Marathon Man (11 page)

I returned home to Newington and entered a whole new kind of reality—as a substitute letter carrier at the local post office. What could be a more meaningful contribution than working at the bottom rung of the U.S. Postal Department? My “radically” long hair stereotyped me as being against the war. And I was against the war. I remember the older guys at the post office, many of them veterans, yelling stuff like, “Get a haircut!”

My uncle had fought in World War II but he was too nice of a guy to get on my case about my long hair or my objection to the war. I do remember him saying to me once, “Why don't you go into the National Guard?” That's what President Bush did. He had the connections to become a pilot in the guard, but he never went to Vietnam. Yet he was seen as patriotic because he was serving in the military. I had a different perspective. I thought I was patriotic by not serving. I felt in my heart, This war is not good for us. This is not smart. It's going to hurt us in every way, shape, and form. We have to think long and hard about this.

I think we took a lot of grief for our beliefs, but hopefully some older people changed their minds. In the end, I think many did. Of course, none of that changed a simple, sad fact: Our people were taking a beating over there.

That March, I got a call from Jason. He told me he'd found a job working at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a groundsman, and if I wanted, he could try to get me a job there, too. I came up two months later and got a job as an escort service messenger. It meant I was no longer running on the track, but racing to the morgue.

 

FOUR

Racing to the Morgue

A
PRIL 21, 1975

F
RAMINGHAM,
M
ASSACHUSETTS

In Framingham, Jerome Drayton, with his dark sunglasses and steely expression, ran a few yards ahead of the lead pack. Without any warning, he blasted off. I followed. It was no struggle to match his pace. I was so fit that I could go with anyone. I didn't care who it was—Tom Fleming, Ron Hill, Jerome Drayton—didn't matter to me. I could race with anybody, at any pace. And that's what it was all about. This wasn't a race for third place or fifteenth place or 1,000th place. It might be for somebody else. That's cool. I'm not interested in that.

I expected Ron Hill and Tom Fleming to go with us, but they hung back—albeit for different reasons. Let Billy take off, Fleming thought. There's twenty miles still to go. He'll burn himself out on the hills like he did twice before. Let him run Drayton into the ground. While Tom Fleming didn't stay with us for strategic purposes, Ron Hill didn't give chase because he was already smoked. When Fleming caught up to Hill, he said in his typical, joking tone: “How're you feeling, Ronnie boy?” to which the thirty-six-year-old Englishman panted, “Bloody knackered; I'm hanging on to you.” I'd left Ron Hill in the dust. This gave me a huge shot of confidence.

Running along with Drayton, I felt I was setting myself up for the real battle ahead, cruising along, getting into race mode. The other runners trailed off behind us. That included Tom Fleming. There was no time to feel bad for him. He was a friend, but on the course he was a foe. A powerful foe who lived and breathed the marathon, and who ran every single race like his life depended on it. I know Tom thought of me as this easygoing space cadet who got along with everybody. Okay, I did get along with everybody. But I had another side of me that came out when I raced. Make a tactical error, I pounced. Let your guard down for a second, I went for the jugular. And I wouldn't think twice. I was waiting for you to show your weakness—maybe I detected your breathing was slightly more labored than it was a mile earlier—and that's when I'd push the pace. And I'd keep pushing harder and harder, increasing the severity of your pain, until I'd annihilated your soul, your spirit, your body. And after I'd left you on the side of the road clutching your side, I'd be on to my next opponent, or the finish line. Once the race was over then we could go to the Eliot Lounge and be friends again. I'd even buy the first round of blue whales.

Drayton and I poured it on through the streets of Framingham. Suddenly, we were out of the woods of Ashland and Hopkinton and running down this big, wide commercial street. There was no shade, which could be rough on hot days. We ran almost touching elbows through the industrial town, breezing past gas stations, little taverns, and factory buildings. I wouldn't describe it as the most scenic part of the course. Of course, the surrounding area had no meaning or power, except that it was flat and I knew I was a quarter through the race. It was always a significant feeling to hit the first 10K of the race. What it meant was “you were making progress.” You'd gone a quarter of the way and now this race was starting to crank up. The marker allowed you to calibrate your pace, if need be. I don't recall plugging figures into my head. With no official clock to check my splits, I didn't have any idea as to my time at that stage. I knew Hill's course record was 2:10:40. I knew that was out of reach for me. I was a 2:18 marathoner. I sensed I could run faster than that. I didn't think about my prerace goal of 2:15 once the race began. After all, it was pure speculation.

Near the seventh mile, Drayton and I came upon an intersection where I could hear the noise of the crowd in the distance. We came around the bend and all of a sudden we were greeted by the cheers of spectators stacked several deep. In a lot of other sports, the crowd is in a stadium set way back, but here they were right on us, up close and personal. The pace was slow enough to be able to see the people and to feel the electric current surging through them, and more importantly, into me. As the crowds increased along the course, so did the intensity of this sensation. I knew, here in Framingham, the crowds were not nearly as crazy as they were going to be later on.

As we approached the train station in Framingham, my eyes widened. More people! A huge crowd of people cheering crazily in the distance. I'd run several local road races where a couple of local folks would stand on the side of the road in front of a rolling cow pasture, clapping for me as I passed by. But I had never experienced anything like this. Passing within arm's length of the crowd, they unleashed a torrent of cheers and war whoops.

It was here in 1907 that the lead pack of ten runners came through just as the freight train was approaching. The runners put on the afterburners and raced across the tracks as tons of steel passed only feet behind them. The story goes that Tom Longboat, a nineteen-year-old Canadian kid from the Onondaga tribe, leaped through the open door of the passing train and out the other side, and kept running. At any rate, the train severed the lead pack from the remaining 114 runners, who had to stop and jog in place for a minute while the train rolled across the road. Longboat went on to capture the laurel wreath in record time while the other race favorite, Hank Fowler from Cambridge, complained bitterly that getting stuck behind that train cost him his chance at victory. Thankfully, I made it over the train tracks without having to jump through any train cars.

I crossed the train tracks, waving happily to the crowd gathered outside the train station. Funny thing, I don't remember doing that. This was the other side of my ADHD, the good side, especially if you happen to be a distance runner. Most normal people could not run for over two hours without a single break in concentration, but my condition gave me an abnormal talent for immersing myself in a single activity I enjoyed, in this case running. Once I went into this zone of hyperfocus, I shut out the rest of the world. I could have been running through an artillery range with live mortars going off around me and it wouldn't have bothered me. Being able to lock it down for 26.2 miles while disregarding the messages of worry, confusion, and insecurity that can infect the mind and deplete the body gave me a special edge. Which was kind of funny because, the rest of the time when I wasn't running, my mind was all over the place. Everything has a flip side, I suppose.

Drayton and I were the first runners to reach the first checkpoint, which read
6.5 MILES
. The arbitrary marker was of no use in terms of keeping track of your pace. Why have a marker at 6.5 miles? Why not 7.5 miles? The answer: It was close to the train, allowing officials in the old days to quickly monitor the progress of the race before quickly jumping back on the train and going to the finish in Boston. Without markers set at regular intervals, I had to gauge my pace on feel alone.

Drayton was running very easily next to me at the same record-setting pace. I was in a steady rhythm, my feet kissing the pavement. If I ran at this roaring pace at even a slightly reduced fitness level, or on a much hotter day, I would be sure to dump out in the Newton Hills. Our footsteps hit the ground at the same interval. How fast were we moving? Who knows? All that mattered was the race, the course, and how I felt. All that mattered was that I had just run a two-hundred-mile week. It lifted me up. I felt sort of like a running Superman. I don't think there's too many others doing this, I'd think to myself.

I had a gut feeling that Drayton was one of them. He was a true amateur like me—training on his own without any financial or scientific assistance. Working a full-time job. Waking up early in the morning to run ten miles before his job, then putting in another seventeen miles after. The amount of time and effort we put into training for the marathon could be seen as a clear sign of madness, but we both knew the quest for greatness in this sport required a single-minded, almost obsessive dedication. As Drayton once said: “I never really liked the marathon to begin with, but when it really felt like a chore, I'd just say to myself, Somewhere in the world, one of my competitors is out there running right now. He's got to do it, so I've got to do it.”

Drayton and I didn't exchange a single word as we ran in perfect unison. Drayton wasn't a real talker. He was assessing me, and what I could do. He didn't know what I could do. That was my advantage. On the other hand, I had no idea what he could do, either. Who was this guy?

It turns out he was born Peter Buniak in 1945 in Germany. His poor Russian-Ukrainian parents gave him his name, and not much more. As an infant, he survived on frozen potatoes and icicles. By the age of six, he was put in foster care. Recalls Drayton: “I learned how to fight, how to throw stones when it was three against one, and how to keep to myself.” Amid the background of a ravaged city, a teenage Drayton found momentary escape as a runner.

When he was eleven, Drayton emigrated to Toronto, Canada. In order to cut ties with his bitter youth in postwar Germany, he gave himself a new name. Like most things about Drayton, the origins of his adopted identity are shrouded in mystery. While it's hard not to notice that former Canadian world-record holder Harry Jerome and American Paul Drayton both medaled at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, he claims he came up with “Jerome Drayton” by flipping through a European phonebook.

In 1969, Drayton showed up at the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan, the unofficial world championship for marathoners, with his new identity, complete with dark shades and mustache. He refused to speak to virtually anyone before the race. Drayton was angry that he had not been invited to run in the prestigious race, despite posting the third-fastest time of the year at the Motor City Marathon in Detroit. Not only that, he had to plead with the Canadian government just to help pay for his flight over.

A day before the race, a reporter asked Drayton to assess his chances against the fastest marathoners in the world, including 1968 Olympic marathon champion Mamo Wolde; 1969 European marathon champion Ron Hill; and 1969 Boston marathon champion Yoshiaki Unetani. “In spite of recording the third fastest time of year, 2:12:00, I was not invited to the race,” said a stone-faced Drayton. “I will win the race tomorrow.”

As soon as the race got under way, Drayton rocketed out to the lead. The experienced runners knew to let him go. Let him burn himself out. By the halfway mark, Drayton had built a thirty-one-second lead. The top runners weren't worried—it was only a matter of time before this party-crashing Canadian would crash back to Earth. Drayton responded by increasing the pace. He led wire to wire, becoming the first Western athlete to come to Japan and win their coveted marathon.

Immediately after shocking the racing world, Jerome celebrated with nobody. No teammates were there to throw him a party. No girlfriend was there to leap into his arms. He sent a telegram to his parents in Toronto to inform them of his victory, and that was all. You can be sure the next day he was back out there. Training hard. Running alone.

F
IVE
Y
EARS
E
ARLIER

B
OSTON,
M
ASSACHUSETTS

In 1971, President Richard Nixon said, “Emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the presidency.” It was a winter earlier and I was emptying bedpans as part of my daily routine as escort messenger at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. I was also disposing of soiled linens, washing dishes, and taking lifeless bodies down to the morgue. You know, dignified stuff.

I was one of eight escort messengers. Almost all of us had signed up for this inglorious job in order to satisfy our alternative-service requirements as conscientious objectors to the war. We would wait in a little area off to the side of the nurses' station for the bell to ring. Long-haired Quakers, Catholics, Mennonites, Amish—well, maybe no Amish—in wrinkly white uniforms objecting conscientiously to the war, one mindless errand at a time.

The part I liked about the job was that I was always moving and interacting with people throughout the hospital. I'd constantly be running through the long maze of corridors, traveling from one department to another, picking up X-rays in Radiology and delivering them to a doctor's office or rushing blood from the blood bank to the operating room or taking a patient up to Pathology to get tested and then returning them to the main ward.