together in early 1961, dubbing themselves the Minnesota Road Runners Club (MRRC) and later evolving into what is now known as the Minnesota Distance Running Association (MDRA). Lacking appropriate clothing, shoes, gear, or any understanding from the nonrunning public, this tight-knit squad of nine runners hit the streets of the Twin Cities purely for the love of the sport.

MRRC’s founders are now seen as revolutionaries in the eyes of local hardcore runners. Those trailblazers included Pat and Emily Lanin, who are largely credited with breathing life into the organization. High school sweethearts from Virginia, Minnesota, the couple settled in St. Paul. With one year of eligibility left, Pat Lanin ran cross-country and track at the University of Minnesota under famed coach Roy Griak (Lanin first attended Virginia Junior College in Virginia,

Minnesota).

The club began as a result of the Lanins’ desire to provide the small running community a forum in which to compete. Bruce Mortenson of St. Louis Park, a

Minneapolis suburb, was a national champion in the steeplechase at the University of Oregon under Bill Bowerman. He remembers his postcollegiate running days in Minnesota, saying, “They were the first ones to put on races. They started the road runners club simply because there wasn’t anything for them outside of

college.”

Among the MRRC charter members was Bob Harris, a New Jersey native who was rooted in the already-thriving East Coast running scene. While the

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Lanins were the organizers, Harris was the evangelist, says Pat. “His soapbox was distance running, and I was held under his sway.”

The ragtag operation also included Minnesota legend Ron Daws, whose commitment to the sport could only be described

s “fanatical.” “He became a top-flight runner by sheer will,” says Lanin of the 1968 Olympic marathoner.

<4 The Minnesota Distance Running Association’s newsletter.

Ron Daws (left) and
Van Nelson (right) at the
Macalester College track
in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hoag remembers, “He’d go in the [University of Minnesota] fieldhouse and run for hours. He’d be there when we started our practice, and he’d \ still be there when we F { \ were done. The guys ~ ts on the track team just thought Daws was nuts.” Famous for making his own shoes as well as a homemade treadmill, he was the inventive and creative character of the bunch. He would later be featured in a 1972 Playboy magazine article titled “The Purity of the Long-Distance Runner.” In it, author John Medelman noted that marathoners like Daws “were as rare as auks.”

The crew of Twin Cities runners organized for the first time on March 12, 1961, in the parking lot of Minneapolis’s Columbia Golf Course following the club’s inaugural race. The box of aged archives paints a picture of the day: “The course was clear and smooth except for a stretch of ankle-deep snow covering about 300 yards at the end of the circuit.” The 39-degree temperature, clear skies, and gentle breeze made for good racing conditions for the seven finishers on the presumed five-mile course (later found to be only 4.6 miles). Sweat soaked and chilled, the group gathered around the back of Pat Lanin’s car on that brisk, early-spring morning to discuss running and racing. By the end of year one, the

MRRC had nine dues-paying members, 14 organized races, and an annual budget of $28.50.

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On the fringe

Although the MRRC’s membership more than doubled in 1962, the 20 members remained on the periphery of recognized sport. Mortenson contends that as a runner, “Back then, you really felt like a renegade.”

“The running, to us, was kind of countercultural. We were thumbing our noses at society,” reminisces Lanin. “We had long, hairy mustaches, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with hair down to the collar. Definitely part of the motivation was the rebellious aspect of running.”

Hoag grins when he remembers running in thermal long underwear and corduroy pants with an anorak jacket. He would sport a paper mask when the temperature dipped below zero. “I probably got a form of resistance training running in that 5 pounds of clothes,” he jokes. Mortenson ran in shoes he dug out of the lost-andfound bin at St. Louis Park High School. Many of the regular marathoners drank sugar water and took dextrose tablets as midrace fuel.

Passing drivers heckled and honked at the MRRC gang as they logged their miles. Lanin shakes his head, saying, “You’d get beer bottles thrown at you and people giving you the bird.” Hoag continues, “You could almost count on it at least once during a run.”

Perhaps not surprising for this bunch, 35-mile runs in 5 inches of snow were standard. Lanin puts it best: “I would call these guys that we had in the early days “smash-face runners.’ These guys would rather take a board to the face than walk in a race. They were hard core. They were out to run. They were not joggers.”

Lanin remembers being out on the streets of the Twin Cities and going weeks without seeing another running soul. “There were only a few guys in the beginning. There were so few people running that if we saw a runner anywhere in the Cities when we were driving, we could tell who it was from the back,” explains Emily Lanin. Pat laughs, adding, “Or, if we saw another runner, and we didn’t know them, we’d stop the car and get out. This was an emergency.”

The Lanin abode became home base for this offbeat group of harriers. They were all friends and competitors. “Pretty much everybody knew everybody,” says Mortenson. “You were friends until the gun went off,” explains Hoag.

The postcollegiate scene

While the state produced a handful of notable runners in the first half of the 20th century, college diplomas tended to signal an end to running careers. “There really wasn’t much available for postcollegiate runners at the time,” says Mortenson.

Hoag agrees. “If it hadn’t been for those guys [Lanin and Daws], I probably would have hung it up, because there wasn’t anyone to support your running.” The postcollegiate superstar continues, “I remember Ron telling me there’s so much more running after college. And he said it was more fun. It turns out he was right.”

Lanin reminisces about thumbing through the AAU record books and thinking, “We can break that, and we can break that, and we can break that.” So, he says, “We just set up races, got sanctioned, and started setting American records at the

Macalester track.” Just like that, the tribe began knocking off records in many of the lesser-run distances, such as the 6,000 meters, 8,000 meters, and the 30,000 meters, all at a small St. Paul-based college track.

“We ended up setting all kinds of records that were listed but rarely ever run. It was like looking in the Guinness book and saying, ‘Oh, hell, I can do that,’” says Lanin. Along with those records, Van Nelson narrowly missed the 5,000-meter American record on that same track. Later, the Minneapolis native would go on to run the 10,000 in the 1968 Olympics.

When they weren’t breaking records, MRRC members were competing in a number of now-defunct racing competitions that were popular in the 1960s. Hour races, 10-mile races, 24-hour relays of 10 runners, and various postal competitions’ were all held on the world-class Macalester track.

While the runners delighted in the chance to compete on an all-weather track, the majority of MRRC races were pavement pounders. Hoag remembers road races at the time being pretty primitive. Even the Boston Marathon didn’t have water stops until 1978. The MRRC races were clocked using car odometers. They were timed by handheld stopwatches. Color-coded cards or Popsicle sticks were handed to finishers to keep track of their places. All tabulations were done by hand.

Of the Minnesota AAU 30,000-meter championship on Sunday, May 8, 1966, the MRRC archives tell the story of perplexed passersby: “A good many carloads of Mother’s Day sightseers along the River Road saw quite a different sight.” Today’s Twin Cities streets are rerouted nearly every weekend nine months out of the year for races, but in the 1960s, running competitions were rare and could be described only as bizarre.

The stuff of legends

The 1960s were perhaps the optimal time for the MRRC to band together, a motley crew of activists running counter to the mainstream. The decade would see some of the most notable postcollegiate success stories in the state, the first women runners on the scene, and a slow inching toward the eventual running boom of the 1970s. It also gave way to a long list of new Northland superstars and Olympians, including Garry Bjorklund, Steve Plasencia, Janis Klecker, Dick Beardsley, and Bob Kempainen.

In an old handwritten letter by Lanin, he recognizes that he and the MRRC were ahead of the curve. In hindsight, he refers to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, citing Buddy Edelen’s sixth-place marathon finish in an American record time of 2:18:12, Billy Mills’s gold in the 10,000 meters, and Bob Schul’s 5,000-meters gold. “This was the bellwether of the eventual flood of distance running which would deluge the USA,” he writes.