friends. For me, this means getting to know better the people I admire, those with whom I have a shared passion. There are a few people, women in particular, who have travelled a long road in sports with me, and it’s the essence and significance of those relationships that I’ve been longing to capture.

Sitting in a coffee bar one snowy afternoon in Boulder with Lorraine Moller, we began discussing our long careers and the importance of friendships like ours. I found myself saying, “I wish you could meet…” and “I wish we all had time to get together with…,” when I thought, why don’t we just make the time?

This year, Roger and I had given up most of a New Zealand summer to spend Christmas with parents in Virginia and England when it occurred to us that we could have fun with our friends, too. We could rendezvous with Lorraine and her husband and go together to hang out in Aspen with runners Joan Ullyot and Joyce Rankin and race car driver Janet Guthrie and their husbands. It was perfect; it fulfilled all aspirations.

It turned out we all were ready for a little vacation on our own terms. So 10 successful, active, highly-demanding, and independent people headed for ski country. No egos, no preening, no sparring. No lawyers, no shrinks, no “exes,” no kids. And for three days, no dogs, no cats, no deadlines.

So what did we do? Well, we had fun. In fact, we had a ball. It snowed a ton the whole time, and we felt and behaved like kids on the front of a Christmas card. We cross-country skied, snowshoed up and down the mountain, went out to dinner, and sat by the fire and told plenty of terrible jokes. We drank a lot of wine, including a bottle of Harrier Rise, which I had taken with me from New Zealand in honor of Arthur Lydiard, who in a way had brought us all together over the years.

We talked about work and projects and ideas, and, of course, we talked about running: the triumphs, the hurts, the hijinks. Mostly, though, we talked about training, because that is what we all still do and, in one sense, what we care about most. Being at altitude was important, and whether the running had to share time with snow-shoeing or heli-skiing or snow-boarding, it was the sense of the physical endeavor that was most important. We had all made training a priority and were totally unrepentant. We were fit as trout and bloody proud of it.

Was that it for earth-shattering revelations of cemented friendships? Believe me, it was a very good beginning. Like Arthur’s athletes, the talent—for fitness or friendship—is everywhere. It only needs the opportunity.