Marathon Man (38 page)

Finally, I found myself back at the entrance of the stadium. As I emerged from the tunnel onto the vast track, I was a broken-down, sputtering piece of machinery, walk-limping underneath the darkening sky. The scattering of people that remained in the cavernous stadium urged me on with shouts of support. Then I heard somebody shout, “Why don't you quit, Yankee?” I yelled back, “I haven't quit yet,” and started running a little.

As I struggled through my final lap around the track, I had no clue which runner had taken the gold medal, but I assumed it would be Frank Shorter. I glanced up at the giant scoreboard and to my surprise I saw that the East German Waldemar Cierpinski had chased down Shorter, besting the reigning Olympic marathon champion by fifty-one seconds. He won in 2:09:55, cutting over two minutes from Abebe Bikila's Olympic record. So much for the slow, difficult race in the summer heat I had expertly forecasted.

Twenty years later, a German doctor named Werner Franke uncovered hidden documents that revealed the country's systematic doping program and showed that Cierpinski had been taking androgenic steroids when he competed in Montréal. I felt for Shorter. He was cheated out of a second gold medal despite running 2:10:46—his fastest-ever time in the marathon. I also felt for Don Kardong, who made a brave late charge for third place, only to miss out on a bronze medal by three seconds. Of course, if Cierpinski's win was voided—which it never was—Kardong would move up from fourth place to the bronze medal. As for me, I finished in fortieth place in 2:25:14.

I was in a mental fog as I made my way back to the rented house after the race. The hardest part for me was the finality of it all. My legs were cooked and I was not in a good mood. Making the Olympic team was a terrific high. Now I fell down to a terrific low. To have a terrible race on that day was worse than frustrating, worse than dispiriting, worse than any feeling I can come up with.

During the awesome pageantry of the closing ceremonies, I remember looking up at the giant screen and seeing hundred of Russian girls dancing and a banner that read, “See you in Moscow in 1980!” It hit me like a ton of bricks: Whoa, that's four long years from now. I was struck by a desolate feeling in my heart. For the next couple of days I did nothing. My foot was in too much pain to go running; besides, I was too deep in the doldrums.

Ellen and I made the long drive back to Melrose. Later, I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons. I ran in the Olympic marathon. I did my best. I recorded a time. I represented my country. I experienced the pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies, and soaked up the beauty of the city, its streets bustling with people from lands far and wide dressed up in flags and singing their anthems. I got to meet other athletes, trade pins and jerseys with them, and learn a little about their culture. All in all, I wouldn't trade my Olympic experience for anything.

Two weeks after Montréal, I entered a 7.7-mile road race in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. I think the other runners were shocked to see me racing again so soon after getting the stuffing kicked out of me at the Olympics. Though my legs were still achy from the marathon, I breezed to victory.

A couple of reporters came up to me after the race. I assumed it was to talk about my victory, but instead I was bombarded with questions about whether I was going to quit running after my poor showing in Montréal. Quit running? To them, I was washed up. My fortieth-place finish in the Olympic marathon was a career death sentence. My breakthrough win at Boston the previous April—nothing more than a fluke.

The last time anybody had asked me if I was going to quit running, it was my parents and I was graduating from college. Back then, I assumed that I would need to find something else to pursue in my life; but running was no longer some hobby, but an all-encompassing lifestyle and a essential part of who I was. I was not alone.

For me, for Frank Shorter, for my GBTC teammates, running was not an escape from the real world. It was a necessary, life-sustaining passion, the way painting was to Vincent van Gogh or writing was to Ernest Hemingway. As runners, we embodied a new attitude; and it would be this new attitude that led to the running boom, and the last golden era in American long-distance running.

 

NINTEEN

Showdown in New York

In my log a week later, I wrote how my legs were still tight. Having the terrible race in Montréal was really depressing. It wasn't like I couldn't get out of bed, but the disappointment was hard to shake. In terms of failures, it was like going back in time to my first Boston marathon. But these are the kinds of missteps you can get in distance running. Like I said, the marathon can humble you, no matter who you are. It will do it. Everyone falls. So, how do you get yourself back up? You get yourself back up by looking to the next race. You get yourself up by setting a new goal.

I was eager to get back into competition after my debacle in Montréal—something to remove the bad taste in my mouth. There's no way to describe how bad I wanted a chance to race again after being stripped of my status as up-and-coming star and given the new label of “one-hit wonder” in whiplash speed. I knew the 1976 New York City Marathon was my chance to rectify things. A chance for salvation.

The next Sunday I returned to the Falmouth Road Race, along with my Greater Boston teammates Scott Graham, Bob Hodge, and Vin Fleming. A year earlier, in 1975, as a favor to my good friend Tommy Leonard, I wrote a letter to Shorter, asking him to run at Falmouth. After all, I knew that Tommy's dream of holding his own world-class road race in Cape Cod was born the night he watched Shorter's gold medal run on the TV above the bar he tended.

Shorter, who was on his way to Europe for a ten-thousand-meter race, agreed to show up for the race, but only if he was given six hundred dollars and a plane ticket. Tommy convinced Billy Crowley, the owner of the Captain Kidd, the Woods Hole bar where the race kicked off, to pony up the money and the ticket. Shorter accepted the invitation. I thought I had a great shot against the gold medal champ, especially after my record-setting triumph at Boston four months earlier, and the fact that I had won Falmouth the previous year in 1974.

Shorter and I gapped the field of 850 runners by two minutes over the seven-mile route along the shore, from Woods Hole to Falmouth Heights. But in the end, Shorter won the shootout, pulling away around mile 5 and coasting to a fifteen-second victory in a record time of 33:24.

The real winner, however, was Tommy Leonard. With the national media playing up the showdown between the top two American runners, Falmouth quickly became one of the most popular and celebrated road races in the country, and eventually the world. Tommy's dream from that night in 1972 had come true.

By 1976, the field at Falmouth had exploded to 2,090 runners but all anybody could talk about was my rematch with Shorter. Could I finally step out of Shorter's shadow? I think we made each other nervous. I knew I could beat everyone else here—but what about Shorter? He was a great strategist in terms of how he ran his races, how he exerted pressure, how he paced himself. He knew when to go for the kill.

The night before the 1976 race, I met up with Shorter at a nightclub on Main Street in Falmouth called The Oar and Anchor. I asked him, “What have you done since Montréal?” He answered: “All I've done is lie around a pool, go waterskiing, eat and drink too much, and live the life of laziness. I feel terrible.”

“That's great,” I replied. “That's the way I feel.”

I might have been too easily taken in by the wily Ivy Leaguer because the race proved to be a repeat of 1975, with Shorter beating me by eleven seconds. He broke his own course record with a time of 33:13.

New York City Marathon race director Fred Lebow, a charismatic and street-smart promoter, approached Shorter and me after the race. He told us that, for the first time ever, the New York City Marathon would be staged through the streets of all five boroughs of the city. He planned to sell the extravaganza to the public as an epic battle between the two American heavyweights of marathon racing. Our head-to-head duel would add lustre to the event and set the media abuzz. But I wasn't interested in attention. I was after redemption.

The strongest wind couldn't blow me off course as I prepared for my showdown with Shorter in New York. (Feel free to start humming the
Rocky
theme right about now.) I woke up early to train before school and ducked out for an eight- or nine-mile run on my lunch hour. I took advantage of the weekends to rack up more miles. I coasted through the streets alone, monotonously chewing up distance with each stride, my running shoes gliding with rhythm over the pavement. My shirt was drenched in sweat. My mind didn't wander. I concentrated on my breath. I thought about my form. I went over race strategies in my head. Everything I did was geared toward making sure I was in the best shape of my life when I stepped up to the start line in New York.

I trained more miles per week leading up to the New York Marathon than I had during any other time in my life. Over the next eight weeks, I ran between 130 and 150 miles per week. One week I racked up 180 miles. In September, I set a new personal record for miles in a month—673.

I ate like a horse, consuming four thousand calories a day. I stepped up my ritual of raiding the refrigerator in the middle of the night, drinking bottles of honey, devouring boxes of Oreo cookies, scooping out gobs of peanut butter or mayonnaise from the jar and, for the grand finale, submerging them in a bottle of bacon bits. On this diet, I was a whopping 128 pounds with seven percent body fat. The normal standing heart rate for most people is between sixty to ninety beats per minute. Mine was thirty-eight.

Feeling like I was making a comeback gave me strength. It invigorated my spirit. My desire burned at full flame. I ran with friends. I ran alone. I ran in the heat. I ran in the rain, one long, steady run after the next.

Despite my all-out commitment to training, I was careful to give my body the rest it needed. I knew how hard I could push myself without overtaxing my body. Injury is the biggest risk a long-distance runner faces: Perhaps no athlete in any other sport can less afford to be knocked off his training program than the marathoner. Miss a couple of days to injury or sickness and you can be sure to lose some fitness. For every day you take off, it takes twice that long to build your mileage back. Every run matters.

I would psyche myself up on training runs with my friends, even once telling Sev that I was going to “take Frank out.” He had the legacy to protect. I could only acquire mine. Still, I knew that no one expected me to answer the bell in New York, not after Shorter got the best of me in Montréal and Falmouth. But when race day finally arrived, I was in the best shape of my life. If I was going down, I wasn't going down easy.

I was so broke that I drove all the way to New York City on back roads in order to avoid paying tolls on the turnpike. I figured if Shorter could get six hundred dollars under the table for running in Falmouth, maybe Lebow would pay me something to run in New York. Of course, it was illegal for me to directly ask for money, so I let Ellen handle the negotiations, while I stayed in the dark. She called up Lebow and asked for two thousand dollars. He agreed.

On the morning of October 24, 1976, I parked my car in Manhattan and shared a cab with
New York
magazine publisher George Hirsch to the race start. Fortunately, it was a different taxi than world-class marathoner Jack Foster of New Zealand had stepped into after arriving at Kennedy Airport. Two men who were already inside the cab robbed him on the way to the hotel.

I arrived at the race start on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to find overcast skies and 40-degree temperatures. I couldn't have asked for more ideal conditions to race in. A beautiful day for a tour of New York City.

The top runners and I toed the starting line. I was wearing my lucky white gloves, my Greater Boston Track Club T-shirt, and a pair of borrowed red soccer shorts. Around two thousand runners crouched directly behind us, waiting to go off like a time bomb. Half the field consisted of first-time marathoners, a clear sign that the country was on the crest of a running boom.

Among the world-class assemblage of competitors at the starting line with me were Ian Thompson, a linguist from England who ran a 2:09:12 in 1974, then the second-fastest marathon time in the world; Great Britain's Ron Hill and Chris Stewart; Akio Usami of Japan; the always tough Tom Fleming, and, of course, the man everybody was trying to beat, Frank Shorter.

When Shorter and I finally lined up on the Verrazano Bridge for the start of the marathon, the whole nation was tuned in. Lebow had set up New York as a personal grudge match between Shorter and me, but in my own mind, it had less to do with taking down Shorter and more about setting things straight about where I stood in the marathon world. I felt in my heart that I was one of the best. I came to the conclusion that the only way to prove this, and erase the dark blemish of that failed Olympic marathon, was by fighting and beating the best in a head-to-head competition.

I had a little nerves at the starting line. I was about to leap into the unknown. What awaited me could be pain, misery, and heartache. If you're not feeling a little anxiety before taking off on a 26.2 mile race at unrelenting, break-neck speed, you might want to make sure you're still breathing.

Former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton fired the starting gun and we were off. A twenty-seven-year-old Finnish Olympian named Pekka Päivärinta broke from the Staten Island toll plaza at the start of the race as if blood-thirsty mobsters were chasing him down with tommy guns. Frank and I hung back, rather than try and match Päivärinta's fast pace across the world's largest suspension bridge, sloping into Brooklyn. Both of us knew Päivärinta was more of a miler than a marathoner and doubted he could maintain the blistering 4:45-mile pace he'd run for the first five miles.