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

Part 3 of 3

Editor’s note: On April 21, 1969, Bruce Tulloh of England set out to run from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, with an eye toward setting a 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. In part 2, he ran from Arizona to St. Louis. In this final segment, he makes the final push for the East Coast. The transcontinental excerpts are taken from his book Four Million Footsteps.

five miles before having breakfast by the roadside: grapefruit, cereal, bacon, and eggs and then jogged 12 miles in the next 90 minutes, a gentle downhill. Then had a coffee break before the last nine miles into the center.

The nearer we got, the more our caravan built up: our two cars and the trailer, Maury’s van, a man from British Leyland, then a TV crew and an agency photographer, then the local press, and they all wanted their pictures.

There was no sidewalk and the traffic was heavy in both directions. I had to walk on the left for them to get their pictures, and I got closer to being run over than any other time.

We reached our motel at 1:00, but it was an hour more before I was able to sit down to lunch. We had the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, two agency photographers, and three TV crews, all demanding time. It didn’t worry us. We had letters from home and new shoes from adidas, and I was half a day in front of my schedule. Thad done 330 miles in the past week, so I calculated that with 937 miles left to New York I could do it comfortably in three weeks; the eventual distance came out at 960.

Te Fourth of June was a big day—the day we arrived in St. Louis. I walked

rtesy of Bruce Tulloh

A Bruce, Clive, Mark, and Sue at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

We never found any jazz in St. Louis, but that was the only disappointment. We relaxed, we visited the magnificent Gateway Arch, we had photos taken, and we went out to dinner.

The next morning started with a lie-in, then pancakes and bacon, and there were more photos as we crossed the Mississippi. It was 11:00 before we got into East St. Louis, a depressing place of rundown streets and high fences. I was getting hot and tired, but I got a real lift in the afternoon. A local teacher had brought his cross-country team out to the highway to run with me and the miles flew by as we talked and compared experiences. My running was going easier now that Thad new trainers [running shoes], and I was clocking up 48 miles a day in spite of 95-degree heat. We found a lovely campsite with a lake one day, and the next Thad a visit from an English friend—a fellow teacher and track coach. We had a good dinner with them and they came with us the next morning.

A companion along the way

Our next goal was crossing into Indiana and getting through Terre Haute. Luckily I had someone to run with, a serious marathon runner named Joe, who had run Boston that year. He ran 17 miles with me, which took us through the city—more

TV crews, more photographers. The weather turned cool and cloudy; we crossed into eastern standard time, which gave us more daylight that evening.

Thad now rejigged my schedule so as to arrive in New York on July 25. This meant that we had to reach a certain place at the end of the day rather than just keep to a daily average. If there were a few more miles than I had bargained for, Thad to cover them, so I was going 48 to 50 miles a day.

We came through Indianapolis—a bit run down in the center, I thought—and got onto quieter roads again. The memories of those little towns blend into one. As we approached, we would see “Texaco ahead” and “Gulf station 3 miles,” then signs for the motels: “Sunset Court, refrigerated, TV, 30 rooms.” At the city limits there would be a sign with bits of information, either “Blankville, pop. 970” or “Blankville, elevation 1302.” I noticed that where the elevation exceeded the population, the sign gave the larger figure, unless the town had been founded before 1880, in which case it had historic significance.

After the signs for the churches and the Lions Club we came into the town: filling station, motels, and then the residential part, where the lawns ran down to the sidewalk, shaded by trees. The women and the old people would look up from the porch and the kids would pedal alongside, bright faces and bright questions.

At times I picked up another runner for a few miles, at others I just concentrated on the miles. By the time we crossed into Ohio, I was running at nine miles an hour, clocking 6 minute, 40 second miles, and I managed 335 miles in the first week out of St. Louis.

It was in Ohio that we found the nicest campsite of all: Imes Park. It had a stream running through it, where Clive caught crayfish, a river to swim in, and complete peace. It was a good thing that we started in a good frame of mind, because we had a particularly stressful day. Maury had done too good a job with his advanced publicity and we had streams of TV crews, reporters, and what Clive called “whirl-wishers,” from Dayton, Springfield, and Cincinnati. Two young reporters took up 40 minutes of my lunch break. As we got into Springfield we had a massive and prolonged rainstorm. I was so cold and wet that we stopped a little early at a motel that Sue had found and had a hot bath and an early night.

We pressed on through Columbus (home of James Thurber), Reynoldsburg (home of the tomato), and on to Zanesville. Route 70 was a quiet road with not too many “whirl-wishers,” who were becoming an occupational hazard. We runners are an obsessive bunch and don’t care for interruption. You don’t like to ignore people, but if you stopped to talk to everyone you would never get the run done. As I wrote in my Observer column: To be fair, the majority of people we meet on the road are courteous and encouraging, but when the 50th person leans out of an air-conditioned car and says to me, with my sweat, my mahogany tan, and sun-bleached hair: ‘Hey, are you the guy who’s jogging to New York?’ I am sorely tempted to say: ‘No, I’m Ho Chi Minh.’”

Across Ohio we managed 46 to 50 miles a day without too much incident and on Monday, June 16, I was looking forward to crossing West Virginia and entering Pennsylvania—two state lines in one day!

A route too far—or farther than | thought

After several checks I discovered that the distance to New York was 20 miles farther than I thought, but I was going an extra mile or two each day to allow for that. As I approached the valley of the Ohio River, I witnessed a great change in the topography. The hills became higher and more dramatic, the valleys more deeply cut. The road and the railroad ran side by side, with little space to park, and the smoke from the towns hung between the mountain walls.

From Bridgeport, Ohio, to Wheeling, West Virginia, you cross by means of two bridges and an island. Here for the first time one could feel a sense of history. The houses by the river, on high foundations, stood up like islands, their different styles showing the changes that had taken place. There were rows of miners’ cottages, then some fine wood-frame houses, then the black-windowed, iron-framed factories and shops of the last century.

The old iron bridge with its spans and girders spoke of the struggles of the 19th century, while the modern concrete arch appeared to soar across without effort.

We reached Washington, Pennsylvania, well ahead of schedule, which was lucky, as the last few miles were very hilly. I was able to take my time, walking up the hills and jogging down them, and still complete 48 miles for the day.

The farther east we got, the more crowded the roads, and the media attention increased, which added to the strain.

Outside Monongahela, where we stopped for lunch, we had another visit. A long red car drew up with a friendly driver, a tough-looking cameraman full of chat, and the professional newsman, very smooth in his striped tie and trendy blazer. We cruised up and down the road to get the pace right, with the cameraman shooting off the tailboard. In the house opposite a boy came out to watch, and when he saw what was going on he went wild: “Mom! Dad! Quick! It’s the newscaster from Channel Seven outside!” What the subject was, he didn’t care. It was the fact that the actual newscaster, the man who brought the world into his front room, the god from the machine, was present in the flesh, outside his house.

All through the past week, across Indiana and Ohio, the physical side of the running had been working very well. It justified my faith in the adaptability of the human body, which can adjust itself to practically anything. My body was a running machine. You put in fuel—cornflakes, salads, beans, and beers—and the miles kept coming. Although I had only a week to go, I could not afford to lose concentration. The Blue Ridge Mountains ahead would be tough, and there was no time left to catch up on the schedule if I had an accident: a sprained ankle or

an overzealous dog could turn the whole thing from triumph to fiasco, and after 2,500 miles I didn’t want that.

We had expected Pennsylvania to be urban and industrial; instead we found miles of beautiful unspoilt country. We crossed ridge after ridge of dense woodland, climbing and dropping maybe 400 or 500 feet each time. From the top of one ridge you could see two more, and in between each was a veil of moist air that changed the quality of the light and gave the mountains their name. The only clue that we were not hundreds of miles from civilization was the dull roar of the turnpike a couple of miles to the north of us.

The long trip across Pennsylvania

The people of Somerset had been warned on the radio that I was coming through. A couple of motherly-looking ladies presented me with a packet of chewing gun and a tube of Lifesavers wrapped in a dollar bill. In the afternoon the clouds came down and it rained. We camped for the night where the run finished. I rubbed myself down and put on dry clothes, Sue cooked supper, and we played cards by gaslight.

Another day of long hills took us through Bedford, over the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and on to a nice wooded campsite near Harrisonville, with a lake to swim in. The next day—getting hotter and more humid as we lost height—was rather interrupted by the demands of TV, but I was able to make up time by running nine miles an hour and once again we found a really nice campsite in a state park. It was Friday evening and the park was full of weekenders. During the last mile of the run, I met a fellow runner named Joe, who had driven down from New York City specifically to run with me over the weekend. This made the next two days much less boring.

The first part of the next day took us through Gettysburg. Like every other English-speaking person, I found the name resonant, but the commercialism was appalling. For the last six miles into town the traveler is bombarded with signs and advertisements. Tourism is an industry, we know, and the Civil War exercises a powerful hold over the imagination, but I would not go here to remember it. I would rather stand by a stream running over stones and think that once Americans in gray and Americans in blue killed each other and the blood of them both ran down this stream and returned to the soil.

With help from Joe and Mark, the run went quickly. I ran a 17-mile stretch in the afternoon without a break, and after eating a sticky bun and having a ginger beer I knocked off the last four miles, which gave us a long evening—time for a swim and a drink before dinner.

The next day took us through Amish country. Even though we had been told about them, it was a strange sight to see when a little pony trotted by pulling a

covered black gig. The driver had a black hat and a square-cut black beard; his wife wore a black bonnet and Victorian clothes. They trotted along through the 20th century, on their way from farm to church. I wondered how many of those who snapped their picture envied the simplicity of their lives, and I wondered what sort of people dwelt in those antique costumes. We shall never know.

We managed to find one more really good campsite before we got swallowed up in the outskirts of the Big Apple. This was Frank’s Folly, which lay alongside Brandywine Creek. We found a space in a grassy meadow beside the stream. By the time I arrived, Clive had made friends with half the camp and we soon met the famous Frank. He refused to take any payment—we were his guests. He showed us the fishing holes, bought us a beer, and invited us to come and see the annual Passion Play in the town. “I’m playing Judas Iscariot again,” he said, “so you can tell what they think of me!”

There was a happy family atmosphere among the campers, most of whom were regulars. That evening was the last chance we had to appreciate the deep peace of the American countryside. Mark fished and Sue and I watched Clive running races and being shown how to throw a Frisbee.

We went to sleep that night with the bullfrogs singing a lullaby, but Mark and a friend fished on far into the night.

Within easy reach of NYC

On the morning of June 25, 1969, I lay in bed, listening to the rain. I had slept in many different places in the last three months, and it took me a moment to recollect where I was. I was in a motel, beside an expressway. The motel was north of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and 20 miles from New York City. Behind me lay over nine weeks of continuous running and walking, all the way across the North American continent from Los Angeles. Those nine weeks contained many days of sweat and toil, sometimes even pain, but all I had to do now was to run an easy 20 miles to set a record for the world’s longest run.

There wasn’t time to lie in bed for long. I woke up Sue. We dressed quickly and piled the last of our things into the already piled-up suitcases. For the last time I put on my sponsor’s running kit: bright yellow T-shirt and shorts, yellow sweater with the Schweppes logo, and matching sweatpants. In the other bed, the only sign of our son, Clive, was a little bit of blond hair above the bedclothes, so we left him asleep and went for breakfast.

Like all American breakfasts, it was both quickly served and good to eat: orange juice, scrambled eggs, and crispy bacon, toast and honey, fresh coffee. Although it was only 7:00 a.M., there was already one newspaper reporter waiting for me and a radio station rang during breakfast, wanting an interview, but we had gotten used to that. My cousin Mark shambled into the room, looking rather

sleepy—he is over 6 feet tall, well built and strongly tanned, with long curly hair and a beard. While he finished breakfast, I got ready to run and at five minutes until eight our PR man, Maury Soward, drove me the mile down the road to the starting point, followed by a press car.

The run had finished the night before at a place called Fords, at the junction of Amboy Avenue and King George Street. It was essential that I start again at exactly the same point. The reporter was going to run with me for the first mile to get his story, so I set off at a fairly gentle pace, because the traffic was thick. The rain had eased off but there was still a damp mist. The streets, the cars, the sky, all appeared in various shades of gray. It was very different from those bright mornings in the West, with the crickets singing and the sky implacably blue. When the reporter left me and I was on my own, it was hard to think that this was different from any other morning run, except for being wetter than usual. The streams of commuter traffic did not notice me.

Lhad studied the route the night before—it was on Route 440, which first cut across the maze of construction and expressways and then became very quiet as it approached the Outerbridge Crossing, the bridge that connected Perth Amboy to Staten Island. There was little traffic on the approach—a long curve of concrete. I passed a crossing-control lady, clad in yellow plastic against the rain. She stared in disbelief as I padded toward the bridge, then shouted after me, “You can’t run there; you can’t cross there!” I hadn’t got the time to stop and explain, so I just waved and kept on running, but not for long. Before I reached the bridge, a yellow police car slid alongside. The cop gave me a hard look and jerked his head: “Off, buddy, can’t you read?”

I felt a bit worried, but I explained to him that I had run all the way from Los Angeles and that I was due at City Hall at noon to meet the mayor. His reaction was what I expected: he gave a big grin and told me to watch the traffic, but he took my name and address.

At last! New York State

Crossing the Outerbridge took me into New York State. On the New York side was the toll office, where I was greeted by a rather striking Jewish lady in a pink uniform. “Ya got some money for me?” I said I hadn’t. “Ya run from California? Ya muss be crazy!” I agreed that I was, and English as well, so she let me go. Staten Island lies in one of the world’s most heavily populated areas, so there must be a reason for its being largely uninhabited, but I don’t know what it is. I had a quiet run along a wide road with trees and bushes on either side and little traffic. I came to some construction work and got red mud on the new running shoes I had put on that morning. At about 9:00 my entourage rolled past: Maury in his Volkswagen camper, Sue in her little brown Austin with Clive, Mark in the

The last leg, boarding the Staten Island Ferry (Sue in the car, the top of Clive’s head just visible).

white MGB towing the trailer, and a press car. They stopped to check the route with me, which made quite a sight, and in no time a police car turned up to see what was going on.

As the road wound on and became more built up, I caught the smell of mud and salt marsh drifting in from the estuary.

We stopped beside a derelict café to give me a rest before the last stage and to give Sue and Mark a chance to put on their smart clothes. We did a few more photo shots, and just after 10:00 I set off again. It was seven miles to the ferry that would take us across the harbor to Manhattan, and it was due to leave at 11:10. The rain came down again, the escort drove off, and I was alone again. Only a handful of miles now, and it seemed unlikely that this was really the end. I couldn’t get excited; it seemed a long seven miles through a scruffy dockland area; nobody gave me a second look. When I reached a downhill stretch to the ferry, with only a mile to go, I allowed myself a small glow of satisfaction—after that it was too hectic to feel anything but confused.

At the ferry terminal I ran toward the pedestrian entrance; there was a single photographer there and he led me through the turnstile. It was only a nickel to ride the Staten Island Ferry—the best value for money in New York. There were

Courtesy of Bruce Tul

two or three English reporters in the entrance hall, and I talked to them while we waited for the gates to open—it was just 11 o’clock. There did not seem to be many TV people about, which was odd, as I knew that Schweppes had got everything organized. I walked onto the ferry then went down to the car deck, expecting to find my crew, and bedlam broke loose. The cars and caravan were still on shore, waiting for me to arrive, surrounded by a 50-strong horde of TV men, pressmen, and photographers—and the ferry was about to leave!

The newsmen ran toward me; I ran toward the cars; Sue, Mark, and Maury jumped into their seats and we all rushed onto the ferry, where the center lane was being held for us. The confusion was increased by the cameramen, who were trying to get in front of us to film us coming aboard. The moment we were all on, the ferry set off, and it seemed to be tearing through the choppy gray waters of the harbor, though in fact it took half an hour for the four-mile journey.

Of all the various forms of media, photographers are the most aggressive and the New York photographers are the most extreme of their breed. They pranced around us like cannibals round a juicy captive, turning us this way and that as they stood in the bow of the boat, Sue beside me and Clive between us. “Look at me, Bruce.” “Look at your husband, lady.” “Now let’s point out to sea!” “Let’s have the little boy on your shoulders.” “Look at me!” “Turn your face!” “Would you look up, please?”

Then it was the turn of the TV interviewers, who almost came to blows with the photographers. We had promised the first interview to Thames Television in England, but it was hard to tell which of the three crews was filming for Thames, and when we declined to be interviewed one man turned quite unpleasant.

Peace at the center of the turmoil

However, nothing could spoil this moment for us. The Statue of Liberty loomed up out of the grayness and then the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan, shapes so well known that they have become worldwide symbols. Here they greeted us like familiar, welcoming giants. The wind and the spray blew into our faces, Sue’s eyes sparkled and her