There are no bad experiences,” my now deceased father said from

behind the microphone. Recently, with the help of videotape, I was reliving his pep talk to the troops at the 1987 Boston Marathon clinic. Actually, you could say this former World War II Navy physician was practicing the art of medicine, even as he stood there in his unlikely dress blues: a polo shirt and jeans.

Anxious runners from all over the country filled the hall. More runners, perhaps, than had joined him in his first Boston Marathon back in 1965. Now, 23 years later, prostatic cancer had made its way along the course of his bones, making the marathon distance an event of his past. His beloved Beantown streak was over. His annual trek to this “theatre for heroism” was now being reduced to a simple pilgrimage to the heights of the podium.

Always operating under the Hippocratic Oath, the good doctor would attend to the needs of the brigade arrayed before him.

Time was growing short. Months of training had been invested. You could sense that the festive mood of the weekend was becoming more weighted with seriousness as Sunday’s shadows grew longer. The potential heroes waiting half anxiously, half eagerly for battle, were looking for a little last-minute psychic massage. Something to rub away any doubts regarding their coming quest.

Who better to minister to them than this wily veteran of 22 Bostons? If experience is the great teacher, they were coming to someone who was emeritus in this field of marathoning. If anyone could, he would take the worry factor out of play.

Here I was watching all of this on videotape—years later—but feeling Dad coming alive. I was being drawn in, entertained, inspired, and all the rest, for the umpteenth time.

For here was the man who had been there from the beginning. Or, almost the beginning. Before “running.” Before “jogging.” That is, before the running boom of the 1970s.

Now, as I speak at running clinics, I tell the gathering that when my father began his midlife journeys to Boston, his running life was a self-creation, a constant work in progress. Injecting some hyperbole, I say, “In those days there were no races, no doctors, no women. … There were no timers at Boston after four hours!”

George Sheehan, Jr.’s running odyssey began one hot afternoon behind our house. In those days being seen in public running “in your underwear” was cause for raised eyebrows. Schoolboys, maybe. But grown men? The seeds of revolution were planted in that backyard, as he ran enough laps to cover a mile.

Possessed of an Irish temper fueled by a large family at home and an even larger patient load, Dad nonetheless was not known for using foul language. So, his exhausted diatribe at the end of his first run surprised us as he staggered through the screen door into the house.

When he needed races, he would beg entry into our high school crosscountry meets. If he ever got hurt, he found his physician friends ignorant of acure. “Rest, or quit running,” would be their prescription. When he discovered that podiatrists often had the answer and said so in public, he was considered a heretic. You could see he was slowly breaking from the herd. He would find his own truth on the roads.

Training advice was hard to find. He had been a college runner, and my brother and I were on school teams, so we often discussed training theory. Exercise physiology was in its infancy. Human potential was still the subject of myth. Women’s running, for instance, was restricted in the Olympics to races no longer than 800 meters. Little Joan Benoit was probably having cookies and milk at the blue table in kindergarten.

So, my father learned on his own. That keen, come-through-the-back-door mind of his was open to almost any idea. Some worked, some didn’t.

Watching the tape, I thought about Dad’s journey down that running road less traveled. And how there always was a method to his madness. There was that race early in his career, when he decided to brew what he thought was the

He finished in heroic fashion. Old-timers still mention that race tome. Why not? Who could forget this moaning and groaning harrier as he raced to the finish . . . with one leg completely brown? Years later, I wondered if FloJo’s people had seen something in those contrasting legs?

In time, he learned how to avoid those problems with “number two.” As for “number one,” when racing, he recommended in so many words that we “just do it!” Short spurts worked best, he advised.

Turning the world of hygiene upside down, again, he confessed that his midday runs from his office were followed by a simple towel-down. No need to shower, he told his readers. Honest sweat is odorless. Anxious sweat is the culprit. In fact, he reasoned, it’s precisely those pressured souls who need the stress relief of a run. No need for a deodorant, then. His patients never complained.

I mentioned his “moaning and groaning” racing style. And I might add he was usually seen after races down on his hands and knees. “Help that old man,” I’ve heard spectators say at our summer race series.

“No, no, that’s Dr. Sheehan. He does that after every race!”

In extremis, he was. He always ran hard. But his behavior was in reality a product of “belly breathing,” discovered from the Oregon runners of Bill Bowerman. It’s the natural way to maximize your oxygen uptake. Groaning through pursed lips helps while running; going down on all fours is perfect for the postrace recovery. You see Dr. George Sheehan in the 1988 Asbury Park the method? 10K.

My father earned a reputation for challenging the status quo. The unexamined experience was not worth having, he felt. So, he took his talents to the test. He began running Boston.

I finally joined him in 1970. Three years after my last college race, I decided to give this Boston thing a try. It would be my father’s sixth Boston. In that time the race had tripled in size to just over 1,000 entries. Negotiating a 90-degree turn on the town square at Hopkinton would soon force the race to change its route. Raceday seemed like Armageddon to the locals that day. The Russians weren’t coming, but it must have seemed that way.

The Boom could be heard in the distance.

The trip from the Jersey Shore would be a six-hour Sunday drive. As usual, Dad would putter up in his trusty Volkswagen Beetle. That was the “people’s car,” quite apropos for transit to a race that had few stars and mostly ordinary people toeing the starting line.

We were joined in our journey by another George, a mild-mannered schoolteacher, prone to using words like “golly,” and “gee.” His Brooklyn roots, similar to Dad’s, led to neighborhood stories. Race strategies were discussed. Everything would be new for George and me. Dad was on his sixth tour of duty. He was the vet. He knew there were plenty of minefields on the way to a successful finish. We listened carefully to his advice.

So there we were, the three Georges. We were a cozy, childlike threesome on the Yellow Brick Road to Boston. Gray skies and drizzle, thunderous trucks, and wicked traffic that beat the Beetle around like a Ping-Pong ball couldn’t put a damper on our excitement.

We checked into the Lennox Hotel, right on Boylston Street near the finish. Many of today’s newer hotels were still in the planning stage. Other long-time regulars at Boston checked in, too. [imagined each of these hardy individualists had raised some eyebrows back home, too.

Like Dad, they had broken from the herd. Their annual return to the Lennox had that “same time, next year” feeling. Each of us came to write his own script. Each hoped for a happy ending.

Dr. Sheehan—with long-time friends George Hirsch and Fred Lebow—at Sheehan’s 70th birthday party.

But first, what to do for dinner. Blue laws in those days had most restaurants closed. So, there we were in the labyrinth of Back Bay Boston. Dad was our Moses, leading a pack of a dozen or so runners through the streets. We were searching for the Promised Land of Pasta. In truth, we looked like a band of what would years later be called “the homeless.” You see, fashion was not our strong point. Designer wear was not the running rage. After all, Frank Shorter’s victory at Munich was still two years away.

We finally saw a red neon sign in the darkness, signaling a chain restaurant. Now, arranging seating for 12 is not exactly a waitress’s delight. Icould see that right away. There was an end-of-the-day tension as she returned for our order. As we reviewed the menu, we found that the carbos we needed were offered in only one selection. But it appealed to both our palate and our pocketbook. “The children’s portion of spaghetti, please,” each of us announced. Our orders shortened the waitress’s paperwork, for sure, but I’m afraid it had the same shortening effect on her temper as well. Our frugal tip couldn’t cover the damage.

Then it was back to the hotel and the Land of Nod.

Race morning brought gray, rainy skies and 40-degree chills. As I looked out my hotel window, I could see legendary race director Jock Semple furiously herding runners into buses on Boylston Street. He was hotter than the traditional postrace beef stew. Hardly a labor of love for him, I thought.

But the time was at hand. Time to go to war.

As it was, I survived. Negative splits saved me as I played defense with the course. My father had learned that strategy in his first Boston. Having crashed and burned in a previous race, he was told by an aging Austrian Olympian, “Use the first seven miles as a warm-up.” Dad was 202nd out of 225 when he went through Framingham. He crossed the finish 95th. Lesson learned.

I learned some lessons, too. My low-mileage training was barely enough. Iran really on the memory of my college fitness. My postrace stiffness lasted for days. Forget about the legs; I never knew biceps could be sore—or nipples, either, for that matter.

Two years later I came back with lots of training under my belt (and bandaids for my nipples), determined to improve my time. Two of my brothers joined my father and me at the starting line.

Yes, I was in better shape, but I didn’t factor in the weather. It was 25 degrees hotter. The three Sheehan boys all crashed and burned. “It’s not the heat that kills, it’s the pace,” my father would say.

I recall hitting the wall first, at about 17 miles. I gave in to Defeat, and not wanting to discourage the rest of the clan, I decided to hide behind some bushes. Isilently blessed my brothers-in-arms as they plodded by. But their own Valley of Death awaited them.

Meanwhile, Dad patiently reeled us all in. Once again he had figured out a better way—negative splits!

As he partied back in the room at the Lennox, his second son lay nearby in his wife’s arms, dimly aware that he was alive. It was a solemn scene. Have you ever seen Michaelangelo’s statue “the Pieta”?

The videotape continued to stir old memories. . .. Over the years I saw, and felt, Dad’s medicine work its magic many times. He spoke not as a highbrow above it all but as a fellow sufferer. He had, in the words of our running president, felt their pain.

Dad knew bad days are part of the game, especially at Boston. He wrote about just such a day in his classic book Running & Being:

So, here he was again at Boston. He couldn’t run, but he could preach. Despite his condition, I realized watching this tape that there was no whine in him. All his concentration was centered on this lovable but needy band of runners.

Dad knew that too much prerace worry could doom the training process. He also knew that just as his cancer called for a two-pronged hormone therapy, these worried runners needed additional attention, as well. His remedy was a protocol calling for a quote from G. K. Chesterton. It would add support to his idea that “there are no bad experiences.”

Chesterton, you may know, was a British writer and thinker, popular in the early 1900s. Much like my dad’s father, Chesterton was a portly man with a keen mind. But he was not an athlete. Running in his day was the rare pursuit of the leisure class, usually the lads at Oxford and Cambridge.

However, Chesterton’s words in this case could be perfectly applied to the marathon experience. So, Dad went deftly to his bag of quotes from dead philosophers and applied the treatment: “Whatever is worth doing,” he calmly told the huddled mass, “is worth doing . . . badly!”

Laughter raced through the room! Always a sign that the crowd had taken the cure. Suddenly that gray Boston chill was gone. With it, that prerace anxiety. Within moments, a sunnier mood enveloped this band of hardy foot soldiers.

To add icing to his philosophical cake, Dad gave them one more dose of British therapy with a quote from Roger Bannister: “The marathon,” he told them solemnly, “is the acme of athletic heroism.”

They would savor that thought over their pasta later that night. The treatment was done.

As the body has a mind of its own, these runners were now in a state of assured relaxation. They now knew everything would be all right, despite the enormity of their 26-mile challenge.

Dad and son in Colorado a few years before Dr. Sheehan’s death in 1993.

Whatever cruelties April in Boston could harbor, each of these “experiments of one” knew they would respond with their best effort. In short, they were confident they would find a way to “win.”

It’s a wonderful running life, I thought, as the tape came to its end.

The Marathon & Beyond staff will head to Boston again this year for the John Hancock Sports & Fitness Expo on Saturday, April 17, and Sunday, April 18, at the Hynes Convention Center. Highlights include these:

distribution of complimentary copies of the March/April and May/June issues of M&B * sale on great running books—our biggest collection ever! ¢ special offer to all expo attendees who subscribe (or renew a current subscription) Special guests at the Marathon &Beyond booth will include such luminaries as Kathrine Switzer, Roger Robinson, Dr. David E. Martin, and Nancy Clark. Hope to see you in Boston!

“The philosophical bible for runners…a genuine classic.” — Joe Henderson, Runner’s World

“More than anyone, Dr. George Sheehan widened running’s moral purpose, which was not to live longer but to live better, to have more energy and self-worth and clarity for all the more important things to do in life than run.”

—Robert Lipsyte, New York Times