Looking Forward

Here is one of those iconic pictures of the great Jim Ryun showing his head slightly askew, pumping arms, powerful stride, and eyes glued on the goal of reaching the finish line in first place. The picture is about Jim Ryun, and not many people may notice the "other guy". Well, I never did. However,  I was recently informed that the other guy is a runner named Glenn Ogden, whose name didn't ring any bells with me, even though I consider myself a student of the sport. I was surprised to find out that Glenn Ogden was a 1965 graduate of The Stony Brook School on Long Island, the same small college prep school that I attended. Here is the caption I found for the photo:

Glenn Ogden ’65 was one of the finest runners in school history.  After a Hall of Fame career for the Blue and White he attended the University of Missouri where he won 2 Conference Championships for the Tigers and set the 2 mile record with a time of 8:46.0.  In the above photo Ogden is running against one of the biggest names in the history of American sports: Jim Ryun.  In 1964 Ryun became the 1st high schooler to smash the 4 minute mile barrier by running a blazing 3:59.0 as a junior.  His litany of accomplishments include being a 3-time Olympian, setting the mile and 2 mile world records as a 19-year-old and being named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year.”

Stony Brook for many years had a strong and stellar tradition as a running powerhouse with many accomplished running "stars" and "no" I was not one of them (history here).  After a little searching I noticed that Glenn was ranked 9th in the USA at 5000 meters in 1966 (former Wheaton College teammate Dan Henderson was ranked 9th in 1984 and 8th in 1985). The all-time USA rankings in the men's 5000 meters can be found here. Another outstanding Stony Brook and national class runner Robin Lingle preceded Glenn at Missouri. Lingle would later coach at Missouri and then return to coach at Stony Brook. It was interesting to find out more about that old photo and discover the connections to my own running past!

As much as a runner looks forward to finishing a race, I am looking forward to Monday when I finally find out results of the MRI I had over a week ago. I hope the doctors can finally tell me what is wrong with my hip. I also hope to find out whether surgery will correct things (it better). I have my ideas about what they will find. I put my money on hearing the words "labral tear" and "hip impingement". I do hope they offer hope for me that I can be fixed. I have completely given up on even trying to run any more. It just doesn't work. I was so excited to finally get warm enough weather last week to go out biking. I took out my mountain bike and it felt good so I did about an hour, but that night the "nerve pain" came again all down my left side and stayed with me throughout the next day. I was hoping that at least I could bike, but I guess I can't even do that. It seems the only exercise I can do to work on my endurance is kettlebells. Yesterday, I set a new PR doing kettlebell swings. I did 1250 swings with my 50 pound kettlebell. It feels good to do these, but the only problem is I now get blisters on my hands instead of my feet.

I have had lots of conversations and  feedback online with other runners that have had labral tears and so much of what I have experienced matches up to their stories. The best description offered me explaining labral tears and their cause and damage comes from runner, cyclist, kickbiker-footbiker, and chiropractor Jamie Whitlock, (also runs the No Gears Needed blog). He wrote me this:

Labral tears would be a surgical fix. If that is the problem I would think that it was result of an imbalance. The muscles of the pelvis/hip, especially the psoas, are so prone to tightening, then you get a weakened Glute Medius, which is a stabilizer of the pelvis, and you are rocking side to side vs. gliding forward. This puts undo pressure on the hip joint itself, and shazaam internal destruction in or around the joint....All the muscles around that area, TFL, of course the ITB, G Med, Psoas, Piriformis all culprits!

That about sums up most of my trouble muscles and imbalance problems and tells about what I expect the MRI to show, "internal destruction in or around the joint."

How Runners Communicate (through the years)

When I started running in the 1970s everything I knew about running came from my coaches and teammates, books on running, televised track meets, and Runner's World magazine. I was fortunate to grow up in Falmouth on Cape Cod, the home of the Falmouth Road Race and I started running for the Falmouth High School Cross Country team just a couple of weeks after the first Falmouth Road Race. I also learned a lot about the athletes and the sport from participating in the Falmouth Road Race and seeing and reading about all the stars of the sport in the local papers. Being in close proximity to the best in the sport probably helped instill a passion in me for the sport of running.

 High School Communication:

Falmouth High School 1973-1974

 There was no internet. Runners did not even have timers on their watches to accurately record training times.  Results were either written down or mimeographed and distributed later. Results from my first year of running cross-country. I was no running star! The only race that is missing is the final race, a handicap race for the Falmouth XC team. I was one of the first starters, based on my slow best time, and held on for the win in 19:53.

I think this is the first time I was mentioned in the newspaper. It was just for being on the track  team. I was pretty slow.

The Stony Brook School 1974-977

Mimeographed sheets again. Communication with Coach Goldberg in the summer was by mail or phone. The only way I could get to the top of the list was if the top guys did not run, but it was fun to get there.

 Results always seemed to be in purple. These are from the New York State Suffolk County Cross-Country Championships in 1976. We had an outstanding team, and finished third in our NY State division race. I wonder how many race results are lost to history, except for those saved by racers stored  in boxes in garages and attics.







 

 Our outstanding coach, Marvin W. Goldberg, would post workouts everyday on a bulletin board in the gym and send postcards and notes throughout the summer. After a season, he would meet with his athletes individually and go over goals. I think I am the only high school runner, despite loads of effort, who could never break 5 minutes in the mile (all slow twitch fibers and a funky hip and stride).








Wheaton College 1977-1981

In college we had this postcard-newsletter system to keep up with our teammates throughout the summer. How else would you know that a teammate just won an NCAA title or that another teammate spent his summer elongating the necks of Coca-Cola bottles for carnivals (in another newsletter). There was a lot of ribbing and strange humor in these newsletters (maybe the Coke bottle puller was just someone pulling our legs-I still don't know). It was a fun way to keep in contact and stay motivated through a long summer.

Through college and after, if I wanted to stay in-touch with the running world, I had to read magazines and books, run and talk with running friends, go to races, and watch the occasional event of television. It  might take weeks or months to view the results in running magazines of races from around the world and in the US, unless they were printed in a newspaper like the Boston Globe. The computer changed all that.

In the 1990s the Gate City Striders had a computer bulletin board in addition to a mailed out newsletter. You would phone in using your modem (I think one person at a time could gain access) and you could read and send messages to teammates and read messages on a newsgroup called rec.running to hear what people around the world were writing about running. The message board was a lot of fun and a place of inspiration: just when you thought you were training well, you could read the messages of your teammates and find out that they were running farther and more often. It was motivating hearing about their training runs and races, as well as being able to plan workouts and long runs.

As the internet exploded and more people became computer savvy, the bulletin board was eventually laid to rest. The Gate City Striders, like other running clubs, migrated their presence to a web page. Runners could now communicate easier and messages and results flowed more freely and with greater speed. Running forums like Runners World and Letsrun allowed even greater communication and then results started showing up online with sites like Coolrunning. Now, you didn't have to copy results from a printout after a race to keep track of your times and placing, but you could go online and see what your friend's times were in races you didn't attend soon after they were completed. Now you can even see a record of your online results at Athlinks.

Technology soon expanded more, so that you could listen to races online. I recall getting up early one Sunday morning to hear the BBC broadcast of the 2002 London Marathon where Khalid Khannouchi defeated Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie in a world record time before getting in the car to go run the Fred's Marathon. Pretty soon races from around the world could be viewed online, many live. Sometimes you had to pay and sometime they are free for the watching. I have a few VHS tapes sitting around from before that time marathons like London and Chicago, where I had to buy a tape of the race on eBay to see the full action in a race.

Communication is pretty instant with runners and races nowadays. Runners on Letsrun often get a bit angry if results are not posted within minutes of a race's completion. Another type of communication also followed for some runners. I started this blog a few years ago to write about my experiences with running, racing, health, and injuries. I have made many friends in the running community from places all over the world through this blog or reading websites and blogs that other runners, coaches, and therapists provide. I have been able to read and talk with others about common injuries and share my own struggles in hopes that others can find some helpful nuggets of information or provide from their own experiences and knowledge to help me. I also like reading my teammates and friends blogs to be inspired by their races and workouts and encourage each other to become better runners.

Eventually I broke down and got a Facebook account (how else do you communicate with you kids when he is in college). This has provided a new set of friends in the running community. I have met some fellow runners in the oddest circumstances through Facebook. One runner found himself in the background of a photo of my  finish in the 1976 Falmouth Road Race. I have connected again with former teammates from high school and college (every result and article above has one or more of my Facebook refound friends listed) and I made new friends who share their love of running and racing (some are runners I knew about and others are runners I have still to meet). It is always fun to read other runner's  accounts of races and training (as well as the bragging and dissing that goes on). I think that if I was left alone in a bubble, I would probably just give up on the running thing, but I am always inspired by the success and wisdom of others as they relate their own experiences. Who would want to stop running? The running community is full of so many fun and positive people. Technology and computers has certainly changed the world of running and we are all better for it.If you are a runner and like to communicate on Facebook, you can find me here.

Another aspect for having this blog is to practice my writing skills due to the fact that I am a teacher. I try some of the things I have my students do with their writing. So that leaves me with a new avenue, I am tentatively going to try on "Recover Your Stride". I would like to write about other runners and discover their successes and secrets, as well as their history with running. I don't know how it will go, but I would hope to find some willing subjects that might be more interesting to write about them myself, as I am not really that interesting as a runner, I am just persistent runner who loves the sport, I already have my first subject, someone who loves running as much as I do, someone who loves the Falmouth Road Race as much as I do, and someone who has an incredible string of Falmouth runs- even more races than I have done. I have seen him and his brother at plenty of Falmouths in recent years, but have never really met him except online due to this blog, so it will be fun to find out his history and how he has stayed so successful.

30 Year Ago: Running and Racing in 1980

I recently dug up an old sheet of paper with my summer mileage for the 1980 cross-country season at Wheaton College. I was never that talented of a runner, but 1980 turned out to be one of my better and more interesting running years. I ran some personal bests that year that were very pedestrian by collegiate running standards, but it was the best I could do.The sheet shows that in 12 weeks of summer training, I accumulated exactly 1000 miles of running.My goal over the summer was to do more mileage than anyone else on the team and hopefully make the varsity squad for my last year of college cross-country.

Here are some highlights of an average, but determined runner in 1980 that saw me race distances from 1500 meters to the marathon, plus a 50 mile run on the track. I basically wasn't needed on the track team in college, OK I stunk and we had plenty of guys much faster, but I did race a few meets here and there and practiced with the track team often.

1979 ended with me running my second marathon on Nov. 25 right after the cross-country season was over. This was the Philadelphia Marathon and I ran 3:03:57. After the race immediately  took a train to NYC, then a bus to Worcester, Ma., where I met some friends and we then drove 20 hours straight packed into a car to get back to college. Somehow I unwound myself to run the cross-country teams 24 hour relay on December 7- 8. We went 250 miles and then stopped earlier than 24 hours as too many guys were injured and couldn't run anymore. I said, "Never again!" to doing one of those. I like my sleep too much!

March 22-I ran a 1500m in 4:27 and a 5000m in 17:07.
April 13 I ran the Aurora Marathon in 2:54:38 (my 3rd marathon and my first under 3 hours. I had not run a training run longer than 11 miles since running the Philadelphia Marathon back in November-although I did run 30 miles in one mile intervals on Dec. as part of that 24 hour relay). My time in the Aurora Marathon is very important to me now. If I can get my hip and stride fixed, my number one running goal is to run another sub 3 hour marathon. If I do, I will get on this list of Longest Time Spans Between First and Last Sub 3 hour Marathons. The longer it takes me to go sub 3 hours, the higher up the list I go.

May 8- I ran a 1500m in 4:17 and an hour or so later ran a 5000m in 16:02. It was a beautiful night at a North Central College all comers meet. The 5000m was won in 13:50 something by teammate Danny Henderson. Olympian Steve Lacy and other top level runners werealso in the race. The closest I got was when I was lapped by the lead pack, but I got to watch the sprint finish from across the track.  Earlier that night an errant hammer throw went flying over a screen and hit a guy in the head. He died later that week.
May 17 Gil Dodds Marathon in Wheaton, Illinois. I ran 2:50:07 just missing the qualifying standard for Boston. I lost some seconds running into a parked car with about a mile to go and running too far around the  track before heading up the football field with just about 75 yards to go. It was a disappointing race to miss a qualifying spot by seconds, but I was the first Wheaton College runner to finish. 1980 was the only year the race was held. A lot of it was run on a gravel "prairie path".

Heading to the finish. I thought it would be one lap around the track.

Nope, you had to cut up the infield to finish. It was my second 11th place marathon finish in a row.

Summer training started June 2
Weekly mileage:
1) 98 miles
2) 74 miles
3) 107 miles
4) 100 miles
5) 71 miles
6) 92 miles
7) 53 miles
8) 92 miles
9) 90 miles
10) 55 miles
11) 73 miles  Ran the Falmouth Road Race in 39:58
12) 92 miles

I did make the varsity team for Wheaton College:
November 1- At the conference meet I secretly decided to try to have a "breakthrough" race. I went out with the lead pack and hit the first mile at under 5 minute pace. I tried to stay with the lead pack of North Central runners and other top runners as long as I could. It was going good until someone put concrete in my shoes and I waddled home in 27:55.The coach was mad! I was trying to go sub 26 minutes. You'll never know what you can do, if you don't try! I tried. I couldn't! !I then developed a sore right hip-later diagnosed as wallet in the back pocket of too tight jeans pain. I wasn't sure if I could run my final collegiate race.
November 15-My hip still hurt but I used a lot of Atomic Balm on it. Hit the first mile of the NCAA Div. 3 Midwest Regional race and found myself in dead last place. I can't imagine how slow that first mile really was. Fortunately my hip loosened up and I decided not to let my last cross-country race end this way. I took off and started passing people by the score and had a blast! I ended up running  26:52.

The end of cross-country running.

 November 23 I ran the Cape Cod Marathon. I finished in 2:51:57. It was not run in Falmouth in those days, but rather on the desolate and windy Otis Air Force Base. I was hacking away the whole race with a terrible cold and cough. Every cough seemed to send me backwards a bit. There was a lot of pack running and that time only netted me 44th place overall.

Here is a picture of race winner James Murphy finishing the 1980 Cape Cod Marathon.

Dec. 5 The Wheaton College Cross-country team was doing another 24 hour relay. After running the previous year, I said never again. I decided to start at the same time as the relay runners and run 50 miles around the track instead. I did have a plan to walk a lap at regular intervals as I was seeing what it would feel like to be an ultra-marathoner, not to go fast. It took me 8 hours 41 minutes and 43 seconds. I don't recall if I ate anything or what I did for nutrition. The highlight was that somewhere around 40 miles, someone dragged a stereo system out onto the track and played Bruce Springsteen's album "Born to Run". The second best thing is that I walked home and went to bed that night. I came back the next morning to cheer on the still running relay runners.

 

The day after running 50 miles and getting a good night sleep.The 5 guys on both the top and bottom rows were the 24 hour relay runners.They look the part, too!

The loneliness of a 24 hour relay. Jon Orewiler handing off to Coach Jim Whitnah.

Final victory lap for the relay runners. Mark Faris and Dave Whitnah can be seen sleep-running.

In 1980, Bill  Rodger's won his fourth Boston Marathon and Jacqueline Gareau was the female winner after Rose Ruiz tried to steal the win. 

Here is a great old clip off someone's home movie camera showing the Boston Marathon in 1980. You can see Bill Rodgers and other top runners racing by the camera. Interestingly enough you can even see Rose Ruiz (yellow shirt-45 seconds) after she sneaked onto the course. At the end of the video you can see the 1979 NCAA Cross-Country Championships that Alberto Salazar won. You can also see teammate Danny Henderson finishing in 10th place (just days after winning the NCAA Div. 3 XC Championships-blue shirt-orange shorts-orange hat). Then he did that 24 hour relay with us weeks after this race!


Here is another clip. At 1:28 you can see Jacqueline Gareau and the 2nd place female Patti Lyons Catalano. Notice the police horses on the course. In 1981 Patti would slam right into the backside of one of the horses during the marathon.


Bill Rodgers also won his fourth New York City Marathon in 1980. Greta Waitz was the female champion.

Tony Sandoval won the USA Olympic Trials Marathon (to nowhere). Part of the course was in Canada. Women were still not allowed to run the marathon distance in the Olympics.

Craig Virgin won his first of two World Cross-Country Championships with an outstanding finish. You have to see this, if you have never seen it before.



The USA did not participate in the  Moscow Olympics, but Seb Coe defeated teammate Steve Ovett after losing to him in the 800 meters.







 Miruts Yifter won the 5000 meters and the 10000 meters.





There was lots of running and track on television in 1980.

Eammon Coghlan Documentary Video

I really enjoyed watching this Eammon Coghlan video documentary that juanmarti2 just uploaded to Youtube. You get to see some great historic Olympic and World Championship video from this great Irish runner.



Here is a picture I took at Franklin Field in Boston at the National Cross-Country Championships back in 1982 (I believe). It was won by Pat Porter. The first of eight that he would win. In this photo you can see Pat Porter in the lead with Ed Eyestone directly behind him. Eammon Coghlan is third in ithe NYAC singlet. I believe that is Jeff Drenth behind Eammon. Leading the 2nd group is Dan Henderson, a former teammate at Wheaton College. He is the tall thin guy running in the Athletics West shirt (#6). Next to him is Dan Dillon #3, who is now married to the former Amercan record holder in the marathon, Patti Lyons-Catalano. Two other runners in this field (not visible) were my former high school teammates Mark and Andy Whitney. They were running this race as teammates of Eammon Coghlan for the NYAC. I believe that is the last time I saw these three former teammates. The Whitney's sister is Laura Bianco, a (former) Gate City Strider runner and the winner of the Hollis Applefest half-marathon back in the early 1990s.

1980 Falmouth Road Race Photos

This week the Letsrun community was trying to identify the top competitors in a photo of the start of the 1978 Falmouth Road Race that came from a post on the race I made last year. I helped out by posting a few extra newspaper clippings and decided to do another post with pictures from a previous Falmouth Road Race.

About runners leave the starting line of the 1980 Falmouth Road Race.
Rod Dixon won the race in a time of 32:20:04.

From an old postcard of the start of the race.

Here are some pictures I took of the Falmouth Road Race 30 years ago in 1980. This year I am looking forward to another run at my hometown and favorite road race on August 15. If you want to see some wonderful photos of the actual race, Scott Mason has just uploaded a bunch of photos he took of the top runners at the 1980 Falmouth, You should view them and you will find them here.

The crowds at the finish line

Race winner Rod Dixon

Joan Benoit and Rod Dixon

Bill Rodgers and Fred Lebow(?)

Bill Rodgers

Joan Benoit (4th) and Rod Dixon.

Race winner Greta Waitz

Wheelchair pioneer Bob Hall

Herb Lindsey (2nd place)

Greta Waitz leading at 6 miles

Benji Durden (9th place)

Jackie Gareau (6th place)

Me (184th place)

Here are the results of the top few hundred in the race. I recall I had just finished over 1000 miles of training in the 12 weeks before the race trying to get ready to break onto the varsity XC team for Wheaton College. I finished in 184th place in 39:58 for the 7 mile race. I don't remember much about the race except for standing for an hour or two in place to be at the front of the 2nd corral. After this race, the road race officials started giving me a seeded number which I still get to this day (I hope I do this year too) as an age group competitor. This makes the race doubly fun. Now it is not just my hometown race, but I get a relaxed warmup before each race as well as I get to see the best road runners in the world up close and personal before the race start. Unfortunately, I can't find any newspaper articles on the race. There are a lot of great runners listed in the results and even some runners that I see around at races even 30 years later. Duncan Warden was one minute behind me. He was a teammate of mine when I started running in 9th grade at Falmouth High School and I still see him running at Falmouth every year still. Striders may know Dave Birse who was 30 seconds behind me.

There is one photo that I really wish I had. I think it was at the 25th Falmouth Road Race, in 1998, I hit the 5 mile mark at exactly 29 minutes flat running right next to Frank Shorter. At that exact moment, I heard an accented voice behind me and turned around to see Rod Dixonrunning steps behind us. I ran for awhile with Frank Shorter and Rod Dixon, two of the all time running greats, before they pulled away from me.

Here is a post by Scott Mason, a real runner and photographer, who photographed the race for Frontrunner magazine. Scott has a few stories to tell and here is a link to some of his 1981 Falmouth Road Race photos. Scott was at the 5 mile mark. Why couldn't he be there in 1998? I'll have to do a post on 1981 some day, as I have more pictures and articles.

UPDATED:

I found some new photos of the 1980 race in the 1981 Falmouth Road Race Souvenir Program.

Bill Rodgers 16th place

Ric Rojas 3rd place

Rod Dixon 1st place

Grete Waitz 1st place

Other Falmouth Road Race Posts

1976 Falmouth Road Race

1977 Falmouth Road Race

1978 Falmouth Road Race

1980 Falmouth Road Race

1982 Falmouth Road Race

1983 Falmouth Road Race

2006 Falmouth Road Race

2008 Falmouth Road Race

2009 Falmouth Road Race