Marathon Man (32 page)

B
OSTON,
M
ASSACHUSETTS

I don't recall every moment of my 26.2-mile journey to victory, but I'll never forget turning the corner on to Boylston Street for the home stretch and seeing thousands of people erupt like a rumbling geyser that can't hold back any longer, shooting out a powerful spray of emotion. Many runners have gone on record saying that the final downhill parade along Boylston Street to the finish line at the Prudential Center is the best stretch of road in marathoning. I couldn't agree more.

“Dreamlike” is the only way to describe how it felt as I ran through the tiny path cutting through the unruly mass of Boston fans, spilling over onto the streets and sidewalks. I let myself succumb to the thunderous madness all around me. I let myself get swallowed up in the wall of ecstatic noise. I let the crowd's energy carry me home. It was fun and exhilarating. The greatest thrill of my life.

Unbeknownst to me, as I turned for the finish line, Jack McDonald, the former college miler who had founded our little track club one night with six other runners in a Boston College locker room over a six-pack of beer, scampered up a tree to see me break the tape. “As he came by, down Boylston Street, I'm up in the tree, holding on to the tree and trying to clap my hands at the same time, screaming,” McDonald said. “It's like, ‘I know that guy. He's my friend. I drank beer with him two days ago.' It was a lifetime memory.”

I coasted to the finish line with the next closest racer two minutes behind. In those final steps of my twenty-six-mile journey, I thought about Amby, who had first inspired me to start running marathons. I was glad my former roommate had dragged me out of bed that one Sunday morning to run the full twenty miles with him through the outskirts of campus. He knew the power and beauty of distance running and, in the acts of his daily life, he communicated this to me. At the same time, he taught me that to succeed at the marathon took the passion of his mentor, Johnny Kelley, the courage of our barefooted hero, Abebe Bikila, the Lion of Ethiopia, and the commitment that he himself showed to the highest degree.

As I closed in on the finish line, I also thought about my brother, Charlie, who had been in my corner ever since I was a kid. He had been there for me since the day began, getting me to Hopkinton for the race start, finding gloves for my cold hands in the nick of time, and then giving me water along the course. Charlie would later tell me that after he told me to slow down on Heartbreak Hill, he flew down to the finish line with his friend. He didn't know if I could hold on and so he craned his neck around the corner, waiting anxiously for me to come into view. When he finally saw me coming down Boylston Street, he leaped up in the air, and for the first time he thought to himself, Oh my God, he's gonna win this thing.

I thought about Ellen, who had been there with love and understanding and rent checks: I thought about Coach O'Rourke, who had given me that initial confidence and Coach Squires, who had been there with his crazy, ingenious workouts: I thought of Tommy Leonard, who had been there with sea breezes and blue whales, offering shelter and warmth to maligned runners fighting for respect on the streets; Jock Semple, who drove me to races in his car, shouted encouragements to me along the course, and gave me sage advice at his Boston Garden training clinic; and my teammates, who had been there every day, pushing me on runs and aiding my recovery after workouts with food, drink, and laughter. Lastly. I thought of my pal Jason, who had been there on his bike to inspire me as I was coming down the home stretch.

I felt like I was floating on air the last fifty yards of the race, my elbows practically grazing the spectators who pressed thirty deep along the narrow pathway. As they screamed, clapped, and urged me on to triumph, I glanced down at the racing shoes, taking me those last steps to victory. In a way, Steve Prefontaine had been there for me, too. His gift had carried me to victory just as surely as the crowds had. What did Edison say? “Success is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”? It might be the other way around in the marathon. Inspiration is everything.

It was a nuclear explosion of cheers as I broke the finish line tape. As the tape drifted to my feet, I saw Ellen jumping for joy and that's when I knew for sure I'd won it. I still had no way of knowing if I'd hit my target—2:15. I was too swallowed up in the surrounding excitement to care.

“After he crossed the finish line,” Charlie recalled, “my friend and I put our arms around each other and started jumping up and down and yelling. I'm sure the people around us thought we were insane. Next, I fought my way up through the crowds—which were out of control back then—to the victory stand.”

Meanwhile, Amby Burfoot was now running with all his remaining strength to get to the plaza in time to see me receive the laurel wreath. Soon after reaching the Prudential Center, he found a lonely-looking Ellen and took her by the hand and led a blustery charge through the police and press to get her to my side.

At that moment, my mother, who was a nurse's aid at a children's hospital, was driving home from work with my sister. The radio was on and they announced that William Rodgers had just won the Boston Marathon. She nearly drove off the road.

As for my dad, he was handing out exams that day at Hartford State Technical College, where he was a professor of mechanical engineering. He told his students, in a tone of mild exasperation, “My son is running in that crazy Boston Marathon today.” He thought it was a goofy and perhaps dangerous thing to do. The next day he came in and all the students were waving newspaper accounts of my Boston victory. Pretty funny.

On the victory stand, the winner's wreath was placed on my head as I become the first Boston resident to win the marathon since John “the Elder” Kelley in 1945. The torch had been passed. As the wreath was put on my head, I saw Charlie leaping up out of the crowd, calling out my name. There's a picture of him reaching his hand up to me and me grabbing it and we're laughing with joy.

Charlie said, “You broke the American record! You ran 2:09:55!”

“That can't be true,” I responded. “I can't run that fast. I just can't.”

I had just taken ten minutes off my personal best marathon time. It didn't seem possible to me. I was shocked.

Now, everybody was there—Ellen, Amby, Charlie, Jock Semple, Tommy Leonard, Coach Squires, all my GBTC teammates. It felt like a homecoming, and we were all wired. We were like the same team—New England road racers. Great fun. I was as high as a kite.

In that moment, to have that laurel wreath, which you know has been on six-time champion Clarence DeMar, Tarzan Brown, John “the Elder” Kelley, Young Johnny Kelley, and all of a sudden—I'm this nobody Boston grad student and it's being placed on my head. Winning had been on my mind in my training for months and months. But at that moment, standing on the podium, I was like, “What the heck just happened?” because I had gotten my marathon time down to 2:09:55, which was, at the time, the fourth-fastest marathon in the world. I had suddenly run the marathon race I'd always wanted to run and to win was a great honor. That's how I felt about it.

I posed together with the female winner—a West German named Liann Winter, who dwarfed me in height and size. As photographers snapped pictures of us, I felt I should congratulate her on her victory. I gave her a big smile and said, “You had a great time. You must be very happy.” She turned to her interpreter and started speaking German. The interpreter looked at me: “She said, ‘I am. But could you get me a beer? I'd really like a beer.”

Her wanting a beer right then flipped me out. But that's the way runners were—very down to earth. It was like, “Hey, we both won the Boston Marathon. Let's have a beer and celebrate.”

I was quickly ushered down to the makeshift media room deep in the basement of the Prudential Center. There I was besieged by hundreds of flashbulbs and a horde of reporters. They shouted out questions at me as I sat there with a look of awestruck wonder on my face and a green laurel wreath on my head.

“How does it feel to have run a 2:09:55, breaking Frank Shorter's American record?”

“Are you sure it's a new record? 2:09.55? Honest? This is absurd. I can't run that fast. This is ridiculous. I must be dreaming this whole thing.”

Everyone laughed, but I was serious. The moment felt so surreal.

I have a photo of myself lying down on my back, laughing my head off, because there was a tradition at Boston where a podiatrist would take off your shoe and your sock and take a picture of your foot. This was a big deal because they wanted to show bad blisters and stuff. A totally corny photo. They would never do that today in a million years, but I didn't care. I was floating.

The podiatrist removed my Prefontaine Boston '73 shoe. I didn't have a single blister on my foot. It was a great ad for Nike.

Questions continued coming fast and furious from the reporters. “What were you thinking, stopping four times for water?”

“I can't run and drink at the same time.”

More laughter.

“You also stopped to tie your shoelace?”

“Yeah. On Heartbreak Hill, a good place to stop, don't you think?”

The crowd erupted again.

“What are you going to do now?” somebody shouted.

I said, “I'm going to the Eliot Lounge to have a blue whale.”

Again, everybody laughed. But I was just speaking the truth. I wasn't going to Disney World. I was off to the Eliot Lounge to celebrate with Tommy and all my friends.

If I had thought of it, I would have invited Liann Miller to the Eliot Lounge for a Hefeweizen.

The scene at the Eliot Lounge that evening was uproarious. I remember being there with Ellen in this sort of floating state. Surrounded by friends and family, my face radiated with joy. To celebrate my victory here in this small club, a runner's club, with pictures of runners hanging on the walls, felt perfect. A part of me wanted to run around town and thank each and every spectator who had lifted my spirits as I ran for the win. A nice thought, but I don't think my tired legs would have allowed such a thing.

While the place was packed, it was still very much a local runners' party. It was fun and we were just laughing our heads off. Young Johnny Kelley was there and I got to know him better. Having Johnny show up really made it a New England thing. The New England road runners—cranking it out for the past hundred years.

If the Greater Boston club reached its peak in '79, then this was the kickoff. Coach Squires was there, pumped out of his mind, as were all my Greater Boston mates. Everybody was trying to grasp what my victory meant, including me. To hold my own against Olympians in Morocco was a major deal—real runners like Amby and I understood that. But I was far from an established marathoner, so to run the way I had that day in Boston was beyond comprehension. Nobody could conceive that I could run that fast. I ran out of my body and my mind.

“For me as a sports fan,” says Jack McDonald, “Billy's win in '75 is right up there with Carleton Fisk's home run that won game six in the World Series. It's up there with the top things I've seen in sports, seeing your buddy run and set the record.”

People think the marathon is a loner sport, but that's not so. It's a powerfully emotional sport, and that's why you see so many things today, like the Run for the Cure. These organizations have realized the emotional power of the sport and what it means to try so hard to do something and for someone other than yourself. I don't know if I was doing it for someone else, but I did feel part of a close fraternity of runners. My teammate Scott Graham, who would later make a scrapbook of newspaper clippings of that race from around the world, came over and gave me a big hug in the middle of the crowded bar.

My faithful training partner Sev was also there, but the tough Vietnam vet opted for a hearty slap on my 125-pound Kermit the frog frame. “Bill doesn't even know this,” says Sev, “but the day he ran 2:09:55 I was with Dickie Mahoney. Dickie and I were sitting in a car outside the fire station near mile seventeen where the runners turn onto Commonwealth Avenue and start their climb through the Newton Hills. Dickie and I are trying to fly to the finish—he's driving because I have a cast over my foot—and the freaking radio announcers aren't saying crap because they didn't know who Billy was. One minute they're talking about how he stopped for water going up Heartbreak Hill. After that they said nothing. We had lost him. Then suddenly they announce that he'd won. I remember Dickie and I stopped the car and started crying—matter of fact, I'm probably going to cry now—because we knew him so well and had watched him grow.”

I did, in fact, order a blue whale, a concoction of blue curaçao, vodka, gin, and rum. The Tommy Leonard specialty looked like a large Guinness pint of Windex. Only Tommy Leonard, the usual ringmaster of our festivities, was bizarrely nowhere to be found. It turned out that Tommy had rented a room at the Eliot Hotel, where he fueled up for the party with a dip in the hot tub that included a few pints of friend rice and more than a few beers. “The next thing I knew,” recalled Tommy, “I woke up freezing with a ring of fried rice around the tub and a flotilla of beer bottles. I wouldn't want to say I drank too much.” Only Tommy, the man who could turn a regular Tuesday at the Eliot Lounge into a triumphantly good time, could end up missing the biggest celebration in his bar's history.

I could see from the glowing blue drink in Charlie's hand that he had just been introduced to the blue whale. He put his free hand on my shoulder and said, “I can't believe you really won. You were flying along so smoothly out there, it looked like a lark.”

“I felt great,” I said. “I was having fun.”

“You know how I told you to slow down out there on the course?”