Marathon Man (36 page)

Frank and I were cranking through the middle section of the course, knocking off ten miles in forty-nine minutes. The early part of the race had been nerve-racking, especially with my rushed start, but once we got out there—well, it was still nerve-racking because we were running at a sub-five-minute pace, but it was also exhilarating. They didn't run much faster at this year's Olympic trials—and we had tough weather. Much tougher weather. To command your destiny under the power of your own legs was a tremendous feeling. Something you can't really describe.

For well over an hour, I ran elbow to elbow with Frank and we even talked a bit. I think in a way I kind of helped him because I forced the pace and we were able to put the rest of the field away early. Around mile 13, I said to Frank, “We've got this.” It was my way of telling him, let's just run smart and steady now. It was clear we were the two top Americans. There was no reason to turn this into a showdown between us. There'd be plenty of opportunities in the future for us to take each other on.

It was a sunny day, mid-to-high sixties—by no means overbearing, but warm enough to elicit a healthy sweat early in the race. Unlike me, Frank ran well in the heat. Also, he had made sure to have his own special water bottles, probably filled with Gatorade, waiting for him at each water station. I didn't.

Frank would run along and pick up his own plastic bottles, which had a long, curved straw, allowing him to take a sip without disrupting his perfect running posture. I, on the other hand, was trying to swipe cups off the tables as we flew down the road—most of the time, missing my mark. On the occasion that I managed to secure a cup, most of the water splashed out before it ever reached my lips. I was tilting my head back, breaking my stride, and trying to throw the contents into my mouth, coughing out the water I had taken in too fast.

The weather in Eugene had been cool in the days prior to the race so I made no arrangements to station plastic bottles, with or without perfectly cupped straws, along the course. Looking back, I should have been filling up bottles with hydrating sports drink instead of emptying the hotel vending machines of Ring Dings. As a result of my serious (water) drinking problem—I barely consumed any fluids after the first few miles—my calves and legs stiffened up about five miles from the finish line.

We came into the stadium with two miles to go. Frank started pulling away. I could have tried to stay with him, but what was the point? A second-place finish would earn me a spot on the team; I knew we had a two-minute lead over everybody else and I was concerned about my calves. I eased up and watched Frank widen the gap between us.

I remember seeing the finish line up ahead and feeling a rush of euphoria. I started to count down the steps to the finish line. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.… I had never felt such elation and relief as I did crossing that line. I had fulfilled more than a goal; I had realized a dream. I had refused to let anything, not snow-clogged streets or brain-clogged principals, take away my dream of representing my country at the Olympics.

I thought back on the long road I had traveled to get here. After not running for three years, after being in such poor shape I could only run a mile around the dinky YMCA track, after losing my job, losing my bike, going on food stamps, after all the days and nights spent running alone around Jamaica Pond, after sneaking out on my lunch break to get in an eight-mile run, coming home and running ten more miles, after all the pavement I had covered on foot, all the training, all the early marathon failures and heat-related collapses, I was on my way to Montréal. Unbelievable.

In the end, Frank beat me by seven seconds with a time of 2:11:51. At the stadium, we shook hands. Frank and I were both running for Asics at the time and I remember the Asics shoe rep coming up to me and giving me a big athletic bag, which I thought was cool. That night, back in my hotel room, I was already thinking about what I needed to do to win gold. “In the next few weeks,” I wrote down in my running log, “1. Need two or three 25–30 mile runs at good pace; 2. Need to take ERG or Coke during race; 3. Need little more speed; 4. Need lots of rest.”

That last thing—get rest—was the toughest to follow. The next day I was running five miles at the San Francisco Airport during a layover. I got two hours of sleep that night. I was so wired, thinking how I was going to be running in the Olympics. The word “Olympian” has always struck a deep chord within me. I felt that I was running for more than personal glory; I was running for my wife Ellen, for my coach, my teammates, my family, my friends, for my brother Charlie and my best friend Jason. Most of all, I was running for my country. If all this comes off sounding romantic, that's because for me it was.

As soon as I got home, I leaped right back into my training. Two days later on Monday I ran sixteen miles. The day after that nineteen miles. Today top runners wouldn't do that. They would rest more. But I was one of those people who had no time to rest, only time to train.

I think my mentality was typical of runners during this, the running boom. After Frank Shorter's gold medal victory, there was a no-limits attitude in our sport, a feeling that you've got to aim high. Because the Finns and the Russians and the Spanish were training harder than ever before and reaching new levels. It was an intense time when you had runners who were hungrier, who were willing to sacrifice more, who were willing to drive themselves to the limit, maybe over the limit.

The old approach was to do a moderate level of training because there were more important things to do. The prevailing attitude was, “Your job was all-important and don't take this running thing too seriously. After all, it's not a realistic pursuit.” But this was a different approach. The approach of professionalism was that this was a very worthy and high-level goal in itself, and that's why the training mileage started increasing and the records started falling.

It was this no-limit attitude that convinced me to return to Eugene in June for the ten-thousand-meter trials; also, I felt that training for the ten thousand meter—which would require lots of speed work on the BC track—would actually help me bring down my time in the marathon, and so did Coach Squires.

At the Penn Relays in April, I shocked myself by scoring the fastest American qualifying time in the ten thousand meter; how could I not try to make the Olympic team now? In Eugene, I made it to the ten-thousand-meter finals. Before the race, Squires and I talked it over and decided not to try and make the team. Our reasoning was that the two ten-thousand-meter races I would have to run in Montréal would take a lot out of me and it would be better to conserve all my energy for the marathon, an event I had a real shot at winning. Meanwhile, I was a serious long shot to medal in the ten thousand meter.

Just because I had decided I wasn't going for the Olympic team didn't mean I didn't want to set a personal record. On a cool day, I hung with the leaders—Frank Shorter, Garry Bjorklund, and Craig Virgin—until half a mile from the finish line. That's when I fell off the pace. I was still in third place, good enough to earn a spot on the Olympic team. Bjorklund, who had lost a shoe earlier in the race, saw me slip back and began sprinting to catch me. He passed me with ten yards to go to make the Olympic squad. I was happy for him and for the fact that I had set a new PR—28:04:04. But my cheerfulness would be short-lived.

One day, shortly after returning home from the trials, I went over to Boston College and tried to run the track. I felt a stinging pain on the ball of my foot. Not good. Not when you run on the balls of your feet, like I did. Turns out I had aggravated an injury in my right foot while running in the Olympic ten-thousand-meter finals. The foot had given me trouble over the previous winter; my guess is that the culprit was overuse. The shoes I was wearing were too narrow for my foot, the metatarsal bone in the bottom of my foot became inflamed, and scar tissue formed, which led to a pinched nerve between the toes. Simply put, the ball of my foot hurt like you wouldn't believe.

I knew that the speed work Squires had insisted I do on the track had played an important role in achieving my American record time in the 1975 Boston Marathon, but I felt I had no choice but to forgo that part of my training regimen; my foot couldn't withstand the heavy pounding. I feared that if I made my injury any worse I might not even be able compete in Montréal and there was no way I was going to let that happen.

Because I relegated my training to long, easy runs, I saw less and less of my GBTC teammates. Most of the time I would run alone through the streets of Melrose, waging my own personal war with the blistering summer sun. While I was training at a slower pace of 6:30 a mile, I told myself that I wouldn't need to run as fast as I did at Boston to take home the gold. Even without my normal speed work on the track, I knew I'd be among the top conditioned athletes at the starting line. The Olympic marathon would be run in August, likely on a hot day, when nobody would be thinking about breaking any records.

I figured that if I ran around a 2:13, I would have a great chance of winning.

 

EIGHTEEN

Feet, Don't Fail Me Now

The only real difference between the first Olympic marathon and the one I was preparing to race in 1976 was the distance. At the 1908 Olympic games in London, the original twenty-four-mile distance was extended another two miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City Stadium, with 385 yards added on so the race could finish in front of King Edward VII's viewing box. The American Johnny Hayes won it in a time of 2:55:18. Other than that, they're both simple footraces. And yet running a great marathon is dictated by any number of variables, some of which, like weather or illness, are beyond our control.

Oftentimes, putting together that perfect race can feel like catching lightning in a bottle. I've always said if the marathon is a part-time interest, you'll only get part-time results. Total devotion, however, doesn't guarantee success. So much has to go your way, not just during the race, but in the months leading up. Running a great race means all your training comes together at the right time so that you peak on the day of the race. It also means your body has survived the day-in, day-out rigors of a relentless training schedule. You've got to make it to the starting line in one piece. Easier said than done.

On July Fourth, I ran in the seventh annual Peachtree Marathon, a ten-kilometer road race held in Atlanta. The first race in 1970 featured 110 runners and was sponsored by a local brewery. By 1976, the number of participants skyrocketed to 2,200. Everybody was shocked and excited by the rapid growth in popularity. Of course, today more than sixty thousand people run the 6.2-mile route from Lenox Square to Piedmont Park, making it the largest 10K running event in the world.

Although my foot was still bothering me, I decided to race the Peachtree to test my fitness, break the monotony of training, and lift myself up—assuming I ran well. You're always playing these little psychological games with yourself during the training phase for a big race, designed to get you to the start line feeling confident. Otherwise, doubt will infect your thoughts during the race and erode your concentration. You'll lose your ability to hear what your body is telling you and to monitor your effort level as you go. It'll be tough to read the subtle movement of your competitors. In a blink of the eye, all those months of careful training can be washed down the drain. So great is the power of the mind in relation to the body that
believing
you are ready to handle whatever the course throws at you is often the very thing that makes it so. In the end, belief is all you can attain because it's never until you're out on the course, when Mother Nature finally reveals her mood, that you discover just how prepared for battle you are.

A 26.2-mile journey on foot is fraught with unknown perils, especially while running at a sub-five-minute-mile pace. How many sporting contests go two hours straight without a single break? The boxer can go back to his corner to get his eye examined. The tennis player can sit down and regroup after losing the first set. The baseball pitcher waits in the dugout when his team is up to bat. The football player gets halftime. There are no timeouts or reset buttons in the marathon. The punishment for performing at less than peak efficiency during a marathon is not just defeat, it's total destruction.

On the day of the Peachtree, I ended up losing by two seconds to Don Kardong, a collegiate track champion at Stanford. I knew I'd have the chance to face him again—and our fellow American Frank Shorter—at the upcoming Olympics. So I licked my wounds and got back up.

Over the next three months, I stuck to a moderate running schedule. I threw in some speed work on the track, but not as much as I wanted. I felt pain every time my foot pounded the ground. I knew I had to keep up the high mileage, in spite of my foot issues and the brutal heat of summer. I felt that I couldn't let anything stop me. I might run at different times in the day or slow up my pace. But if you need to go twenty miles, you're going to go twenty miles. Guys like me and Jerome Drayton and Tom Fleming and Alberto Salazar were from the era where we were trying to achieve times which had never been done before in the marathon. Long periods of rest weren't an option. Our mentality was always keeping pushing. Run more, run harder.

On July 9, I drove up to the Olympic Training Center in Plattsburgh, New York. The next day, President Ford showed up in Plattsburgh and met personally with all of us who would be representing America in the Montréal games. Afterward, he delivered a speech at a ceremony outside the SUNY Plattsburgh Field House. “All the wonderful people of Plattsburgh and your fellow Americans know that you will bring the Olympics the same dignity, the same dedication, the same magic blend of hope and talent, humility, and pride which has characterized American Olympians and made them so successful and so respected over the years. Good luck, God bless you, and as the Olympic motto suggests, may all of you be swifter, higher, and stronger.”