ON the ROAD WITH JOE HENDERSON

We met in person only once, and then for less than an hour almost 30 years ago. Yet I count Jack Foster as one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had. Like all the great ones, he has never stopped giving.

Measured by the most said in the least words, one of the best books ever written about running was really just booklet length—Foster’s Tale of the Ancient Marathoner. Its first words, and far from its best, aren’t his but mine

that introduce him to readers.

“If a friendship can be measured by the number of letters two people exchange,” I wrote in the foreword, “then I can count Jack Foster among my best friends. On my desk here now is an inch-thick folder of lightweight blue aerogrammes postmarked ‘Rotorua, New Zealand.’ I feel I know Foster about as well as I know any runner.”

At the time we hadn’t yet met. We tried at the Munich Olympics before the marathon he ran there at age 40.

Iwormed my way into the Olympic Village, found the New Zealand compound, and knocked on the door that I’d learned was his. No one answered.

Oh, well, I thought at the time, ll try again later in the Games. But a few days later, everything changed for that Olympics and for all to follow. No intruder sneaked into the Village again.

Our writing back and forth continued, peaking during his writing of that wonderful little booklet (which I edited for publication in 1974). He handwrote it in tiny script across almost 100 pages of aerogrammes.

By then the sport knew him as the world masters marathon record holder. His mark of 2:11:19, set at age 41 while silver-medaling at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, would stand until 1990.

We finally did meet, briefly, at the Boston Marathon in 1976. The meeting was awkward, as we tried to reconcile the person imagined from written words with the one now standing before us, speaking.

Though his measurements (about 5 feet, 8 inches and weighing in the 130s) were known to me, I was surprised by how small he looked. We expect people who have done big things to be bigger than life.

Jack and I didn’t say much that night, at least not to each other. We stood together at a question-and-answer clinic, where he wowed the crowd with his simple wisdom.

He did the same for me as he now gave voice to what he had told me by letter over the years. Though we never talked again, I would never stop repeating his words.

Other runners feel that way, too. Jack’s booklet was a treasure when published 30 years ago and is much