Running My Life The challenge of running from sea to shining sea.

Part 2 of 3

Editor’s note: On April 21, 1969, Bruce Tulloh of England set out to run from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, with an eye toward setting a new world record for the crossing. With him were his wife, Sue, his 6-year-old son, Clive, and his cousin Mark. They had two vehicles: an MGB convertible towing a small travel trailer and an Austin America. Bruce’s effort was sponsored by Schweppes soft drinks. In part 1, we followed Bruce and his entourage from Los Angeles to Salt River Canyon in Arizona. He also detailed his early years as a runner. This installment follows his transcontinental course from Arizona to St. Louis and also details his rise on the international circuit. The transcontinental excerpts are from his book Four Million Footsteps.

t was a Sunday, May 5. I was lying in my bunk in our trailer, at the bottom of the Salt River Canyon in Arizona. I had covered only 495 miles in the first 12 days, and I still had nearly 2,500 to go.

My right ankle was already extremely painful. Maybe I should have been worried, but I wasn’t. Life was good. Outside, my wife, Sue, was getting breakfast, my cousin Mark was making me a walking stick, and our son, Clive, was splashing about in the river.

With the walking stick taking the weight off my ankle, I managed to do 10 miles in 2 1/2 hours before lunch. After a break I started up the other side of the canyon. Mark walked with me for a bit, and then Sue took over. We were climbing steadily, and we could see clouds forming farther up the canyon. Then the far side disappeared from view, and it started to rain. We kept walking. All of a sudden the rain changed into a giant storm and then turned to hail, hammering down on us. We tried to find shelter, without success; then it passed over.

We were soaked through and cold, but moments later Mark roared up in the MGB and drove us back to the campsite, for which we were very grateful. Although I had done only 15 miles in the day, I decided to do no more. It continued to rain all evening, and in the night it really poured.

I woke several times, wondering whether we were going to be swept away by a flood or a rockfall or whether the packed earth we were parked on was going to crumble into the river.

When morning came and none of those things had happened, I learned that the others had been thinking exactly the same.

The next three days were a struggle against the elements, at times grim, at others invigorating. Certainly it was a time that I remember very distinctly, because I was really working at full strength, using my mental and physical powers to the utmost. We were climbing steadily, from 4,000 feet at the bottom of the canyon to 7,500 feet at the top, and as we climbed, it grew colder. There were very few settlements marked on the map, and we were not sure what to expect each day.

Dealing with higher altitude

A further unknown was the effect of altitude, which I had not experienced before. We were approaching the height of Mexico City, where the altitude had affected several of the distance runners in the Mexico City Olympics the year before. However, I was going very slowly, so it was never a problem.

On Monday morning I set off before breakfast, determined to get as many miles done as possible before sunset. The previous week had totaled only 230 miles, whereas I needed to do 300 a week to achieve my target of 66 days. I did four miles before breakfast, stopping only for a word with the Arizona Highway Patrol. Out in the hills they were naturally curious about what I was doing, on foot and alone. Joggers were very rare in those days. But when I explained my mission, they wished me luck.

I walked for a further eight hours that day and covered 32 miles in all. It was cloudy and windy all day; I wore tracksuit trousers, a sweater, and a waterproof anorak. I had learned to use my walking stick quite effectively. The country was wooded, but as I got higher the trees became sparser, until we reached pine woods.

In the afternoon we traveled over a wild heath land, crossed by ravines and curiously pitted. The rain was driving across in gray sheets, and I was grinding along in a mood of dogged determination when I saw the smoke of a fire just off the road. As I passed, I saw two Indians standing under a tree, and when I got downwind I caught the sound of a droning chant, punctuated by strange yelping sounds. Was it a religious ceremony, or did they have their transistor radio on? Like so much else on this journey, it remains to this day a mystery.

We stopped that night in the little town of Show Low. The thermometer dropped to 28, but inside the trailer we were warm and snug, and Sue cooked a lovely hot

meal. Maury, our PR guy, went back to his camper van, where he nearly froze, as he had neither a heater nor a sleeping bag. After that day he lost his enthusiasm for the outdoor life and spent more and more time in motels.

It was still cold when I got on the road next morning to cover the 13 miles from last night’s finish to Show Low. I went back to the running shoes and evolved a limping running style, which was not too painful. When the pain increased I would walk for five minutes. I managed to do that stretch in 1 1/2 hours, did an interview, had a hot shower and a change of clothing, and did an additional 10 miles before lunch.

And then it began to snow

The first snow started to fall as I set out on my afternoon stage. I put on my full tracksuit and kept going, doing 10 miles in 1 1/2 hours before stopping for tea. Just as I was about to go out again into the swirling snow, Mark arrived from Springerville with a packet of letters from home. It was marvelous to feel in touch with our family and friends. I even had a letter from the girls in my class at school. They said that our departure from Los Angeles had had a lot of publicity at home, and they felt sorry for me, running in all that heat.

I put on my anorak and got going, keeping my head down to keep the snow out of my eyes. My leg was beginning to hurt again, but I managed to get back into my limping shuffle, determined to get 40 miles behind me that day. Luckily the snow stopped for the last few miles, and the 40 miles took me to the highest point on that stretch of road. With the limp, the snow, and the altitude, I felt pretty tired and was glad to step into the car and be driven down to Springerville, 20 miles east.

We went to Maury’s motel room, where I took a hot shower and got a massage. Clive was not feeling well—it could have been the altitude; all we could do was give him some Aspro [aspirin] and keep him quiet.

Back on the road—and into the wind

The next morning Mark dropped me off where I had stopped the day before, 20 miles west of Springerville. I wanted to run the whole distance back to the motel, so I left my tracksuit in the car when I got out, as I knew I would get pretty warm after a few miles. It was no longer snowing, but I had not taken the wind into account. It was blowing very strongly from the southwest, and it was freezing cold. My right leg was sore, and the muscles of the left leg were aching from the extra work they had had to do the day before. If it had not been so cold, I would have walked for the first few miles. The road was downhill, which should have helped, but it did not. I had to brace my painful thigh muscles on each step so as

not to increase the ankle injury. All I could do was keep going, trying to run fast enough to keep warm.

I was miserably cold; my ankle hurt on every step, and my muscles ached. There was nothing to see but the road winding down across the desolate prairie. I think it was the worst time of the whole trip. I shouted at the wind in my anger and frustration; tears poured down my face, and I longed to be back home. I thought of the warm bar of the White Hart in Wargrave, and I even began to long to be back in the desert. But there was no question of giving up. No one was going to come and get me. There was nothing to do but curse and keep going until it got warmer and the pain in my ankle lessened. Sue came to meet me with coffee and biscuits, and I made my 20 miles in three hours.

After this experience my nerves were pretty limp, but after a shower and a change of clothes I felt able to go on. I put the boots on and had a few miles of easy walking before lunch. We kept the heater on in the trailer and had hot soup for lunch. The snow closed down again and I had to wear two tracksuits and an anorak, but I managed to walk for an hour and jog for an hour before tea.

Mark went ahead and found a place, the Redhill Motel, only 10 miles ahead. I already had 33 miles behind me that day, and I managed eight miles more, making Al for the day. This finally took me out of Arizona, where I had experienced the worst injury and the most extreme weather conditions of the whole trip. When we reached the hotel I learned that Sue and Clive had got stuck in a lay-by at teatime. They were quickly pulled out by a local guy with a pickup truck, but as they were about to drive away, they heard a deep growl in the bushes. It was the nearest we ever got to a bear, but they didn’t stop to investigate! It was back to the warmth of the hotel and the hopes of a better day ahead.

Finally, into a new state

Our first morning in New Mexico dawned bright and clear but also very cold. I walked the first six miles as my ankle was still painful, but then things warmed up. Clive had recovered, so we all felt more cheerful. Walking and jogging, I got up to 20 miles before lunch, and 10 miles more took us to Quemado, population— according to the sign—‘‘250 good people and a few old crabs.” One of the latter spoke to me. He had been a stringer for the Associated Press for 50 years, and I gathered that my arrival was the most exciting thing that had happened in Quemado since the public hanging in 1924!

To get in another 10 miles I put my boots on and walked out past the wooden crosses in the dusty graveyard. We had put our watches back an hour when crossing into New Mexico, so we had plenty of daylight. I strolled on through the rolling grassland with the sun on my back until nearly 8:00, and then we drove into Pie Town and camped by the gas station.

The next day I crossed the Continental Divide, where we stopped for pictures. It was a disappointing feature, just a gentle slope on either side, but it was a big psychological step: downhill from here to the East Coast, 2,000 miles away and only the Appalachian Mountains to climb.

I did 21 miles before lunch and then headed on to Datil Wells. As it was a Friday I had to do my weekly piece for the Observer. I had had plenty of time to think about it during my hours of plodding, so I dictated it to Sue, who typed it on our Olivetti portable. Mark then had to drive 60 miles to the nearest Western Union office. On Sunday morning our family [back in England] would be sitting over their breakfast, sharing our experiences.

Thad 31 miles behind me but I wanted to get back to my planned 43 miles a day. It was a long straight stretch, 35 miles to Magdalena without a bend, but at least it had mile markers. Although I could not run continuously because of the pain in my ankle, by concentrating on a mile at a time, I managed the 12 miles at just over nine minutes a mile.

We camped near the wells, once a staging post on the Magdalena Trail, and Sue cooked pork chops and apple sauce. The drawback with camping out was that there was no hot shower, and the next morning my right ankle and Achilles tendon were in a bad way. There was nothing to do but put on the boots and walk.

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Courtesy of Bruce Tulloh

A The author runs along a hot and dusty road in New Mexico.

Forty miles a day would mean 10 hours of walking. With this in mind I got off early and did the 20 miles to Magdalena in five hours. This was once the end of the cattle trail, where the railroad started for the East—a goal for thousands of steers and scores of cowboys, but now it was a dying town depending on passing trade.

Approaching a city—and media attention

Once past Magdalena, we were approaching Albuquerque, and we started to attract more attention—reporters and TV crews. Sue came out to walk with me for the last part of the day; a car drew up alongside, and the driver beckoned me over. He was an old man with the seamed face of a farmer. “Me and m’ wife here live up in the hills,” he said. ““We heard ’bout you comin’ through.” He fished in his pockets. “Here’s a dollar; when you git into town go buy yourself some Sloane’s Horse Liniment.” I thanked him warmly; it was a kind thought, a piece of human contact.

At last the 40 miles was done, 12 hours including stops. Mark drove us down the 10 remaining miles to Socorro, in the valley of the Rio Grande; we stayed in a motel and enjoyed the luxury of hot showers and clean sheets. Maury had got a meal for us, and the local Schweppes man came over for a chat.

The next morning my ankle was still puffy, but with the boots I managed the 10 miles down to Socorro in well under 2 1/2 hours and then had a drink and a short rest before putting on my running shoes.

We were now off the quiet mountain roads and heading north on Route 85, in the valley of the Rio Grande; the traffic was much heavier and more annoying. In the mountains we could see the thunderclouds building up for another storm.

At teatime we stopped in a rest area. Lying there was a man with his face in the sand and a gin bottle beside him, apparently dead drunk. What were we to do? Several cars had paused and driven on, but Sue couldn’t do that. Clive was horrified; it was something he had not met in the Thames Valley. We sat him up and sponged his face, revealing a pair of the most bloodshot eyes I have ever seen. We asked if he needed anything; he didn’t. “A drink? A sponge?”

“Ner.”

“Where are you going?”

“El Paso.” [200 miles away]

“Are you all right?”

“M’awrigh.”

We left him and went back to our tea and strawberry jam sandwiches.

My target for the day was San Bernardo, just off the freeway. When we got there it was just a gas station, but we found a quiet spot where we could light a campfire, got water from the gas station, and pitched camp for the night. Maury

had already left for the city lights of Albuquerque. Sue, Clive, and Mark drove there after tea to see a movie, as it was a mere 45 miles away.

After this we were back on the quiet Route 60, and I got back into running for most of the day but walking the first hour of the morning and the first hour after lunch. Most days were 45 miles at this point. Clive started to do a mile a day with me, skipping along in and out of the grass verge, stopping to pick up interesting items, and then dashing back to catch up. Sue and Mark would often jog a mile or two with me in the evening, and one day Maury decided that he would try some running. Sue tried to dissuade him, but that made him more determined. Mark lent him a pair of trainers, and Sue took Maury’s camper van a mile and a half up the road. All this took place as I was approaching our trailer, and as I came past Maury he launched himself from the trailer. We were on a down slope at this point, and when we came to the dip at the bottom, I thought /’d better take it easy. At this point Maury started puffing hard. He gasped out: “You go on, Bruce,” and stopped. He had gone less than 500 yards. Sue and Mark fell about with laughter. To do him justice, Maury did eventually complete the mile and a half and later in the trip he managed a full mile with me.

Meeting up with Victor

It was on the evening of that day that we met up with a group of high school boys and their teacher, Victor Amballos, a remarkable man, hugely extroverted. He had moved to New Mexico to see the country and teach in a deprived area. He had taught himself Spanish because that was the first language of most of his pupils. He was a biology teacher, like me, but he also coached basketball, track, and cross-country; studied wildlife; collected snakes; and was a “rock buff.” He and his wife collected semiprecious stones and made them into jewelry. We went back to his house for a meal, and he presented Clive with a horned toad and Sue and me with gems from his collection: moss agate, tiger’s-eye, and Apache tears.

By the time I got to Santa Rosa, where we joined Route 66, my leg was improving. After the initial walk, I used to run three miles at a stretch and then get a drink from Sue, who would be waiting in the little car. The three-mile stretches had been taking 24 minutes; now I was doing them in 22 or even 21 minutes, so I switched to running four miles at a stretch, in 30 minutes.

In Santa Rosa we stayed in a hotel, and Sue caught up with the washing and ironing, as she likes to do. [I’m glad to say that after 49 years of marriage, she is still on top of her ironing.] The next day we started on Route 66, an iconic highway but also a major freeway, with huge lorries roaring past in both directions. It had been different when this road had been used by the pioneers of the Bunion Derby in 1928.

In Montoya we met an old man in the store who had been there when they came through. “They were an untidy lot, like a lot of tramps; they didn’t care *bout anything, just come in, buy a can o’ beans and eat them straight outta the can, then off they’d go again.”

In the morning of that day, our last in New Mexico, I felt very depressed. It may have been the freeway. But after having lunch, taking an iron tablet, and having a rest, I felt quite cheerful. That day I clocked up the thousandth mile since leaving Los Angeles. The scorecard on the side of the trailer now read: Miles gone: 1,033. Miles to go: 1,897.

On May 17 we headed for the Texas border. After eight miles I got a pain deep in the hip socket—maybe a reaction to all the miles I had limped in the previous weeks. After a short break and a massage I got going again but could run only with a very short shuffling stride, like the old men you see coming in at the back of aroad race. Was this the sub-four-minute miler, the man who had demolished the field in the European 5,000 meters? No matter, I was getting there.

Things looked better in Texas—and bigger, of course—wider roads, irrigation, prosperous farms. It got warmer as we lost altitude, and I managed to increase speed and get 45 miles in for the day.

Sunday, May 18, took us to Amarillo—an additional 45 miles of hard slog and the end of four weeks. We had a Texas steak and, with difficulty, because it was a dry county, a bottle of wine, and then went to see 200/: A Space Odyssey at a

A The author reaches Texas.

drive-in. As the Apollo 10 mission was at that moment on its way to the moon, this was of more than usual fascination. The spaceman’s experience is unique—at the same time you are seeing the biggest possible view, yet you are trapped in a tiny box with no chance of getting out. I would rather be on my own feet.

Amarillo was tiring because I had to do several interviews, which took up time. Mark had to take the MGB to the garage for a check, and Sue had to stock up with provisions. Also, we were in a strange city and the thermometer was up to 94 by noon. However, by careful planning, we managed to meet up in the right place for a lunch stop, when I had done 22 miles. My daily average was now catching up: 41 in Amarillo, and it would be 42 when we got to Oklahoma City.

OK in Oklahoma

We got across the Texas Panhandle without incident, with days of 45, 46, and 48 miles. My heat tolerance had improved and my routine was established: four miles walk in boots, eight miles run, total two hours, then a short break and 12 miles in an hour and a half before lunch. After a good lunch and an hour’s sleep, I would try to follow the same pattern in the afternoon.

The big problem was keeping my mind occupied during those long afternoon miles, as fatigue built up. Some time was taken up with calculating daily mileage, total mileage, distance to go, and so on, and then I would think about the books I was reading: The Tin Drum and David Copperfield. [had some music, too: a tape of Nancy and Lee and one of Antonio Carlos Jobim, which I found soothing.

Our first night in Oklahoma, we had a massive rainstorm. It hammered down on the little trailer, but it stayed dry, and the next morning it had dropped 20 degrees, perfect for running.

We had also come off Route 66 and were on 152, heading for Oklahoma City—a quiet, undulating road, with fields, hedges, and grazing cattle. An English journalist from the Daily Mail came out to interview me; it was a luxury to meet someone who shared our background, to discuss our experiences of American life.

Three more days of pleasant running brought us to the state capital on May 24—-Clive’s seventh birthday. We came into the city in style, with a nice following breeze, two motorcycle cops ahead of us to take us through the lights, and a police car behind with flashing lights. My muscle troubles receded, and I ran the last few miles to the Ramada Inn at sub-seven-minute pace. We did more TV interviews, and I met Andy Payne, the man who had won the 1928 Bunion Derby. I was pleased to see him looking fit and well some 41 years later and was able to give him news of his friend Pete Gavuzzi, the Englishman who had done so well in the 1929 race.

The rest of the day belonged to Clive. We went out for his favorite meal—fish and chips—and then went to see Oliver!

A In Oklahoma City, the author meets the legendary Andy Payne, winner of the 1928 Bunion Derby.

Now that we were over halfway and entering more populous country, I was getting more attention. A guy from the Tulsa Tribune, Mike Lester, ran 10 miles with me on two days, and a college athlete ran with me for a whole morning, 23 miles. The running was easier, too. I moved on to doing four 12-mile sessions in a day to catch up on my schedule, and occasionally I would walk an extra couple of miles in the evening to make it up to 50.

It was [high school] graduation week; often I would see rows of chairs out on the sports field, waiting for the photographer, and I passed busloads of girls in white dresses with pink ribbons, looking like the pink-and-white flowers that grew beside the road. It moved me to think that I was briefly touching the lives of people whom I would never see again and so become an isolated speck in someone’s memory. “Do you remember graduation day and how hot we got, standing in the field?”

“Yes, and we saw that little guy who’d run all the way from California, going right through town, all in yellow.”

When your route goes bad

Shortly after crossing into Missouri, I managed to lose my support group for the one and only time. I achieved this by taking Business Route 60 through Neosho rather than the bypass road where they were waiting. Sue and Mark were having tea in the trailer when Sue suddenly realized why I hadn’t arrived. “I know where he is,” she said, and jumped into the little car. Mark drove off in pursuit without

Courtesy of Bruce Tulloh

having time to secure the trailer, so that by the time they caught up to me, the floor of the trailer was awash with tea and strawberry jam, water from the kettle, and most of the pages of David Copperfield, whose binding had broken. We went into a milk bar and had delicious malts to cool down.

It was at the end of that day that we had our most bizarre episode.

A line of cars was parked beside a field, and there were white feathers everywhere. A truck had crashed there, killing the driver and releasing five or six thousand white Wyandotte pullets. Though most had been recaptured, a few hundred remained in the hedges, playing hide-and-seek with the locals, who clearly regarded this as a gift from God.

Whole families were crawling through the bushes, carrying sacks and making clucking noises. We joined in the hunt and got to meet some families, and one of them invited us to stay the night on their farm. It gave us a glimpse of an America I never knew to exist: the country life that had not changed since the first settlers arrived.

The farmhouse was surrounded on two sides by long grass. Sheds and outhouses nestled up against it. The farmer was big and bearded, in dungarees, and his wife was an archetypal “big mama.” There were children of all sizes, from two matrriages, and the animals were even more varied and numerous: a German shepherd with a litter of puppies, a Tennessee coon hound, pedigreed ducks, fancy chickens, and cows. There was no running water and no electricity. It was a family rooted in the earth, totally at odds with the fast-moving, drive-in life we had seen on the highway. They were the poorest people we met, yet they gave us the most—not just their fresh vegetables, but their unaffected natural kindness.

Running with the trains

One hundred miles in two days took us to a mobile home park near Springfield. The days were now routine, and boredom was setting in. It was nice when we ran alongside the railroad, and I watched those great American trains roll by—the engines were of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and the trucks [rail cars] came from everywhere: the Frisco Line, the Wabash, the Rock Island, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the Soo Line.

More days of 47, 48 miles brought us close to St. Louis and back on schedule, but pain was building up again, this time in my left Achilles tendon. It was back to the boots for a couple of hours, and with massage, things improved.

The night before we reached St. Louis, we stayed in a quiet campsite miles from the main road. There was no sound. The stars were so bright they seemed to be pressing on the roof, and I slept happily, close to the grass, between the fulfillment of one day and the promise of the next. —End of excerpt

ES Eo *

Running on behalf of Great Britain

Iran for Britain on the track for nine consecutive summers. Most of the time I was British number one: first at three miles/5,000 meters and for the last two years at six miles/10,000 meters.

Iran in two European championships, two Commonwealth Games, and one Olympics. In 1962 I won the European 5,000-meters title. I broke the British record for two miles (8:33); brought the three-mile record down, in three stages, from 13:20 to 13:12, when the world record was 13:10; and set a six-mile record of 27:23.8. Other times were 1:53 for 800 meters, 3:59 for a mile, and 1:41:46 for 20 miles.

I also ran cross-country internationals, with a highest placing of seventh in the International Cross-Country of 1964. On that occasion the leading English runner was Ron Hill, who took second place; I was fourth team scorer, and the team was closed in by Basil Heatley in eighth and Mel Batty (the world record holder for 10 miles) in 10th. Competition to make the team was very tight. Most of my opponents—Hill, Heatley, Batty—used to run six miles or so to work in the mornings and the same back in the evenings, whereas my training was done after work, only one session a day but generally interval or repetition work, as described in part 1, in the July/August issue.