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

Part 1 of 3 April 21, 1969 Excerpt from the book Four Million Footsteps

t was a Monday morning in Riverside, California, when we left our friends

and drove down to City Hall in Los Angeles. We had two cars from British

Leyland: a little Austin America, which my wife, Sue, drove accompanied by our 6-year-old son, Clive, and a white MGB convertible, driven by my cousin Mark, towing a small trailer. I was wearing a yellow sweatsuit, a bright yellow T-shirt with Schweppes—the main sponsor—across the front, shiny gold shorts, and Adidas marathon shoes. The trailer was packed with 10 sets of running gear and five pairs of shoes, as well as boxes of Cadbury’s chocolate, our clothes, and our camping stuff.

We arrived before 9:00. There was a small crowd of newsmen, TV crews, people from the British Consulate, Mayor Yorty’s office, and of course Cadbury Schweppes, our sponsors. The last to arrive was Maury Soward, our PR man. His watch had stopped. This was already his third minor crisis. He lost his wallet on the day he arrived, and he spent a long time filling the water tank in his minibus without putting the plug in. I wondered whether he would survive the next 10 weeks.

On the run: Bruce, with son Clive.

Courtesy of Bruce Tulloh

Pictures were taken, the logbook signed. I took off my sweatsuit, put on my dark glasses, and as the clock on the tower of City Hall jerked to 10 o’clock, I set off.

I trotted briskly round the corner of City Hall, nipped across the road while the lights were green, and was on my way eastward, up Main Street. I passed the old plaza, which had once been the center of the old Spanish town, the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, now drowned under a sea of concrete. I passed the Union Station and turned onto Mission Road. Soon Mark passed me, driving the MGB with the trailer behind; a TV car cruised by, taking pictures.

On the road—at last

I felt very good to be on my way at last, after a year of planning, training, and worry. It was just up to me now, my willpower and my legs. In the first hour I covered over nine miles in spite of having to wait for lights and stop for TV interviews. The second hour was rather harder, as the sun got higher. The road ran east; I kept to the south side, so as to get the maximum shade from the buildings. There were very few pedestrians, so there was no problem there, but the cumulative effect of hopping on and off the pavement was rather tiring; as with any kind of running, economy is everything, and with the pavement about nine inches above the road, there is an appreciable jar every time one comes off it and an extra effort needed to step up again.

At noon I stopped for a drink and a rest. Normally I would have stopped for a long break at this stage, but having started the day late, I couldn’t do this. I had come 18 miles and had passed the San Gabriel Mission, which in the old days had been set up a day’s march from Los Angeles. I had a drink and a 20-minute rest and set out for six more miles. The sun was directly overhead and I was finding it hard work. Possibly I had been running too fast, pushed on by the first impulse of a will that had to last me the whole 66 days. Whatever it was, the sun or the traffic fumes, I felt very uncomfortable, but I had to keep on until I reached the trailer, where Sue was waiting.

Luckily, the last of the TV cars had left us, for when I got inside the trailer and sat down I got violent cramps in both thighs. I stood up and tried to straighten my legs and then had an overwhelming feeling of nausea and passed out for a few seconds.

I lay on the bunk, with my brain racing. I had been going only three hours. Was it going to be like this all the way? Was I going to risk sunstroke by going on? Then logic took over. I had 10 weeks to break the record; I could take all the time I needed to get used to the conditions; I could walk for a week if necessary; the thing now was to treat myself for the condition I was in. Poor Sue was dreadfully worried, and I knew she was thinking the same things I was.

The cramp was obviously due to sweat loss, so I took two salt tablets and a pint of water, sponged myself down, and had a half hour rest, while Sue got lunch ready. By 3:15 I was ready to start again. We decided not to mention this crisis to anyone; it would have thrown too much doubt on my ability to finish, whereas I was convinced that it was the start that was the hardest part and that it would become easier later on.

In the afternoon it was decided that Sue would go back to Riverside and Maury would look after me, as there was no point in everybody hanging about in the heat and the dust. All went well for the first hour; I deliberately kept drinking regularly to keep up my fluid balance, but as Maury only had fizzy Schweppes drinks, I began to feel like an inflated balloon. I turned south to Pomona, to get myself onto the road to Ontario. I had to go through a subway [underpass] and then turn east on Mission Boulevard. Having completed this maneuver, I looked for Maury with a drink, but there was no sign of him, nor did I see him again for 40 minutes. I went on and on down an endless road lined with motels, bars, and garages, past giant hoardings (billboards) advertising beer and Coca-Cola. Finally I stopped to get a drink at a filling station and eventually Maury caught me up—he must have missed me at the turn—he was very sorry.

For the last part of the day’s run, Sue came out to meet me. The day’s total was 46 miles, finishing at a road junction at Mira Loma. There was no one about and the sun was setting as I climbed into the car and was driven back to the comfort of our friends’ house in Riverside. So ended the first day.

Still sun in the middle of the night

I did not sleep well. The sun was still shining in my dreams, beating on my head. I was pretty stiff the next morning in spite of showers and massage, but the stiffness eased off when I started running. Mark took me back to Mira Loma, leaving at seven, and I did five miles before breakfast.

Sue took the trailer to a suitable spot just off the road to have breakfast ready for me. Unfortunately, Clive and his friends had managed to lock the door from the inside while playing in the trailer, so nothing was ready when I arrived. We had to break in through a window.

Still, | enjoyed my breakfast on the road and had a good appetite. A radio car came by for a brief interview, and a little way down the road we had a charming reception from the people of Riverside. The mayor came out to meet me and a school band played cheerful music in the supermarket car park. The man who had organized it all even ran a mile down the road with me.

After all this attention I felt quite enthusiastic about the day’s task, especially as it was cloudier and cooler than the day before. We said goodbye to our friends in Riverside and felt that we were at last cutting our ties to the familiar world and casting ourselves adrift on a sea of unknown experiences.

The morning run led me through the orange groves, with the scent of blossoms everywhere, then out into the semidesert country and past the vast March Air Force Base, from where the huge bombers of the Strategic Air Command set out to patrol a quarter of the world, from the Rockies to China. How trivial our own enterprise seemed against this glimpse of global reality.

The last part of the day was hard, as I had to turn north and make a climb of almost 2,000 feet in six miles. Just as darkness was approaching and I was feeling tired, Sue drove down the road to meet me, and a bunch of boys from San Jacinto College stopped and ran a little way with me. I had done 47 or 48 miles that day and got to bed before 10:00.

The next day I was very stiff. I started at 7:00 and walked most of the first hour, between Beaumont and Banning. There were reports of a dust storm ahead, and it hit us when we stopped for a midmorning break. When I got out to start running again, the wind blew me along almost faster than my stiff legs could go, but once I turned south and headed toward Palm Springs, things improved.

In Palm Springs, Clive and I were interviewed by Don Wilson, a veteran of the American TV world. Then we had to go to the bank, so I didn’t get as much rest as I needed.

The temperature was up to nearly 90 degrees, whereas I had been training in 40 to 50 degrees at home. I was taking care to protect myself against the sun by using sun cream, dark glasses, a cap, and a scarf. Every three miles I would sponge myself down with cold water and drink half a pint of diluted orange juice. Occasionally I would take a salt tablet. After that first day I never suffered from cramps and never with sunburn or heat exhaustion.

The ole body begins to stiffen up

After four days I had covered 187 miles, but the fifth day brought the average down. After the first morning run I stiffened up badly and could only walk. It took me seven hours to cover 25 miles, leaving me 20 miles short of Blythe, my destination. We stayed in a good motel and I had a shower, a good dinner, and a good night’s sleep. The next morning we left before 6:00, drove back to where Thad stopped, and I covered the 20 miles into Blythe in three and a half hours, without really pushing myself. This was the longest continuous stretch of the trip so far, but I had conquered my first major obstacle, the Californian desert.

That day I covered an additional 23 miles, finishing in a trailer park in Quartzite, Arizona. Along the highway were relics of the pioneer settlements of the 19th century: rusty wire, corrugated iron rooves, and the occasional old leather boot, like the one Charlie Chaplin had for supper in The Gold Rush.

The next day dawned mercilessly clear. It was hot by 9:00 and it was 37 miles to the next place, Salome. For the next two days it was a personal battle

Courtesy of Bruce Tulloh

against the sun. I had a drink stop every three miles. After each stop I would try to run as far as possible without looking at my watch—it was usually about 10 minutes—then I would stare at my feet and try to think of something else until five minutes had passed, by which time the car should be only a mile ahead, a shimmering dot in the heat haze. Then I would stare at my feet again and count a hundred paces.

When things got bad I would think of green and peaceful England, or of being down by the shore at the little Devon village I come from, sailing on the river or fishing in the rock pools. Eventually I would arrive, to receive a lovely cold sponge and a drink from Sue, who would be patiently waiting, though getting hotter and hotter herself.

In this weather, with the noonday heat well over 90, I took a three-hour siesta. The caravan [trailer] stayed surprisingly cool, and I was able to doze off into forgetfulness.

I got my tape recorder out and played again and again the tape of music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, which rolled through my mind like soothing waves.

When 3:00 came and it was time to get back on the road, I could resume battle, knowing that within an hour the intensity of the heat would weaken. It was always easier toward the end of the day, even though I was more tired, because each mile added brought the day’s total to a better score.

That day I managed 44 miles and the next day the same. As I had originally allowed three days for crossing this bit of desert, I was able to reach the outskirts of Phoenix exactly on schedule, on the afternoon of the 29th.

All through the two days after leaving Salome we were on dirt road. We rarely saw another car, and the scene must have changed very

<4 Refueling the runner after a day of running.

little since the wandering Apache dominated this area a hundred years ago. On my left the Big Horn mountain looked over the desert and on the road a pair of kites pecked at the carcass of a rabbit; they flapped lazily up as I approached, and I could hear the lizards and the gophers scuttling away between the tufts of coarse grass. As I padded through the dust I might have been one of those Apaches, and the distant cloud that surrounded our trailer might just as well have concealed a wagon train.

Back amidst civilization’s constant growth

A few miles farther on, though, there was no doubt about which century we were in. Another new highway was being pushed through toward Phoenix, and the men with steel helmets and a giant yellow machine were steadily reshaping the countryside to their own pattern.

“By the time I get to Phoenix . . .” That song will always bring back memories.

Iran seven miles before breakfast and then 11 miles more into the city center. A couple of TV crews came out to film me—my stride lengthened and my style improved—vanity, vanity!

We stopped in the center and did interviews with the press and the local radio stations. When I started again, I was accompanied by a young man with a tape recorder, who jogged alongside for half a mile, asking questions, which I thought wasn’t bad. He obviously thought it wasn’t bad either, because we learned that he played that tape 14 times in the next 24 hours!

It was very hot in Phoenix and having had little rest, I was finding it hard work, with the traffic fumes and the pavement. At lunchtime we reached Tempe and bought a pizza. We stopped at the University of Arizona campus. I had a doze and Sue went for a walk—only to find herself mixed up in a student riot, where the police charged a group of protesters occupying a building. As with all our days, we just witnessed things and moved on. The afternoon took me through Mesa, another sprawl of hot concrete. I passed sign after sign saying “Cold Beer!” and “Frosted Pepsi!” It was mental torture.

What was worse, my left thigh was stiffening up badly, and the day ended with my walking at less than four miles an hour. Sue picked me up four miles short of the evening campsite, as it was getting dark. A reporter from Sweden came out to interview me and two men from the Mesa Tribune. After the hard day it was great just to sit down and drink cold beer.

Thad been running for 10 days now and had covered 440 miles, mostly through desert. I believed that the worst was behind us, but it was just beginning.

On the morning of May 1, my left thigh was very stiff. I started walking early and did five miles while Sue took the trailer on ahead and prepared breakfast.

As we got higher, the temperature dropped and I managed 20 miles of walking before lunch and then had a siesta.

An additional four hours of walking took us to the little mining town of Superior just before sundown. The life of the town centers around a great copper mine, over a mile deep, which employs hundreds of men, mostly Mexicans and Indians. On one side is a rocky bluff, from where the Apache chief Geronimo is said to have hurled himself to his death to avoid capture.

The next morning I jogged slowly up the winding road, climbing 2,000 feet to the crest of the ridge before breakfast. This was all right, but when I started downhill the trouble started. My left thigh was hurting a lot, so l was coming down heavily on my right foot, which jarred the right ankle. It was a painful descent to the valley, where we reached the next town of Miami. The radio station had put out a bulletin and a lot of people turned out to watch me pass through. It wasn’t much of a place: tin huts and a dusty wired-in playground, but the kids were full of enthusiasm. They came running alongside to wish me luck and shake my hands. They were all colors, and they touched me very deeply. Maybe fatigue and pain made me more easily moved, but tears came to my eyes when I left them there, standing under the slag heap. What would happen to their enthusiasm for life? Did they stand as much chance as the kids I taught in England?

I managed only 35 miles that day, and I could feel that I was running into serious trouble. My right shin was very sore from the downhill running, and I knew that shin soreness could lead to a stress fracture.

The joys of camping out in the woods

At least we had a good overnight stop at Jones Water Campground, a federal parks site. We were able to swim in the lake and light a campfire.

The next morning it took me two hours to walk the first seven miles. The only hope was to get some boots, so we drove into Globe and bought some miner’s boots. I walked for an hour before lunch and a further two and one-half hours in the afternoon, making only 19 miles for the day. I was writing a weekly column for the Observer newspaper in England, and when I sent it off on the previous Friday—no e-mailing in those days!—I was still on schedule, so the folks at home would not be worrying. As I limped along the road I kept doing sums in my head. If I had to walk for a week, doing 30 miles a day, then a week of running at 50 miles a day would bring me back on a schedule to beat the 73-day record, if not to achieve my 66-day target.

Leaving aside the pain and the limp, I felt very healthy. The scenery in the mountains was glorious and so was the weather: mid-60s, blue skies, white clouds. Ahead of me lay the Salt River Canyon. We had heard a lot about it. “Wait till you git to them hills,” they said, “that Salt River Canyon is really something.”

It was. I was lucky to be injured while we were passing through the most spectacular scenery of the journey—a 3,000-foot cleft in the mountains, hollowed and sculptured. The rock strata stood out like a giant layer cake, eroded by the forces of wind and rain, and down in the bottom of the gorge we could see the bridge and two little dollhouses that turned out to be the store and the filling station. Sue drove me down to the bottom, where we found a campsite close to the river and had time for a dip before supper. This was the only spot on the entire trip where we spent two nights. I knew I had to be patient, and it gave me time to think back over the series of events that had led me here. —End of excerpt

Eo * *

| started out running

I was always a runner: small, skinny, and quick on my feet, I ran everywhere in my grandparents’ big house, where we lived during the war.

My mother’s family were all good at sports. My mother was not as good at tennis as the others, but at school she was never beaten in any race, and even at 70 she would run up and down the sand dunes, playing games with her grandchildren. Running was the only sport I could excel in at school. I enjoyed cricket and tennis, but my eyes let me down, and I was far too light for any kind of football.

Even on the track I could do well only at longer distances; I was a slow developer, lacking in muscle power. I did get onto the cross-country team, but I was not awarded any colors. That was one of those random but crucial events by which the course of life is determined. Had I been given my colors, I would have retired from sport at 18 and concentrated on the academic life, where I was more successful. As it was, I said to myself: “Right, I’ll show them!”

There were boys at school who were far better runners than me, but they never ran again. It is something we all know, that there is undiscovered talent in every town in every country.

From school I went straight into the military; two years of national service was compulsory for all men in those days. If I had been any good at sport, they would have kept me at the depot to run for the regiment, but as it was, I found myself, a few months later, on a troopship bound for Hong Kong.

There was little real work to do. The Korean War was just over, and there was plenty of time for sport. As we were a small unit, I was welcomed as a member of the track team and always had time for training. The standard of distance running in that hot, crowded colony was never high, and within a few months I was army champion at 5,000 meters and running in the Colony Championships. For the first time in a race, instead of just hanging on grimly, I found myself up with the leaders and feeling good. The thrill of giving your final effort, forgetting your tiredness, and roaring round the last bend and through the tape is something a runner never forgets.

After Hong Kong, though, it didn’t happen that often. I came back to England as a 15-minute-plus three-mile runner, which time does not win many races. However, the following autumn I started my college career as a freshman at Southampton University. For most of us, college days are something we look back on with pleasure, and the older we get, the better it looks in retrospect. It was a small college in those days, with a cross-country team of about a dozen men, who became good friends. We talked running in most of our spare time, analyzing races, comparing training diaries, and training together under the streetlights through the winter months.

Races by the hundreds

In those three years I ran 200 races. In the track season we often had small midweek matches where I would run the mile, the half mile, and the relay leg. Most of the tracks were grass, which is where I discovered how much easier it is to tun in bare feet. Some races were very easy, when we ran cross-country against army teams; the top three of our team could run in together and enjoy huge teas in the canteen afterward.

Some races were very tough—particularly the major cross-country races which, in those days, were over nine miles, usually three laps of a muddy, hilly course, with several hundred runners. We would travel for hours, run to exhaustion, fight for a dribble of water to get the caked mud off our legs, and then set off on a long journey home, sustained by cheese rolls and chocolate bars because our student grants would not run to a meal in a restaurant.

Of all those college races, the most exciting was the Hyde Park relay in the center of London. Most of the universities in Britain took part, and everyone ran the same three-mile leg, so you could tell exactly where you stood, as an individual and as a team.

In 1957 we had a good squad. I took over on the fourth of six stages with a line of runners ahead of me and handed over in the lead, and we held on to win. The satisfaction of that team effort was tremendous—so much greater than just winning an individual race.

I got the same satisfaction when my club team, Portsmouth, won the English Cross-Country Championships. We were a team of very mixed background: dockyard workers, paratroopers, and students, and we had to fight hard amongst ourselves to make the top six, but that made us a strong team, held together by a dynamic manager, Andy Gibb.

In Britain it is never too hot to run and seldom too cold to run. The crosscountry season is followed by road relays, and then you are straight into the track season, so you essentially race 12 months of the year.

Training by the numbers My training at that time followed the program laid down by Franz Stampfl, the Austrian who had helped Roger Bannister to his four-minute mile only a few years earlier. Stampfl believed in low mileage and hard interval training, which suited me fine. A good week’s training in spring 1958, aged 22, went like this:

¢ Sunday: 8 X 880 yards, average 2:16

* Monday: 6 X 500 yards over sand dunes

° Tuesday: 12 X 400 yards on grass

° Wednesday: Rest

¢ Thursday: 6 X 400 yards fast, on grass

¢ Friday: 10-mile road run

¢ Saturday: 6 X 880 yards, average 2:16

That week totaled over 40 miles, which was a lot for me. In the whole year,

with no weeks off, I ran only 1,780 miles. In the following year, when I won the