would bea strange, incongruous sight in any other context. Here, at Boston, in the race hotel, it’s normal. It goes on for three days. If groups of runners came jogging around the tables as you sat in the splendid dining room, you wouldn’t be surprised.

10:30 A.M.— The press conference is in the Gold Room, and the name says it all. The Emperor Nero would have felt athome here. Inkeeping with the setting, the occasion is seamlessly conducted by the John Hancock Corporation, honoring their sponsored athletes. It’s good to see running take on such class, such a sense of occasion and significance. For all that, the tone is in no way splashy. Those who talk about brash Americans or crass sportspeople should drop by this function. Here are some of the world’s supreme physical specimens, yet there is no flexing of muscles, no bragging, no vaingloriousness. They pay tribute to John Hancock, or to Jesus Christ, or to rival runners, but never to themselves. They also pay tribute to the Boston Marathon. “It was more than an Olympics to win here,” says Moses Tanui with quiet sincerity, “because of the history.”

The audience is also low-key, though equally elite. Sitting modestly with their notebooks out are more Olympic medalists and Boston champions than you could count, working now as writers, broadcasters, agents, race promoters, statisticians, photographers. They know this sport from the inside and they love it, but they are here to work, not to be seen and

September/October 1998

admired. When the elite runners move to the tables where they will be available for interviews, the journalists are out of their seats as if the starting gun had fired.

The Kenyan and Ethiopian tables instantly vanish behind a crush of polo shirts and microphones. Fastest to Fatuma Roba’s table is a vivacious woman with striking red hair whose attention I hope to attract later. A weekend can’t be all work. Meanwhile I move among the neglected tables of the lesser stars and have fascinating conversations with Brits Dave Buzza from Cornwall and Karen MacLeod from Scotland’s Isle of Skye (who will turn 40 four days after the race; she ran her first marathon at 34). From Colleen De Reuck I hear my first Afrikaans proverb—“Stille water diepe grond,” which translates as “On raceday she will run with a flourish rather than like still waters that run deep.” I listen to the newer Kenyans talking in their soft, shy way, like Peter Ndirangu, a 24-year-old Kikuyu farmer from a family of eight who trains with Moses Kiptanui and Daniel Komen. What does he make of the Gold Room, I wonder.

Unlike many of the journalists, I don’t have to scout out hot newsworthy stories, or make predictions. I hated that aspect of doing TV commentary, being judged by your prophetic powers. When the anchor would ask, “Who’s going to win?’ I always wanted to say, “If I knew that, there would be no point in us all being here.” It’s nice to be less than cutting

edge with the stats. On Monday morning all that will change anyway.

12 noon—If you want the latest running stats and news, have lunch with Tony Reavis. He’s a walking Web site. I mix a lot with experts in different fields—with scholars, researchers, and university professors, and the cognoscenti of running—but for expert information, Tony is in a league of his own. His awesome memory for detail (he could give you, for instance, every Kenyan runner’s tribe, coach, shoe company, and PRs) is matched by an insight into running that I can only call philosophical. We talk, for instance, about that strange, primeval empathy that exists between competing runners, the way you know when to make the break because, as I like to put it, you “smell the moment.” Tony understands.

On my other side is Running Stats editor Paul Christman, an old friend, author of a fine novel, The Purple Runner, and one of the most literate men you could hope to meet. We talk about writers Vikram Seth and Willa Cather, and Paul’s own novel-inprogress. With Sharon Barbano (race announcer for the new Avon circuit anda radio announcer at Boston) also there, and the vivacious red-haired woman who invited us all along (so far so good) catching my eye from time to time across the table, it’s a very good lunch. Kathrine Switzer is her name. She will cover the race for WBZ-TV, with Frank Shorter and Uta Pippig. If her TV schedule permits, I might make a private date with her

later. Such things do go on backstage, even at Boston. After 11 years of marriage and our fifth or sixth Boston together, the prospect is still enticing.

8:00 p.v.—All around an occasion like the Boston Marathon groups of old friends are catching up, meeting, and eating. That night we drove with TV commentator Larry Rawson (whose rapid-recall knowledge of running rivals that of Tony Reavis) for a wonderful dinner with friends from sports television. Such feasts in our modern world are geographically movable, and we might next meet in London or Wellington. But events like Boston are fixed points in the mobile calendar of sport, annual recurrences that are part of our shared history. It’s like that for thousands who are with running friends tonight, having their last steak, their last beer, before the 48-hour countdown to the start.

SATURDAY, April 18″, 11 a.m— Back in the Gold Room, the second press conference is a brunch hosted by the BAA. Yesterday’s conference focused on the new generation, the race to come. This is a celebration of history. The room is full of fame— Rosa Mota, the elder Johnny Kelley, Gelindo Bordin, Joan Samuelson, Amby Burfoot, Bill Rodgers, and many more. I meet Anne Audain, a New Zealand teammate from 1977, now creator of a major women’s run in Boise, Idaho. There are many, too, who may not be past winners but who fill roles in running at an equal level

September/October 1998

of excellence, like scientist—statistician David Martin or administrator— statistician Basil Honikman. Two are specially honored: Tommy Leonard, who for many years ran the social center of Boston running, the Eliot Lounge, and BAA coach Bill Squires. Tributes are also paid in his absence to Lameck Aguta, last year’s winner, who was brutally injured in an assault after returning to Kenya. It reminds us all that life never guarantees the next annual reunion.

1:00 p.m.—The expo overwhelms me. Never happy in big crowds, as I shuffle from booth to booth I feel as if ’mjammed ina massed start where we don’t know which way to run. The energy level is overpowering. I watch the lines waiting for their moment of time with Bill Rodgers or Grete Waitz and marvel at the patient generosity on both sides. I make new friends, and I meet old ones—Mike Piper from Invercargill, New Zealand, and Henry Southworth from Birmingham, England. Both are Boston regulars who are here to run. I chat with Chester Polyester, tackily resplendent in his shiny yellow suit (in my first year of racing in America, 1980, he was Gary Fanelli, a top 10K racer). Then I give a little support to Marc Bloom, whose forthright New York Times article about the “Kenyan problem” is already getting him flak. Fanelli the jester and Bloom the soothsayer: both in their different ways save running from becoming complacent. One reminds us that it’s all play. The other reminds us that

September/October 1998

it’s serious, with moral implications. Both are right.

8:00 p.v.—Dinner that night is with friends from running journalism. In the cab I sit up front, and the driver and I cross-examine each other. I want to know where he’s from—Mexico? Turkey? I can’t quite place his features and accent. He wants to know what we have to do with the marathon. We chat about crowds and runners, and then he says, “But those people that run 2 hours 20, how can they do that? They are notta human.” I go quiet while he negotiates some jostling traffic. Then he says, “How fasta you fun?” “Um, well…er, inmy best year at Boston . . .2:20,” I say. And we both burst out laughing. I think he believes me, because as I leave the cab he leans across and says confidentially, “I’m from Saudi Arabia.”

MONDAY, April 20, 10 A.m.—The Copley Plaza has only one topic of news: Tegla Loroupe’s women’s marathon world record set in Rotterdam the day before. Kathrine and I hear it in the elevator, but it’s everywhere so fast it must be getting pumped through the heating system. We are overjoyed, Kathrine because Tegla is a friend, and in my case, I confess, because I had feared that the record would fall into the clutches of some testosterone-loaded hermaphrodite. The pacing issue begins to buzz around the corridors, and everyone has their own scenario for today’s race, which is less than two hours away.

The atmosphere is getting feverish, so I decide to take some air. I set off to walk the last mile of the course.

Boston Public Library, just handsomely restored, is proudly engraved with famous names and resonant phrases. Over the finish line the great names of American history face those of major British writers: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison opposite Edgeworth, Austen, Bronte, and George Eliot. A few yards away, in Copley Square, the Boston Marathon Memorial (dedicated in 1996) commenorates the names of every Boston winner in an impressive circular pattern. I like a city and a culture that can give equal recognition to these different kinds of achievement.

I walk on along Boylston Street, past a woman wearing a Jesus billboard (“His Pain Your Gain’), and then a cluster of brightly colored concession stands in front of giant inflated cans and bottles, banners, bunting and balloons and a giant screen where the indefatigable Johnny A. Kelley is already being interviewed on TV. He must have been cloned to get in so many places. The Marathon, too, is everywhere— on giant posters by the roadway high on bridges, on a bus resplendent with pictures of runners, Juma Ikaanga prominent, among the people gathering with their coffee and “GO DAD” banner, and at one Kenmore Square bar on the course, just over a mile from the finish, which displays a big sign: “Rosie Ruiz Started Here.” Well, it’s all history.

Twenty-six miles away at a quiet little New England township, 11,000 people are about to embark on an experience that will be engraved in their consciousness for the rest of life. Another 6,000 are out as volunteers to help them, anda million or so more are moving into prime positions in crowds so thick that later I could simply not get through them. Even among the professionals, the journalists back at the hotel, the excitement is mounting, as we position ourselves in the rows of desks and computer terminals facing the giant TV screen. There are two large rooms like that, with facilities for several hundred journalists. Lunch is provided, and a schedule of postrace press conferences is punctiliously followed. The days of scrambling over fences are truly over. But Boston is never just another day at the office. Nearly all of us working in the press center have known the bite of the Hopkinton wind and felt Heartbreak drag at our legs. Other professions might get blasé, but not the people in running. It’s a game; it’s significant: Gary Fanelli and Marc Bloom are both still right.

TUESDAY, April 21″, 10 a.m.— Kathrine and I stayed on overnight after the race. We got our private date. The next morning I talked to Henry and Mike, the friends from England and New Zealand who ran in it, and heard their stories. Journalists and broadcasters move wearily now round the hotel, equally exhausted after the rigors of deadlines or hours on the air,

September/October 1998

and, like runners the day after the big race, unable to change their performance, good or bad. While Kathrine cleared her head with a well-earned run, I spent an hour in the hotel gym pedaling an exercycle and was joined by Tony Reavis, so we did a gasping kind of debriefing. It’s in the books now: Moses Tanui and Fatuma Roba, both running masterly strategic races. Those three days of fevered speculation and prediction as the race apAdventure Running

proached fade away, and no other result seems ever to have been conceivable. That is how history works.

Noon—Time to leave the gilded Fairmont Copley Plaza for another year. On the way to the elevator, we pass a maid’s cart in the corridor. Tethered above it, bobbing over the towels and replacement shampoos, hovers ared, helium-filled balloon. It carries a message that is now history: “Good luck.”

At Its WORST!

In 1989, two runners set off to become the Jirst to run from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney and back—in mid-summer. Lottsa luck, Jellers!

Send $22 in US funds (shipping/handling included) to: Rich Benyo, Box 161,

Forestville, CA 95436, USA

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Allow 6 weeks for delivery. If you wish a personal autograph, please include name of person for whom book is intended.

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September/October 1998

The Three Stages of the Marathon

Like a Multi-Staged Rocket, the Marathon Easily Breaks Down into Three Distinct Segments.

By RICHARD BENYO, JONATHAN BEVERLY, AND MARK CONOVER

¢ ‘T HE MARATHON,” Frank Shorter once said, “is half over at 20

miles.” Serious marathoners agree that the marathon begins as a diehard race at the 18- to 20-mile point; the journey to that point is just that: a journey to a battlefield where the runner confronts the remaining distance and his or her own soul.

Although what occurs after 20 miles is of extreme importance to the outcome of the race, the condition in which you arrive at the battleground has a profound effect upon the outcome.

If you consider the physiology and tactics of marathoning, the race breaks down into three segments:

* The start to roughly 7 miles: Find your pace; set your position; warm up the muscles, lungs, and mind; hold yourself in control.

* Miles 7 to 18: Usually the smoothest portion of the marathon, where your deep muscles are warmed and you establish a rhythm, and where itis easy to “blow up” by running how you feel, because you usually feel good through these miles.

* Miles 18 to the finish: Dig down and go for it. We’ve asked three sub-3-hour marathoners to run you through the three

stages of the marathon, and it is no mere coincidence that as you move from stage 1 to stage 2 to stage 3, the lower the writer’s PR.

Esthet eae Pacing Is Everything

by Richard Benyo

There are essentially three things a runner needs to know about approaching a marathon:

1. You cannot run what you have not practiced during the build-up to the marathon. Certainly, the excitement of the race situation pumps you up to the point that you can potentially run the best race of your life, but that which has not been practiced beforehand cannot be applied to the race.

2. There is no such thing as a “bank” into which you can deposit time and

miles in the early going that will deliver dividends in the final miles. Actually, the opposite is true: Go too fast too early and you’re guaranteed to be bankrupt by the end of the race.

. The secret to running a successful marathon is summed up in one word:

pace.

My favorite story about the converse of good pacing comes via Derek Clayton, the fierce Australian who held the world’s marathon record for 14 years: 1967-81 (2:09:36, set in Fukuoka on December 3, 1967, and 2:08:34, set in Antwerp on May 30, 1969). It was the early miles of the 1969 Antwerp Marathon, in which Clayton would break his own world’s record. He went into the race with the idea of going very fast, and he went out of the blocks that way, but very much under control. As he went through the 10K split in 30:06, there was an unfamiliar Kenyan with him. Clayton turned to the runner as they sped along. “Do you know what your best 10,000 meter time was?” Clayton asked.

“Well, that’s it”’ the unfamiliar runner replied.

Clayton laughed.

“You’ve got to be in it to win it,” the runner said, defending his strategy.

“Well,” Clayton finishes the story, “he wasn’t in it for long, I can tell you.”

One of the most common laments I hear about pacing, or rather, about the lack of pacing, is this chestnut: “I run like I feel. I’ve never been able to run an even pace.”

Of course, that attitude is ridiculous. “Can’t” and “won’t’ are two entirely different concepts. Running an even pace takes self-control and discipline. If you can be disciplined enough to put in the miles needed to race a marathon, you can call upon that discipline to learn even pacing. The concept of even pacing isn’t an alien thing.

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON 11

Arthur Lydiard, the father of successful modern distance running, lists proper pacing among the 1 | essential factors needed for arunner to reach racing potential.

Joe Henderson, currently West Coast Editor of Runner’s World and in 1970 (when he said this) editor of that magazine, put it this way: “Generally, it’s pace that kills, not distance.”

“I’m pretty sure one’s best race times are achieved as a result of even pacing,” Bill Rodgers says. “If I’ve had any success in racing, this is one of the major reasons why. In my training and in my racing, I’ve tried to run ata steady, rhythmic pace.”

“A factor in marathon racing that is of supreme importance is the even pace,” says Manfred Steffny, editor of the German running magazine Spiridon. “In no other sport will you gain so much from an ability to apportion your energy carefully. Poor pacing is disastrous; usually it takes the form of going out too fast.”

Jon Anderson, the 1973 Boston Marathon winner, puts it this way: “If one is to race effectively, he must realize what pace to begin the race at—this is the key to being able to finish the race effectively.”

Even pacing begins months before you arrive at the starting line. Like everything else about running, pacing can be practiced. Since pacing is a matter of running miles in a predetermined time, and since training for a marathon involves running lots of miles, you can practice pacing with every training mile you log.

Unless you are running ata track, where the distances are precisely marked, measuring workout courses accurately is essential to determining pace. Most essential is marking the first mile of each course.

The focus of this article, however, is not learning pacing so much as applying pacing to the early miles of a marathon so you save yourself for the later miles. The point is, pacing is everything. Period.

Let’s jog through the first 7 miles of the marathon, beginning with the countdown 30 minutes before the start.

MINUS 30 MINUTES AND COUNTING

Between 15 and 30 minutes before the marathon start, it is a good idea to gently jog a half-mile at a shuffling pace (three to five minutes per mile slower than your planned race pace). This warm-up will begin to loosen the big muscles of your legs, and it will gradually shift your breathing from anaerobic to aerobic, making the initial miles of the race more comfortable.

Between 10 and 15 minutes before the start, shed your outer clothing and either secure it in your car (if it’s an out-and-back or loop course) or bag it and stow it on the sweats bus.

From 5 to 10 minutes before the start, do half a dozen 40-yard pickups (easy sprints); begin gently, and then, as your legs respond, increase the speed and power; jog 15 to 20 seconds between each pickup.

Five minutes before the start, find your place in the starting field. Many marathons have pacing standards on the side of the starting field indicating the pace that segment of the field hopes to maintain throughout the race. At other races, the start announcer will give you directions for lining up in an appropriate place in the field based on your planned pace. Unless you are able to run 26 five-minute miles in a row, do not place yourself near the front of the field. If you are unsure about where to line up, ask one of the other runners. It is usually good advice to line up on one side of the field or the other, where you’ll have some space to maneuver and not be trapped in the middle of the field.

The ability to get rolling at the start is, naturally, a much bigger problem at megaraces like New York, Marine Corps, Honolulu, or Los Angeles than at the marathons that feature 1,000 runners or fewer. At a big marathon, it will take awhile before you even see the starting line, while in a smaller marathon you’ll likely cross it in 30 seconds or less.

While you are waiting for the starting signal, shake some of the tightness out of your arms and shoulders; gently lift your legs, one at a time, to your chest (this gently stretches the muscles and tendons); blow the air out of your lungs and take a few deep breaths, filling your lungs with fresh oxygen.

THE START!

At most marathons, a countdown from the starting area is chanted by the assembled runners, so you will have a good sense of when the race is about to begin. Be prepared to punch your chronograph at the signal of the start, even though you will not immediately move. Your finish time is based upon the time elapsed from the starting signal. In some large, sophisticated marathons where runners are corralled by qualifying times, adjustments are fed into the computer to reflect more accurately the time the specific groups of runners crossed the starting line. And, of course, with the introduction of the ChampionChip, accurate times are pretty much assured for each runner, although the chips are not yet used at many marathons because of the extra expense.

If it takes you more than three minutes to reach the starting line, reset your chronograph to zero and restart it when you cross the starting line. In a large field you’ll hardly move at all at first. Then a shuffling begins with some

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON fm 13

© KEN LEE

In the early going of a megamarathon, move as the opportunity permits.

forward movement and periodic stops as the front of the pack moves down the course, opening space for runners coming up from behind to fill in. Don’t panic. Move as the opportunity permits. Shuffle forward smoothly. Even when you begin to move somewhat regularly, try to walk fast initially, saving your running muscles.

Once the field moves forward enough to allow you to roll into a shuffling jog, do so, but don’t push too hard. If you see an opening in front of you, flow into it. If an opening is ahead and to one side, check to see if anyone else is coming up to fill it. If no one is, move gently into the opening. Take pains to make all moves smoothly and well planned so you don’t run into or trip other runners, or be stepped on yourself.

The first mile of any marathon can be rather confusing and also somewhat frustrating; you don’t want to waste all your pent-up energy by immediately trying to get into a running rhythm. In reality, the close quarters during the first mile tend to “save” more marathons for runners than ruin them. The tightly packed field makes it difficult for you to get pulled out too quickly. If you are shuffling along on the side of the field, and it is clear for 20 yards ahead, roll into the opening, but don’t sprint into it. Conserve, don’t waste energy.

Gradually, as the runners in front move farther ahead, there will be more and more space for you to maneuver. Gradually you’ Il be able to increase your pace. Do not attempt to make up within the first mile the time you may have lost at the start!

MILE 1

When you reach the first mile, check your time. If you are several minutes slower than you had hoped to be, don’t panic, and don’t attempt to make up the difference over the next mile. The idea is to get back on your pace over the first 5 miles if the field is not too congested, or over the first 10 miles if itis. Readjust your time goals if it took you an unreasonable amount of time to reach the starting line.

If you had planned to run at an 8-minute pace, and you reach the 1-mile mark in 10 minutes, plan to run between 7:45 and 7:50 for the next 9 miles. This will put you back on an 8-minute pace by mile 10. If the field is small and you got out smoothly, immediately try to get into an easy rhythm. During the first mile it’s better to err on the slow side than to go faster than planned. Considering the tremendous physical conditioning you are in at this point, the first mile may very well seem incredibly pedestrian, but don’t give in to the urge to pick up the pace. At 20 miles, your 8-minute pace will not seem so pedestrian, and it may even be a struggle to hold it.

If you reach the first mile a bit on the fast side, immediately slow yourself to what you feel is the proper pace. Don’t slow down below your planned pace to average out your first two miles so they equal your planned pace. Just put the few extra seconds away and forget about them. If you ran a 7:45 first mile, for instance, and you planned to run 8:00, plan to reach mile 2 at 15:45.

If you took more than three minutes to get to the starting line and you reset your chronograph to zero as you crossed the starting line, run the race according to your chronograph and not according to the official time. Your first goal, after all, is to complete the marathon safely.

Ifyou had set a specific time goal that now seems impossible because it took you so long to reach the starting line, you have two options. Accept that you cannot regain the lost time and run on your own chronograph, ignoring the official clock. Then you can still strive to achieve your time goal. Although the published results won’t reflect it, you’ll know what you did. The second option is to try, if you are feeling good when you reach the final 10K, to regain some of the lost time.

It’s not worth jeopardizing your entire race by attempting to make up more than three minutes within the first 10 miles. This inability to get to the starting line quickly inamegamarathon is a prime drawback for the first-time marathoner.

MILES 2 THROUGH 7

Late in the race, it becomes almost impossible for many marathoners to do even the most simple math. This is not the case during the initial 10 miles, so take

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON &® 15

advantage of the segment by settling in, finding your breathing and running rhythm, and do the necessary math and pace adjustments you need to get into your planned pace.

You’ll find yourself running the same pace as many of the runners around you. If you are shooting for a popular time goal (3:00 or 3:30 or 4:00), there will be whole clumps of runners rolling along together. They are attempting to feed off one another and to stay on pace to reach their goals.

If during the first7 miles you want to join such a group mirroring your target pace, that’s fine. If you do join them, run at the edge of the group. Its leaders will typically change periodically. If you are a new marathoner, don’t lead and don’t get absorbed to the point where you feel hemmed in or where you become lulled by the group mind. If you are sensitive to it, and if the group you are with is an experienced one, you can feel the energy coursing back and forth. It is always easier to run the initial 7 to 10 miles with one or more other runners than it is alone, especially if headwinds prevail.

However, there is a tendency when running in a group to allow the group to dictate your pace, seemingly relieving you of the responsibility of staying on top of your planned race. But you need to continue to monitor your own pace at each mile marker. If the group begins dropping behind or getting ahead of your planned pace, gradually leave them and get into your own groove.

Some groups converse as they roll along. Don’t join in. Save your breath for later in the race. If someone addresses a question specifically to you, answer as simply and precisely as possible. If it’s your first marathon, it’s fine to add, “This is my first marathon so I want to listen and learn,” but don’t become engaged in a conversation.

You want to stay on top of all of your body systems, so monitor your physical condition from head to foot at least once a mile: How’s my breathing? Can I hear my footsteps, or are they silent? Am I drinking enough? Could I urinate right now if I wanted to? Am I too hot or too cold? Should I remove a layer of clothing now that I’m warmed up so I don’t overheat? Am I using my arms as I practiced at the track? Is that a passing twinge I feel on the outside of my left knee or have I experienced it before? If I move to the other side of the road, will the different slant of the road alleviate the twinge?

Begin taking fluids from the very first aid station onward. When you approach aid stations, slow down, take your fluids, and walk briskly through the station area as you drink. Do not attempt to drink on the run; fluid splashed on your T-shirt won’t do you any good. Walking gives your running muscles a temporary break, and, more importantly, you remain hydrated.

Drink, and then flow out the other side of the aid station and roll back into arun. Eventually you’ll catch back up with your group or get back onto your pace. (If you are running in a group, make sure that you’re not hemmed in as

you approach an aid station—you don’t want to miss your chance to grab a cup.)

If it’s a cold day, drink one cup of water at the first aid station. If it’s a hot day, drink two cups at the first aid station. You want to begin taking fluid as early as possible, since it takes about 45 minutes even for plain water to be emptied from the stomach and properly processed through the body where it will do some good. Even if it’s cool, your working muscles are using a tremendous amount of fluid to cool themselves. Don’t be lulled into dehydration just because you are enjoying cool weather. You are still perspiring. You need fluid during a marathon no matter what the temperature.

Don’t use electrolyte replacement fluids during the first 10 miles—take only water. You don’t need other fluids yet, and if you take electrolytes too early, the sugar in them could interfere with your body’s attempt to switch to using a greater proportion of fatty acids from the bloodstream.

Once you get beyond 10 miles, your body will begin lusting after sugar in as simple-to-process a form as possible, both to fuel the working muscles and to keep the brain, which requires tremendous amounts of simple sugars to function properly, stable. Here, between 7 and 10 miles, is the place to begin taking electrolyte drinks. You can drink it alone or, if the drink is too concentrated, drink a cup of water to dilute it.

By the time you reach 7 miles, your muscles should be warmed through and through, even to the middle of your dense thigh and calf muscles. Within the next dozen miles, you should experience some of the smoothest, most effortless running of your life. During this period, however, you must be careful not to succumb to the urge to run the way you feel, which usually means running too fast because you feel so good. In real estate, it’s location, location, location; in marathoning, it’s pace, pace, pace.

Pert ets, Managing the Middle Miles by Jonathan Beverly

If the marathon is a 20-mile training run followed by a 10K race, we need not waste time ona separate section for the middle miles. We can view them simply as an extension of the first 7 miles, with the marathoner’s only task to endure the accumulating time and distance. Accepting this model, one of my friends calls them “the stupid middle miles.”

Repeatedly, however, I have been surprised at the crises of body and mind that occurred during these “stupid miles.” I found myself shocked and unprepared when the ragged edges of fatigue surfaced through my veneer of cool composure. More than once I wanted to call “Time Out!” somewhere around mile 12. Like life, however, the marathon allows no time outs, so I have always pressed on, trying to manage these crises literally on the run.

The difficulty of the middle miles is this: They are neither the beginning miles, where control is the clear priority, nor the final miles, where the mandate of survival lends crystal clarity to the task at hand. The middle miles are a transition, where elements of both the beginning and the end exist concurrently, where ideals meet harsh reality, and where the runner must make critical decisions and commitments.

If, as Fred Lebow used to say, the marathon is a metaphor for life, then the marathon’s middle miles can be compared to the middle years of life. Like the middle miles, these years may seem benign and unimportant compared to the formidable demands of childhood or the struggles of old age; research and literature on the life’s span devote the majority of their attention to these bookends. Yet the middle years fill the bulk of one’s life, and the skill with which they are managed determines the satisfaction of the final years—indeed, the success of a life itself.

© KEN LEE

Roll back into a run after passing through an aid station.

The crises of the middle years start when we begin to doubt our life’s direction. This internal ambiguity is unavoidable as we age. While in our youth we drove forward with clear goals, we now find ourselves divided and uncertain. Part of us wants to continue to explore and expand the limits of our world, while another wants to settle and establish continuity and community. We enjoy the authority and confidence of age yet fight to maintain the energy and recklessness of youth.

BALANCE THE CONTRADICTORY

Our natural reaction is either to ignore these problems or to try to solve them by fully embracing one side and disregarding the other. “The serious problems in life, however, are never fully solved,” Jung wrote. “If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost.” We must learn the trick of balancing seemingly contradictory concerns and priorities.

Similarly, we find ambiguity and conflicting priorities in the marathon. Like the life challenges they mirror, they cannot be solved, but must be balanced against each other. The first of three challenges stems from the marathon’s demanding length.

1. Establish a Rhythm While Avoiding Stagnation

By the middle miles of the marathon, we begin to fully understand how long itis. We barely remember the start and cannot yet imagine the end. To survive and succeed, we must develop strategies to pace ourselves physically and emotionally. But we face a danger of falling into a rut and losing contact with the markers that guide us toward our goal.

By our middle years, life also feels interminably long: days blurinto months, tempting us to stagnate in a well-worn routine. When the big picture eludes us, we must establish disciplines that enable us to endure less inspiring days, to pay attention to details, and to care about excellence in our work and relationships.

The marathon also demands a few clear disciplines. We need an efficient stride that consumes miles with minimal effort. Maintaining regular fluid intake should be second nature; the ability to sustain a steady pace must be as sure as a musician’s scales. We can only develop these disciplines during the hundreds of miles leading up to raceday. .

On raceday, ideally we want our legs to maintain the same rhythm over the entire course. But the distance betrays us: the same muscles repeating the same motion will fatigue before the day is through, requiring us occasionally to vary our efficient stride. On a hilly course, practice altering your stride going up or down. When running the Jersey Shore McMarathon, a very flat course, I switched

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON @& 19

to a higher knee lift for a few hundred yards when I felt muscle fatigue, then settled back to my low, marathoner’s stride.

CONSERVING ALL ENERGIES °

Success in the marathon, however, requires that we conserve more than physical energy. As in life, the mental and emotional demands of our days drain us deeper than any physical tasks. We must also learn the discipline of running on cruise control, relying on our practiced form to carry us forward while we reserve our emotional energies for the demanding miles to come. This “autopilot” mode gives us the freedom to dissociate and enjoy the event while it monitors the level of effort and ensures all needs are being met.

Personally I have little difficulty going on autopilot, sometimes achieving this state even during the middle of a workday. During more than one marathon, however, I let the autopilot run too freely and found that I had gradually lost pace throughout the middle miles, arriving at the end too late to push for my goal. On a few occasions the autopilot has pushed too hard, like an absentminded driver with a lead foot.

Since the autopilot can sabotage our goals as well as preserve them, we can’t fully “check out.” We have to balance the need to tune out with the ability to monitor our progress. I like to imagine this as a program running in the background that flags me with any problems while I run in energy-saving “suspend” mode.

Many race factors can serve as flags for our mental program: Play mental games with splits, updating the formulas and recalculating each mile. Pick landmarks on the course map and use them as checkpoints. If you ran the first miles correctly, you should be catching other runners—when you find yourself behind the same group for several miles it often means you are slowing down, and that fact should wake you up. Thank a volunteer: it will break your trance and make someone’s day. These mental breaks provide an opportunity to evaluate and adjust our strategy during the middle miles, which is the second challenge.

2. Adjust to Realities While Overcoming Obstacles

The strategies of the middle miles are dependent on several factors: raceday conditions, the results of the first miles, and your physical and mental toughness. Since none of these can be completely known in advance, evaluation must be conducted and decisions made in mid-stride, requiring you to balance honest appraisal with courageous resolve.

The middle years also inspire a time of evaluation and reckoning. We realize that we cannot be everything we thought we could be at 21—that the choices and circumstances of our lives have set a course, and we must either adjust to these realities or consider starting over, perhaps at a disadvantage.

Some say this process begins the day we recognize our mortality. In the marathon it begins the moment we realize, “This is going to be work!” If this happens earlier than expected (and it always seems earlier than expected), it may cause a crisis of confidence. Whatever goals we carried to this point are threatened. We naively dreamed that we could cruise through this without difficulty.

“We wish to hear only unequivocal results,” Jung wrote, “and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged from the darkness.” The darkness begins with the doubts of the middle miles, which must be confronted before the deep darkness of fatigue sets in.

Often the first hints of darkness are not an indication of impending doom. Many marathoners report having bad patches—when an easy pace suddenly becomes ragged and strained, when something hurts, or when we lose focus and motivation. Learning to ride out these bad patches is a mark of a successful marathoner.

RUN THROUGH THE ROUGH SPOTS

Compared to a 10K, where one bad mile is a significant portion of the race, the length of the marathon weighs to the runner’s advantage during tough miles. If we don’t panic at the first sign of difficulty, we can back off a notch and ride through it. A mile or two reveals whether it is serious, and when the rough spot passes, we will have lost little. Sometimes all that is necessary is an internal adjustment to the increasing difficulty as the miles add up.

The marathon does, however, require a blunt and thorough evaluation: “Have I overextended myself in the first miles?” we must ask. “Do the conditions (heat, humidity, wind, crowds) necessitate altering my goal? Am I injured? Sick?” The marathon does not permit delusions past the middle miles. We may ignore the signs that we should adjust our goals and strategies, but we will pay for it later.

Some indicators are concrete and non-negotiable. The temperature in the 1993 New York City Marathon climbed to the mid-70s before I reached halfway. A year earlier I had run in similar conditions in Pueblo, Colorado, ignored the early signs of dehydration, and suffered debilitating cramps as my reward. Having learned my lesson, in New York I cut the pace enough to allow

me to finish strong: not a record, but far ahead of my stumbling Pueblo debacle.

Any pre-existing condition will resurface by the middle miles, often forcing the most difficult choice: to drop out. I spent the night before the 1982 Maine Coast Marathon drenched in a fever sweat. Even though on a PR pace at mile 18, [stepped off the course rather than face the last 8. A friend went into the 1997 Boston ignoring a knee pain that had plagued him for six weeks. He reported afterwards that he “came through 10 miles in 60:08 [his goal pace] and then had anice walk along the marathon course from mile 12 to 17.” Both of us decided that the cost of ignoring these conditions was greater than the reward of finishing this race.

The evaluation that continues throughout the middle miles—balancing the necessity of adjustment with the courage to overcome difficulties—requires both emotional control and competitive will. Learning to balance these emotions is the third challenge.

3. Stay Calm While Gearing Up

A marathoner enters the middle miles tightly controlled and emotionally detached—casually observing and monitoring the body to keep it from pushing and wasting energy. At mile 18, the same marathoner emerges an aggressive competitor poised to attack the last 8—totally committed to the task, pushing farther and reaching deeper than at any point in life. The middle miles are a grey continuum of both.

Again the marathon parallels life: we find in the middle years the imperative to plan and save for our final years but do not want to arrive at the end with reserves that should have been enjoyed when we had youth and energy. We want to burn brightly but are afraid of burning out too soon.

Inthe marathon, we need to balance control and competitiveness. Erring on either side leads to disaster or disappointment. At Boston’s “100″” celebration, the cumulative adrenaline was overpowering. After 7 miles of holding back, I surrendered to the energy within and around me. I’d rather not talk about the final miles. In contrast, at the 1995 Vermont City Marathon, I found myself running a careful, controlled pace at halfway, but over two minutes behind my goal. [made an instant transition to competitor, running a negative split PR, but was left with tantalizing questions of what might have been.

Ideally, we want to maintain an even pace and gradually transition our mental state to meet the changing demands of the task. One of the keys is to break away from friends or other runners that we have socialized with during the first miles. While companions can help in the early priority of keeping the tone calm and easy, they can distract you from the task of preparing for the final miles—miles that everyone must face alone.

TALK TO YOURSELF—REALLY

Accomplishing this transition requires changing how we talk to ourselves. Over the course of the middle miles, our words of calm (“Relax. Have fun. lam in control. This is just a long run.”) transform to statements of affirmation and determination (“Tam fast. lam tough. Iam smooth. I am prepared for whatever it takes.””)

If we are going to succeed in this challenge, we must know and believe in our goals. The mind requires a persuasive reason to depart from its natural tendency to avoid pain. If we wait until the moment, we will have trouble convincing ourselves that the cost is worth it.

Well before the marathon—days and even weeks earlier—we must mentally work through the full race, deciding why we are running, what we wish to accomplish, and what accomplishing this will require, that is, the “cost.” Once we have settled the cost and prepared ourselves to go the distance, we wrap this raw desire with a smooth shell of emotional calm to preserve it for when it is needed. Thus prepared, the strategy in the middle miles becomes the task of gradually removing layers of calm control to reveal the solid core of resolve with which to face the final miles.

‘SECTION 3: MILES 18 TO 26.2.

18—Perhaps Your Lucky Number by Mark Conover

The final 8 miles of the marathon will test you in ways you can’t imagine. Only after you get there will you know how you’lI feel. And only after you know how you feel will you know how to react. The way your mind and body react during the final 8 miles may not always be pretty, but chances are once you ve finished and assessed the race, you’ll be satisfied. I will provide examples of what you may experience from mile 18 to the finish based upon personal experience. In all instances, there is a definite cause and effect.

The previous two authors have already prepared you for the ride along the way to the 18-mile mark, discussing a possible cause (impatience) that may result in a rather dismal effect (simply knowns as “hitting the wall”). I will discuss this scenario first since this effect is what one tries to avoid, but which you will most likely face more than once during a marathon career.

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON & 23

My example comes from my third most memorable marathon, which was actually my first-ever marathon, the 1976 Livermore Marathon, which I ran as a high school junior.

The running boom was at its peak, and as a result, people of all ages were running lots of miles. In California, schoolboys were breaking nine minutes for two miles on a regular basis, mostly because these guys were already doing college-type mileage and intensity. For a schoolboy to run 80 to 100 miles a week wasn’t unheard of then as it is now. Even the less genetically gifted were pumping out the miles. How cool, then, for this undeveloped youngster to join the craze and run a marathon… .

Ihad finished my second cross-country season as a varsity runner, becoming the number one runner on our team. I had five weeks to go for the marathon, so limmediately upped my weekly mileage from 50 to 90 miles. I reached 108 miles two weeks before the marathon, then rested for a week. My longest run was 14 miles.

Iremember how easy the marathon felt—until about 8 miles. I was running sub-6:00 miles and realized early on that I was no longer taking in the scenery or feeling giddy and euphoric with the flow of endorphins that had lulled my body earlier in the race.

By the half-marathon, I was a mask of ultimate concentration: furrowed brow, oblivious to the beautiful green pastures surrounding the flat country miles. I was feeling like a gnarled old tree trunk trying to run a 6:30 mile.

You see, at that age, I had yet to consider pacing for 26.2 miles. I was happy to pass pre-Algebra, so why should I have to figure out that to run a 3-hour marathon, which was my goal, I needed to run consistent 6:55 miles, not the 5:40 to 6:00 miles which I had begun to lope through as soon as the gun went off?

By 22 miles, I was oblivious to my own feet striking the ground. The only thing I recognized were other runners passing me like I was standing still. Hell, by 23 miles, I was standing still, hunched over with the worst side stitch I’ve ever experienced.

THE DEATH MARCH

I walked nearly a mile, then started jogging it in, looking ahead on the long, straight, tulle-fog infested road for any sign of a finish line. My legs were reduced to moving bones with muscles so depleted of glycogen and so laden with lactic acid that it’s a wonder I was able to finish at all. My mind was numb, kind of like what happens if you have to listen to a jackhammer all day long. Actually, my whole body felt like a jackhammer—a shattered one.

Ireached 25 miles and had the wherewithal to know I would break 3 hours, but I wouldn’t look good doing it. As I trudged to the finish at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where at one time work had been done on creating the atom bomb, I felt like the physicists must have left one bomb behind, and it fell on me—right around the 18-mile point in the race.

Iran 2:54:51, tired, sore, and downright ornery: “Hell no, Dad, I ain’t walking to the car. Go get it and pick me up while I lie here on the sidewalk—”

One of the hordes of more intelligent marathoners on that day who whipped past me looked a lot like a young guy my age. You can imagine how delighted I was to find out that it was a 14-year-old girl who set the national age-group record with a 2:52.

Yes, while this tale may attest more to the impetuousness of youth, I’ve seen many seemingly sound adults ignore proper pacing in the early stages of a marathon. As a result of bad pacing, you can still finish your marathon, and you may even reach your time goal, but the price you pay will be a visit to hell, especially during the miles beyond 18. You’ll have no glycogen for fuel because you will have used carbohydrates from storage too early to meet your intense energy needs to deliver oxygen to the working muscles.

Along with depleted glyogen will come the formation of lactic acid, the only way your body will have left to attempt to secure oxygen for the working muscles—an avenue that produces whole tanker trucks full of this evil byproduct.

Other effects from stupid pacing—or rather, lack of pacing—range from zero blood sugar, which will impair your ability to concentrate, to postmarathon depression and injury. In the wake of your disappointing marathon, you may not feel like running for months. In my case, I became injured and couldn’ t train or race again for a long time. I ended up missing my junior year of high school track with sciatica, which I attributed directly to my first marathon.

Aside from having to drop out, the experience I related is one you should strive to avoid at all costs. I have never had such a tedious 8 miles since then. But my next experience typified the majority of my dealings with miles 18 to the finish, save one special marathon, which I’ll discuss later. For now, I’ll discuss a race strategy and circumstances during the race that are commonplace and result in relatively predictable feelings after mile 18.

WITH KNOWLEDGE COMES GOOD PACING

By 1987, [had become a seasoned veteran, nearly becoming one of those nineminute two-milers my senior year in high school (I never ran more than 70 miles a week after that ill-fated Livermore Marathon), a national champion collegiate runner, and an Olympic Trials qualifier at 10,000 meters on the track.

My new goal was to qualify for the 1988 Olympic Trials—in the marathon. I chose the California International Marathon in Sacramento as my qualifier.

Not only had my body accumulated a wealth of strong training miles since my first marathon in 1976, but my mind had also accumulated a wealth of knowledge about pacing and preparing for the marathon. Thus, after three months of weekly tempo runs and a few 20-milers, I felt ready for a sub-2:20 marathon, the time needed to run in the Olympic Trials four months later.

The day before the race was stormy. The morning of the race was even worse. I remained calm and realized that my prerace plan of starting conservatively was going to be everyone’s plan. On a day with driving rain and galeforce winds, surely no one would go out at a suicidal pace. Even if they did, I wasn’t going to follow.

Asapack of 25 or so went through the halfway mark ata modest 68 minutes, I felt very relieved and relaxed. Just as [had hoped, my breathing was easy, my mind focused, and my legs fresh. At about 16 miles, an Irish runner made a move, and the field was suddenly down to six lead runners, including myself. I was beginning to feel less comfortable as I entered the zone where the real racing begins.

At 18 miles, my legs were heavy, a sign that I was probably savoring my last few miles of glycogen. From there on I would have to focus on remaining efficient and economical with my stride. I made a conscious effort to make sure I latched onto one of the other runners, thinking to myself that if I treated the last few fatiguing miles like a hard tempo run with a training partner who was feeling a bit more chipper then I was, I could at least get pulled to a solid finish.

Thankfully, my intuition paid off, because by 21 miles, Ihad entered a zone where I could still run efficiently, but my mind wasn’t as focused and my ability to consciously be aggressive was waning—a classic sign of blood sugar and glycogen depletion.

Now it was up to whatever mental resolve I had left in order to latch onto someone and run, robot-like, simply focusing on putting one foot in front of the other in tandem with another human being.

The Irishman who made the move at 16 miles fell off the pace at 21 miles, and a Canadian who was a marathon veteran seemed to be running away with the race. But a Kenyan about 5’3″ became my running buddy, and off we went in tandem, running for second place. With each passing mile, my brow became more furrowed, and my concentration focused on merely being able to concentrate, rather than concentrating on how to win my race against the Kenyan. My legs began to get that pounded-like-a-jackhammer feeling. But I hung onto the diminutive African runner, memorizing every contour of his muscular shoulders, to which I had become attached like a limpet.

By 25 miles, I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I knew I only had a mile to go. At that point, [lost much of my mental resolve, and as my head lifted against fatigue, the Kenyan pulled away to beat me by 10 seconds. I placed third, but more importantly, I ran 2:18 to earn a trip to the Olympic Trials.

THE “DREAM” RACE

Iwas very satisfied, but I realized that with the marathon, you are bound to feel heavy-legged and unfocused from 18 miles to the finish. It’s the degree of heavy legs and cloudy mind that determines whether the whole race falls apart or whether you salvage a respectable performance.

And as this article preaches, it’s how fast you run the earlier miles that will determine this degree. But there’s no getting around it—you’re going to fatigue after 18 miles—or are you?

That’s the beauty of the marathon. You prepare as best you can and run the race. You get to see what happens. What happened to me in my next marathon, the 1988 United States Olympic Trials in New Jersey, is the stuff of which we runners dream.

By the time I reached the 18-mile mark, I was leading. Not only was I leading, but along with Ed Eyestone, I was pulling away from the field. I was actually feeling better from 18 miles to the finish than I felt earlier in the race.

As we reached the 20-mile mark, I was completely focused, my mind very alert and cognizant of my surroundings. I remember looking at my reflection in store windows, doing a “form check.” I was telling the motorcycle cop in front of us to give us more room. In other words, I was feeling like I was on an easy 8-miler rather than battling it out in the biggest race of my life. Why did the latter miles of this marathon run so smoothly compared to other marathons Tran?

Ican think of several reasons, all of which you can learn from and take with you to your next marathon.

First, in the months leading up to the race, I didn’t train like an idiot. I didn’t do too many long runs (a mistake we all make in our preparation), fast runs, miles, or races. I trained with extreme moderation. I knew I had built up a tremendous base after I was able to run 2:18 in lousy, early December weather in Sacramento.

Instead of immediately gearing up for the Trials, I took a month off, not running until after Christmas in preparation for the April Trials race. Inever ran more than 85 miles a week. I ran one long interval workout a week, a shorter, quicker interval workout every other week, five races from 5K to 15K, and only four runs longer than one hour and 45 minutes. With a one-week taper, I came to the Trials eager, nervous, and ready to see what would happen.

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON @& 27

The final 8 miles can be the strongest part of your marathon if you train intelligently and stay on pace during the race.

My legs felt fresh, my mind clear, my stride efficient, and my glycogen stores intact. I never felt any discomfort until after I was finished. Only then did my muscles ache with lactic acid and my intestines grumble with whatever physiological trauma they bore the brunt of after running 26.2 miles at 5:03 pace per mile.

Another saving grace for me was my ability to negative split the race. Iran my fastest 10K portion from 20 miles to the finish. I hadn’t planned on this, although certainly every marathoner dreams about it. I think the combination of a manageable pace through 18 miles coupled with being undertrained allowedmy Ken LEE legs to stave off any formulation of excessive lactic acid. My body wasn’t torn down before the race even started, as is often the case for most marathoners.

USE FAT AS FUEL

This allowed my body to run efficiently for a longer time compared to my other marathons. The pace and condition of my body were sufficient enough to allow less energy-consuming fat to be used as fuel by the muscles rather than carbohydrates, which, once tapped into in the form of glycogen, means your fuel and energy meter are running on borrowed time. Start the meter too early and you’ll begin to shut down, which is what often happens from 18 miles to the finish. Remember the jackhammer feeling of pounded legs? That’s the sign that you’ve run out of glycogen.

I’ve had several other good marathons in my career, but none so thrilling and exhilarating as the 1988 Olympic Trials. Never again have I been able to

—— SSSeSeSeSeSeSeSeFeFeFeFeFe

enjoy the final 8 miles of a marathon. I’m almost positive this is because since then I’ve showed up at the starting line as “damaged goods”—a person whose body was already torn down before the race even started. In these instances, glycogen reserves were spent early, meaning that I had to dig deep mentally to salvage a good race during the last 8 miles.

Overtraining is one reason we become damaged goods. Too many miles without proper build-up, too many hard workouts, and too many races can cause overtraining. If you feel excessively tired, especially mentally, then you are probably overtraining. In my opinion, too many long runs over too short a period of time will bring you to the start as an overtrained marathoner.

Long runs, like the marathon itself, exact quite a toll from the body. Unlike going into the marathon, runners don’t usually go into their long runs rested. Thus it’s like getting the jackhammer effect at 18 miles every single week! The body can’t stand such constant stress. My suggestion is to wait until about two months out from your marathon before you run longer than 17 miles. I would run only four of these, one every other week. Never exceed 20 miles. Do your last long run two weeks before the marathon. If you do too long a run every week, especially from too far out from your marathon, you’re not going to give yourself a fighting chance once you hit 18 miles in the race.

Hopefully, we all get to experience a euphoric final 8 miles of a marathon. Ifnot, we settle for the next best thing, which is the ability mentally to persevere and tell ourselves to finish strong in spite of having a weakened mind and even weaker legs. The thing to avoid is the complete “bonk,” where mind and body succumb to the adverse physiological effects that can take their toll during the final 8 miles. The degree of unpleasantness at the end of the marathon is directly proportional to the degree of the bonk. Slowing to a walk, for example, isn’t as bad as having to stop altogether.

Our bodies are amazingly resilient and intelligent (despite what nonmarathoners say). Reasonably fit people have internal mechanisms that will prevent them from doing irreparable damage after the bonk occurs.

We know running the marathon won’t kill us. Thus, we take on the challenge, immersing ourselves in the training process that is meant to guide us through a satisfying marathon. By paying close attention to the process, which begins months before the big day, and by heeding that most important word— patience—you will come through the final miles with flying colors, : bound for glory. Bs

Benyo, Beverly, Conover THE THREE STAGES OF THE MARATHON i 29

Hanging with the Legends

When Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman Get Together, It’s Great to Be a Fly on the Wall.

BY NOBUYA “NOBBY” HASHIZUME

HIS STORY begins in late April of 1997 when Dick Brown of Eugene,

Oregon, called to tell me that Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman were going to get together at that year’s Prefontaine Classic. There are perhaps half a dozen coaches who stand head and shoulders above the rest. Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman are without a doubt two such coaches. Iimmediately booked a flight from my home in Minnesota to Oregon.

COURTESY OF NOBBY HASHIZUME

Nobby hangs with coaching legends Bill Bowerman (left) and Arthur Lydiard.

FLASHBACK 30+ YEARS

It was the summer of 1960. The place was Rome. In less than an hour a shoemaker from Auckland, New Zealand, became a world-renowned coach when two neighborhood kids he was coaching, Peter Snell and Murray Halberg, won Olympic gold medals in the 800 meters and the 5,000 meters. Barry Magee, another of Lydiard’s kids, took the bronze in the marathon several days later.

The shoemaker, of course, was Arthur Lydiard, who became the overnight sensation in the world of running.

Upon his return to New Zealand from his successes in Rome, Lydiard was invited to speak at the Tamaki Lion’s Club in Auckland. He spoke of marathon conditioning and the benefits to cardiac efficiency through such training. The term “aerobic exercise” was not yetcommonplace. Following Lydiard’s speech, he was approached by several businessmen concerned about their own physical condition. It was the beginning of the first jogging club in the world. It would be nearly a decade before Ken Cooper’s book Aerobics was published and nearly two decades before the arrival of Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running.

Now it is the summer of 1963. Again it’s New Zealand. Bill Bowerman and his record-breaking 4X 1 mile team from the University of Oregon are guests of Arthur Lydiard. On Sunday morning, just as Bowerman is finishing up his breakfast, Arthur Lydiard walks in and asks him if he would like to go “jogging” with a group of local folks. Feeling quite fit, Bowerman agrees and hooks up with Andy Stedman, a fellow 20 years his senior, who is forced to slow down to show Bowerman a short-cut on the five-mile jogging route.

Upon his return to Oregon, Bowerman puts together a local jogging class to get into better condition. He continues to coach University of Oregon runners. In his spare time he borrows his wife’s waffle irons to experiment with making better running shoes, shoes that would eventually become Nikes. Bowerman eventually writes the bestselling book, Jogging, and receives a special medal from President Kennedy in honor of his contributions to spreading the concept of jogging in America. Bowerman’s comment: “TI am but the disciple. Arthur Lydiard of New Zealand is the prophet.”

LYDIARD DISCIPLES

Dick Brown, an established coach who tutored Mary Slaney to her two gold medals in the 1983 World Championships and who coaches Vicki Huber and Shelly Steely, is now a disciple of Lydiard. I met Dick at the Atlanta Olympics, and we’ve been talking about Lydiard ever since. Dick is the current curator of

Nobuya “Nobby” Hashizume HANGING WITH THE LEGENDS ® 31

Bill Bowerman and Arthur Lydiard greet each other before the 1997 Prefontaine Classic.

a little red brochure titled “Athletic Training Schedule” that was passed on to him by Bill Bowerman after it was passed on to him by Arthur Lydiard many — cusrornoservasizune

years ago. Ironically, the original pamphlet was financed by Rothmans, a cigarette company that supported Lydiard’s athletes in the early 1960s. The little book contains the crux of Lydiard’s training principles that transformed neighborhood youngsters into world-beaters.

It is the Friday before the 97 Pre Classic. Dick Brown drives me up the hill to the Bowerman home on the outskirts of Eugene. We are greeted by Mrs. Bowerman and led into the house. Bill is sitting outside, relaxing, enjoying the scenery of the McKenzie River flowing through the surrounding mountains. We are close enough that you can hear the water flowing and the birds singing on its banks. I tell Bill it reminds me of the movie Man From Snowy River.

“On clear days,” Bill explains, “you can still see some snow on the tops of the mountains.” Today it is slightly overcast, and we can’t see that far. Even though we can’t see them, Bill runs through the names of the various mountains. Suddenly he turns to me and says, “Now you’re ready for the exam!” The air is becoming cool, and Mrs. Bowerman shoos us inside where it’s warm.

Back inside, we delve straight into what amounts to a digested history of U.S. track and field. Bowerman coached at the University of Oregon from 1949 to 1972. During that time he coached 24 individuals who occupied 32 U.S. Olympic berths, and he produced at least a dozen sub-4-minute milers. This does not include his post-University of Oregon era when he worked with athletes such as Henry Marsh.

It is one thing to recruit accomplished athletes as some coaches do by importing Kenyan runners or to happen upon one outstanding athlete, but it is

quite another to produce one good athlete after another over a long stretch of time. Bill Bowerman has definitely done the latter. And he actually hated recruiting, considering himself more of a teacher than a head hunter.

In the video Fire on the Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story, Bowerman is quoted as saying, “You start making love to some high school kid too early, his head starts to get bigger and bigger. . . . If [join the [pause] tail-kissers, I’m just another donkey looking for another body to come out and run here. If I want to teach him and if I have something to offer him, we’ll find out after he gets here.”

It is ironic to spend time with Bowerman, for the man who has taught others to excel from inside their bodies is stuck in a strange physical situation. His physical condition is a mess. He is 85 years old, his feet are swollen, he coughs once ina while, and he is rapidly losing his eyesight—that, the result of working in a too-small room with glue and rubber creating what would become the first Nike shoes. He suffered a heart attack some years ago, and he was also in a car accident several years ago, in which the car rolled off a hill. But when Bill Bowerman talks about running, he is animated and sturdy as a tank. He can also be somewhat intimidating, but if he senses his guest is sincere and interested, he responds in kind. It is the same quality I have found in Arthur Lydiard and the late Japanese marathon coach, Kiyoshi Nakamura.

COACHING PHILOSOPHIES

The subject turns to the college coaching scene. I ask Bowerman about his policy of not wanting his athletes to double in the same competition. Later that day Dick Brown and J attended the Oregon State High School Championships. There were kids who were not just doubling but tripling because they were good athletes and the team needed the points. By the third event the kids could hardly drag themselves to the starting line. “I prefer them not to double,” Bowerman said. “Why not give other guys a chance?”

Give the other guys on the team a chance. It isn’t all about winning. It harkens to Nakamura’s training methods in the 1980s in which he combined mental, philosophical, and almost Zen-like elements into scientific training methods. It occurs to me that coaches like Bowerman and Lydiard, whether intentionally or not, were already practicing these elements. It is not the outcome (winning the championship or gaining the points) that is important, but the method of getting there for the sake of that method. With that philosophy, the results have a tendency to follow on their own.When I get up to leave, Bowerman shakes my hand and says, “Hey, your’re all right!” That made my day.

MEETING THE SECOND GIANT

The next day we go to the Valley River Inn to pick up Arthur Lydiard for dinner. As I get out of the car and walk into the lobby, I encounter Moses Tanui, Bob Kennedy, and Sonia O’ Sullivan. It is like runners’ heaven. Among these current greats, I spot a small, gray-haired man ina blue suit speaking to New Zealander Jack Ralston and his wife. Although I have not seen Arthur Lydiard since 1990, he doesn’t seem to have aged. In fact, come to think of it, he doesn’t seem to have aged from 1984 when I spent a year in New Zealand with him. Kathrine Switzer has perfectly described Arthur: “Lydiard is an intimidating, imposing figure, that is, until you stand close to him. And then you realize that he is actually quite short, with a great gentleness and kindness behind the thunder— a total generosity. He is a man totally beloved.”

How good or not so good you are as an athlete is totally irrelevant to Arthur. He is often quoted as saying that it is as gratifying, if not even more so, to work with heart patients than to work with some talented athletes. “Once they get up on the top of the dais,” he has said, “they’ll get big-headed and forget you. But others will appreciate you more.”

When Lydiard was in Japan in 1990, he was asked what kind of quality he looks for in an athlete he coaches. Without hesitation his answer was simple: “sincerity.”

“By coaching and helping other people, you are giving up a part of your life,” he said. “I can’t afford to waste my time with fools.” He never asks athletes if he can coach them. They come to him. And when they have, he has never turned anyone away.

We herd our group together, nine of us, and head off to Mazzi’s, an ItalVicki Huber and Arthur Lydiard during dinner in Eugene ian restuarant. before the Pre meet. The restaurant

COURTESY OF NOBBY HASHIZUME

doesn’t take reservations, but because Vicki Huber will be joining us, we are quickly accommodated. Peppi, the owner, is a great fan of Vicki’s. Also among our group are Dr. Andrew Ness and his wife Christy, who coached figure skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi. (The Nesses applied Arthur’s training principles to Yamaguchi’s training, figuring that the two-minute short program and the four-minute long program were the equivalent of running a half-mile anda mile. By using Arthur’s aerobic conditioning methods, Yamaguchi raised her VO,max from 44 to 60.)

Vicki Huber and her boyfriend arrive. They are all dressed up because they are on their way to Vicki’s birthday party, but they didn’t want to miss a chance to spend some time with Arthur. Vicki keeps referring to him as “Mr. Lydiard,” so I turn to her and tell her this story. “When I went to New Zealand,” I say, “I asked him whether I should call him ‘coach’ or ‘Mr. Lydiard.’ He simply said, ‘In case you didn’t know, my name is Arthur.”

Arthur explains that he’s a little dehydrated from his flight. “The best thing you can do is drink beer!” he declares. Several of Dick Brown’s runners rise to the occasion and declare this is great advice from a great coach. Marla Runyan, a legally blind athlete who’s run a 2:04 800 meters in heptathlon competition, takes Arthur’s advice and then asks for some input. As a heptathlete, she feels she’s too muscular. “That’s got nothing to do with it,” Arthur contends. He uses Peter Snell as an example. He was a very big, muscular man. Because of that, he had some difficult times completing Arthur’s marathon conditioning. But also because of his muscularity, Snell’s kick was so powerful and explosive that once he unleashed it, nobody could stay with him. After being around Arthur Lydiard, you quickly catch his philosophy that nothing about you is a disadvantage.

Sitting at the table, seeing more and more people drop by to pay their respects to Arthur as he elevates the positive aura at our huge table, I am struck by the fact that Arthur is the force responsible for introducing a huge variety of people to each other. Had it not been for Arthur, I would not have met the late and great coach Kiyoshi Nakamura, and I would likely not have become a professional coach in Japan. I would not have met Kathrine Switzer, either. One of her observations sums up Arthur: “Arthur has brought us all together over the years. Like Arthur’s athletes, the talent for fitness or the talent for friendship is everywhere. It only needs the opportunity.”

Now Arthur is going off on his arsenal of old stories. How Peter Snell trained with marathoners like Barry Magee and Ray Puckett before he was fed some “fast stuff.” “Snell and Davies ran 20 quarters in 60 seconds. How much more speed do you want?” Arthur asks.

Or how when Richard Tayler was training for the 1974 Commonwealth Games, he trained on a high school’s grass fields with no lap times taken, no

Nobuya “Nobby” Hashizume HANGING WITH THE LEGENDS ® 35

counting of how may reps he’d done, and not even knowing how far he was running. “Interval training is a lot of eye-wash,” Arthur says. “It’s just the icing on the cake, not the governing factor. But what do most American runners and coaches do? They go on the track with a stopwatch in hand and do more intervals, more intervals, more intervals. … They destroy potential, instead of developing it.”

Arthur talks about the time, in the late 1970s, when he coached a handful of girls at the high school where his late wife Eira used to teach. Within a season, he turned the team into New Zealand cross-country champions. In 1979, he brought one of the girls, 18-year-old Heather Carmichael, to America. She won the Peachtree race and set a course record of 33:38 in hot and humid conditions. “Champions are everywhere,” Arthur says, “It’s a matter of training them properly.” :

BOUNDLESS ENERGY

After Arthur has sated his thirst with 10 beers over six hours and after dozens of photo flashes go off around the table, we decide to wind down. “We’d better get you back to the hotel, Arthur,” I say to him.

“Why?” he asks. “Are you getting tired?”

Approaching 80 at the time, Arthur had flown from New Zealand the day before, driven from Portland that morning, spent the day with Bill Bowerman ona film shoot, and just reached midnight after six hours of talking and beerdrinking. Arthur is still a human dynamo.

Several years ago he was tested in Texas. The results indicated a supposedly aged man whose oxygen uptake was at least a litre above the norm and who sported the muscle-tone of a 40 year old. He was once asked about all the hype concerning running not being good for you. “I guess all the years of running are killing me,” he replied.

PREFONTAINE CLASSIC

The next day it’s time for the Prefontaine Classic. Arthur Lydaird and Bill Bowerman are the honorary starters for the men’s mile race, in which 11 men go under four minutes, led by Kenya’s Laban Rotich’s 3:52.68. This is my first Pre Classic, and it is an absolutely tremendous experience. It is easy to see why Eugene is known as Track Town USA. At the east end of Hayward Field is the Bowerman Building, which features a balcony from which guests can watch the races. Lydiard and Bowerman spent their time comparing notes and telling stories to each other and visiting with friends. Bill Bowerman is respectfully approached by a young Kenyan runner who wants to meet him and ask him a

few questions. Arthur and Bill seem to thrive on the running environment; it belies their ages.

Later, when they stroll down to the parking lot, they are surrounded by young runners seeking autographs. Although Mrs. Bowerman wants to leave early to prepare dinner, Bill continues to sign autographs and answer questions. A coach comes by with several of his charges and asks Arthur about his secrets of lacing running shoes. Invariably this subject comes up. I stick my foot out to show them the particulars, and I tell the coach that I’ll send him a copy of a diagram of Authur’s lacing system from his book as well as some reference on the “Lydiardism.”

As we stand off to the side, watching Arthur and Bill field questions and sign autographs, Dr. Ness wonders if, 20 years from now, anyone will remember Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman. It is unlikely that the average person training for a marathon realizes how much of the training theories they use to make such a challenging event so accessible have come from these two men, who achieved greatness through common sense, hard work, and passion for the sport.

For the moment, I think about the generosity that has made them such accessible giants to those of us who have had the honor of meeting and speaking with them. Although I wish all the greatest success to running and runners, in a world seemingly gone mad with sports, I hope—probably unrealistically—that this access to the giants of our sport is never withdrawn as it has been in so many other areas of the sporting life. For this golden moment, though, it isn’t. The giants smile upon us mortals. And it is our responsibility to pass their words on to the ? generation to come. Rt

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From Within the Ashes

Yugoslavia Continues to Implode, But the Belgrade Marathon Endures.

K ENYAN JOSEPHAT Nédeti and Wally Sayerndorph of Lexington, Kentucky, stand atop the ancient walls of the Kalemagdan, the fortress that overlooks the intersection of the Danube and Sava rivers in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Yugoslavia. Ndeti, the brother of three-time Boston Marathon winner Cosmas Ndeti, won the 10″ annual Belgrade Soko Stark Marathon earlier this April day in 1997. Sayerndorph is a 50-something retired attorney who finished the marathon a few hours after Ndeti. He was touring Eastern Europe and running marathons whenever he could. Different countries, different cultures, different ages, yet here Ndeti and Sayerndorph were, celebrating their races with a group of runners from around the world ina city entering a new era.

“This is a special year for us,” explains race director Dejan Nikolic. Indeed, special for the marathon and special for Belgrade. For 120 days in December

veterans, took to the streets demanding that the fall elections be validated and the winners be allowed to take office.

The uproar made it difficult for Nikolic to plan for his race. “We didn’t know if the streets would be blocked, and if the race would have the support of the government financially,” he says. The protesters finally prevailed, and not long before raceday a new city government was sworn in. Fortunately for Nikolic, the new mayor and vice-mayor embraced the marathon as enthusiastically as the previous government had. Soko Stark, the largest candy maker in Yugoslavia, continued its sponsorship, and the race was on.

A feeling of democracy and of the springtime of a new age was in the air in the days leading up to the marathon. A week of activities took place that included a children’s run at the Belgrade Zoo to benefit UNICEF.

The Belgrade Marathon reflects the ups and downs of Yugoslavia, a country torn apart by war that is now learning to live in peace, although the crisis in the southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo threatens to plunge the region into war once again. Each year the marathon has gotten bigger and drawn more runners and more spectators. It has been, wrote one local, “the only event apart from the war that has attracted international attention to Belgrade.”

THE POLITICS OF MARATHONING

The Belgrade Marathon is covered like a political event, with the prerace press conference taking place in the city hall, where Serbian kings used to reign. Journalists with cigarettes hanging from their lips quiz the runners froma score of countries.

Every year a different sports celebrity promotes the marathon, stars such as Bob Beamon, Emil Zatopek, Fred Lebow, Carl Lewis, Ibrahim Hussein, Lasse Viren, and, this year, Sergi Bubka.

“It is important that the Belgrade Marathon has progressed,” says pole vaulter Bubka, the only athlete to win a gold medal in every World Championships. “It is good for the world’s spirit; sports need to do many things in society today. This marathon is about more than sports. It is good for the future and is something important for the younger generation.”

Adds new mayor Zoran Djindjic, “The marathon is important to our city. It gives a nice, better image of Belgrade to the world. There have been hours of TV coverage from Belgrade, but for other reasons.”

Indeed, the world has watched as Yugoslavia, made up of six republics, split apart in 1991 and ’92, leading to war. For several years, a U.N.-sanctioned embargo meanta lack of basics for the marathon. The city’s spirit was gloomy and gray.

Then, like the flower in Picasso’s Guernica springing up out of the destruction of war, the embargo was lifted and democracy blossomed during the Belgrade winter. The masses took to the street, and, says Bubka, “the changes now in Belgrade are very good. There is a big attention on Belgrade.”

The marathon has grown in large part because of Nikolic. He is a race director made in the spirit of Fred Lebow, the kind of guy you see out timing at local Saturday fun runs. He is dedicated to his marathon, stubborn enough to believe it must go on, and clever enough to keep it going despite all obstacles.

And there have been obstacles. When the embargo was in force against Yugoslavia, runners were flown into neighboring capitals, such as Sofia or Budapest, and then bused to the race. Somehow Nikolic has always managed to have both a competitive elite race up front and a large citizens’ race in the

© KEN LEE

The start of the 1998 Belgrade Marathon.

back of the pack. Belgrade is in the group of marathons ranking just behind the biggest in the world: New York, London, and Boston.

“Dejan is a survivor,” says one city official.

The marathon starts in front of the Eastern Orthodox St. Mark’s Church and finishes in Terazije Square, where demonstrators gathered daily during the protests. A few months earlier the square had been full of protesters, blowing whistles and defying authority; this day, it is bursting with runners and their families and fans.

Many of the students who had walked the streets during the winter ran in a 5K that started after the marathon. They brought a festive, happy atmosphere to marathon day. Looking out over the square and the thousands of people milling about after the finish, Nikolic allowed himself a smile and says, “The marathon won this time.”

The best part of traveling to foreign marathons is getting to know another history and another inflection of the sound and fury of the human condition. And Belgrade has a long and interesting story. From Ndeti’s and Sayerndorph’s vantage point on top of the fortress, you can see where Tito, the partisan-turnedpresident of Yugoslavia after World War II, had his houseboat moored on the Danube, the former border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The first tribe to come to the hills on which Kalemagdan sits, our guide explains to us, were the Celts, about 2,500 years ago. Since then the region has been a palimpsest of different cultures, poised between west and east. The Romans conquered the area in the first century A.p., and when the empire split, the boundary between the Byzantine and Roman portions ran right beneath where we sat.

The Slavs arrived somewhere around the seventh century, and the name Beograd (Belgrade) is first mentioned in 878. From then on warfare was a constant in the area, with the city demolished and steadily rebuilt 40 times. In 1389 came the most important date in the country’s history, when the Ottoman Empire defeated the Serbians at the battle of Kosovo. Turks then ruled until they were pushed out in 1867.

Now, runners from all corners of the globe race beneath Kalemagdan. “I was happy when I won,” says Ndeti. “When did I know I would win? In my room; I prayed to God, and God told me I would win.”

“T was just proud when I finished,” adds Sayerndorph.

Two people, poles apart, brought together atop this fortress. Such is the power of the marathon, and of Belgrade, a city at the crossroads of the Balkans.

The Belgrade Marathon has a fast course and deep, competitive fields. It also has, however, something more important, some ineffable core that contains within it a deeper meaning of the marathon. As we sat with young race workers later that evening drinking s/jivovica, Serbian plum brandy, we talked of the city’s changes and the country’s—the world’s—the future.

Young Serbians, for some reason, are steeped in philosophy. Ask one how the weather is and you get a treatise on the meaning of existence. Perhaps people grow up more quickly in the Balkans and have a better understanding of the vissicitudes of life.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell said the atom bomb represents the disintegrating force of the 20th century. These young people have seen their country torn apart, like those who opposed Dionysus in the Greek myths. The question waiting to be answered is whether it can be put back together. This new generation answers with a firm “Yes!”

The winter demonstrations “were fun,” a student named Jasmina tells us. “We were fighting for change. Change was our goal.”

“Did you march?”

“Of course. Every day. We all did.”

The protests had a uniquely Serbian twist to them. “How can tell you about it? can’t describe it,” she says. “It was not demonstrations like others. It was exciting, a carnival, people talking and laughing.”

Michael Sandrock FROM WITHIN THE ASHES mf 43

THE COLD, THE POLICE, THE LITERATURE

Students stood for hours in the cold facing the police, full of youthful optimism to confront what they didn’t approve of and change it. Sometimes they took turns reading books to the lines of police: Shakespeare, Aristotle, law and medical texts.

Terazije Square was full of protesters banging pots and blowing whistles. There was a distinct, humorous Serbian twist, with men wearing party hats sitting on lawn chairs, pretending to be fishing, like a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

“It was magnificent, this spirit of humanity,” Jasmina says. “Maybe you can compare it to the feeling of being close together with all the people in the marathon today.”

A phrase is used to sum up the break-up of Yugoslavia—“balkanization.” And every day we read of the balkanization that lurks beneath the surface of daily life around the globe—in Central Africa, Algeria, the Middle East, Latin America, and our inner cities—as ethnic, religious, and nationalistic impulses threaten to knock the Humpty Dumpty of civilization into a thousand pieces. We’ve seen too often how the forces of chaos and disorder are close at hand. Hatred, violence, and despair are amplified by past and present prejudices, and the world crumbles.

Then, the marathon arrives. When you see Christians running with Muslims, Croats running with Serbs, one wearing a sign thatreads “mir,” or peace, hope springs eternal; and you recall what Cretan novelist/poet Nikos Kazantzakis wrote: “Civilization starts when sports begin.” Could the meaning of Belgrade be this: that the recivilization of the world starts when the marathon begins? oenLee

InBelgrade, weseeclearlyhow 4 grandfather and marathoner along the the marathon is a unifying force course with a boy in World War II Serb opposing the disintegration of the Army outfit with medals.

cosmos, an ordering force against the “balkinazation,” the breaking apart, not just of Yugoslavia, but of the world. We see clearly that the marathon sometimes is indeed more than a race, that it is part of the emerging new world myth Campbell wrote about, a myth that has as its symbol the blue Earth, as seen from outer space, floating in the cold, dark void.

The marathon aids in the heroic struggle to put Humpty Dumpty back together again by transcending differences of race, religion, and politics, making us aware that we are all not just runners, but human beings.

I tell this to my new friends and ask them: How can it be that running along with people you cannot speak with, you feel closer to them than those “strange apothecary souls” you know well in your own cities? I ask whether the demonstrators read Nietzsche to the police guards.

“Yes.”

Irewrote one of Nietzsche’s aphorisms from The Wanderer and his Shadow, I tell her. It is called “The Way to Equality” and maybe explains what I mean. It now reads like this: “A few hours of marathon running turn a villain and a saint into two rather equal creatures. Long-distance running is the shortest way to equality, fraternity, and understanding—and friendship is added eventually by sleep.”

ROCK THE NIGHT AWAY

That night many of the marathoners show up for a rock concert outside of city hall in the center of Belgrade. On the way over, we stop at the fortress. High atop the Kalemagdan, we watch the comet Hale-Bopp, looking like a large firefly above the western horizon as a full moon jogs slowly across the night sky.

Looking out over the buildings of “new” Belgrade across the Sava River, the centuries slip back into the shadows. The plains are empty wilderness once again. The first humans come and camp, build fires, and hunt the wild beasts. The Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Turks, and Serbs reappear, chasing each other across the plains. And now it is runners chasing, not each other, but. .. but what?

Earlier in the day, thousands of marathoners had run over the ghosts of all the blood and battles that had preceded them in the previous two millennia, through the same streets the demonstrators had marched. With that history in mind, each footstep in the marathon takes on a sacred mission.

All marathons represent their city. Some represent a people and a country. And a few marathons, like Belgrade, represent something more: a new idea. And this evening on the Kalemagdan, the idea is as clear as the stars shining in the night sky—the triumph of order and reunification over the balkanizing forces of disorder and chaos.

I tell this to my Serbian friend, and she replies, “Perhaps. Do you know Karadjordje?”

“Who?”

“Karadjordje. You mean you don’t know ‘Black George’?”

“No,” I reply, a bit ashamed.

“He was a famous Serbian national hero from the war against Turkey, between 1809 and 1813. You see, we are no longer fighting against an occupier, but there are different enemies. What did our beloved Kazantzakis call it? The ‘inner Turk’? Do you understand?”

I wasn’t sure. We walked down to the chapel of St. Petka, the holiest Belgrade saint. The walls of the small side chapel are covered with soot from the countless candles lit to ask for favors, beneath icons of St. Michael and St. George.

The candles are in a five-foot, two-tiered round holder, filled with sand. “You light candles for the living and put them upstairs. Then you make a wish,” Jasmina says. “Candles for the deceased are put below. We believe the church is a sainted place.”

Watching the churchgoers come and go, ask, “Do you agree with Nietzsche when he wrote that God is dead?”

“No, I cannot believe that—”

“Why not?” I ask, as we spar like runners in the lead pack.

THE NEED TO BELIEVE

She shakes her head. “Ihave to believe. That is the most important thing. Belief. Nietzsche had some good ideas in the Birth of Tragedy, about the symbiosis of comedy and tragedy. He knew Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. I think he had the most successful symbiosis of those two principles. In all things you have to have balance.”

We watch women bringing jugs to fill with water from the church, said to effect miraculous cures.

“Our world is an image of the ideal world, the world of ideas,” she adds, “but we are just reflections, so we are not that good. I think Nietzsche was a good philosopher, but his philosophy is not good.”

“Why not?”

“He was writing for the elite, for the ubemensch. What of the rest of the world that are not superpeople but are only trying to survive? What would he say to them?”

What could I tell her? That they are destined to live their lives in the herd?

“That’s just it; there has to be an ideal of the ideal woman and man, even if we know there isn’t one,” I tell her.

“No,” she says, “I prefer Fromm.”

“Why is that?” I ask, sensing her gaining an edge in our discussion.

“He was very humanistic. The first thing is that he was very interesting. The second thing is that he was very good. He made the perfect symbiosis of Freud and Marx. He is not your typical psychologist. He took the good things from both sides, Freud and Marx. He added thought to their emotions.”

“You like him better than Hegel?”

Jasmina replies, “The best thing about Hegel, Marx said, is his final idea that the dialectic is an evolutionary process. Marx didn’t believe in another world. He believed God was opium for the people. . .. Maybe it is, but I still have to believe.”

After a pause, she adds: “And even you have to believe. Maybe the marathon is opium for other people.”

I start to protest, then stop, thinking of something the vice-mayor said yesterday: “The marathon here is more than sports. It is part of the city. The marathon continues the policy of hope.”

Sitting atop the Kalemagdan, watching the comet continue its 30,000,000mile marathon journey and the moon its endless circling of the trans-earthly track, I think about the human struggle endlessly circling over the centuries. You feel blessed to be a foot soldier in order’s battle against chaos and disintegration—the disintegration not just of empires, nations, and city-states, but of the old world order that is crumbling before our eyes.

© KEN LEE

In Belgrade, “the marathon… is more than sports. It is part of the city. The marathon continues the policy of hope.”

Michael Sandrock FROM WITHIN THE ASHES & 47

My friend has had enough of this, and we go to the concert, then to a nightclub. It is packed, even at 4:00 a.m. Our conversation continues over the music. “What of eternal recurrence?” I prod.

“No. There has to be an end. I can’t imagine the universe being endless. It has to go somewhere.”

“Maybe the universe will expand endlessly.”

“Where is it proved that the universe is expanding? Where does it go? Where does life go? If it is expanding, it is expanding within limits, which means it’s limited in space. That proves it has an end.”

Night turns to day in Belgrade. We come into the hotel and head for the steamroom to cleanse. I recall what Bubka said the day before when we met for a swim. After small talk, he was asked if he would try a marathon.

“like sprinting and power,” he had replied. “I’m not a marathoner, but, why not? I will think about it. After all, if you believe in yourself, anything is possible. Even a marathon.”

Yes, Bubka, you are correct. As the Belgrade Marathon continues to i show, anything is possible, as long as you have faith.

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Where Eagles Dwell

Comrades Marathon Winner Charl Mattheus Spends Winter Training in Leadville. Why?

C HARL MATTHEUS (pronounced “Charl,” as in Charles, “Ma-TAYus”), the dedicated, driven champion of the 1997 Comrades Marathon, the world’s largest ultramarathon, fled the comfortable climate of his South African homeland where he enjoys the celebrity of a national hero to train in the frigid winter altitude of a tiny, remote North American town at 10,124 feet above sea level. He endures the loneliness of his 150-mile training weeks in this austere setting for his single-focused goal: to set the course record at Comrades in 1998. On a break in April between his twice-daily workouts, Marathon & Beyond’s Theresa Daus- Weber, a past winner of the famed Leadville Trail 100, met with Charl to talk altitude.

M&B: Over 75 years of existence, now attracting more than 14,000 runners willing to race a grueling 90K (56.25 miles), the Comrades Marathon is the oldest, largest, most popular ultra by far—and the most competitive road ultra in the world. What brings a runner from the competitive environment of South Africa to the wilds of Leadville, Colorado?

Char! Mattheus: In 1996, after I placed fourth in my eighth attempt at the Comrades Marathon, I wanted to figure out why I was missing the win. I analyzed what the missing element was and determined that it was highaltitude training. Then I looked all over the world to find a training location that was high—about 3,000 meters—and in a location where English was spoken.

Russia had some possible locations, but language was a problem for me. I have trained in Russia before, so I know what it is like there. Language is also a problem for me in the very remote locations of Europe that have high enough elevations for my needs. So, I considered high-altitude locations in America. Ihad raced in the U.S. before and liked the culture there. Alamosa and Buena Vista, Colorado, were possibilities, but they were not quite high enough, and they were too windy. Vail was the right altitude but too expensive, so I chose Leadville.

Charl Mattheus trains near the Leadville 100 course, here along Twin Lakes, about 20 miles from Leadville, as the eagle flies.

B: You have selected an extreme environment in which to train to reach your goal. Tell us about your high-altitude training program. I: Although the weather can be quite harsh in Leadville in the winter [midday temperatures average about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and snow covers the ground from November through April], I run outdoors twice a day: in the mid-morning and in the late afternoon. Irun whether it is snowing or a blizzard. Thave run when I could not even see my hand stretched in front of my face. I also use a treadmill in my house sometimes.

Thave several phases of training I want to accomplish while at high altitude, including a weight loss phase [Charl weighed in at the beginning of 1998 at 130 pounds on a 5’8″ frame] and a tapering phase. As I prepare to leave Leadville for Comrades, I will weigh 120 pounds and taper from my 150 to 175 miles per week to 100 miles per week during that [taper] period.

To accomplish some of my mileage and to keep sharp and competitive, I race various races in the U.S. while I am training in Leadville. I set a Colorado

Theresa Daus-Weber WHERE EAGLES DWELL 51

50K record at the Frosty Trail 50K down in the Denver area early in the season. Ialsoraced the Las Vegas, Shamrock, and Los Angeles marathons. I plan to race the Mile High Ultra Trio near Denver again this year in May [1998].

M&B: American ultrarunners compete in an essentially unknown sport here in the United States. When their ultrarunning “hobby” becomes known, they have to listen to clichéd responses like: “You run 100 miles in 17 hours on a trail? Do you do that without sleeping? Do you go to the bathroom?” Ultrarunning is a nationally known and very popular sport in South Africa. Why do you think ultrarunning is so popular in your country and so obscure in the States?

Charl: The Comrades Marathon is a very popular, well-sponsored event. It is a 77-year-old national tradition in South Africa and has produced some of the country’s best-known national icons. The race is televised the entire day and viewed by adults as well as the children. There is much advertisement, sponsorship, and excitement for the race each year. Over 14,000 runners participate, many of them year after year. It is not uncommon for a runner to have 20 Comrades finisher’s medals. Our President, Nelson Mandela, is at the finish line to greet the winners, and the awards ceremony is televised live on national television.

The main sports in South Africa are rugby, soccer, and cricket—all sports that require running. South Africans are familiar with running; it’s part of their athletic culture.

In America, the most popular ultra events are trail races, and these often have the number of racers restricted by the Forest Service. A race that has restricted entry cannot grow and become more widely known by sponsors, nor can more runners participate.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s president, presents the 1997 Comrades Marathon trophy to Charl.

COURTESY OF COMRADES

M&B: How does it feel to be a national hero to 50 million people in a country that is about the size of Texas?

Charl: I worked very hard to achieve my 1997 win at Comrades. It is an honor for a South African. I like to represent the Comrades Marathon and this prestigious international South African athletic event to the people in my country and the world. Success at Comrades is an important career and lifetime opportunity for me. I like representing the successful aspects of South Africa to South Africa and to the world.

I have received many requests to give motivational speeches and make appearances at sports and public events. I will attend to such things in the six months after Comrades, but I feel that I must concentrate on my training here in Leadville the six months before Comrades.

M&B: Tell us about your life as a professional ultrarunner and one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s 10 most eligible bachelors.

Charl: Like other professional athletes, I am able to train full-time and to travel to races with the support of my sponsors [Reebok, Seiko, a Mercedes dealer, Powerade, Ray Ban, a South African insurance company, and a German pharmaceutical company that produces sports products]. I get invited to interesting races and meet great athletes and people all over the world.

The Cosmopolitan Most Eligible Bachelor title? Yes, that is a funny thing. Tam an eligible bachelor, but I cannot even get a girlfriend. That just makes you think that I might run too hard and play too little. I was honored with this title because it opened up doors to be a judge at many beauty contests, and it attracts a lot of attention from the single women. However, my training is very important to me because without it, I will not perform in running.

M&B: What would it take to make ultrarunning popular in the United States?

Charl: A big, international, showcased event with large prize money. Prize money produces good performances and attracts good athletes, sponsorship, and spectators. It must also be a 100K event, the distance that is recognized as the IAAF 100K championship. There must be an extra prize money incentive for setting a world record at the event. This incentive prize money should be insured as we insure incentive prize money in South Africa. The insurance guarantees payment of the incentive in case a runner breaks the record. The sponsor offering the prize money does not have to advance the money unless the record is broken.

M&B: Do you have any advice for U.S. ultrarunners?

Charl: Ann Trason, the 1997 Comrades Marathon women’s champion, is one of the best ultrarunners on this planet, ever—men and women. She is an American ultrarunner, which shows that this country has strong-minded, genetically gifted athletes who can perform at world-class levels. The U.S. needs younger, faster athletes to move into ultradistance running on the roads. You’ve

got the [trail running] athletes. They just have to move over [to road racing]. Trail running is good for base training and for the pleasure of running and strength training, but you loose your speed in trail running. Speed is the only way to record fast times in road ultras. You must have two fast road ultras a year in the U.S., a 50K to get the younger athletes [involved] and a 100K to be able to enter and be competitive at the World 100K Championship race. The fast marathoners will move to the 50K and later attempt the 100K, using trail running as training. You are so lucky to have such beautiful trail runs in this country.

M&B:Is there anything you want to tell us about yourself or your sport that we haven’t covered?

Charl: I ran my first marathon in 2:48 when I was only 13 years old, with very little training. So, I started very young. But I want to encourage young athletes to develop their speed at the shorter distances first before moving on to the marathons and ultras. Then you can be the best at these distances.

M&B: Tellus something about Charl Mattheus, the 1997 Comrades champion, that no one else knows.

Charl: I set five alarm clocks to 4:00 a.m. the evening before Comrades because I am worried about being late for the race on raceday morning. I have prerace anxiety dreams about going to the starting line in my bare feet without my racing flats!

M&B: Everyone thinks there’s something magic that ultrarunners eat to make them run long distances. So tell us, what do you eat that makes you run so fast at Comrades?

Charl: My traditional prerace meal the evening before the race consists of the following items eaten separately: two pounds of marshmallows, aged honey, and corn.

[Note: No, this is not information garbled in translation from Afrikaans. Charl is fluid in English, his second language, and he spoke very distinct, accurate English during the interview. ]

Although not part of my prerace dinner, or my raceday nutrition, I will enjoy a few “jelly babies” [gummie bears] for carbohydrates in my otherwise very nutritious diet of thick, pureed fruit juice, healthy soups with a little meat, and lots of vegetables.

M&B: Racing Comrades is a dream for many U.S. ultrarunners. It was kind of amystery before 1994 when American Alberto Salazar won the race. Tell us about the race.

Charl: The Comrades Marathon is held in the South African province of KwaZulu Natal, the “Garden Province.” The race began in 1921, but there were several years during World War II when the race was not held. Thirty-four men ran the first 89K [approximately 54 miles] race from Pietermaritzburg to

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Durban; now there are nearly 15,000 racers. An interesting aspect of the race is that the course changes directions each year. The “up” course starts at sea level in Durban and climbs 755 meters [nearly 3,000 feet] to Pietermaritzburg, where the Comrades Marathon Museum is located. Handlers, or “crew” as you call them here in America, are called “seconds” at Comrades. In addition to our seconds, there are 60 aid stations along the hilly “up” and “down” course.

The race is run in June, our early winter. The climate in South Africa is always sunny, and raceday temperatures in Durban, a coastal city, are around 24 degrees Celsius [roughly 80 degrees Fahrenheit]. The race starts at 6:00 a.m. The first 10 men and the first 6 women to finish the race win prize money and gold medals. Silver medals go to runners who finish under 7:30:00. To earn a bronze medal, a runner must complete the course within the 11-hour cutoff time. Runners who complete 10 Comrades Marathons are assigned special green bib numbers to distinguish them from other runners. When you have completed 20 Comrades Marathons, you are assigned a “double green” number to identify your accomplishment.

M&B: Let’s run through each of your Comrades Marathons with the year, your finish time, and your finish position, and ask you to comment on each. 1987, 6:10:30, 21″ place.

Charl: My first attempt at Comrades. I was 21 years old.

M&B: 1988, 5:49:47, 7″ place.

Charl: One of my greatest runs. My first gold medal.

M&B:1989, 5:48:57, 9″ place.

Charl: I did not prepare my legs with weight training as I should have, and for a “down” course year, the legs must be right.

M&B: 1990, 6:12:31, 32™ place.

Charl: Due to a 12-hour-a-day work schedule, I did not have the appropriate rest in my preparation for the race.

M&B: 1991, 5:47:31, 6″ place.

Charl: I ran a bad tactical race, and that is why I lost.

M&B: 1994, 5:56:10, 11″ place.

Charl: I was injured during my base training the year that Alberto Salazar won Comrades.

M&B: 1995, 5:35:01, 2″ place.

Charl: I was working 10 hours every day and decided to become a [running] pro.

M&B: 1996, 5:34:56, 4″ place.

Charl: This year the Russians came in and were very strong.

M&B: 1997, 5:28:37, 1% place.

Charl: This race produced the second-fastest pace per kilometer in the 77year-history of Comrades.

COURTESY OF COMRADES

Charl Mattheus earns the biggest victory of his career, the 1997 Comrades crown.

M&B: 1998. You’re going after Bruce Fordyce’s “up” record of 5:27:42.

Charl: My sponsors and running club have offered me a big bonus incentive if I break this record. Bs Postscript: Sandwiched between a strong field of Russians, Charl finished second after a dramatic and gallant duel at the 1998 Comrades Marathon. After battling most of the race with victor Dmitri Grishine, who broke the “up” course record by a minute and 17 seconds in a time of 5:26:25, Charl finished in 5:31:32. This heated race was dubbed as “one of the greatest Comrades Marathons of all times.” Stating that he was pleased with the race, Charl did not use an injury that he entered the race with to detract from Grishine’s win. Charl returns to the 1999 Comrades Marathon as the defending “down” course champion and as the top South Aftrican finisher in the 1998 race.

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