The Great American Footrace

The Great American Footrace is a documentary on the amazing 1928 "Bunion Derby" a footrace across the United States. Back then there was no highway system and roads were poor, so to celebrate the opening of Route 66 the footrace was promoted to gather publicity. Maybe people would realize, "If you could run across the country, certainly you could drive across it without fear." So a promoter who was likened to P.T. Barnum , one Charles. C. Pyle was hired to organize and run this trans-continental race with an advertised winners prize of $25,000.

This documentary highlights the 1928 era with historical video footage and photographs as it tells the tale of this great adventure. It also highlights a 19 year year old Cherokee youth who, "Simply thought he could do it." And he did. I remember reading about this race years ago in a book which may have been this one: The Bunion Derby: Andy Payne and the Great Transcontinental Footrace. There are newer books detailing this race including Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America, and Cash and Carry: The Spectacular Rise and Hard Fall of C.C. Pyle, America's First Sports Agent. The DVD or instant stream is on Amazon: Great American Foot Race, however I was able to watch the video online for free here: The Great American Footrace. Snag Films is a website that makes me want to get a Roku Streaming Player so that I can watch other documentaries like this for free on my television rather than on my computer.

Here is a preview of the movie. Click on it to see the whole movie.




 Here is a long biography of one of the participants as printed in Marathon and Beyond Magazine.

Stone lets you feel the misery of surviving on horrible food, sleeping in leaky tents, and running, on average, 40 miles a day over some of the most challenging terrain on the planet. After reading his account, you begin to understand how seemingly normal men could overcome the challenges of transcontinental racing. He gives you a window into the souls of the 55 men who finished the race.

Not much!

Not much to report the last two weeks. I stopped running when I felt my left hip getting too tight and sore, my adductors feeling pinched, and my glutes tightening up. That was over 2 1/2 weeks ago. I did some mountain biking, kickbiking, and elliptical to get some work in. I had  to wait two weeks to see the physiatrist to get some trigger point injections again as I could tell the knots were back. After a week off, I tried an 8 miler and that wasn't a good idea and then ran one mile indoors at the YMCA later in the week. That was two weeks ago. Finally on Thursday, I got the trigger point injections. Yes, my glutes had really tightened up. One spot on the side of my hip was like a marble. I also got injections in my IT band and the hamstring muscle next to it. I ran 3 miles today in Mine Falls and felt like a beginner again. I also did a bunch of lunges and stretches at the track at the end of the workout.
Weekly totals:
two weeks ago: 9 miles
last week: 3 miles
It is hard to be smart and take it easy when my mind wants to run, but I will get where I want to be someday.


Here are some old photos I found of the start of the Paul E. White Memorial Road Race held in North Falmouth back in 1978.

I am #64 wearing my Frank Shorter racing gear.

Lots of Nike Elite racing shoes!

World Champion Kirani James (and his left leg)

The New York Times had an article yesterday: A Young Sprinter's Ups and Downs on the Way to the Top by Christopher Clarey on the 2011 World Champion 400-meter runner Kirani James. He is fast and talented and won his gold medal in Daegu, South Korea at the young age of 18 years old. The article touches on Kirani's life as an athlete from the small Carribean island of Grenada and his life as a full time college student trying to prepare for an Olympic showdown with American's Jeremy Wariner and LeShawn Merritt. It an interesting article on the tall 6' 3" runner who I saw perform at the Boston Indoor Games in February, but what really intrigued me in the article was Kirani talking about his (and his father's) wayward  left foot. Kirani says:

Our hips face inwards so our knees face inwards, and the leg sways outside — just to explain that in a nutshell.

Well, that is exactly how I have been describing my own left leg and hip issues for years. I have something very much in common with Kirani James. Of course, this doesn't explain why he is fast and I am slow! I have always used this as the reason for my poor sprinting ability, but I guess it is just that I am all slow-twitch muscle and Kirani has all the fast-twitch muscle fibers. Anyhow it is interesting to find someone describing a problem that is similar sounding to mine, particularly when that person is a World Champion. I will have to see how this looks on Kirani while he is running, but he goes so fast it is hard to see exactly what his leg is doing. What does Kirani and his coaches say about his left foot and leg? Here is a fuller section from the article:

Several coaches, including Jacques Borlée of Belgium, whose sons compete in the 400, have suggested that James might need to modify his technique if he wants to reach his full potential and avoid injury. They focus on his left foot, which strays outward when it lands.

“The first time I met Kirani he walked over to me from one of his age-group track meets,” Glance said. “Of course the first thing in my mind as a coach is ‘Wow, look at that left foot!’ Well then I realized that that is just the way it is. There’s a cardinal rule: If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it. That’s always been my philosophy. I will never forget when Michael Johnson first came on the scene. He had this swayback running style and everyone said: ‘Hey we’ve got to change that. If we change that, he’ll run so much better.”’

“By the end of his story, he’s the fastest 400-meter guy who ever lived,” Glance added.

Johnson’s world record of 43.18 seconds, set in 1999, still looks impregnable. But James, now 19, is already the third-fastest outdoors after his time of 44.36 seconds in Zurich last year and is third-fastest indoors at 44.8.

“Everyone has their opinions, and there is just certain stuff you can’t change,” said James, who said his left-foot issue came from his father’s side of the family. “Our hips face inwards so our knees face inwards, and the leg sways outside — just to explain that in a nutshell. But there are little things that I have to work on, like wrist movement and stuff like that. But to make any significant changes? I don’t think I have to, and I just have to believe in my training and believe in myself and believe in my coaching.”

I hope Kirani James does well in London this summer and has a long and healthy career. I also hope that his foot and leg don't  create problems for him down the line with his hip and mechanics.

Oh those Kenyan Runners!

Here is a short video showing the heart and depth of Kenyan distance runners called Iten: The Town of Red Dust. In 2011 they tore apart the record books and dominated the world running scene. The shots of the Kenyans training in Iten are marvelous. If you want to see a longer more in depth video of Kenyan runners check out this.

ITEN - The Town of RED Dust Teaser Trailer from Erik O'Neill on Vimeo.


Here is a newly published book: Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth.

Moses Mosop: Can this guy set a Marathon World Record?

Moses Mosop is an interesting runner (please see this video at the end of this post). Actually he is a beast of a runner! You may recall he is the guy who pushed Geoffrey Mutai all the way to the finish line at the 2011 Boston Marathon running the fastest debut marathon in history and the 2nd fastest ever marathon time right behind Mutai. Their shocking times of 2:03:02 and 2:03:06 do not count as official records due to Boston's course). For an encore, Moses hit the track later that spring at the Prefontaine Classic and broke a 30-year old world record for the 30,000m run on a track with a time of 1:26:47.4. He also nabbed the 25,000m word record with a time of 1:12:25.4 en route. Despite fighting injuries from that race, Moses set a new course record at the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:05:37. That is a faster time than even the late great Sammy Wanjiru could do on the Chicago course. Moses is a legitimate threat to the marathon world record and he says he is healthy and ready to do that at this year's Rotterdam Marathon to be run on April 15. Here is a great video with an interview of Moses Mosop and some excellent training video.


Moses Mosop preparing for Rotterdam Marathon 2012 from Like2Run on Vimeo.

Here is a newly published book: Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth.

Too Aggressive!

I had big dreams last week. It was a vacation week from school and I wanted to up my running mileage, so I came up with a plan to do so. I ended the previous week with two nice 8 mile runs on Saturday and Sunday. They were my two fastest times since my hip operation and they felt pretty good, so I thought that I would be capable of keep doing 8 mile runs for 7 straight days to get to 56 miles total over those days by Friday. I figured I would take Saturday off and then run the final Freeze Your Buns race, It was a great plan and I was really into it. I guess I was too much into it. Mondays run was a bit slower, but my hip was getting sore and I was losing my stride. That was OK, so I did the same run on Tuesday. This time I had lost more of my stride and my glutes got really tight. Too tight. It was then that I got smart and stopped running. The only other run I did all week was Sundays Freeze Your Buns. I was happy to go a wee bit faster than two weeks earlier and I noticed how much my breathing and endurance has improved over the 5 bi-weekly races. I do have a long way to go however, but I am learning to back off and not try to do too much as aggrevating as that is!

Monday: 8 miles
Tuesday: 8 miles
Sunday: 3.2miles Freeze Your Buns 5K 22:42
Total miles 19 miles

Here is this weeks edition of "Running the Show" and highlights include Haile Gebresalasie's bid to make the Ethiopian Olympic team at the Tokyo Marathon as well as the Lake Biwa Marathon in Japan. Both of these races were important for selecting runners for the Japanese Olympic team

Great article: Dorando Pietri and the Olympic Marathon of 1908

The story of Dorando Pietri's Olympic marathon back in 1908 remains one of the classic stories of past Olympics games. In a recent article in The Guardian by Simon Burnton the drama and overall hullabaloo of the first Olympic marathons is wonderfully retold with background information that brings in drama, a bit of comedy, and cheating of, well, Olympic proportions. At the first Olympic Games marathon in Athens in 1896, the third place finisher was disqualified. During the Paris games of 1900, course markings were so poor that "athletes could be seen running randomly through most of central Paris, " More strange occurrences were an American athlete who "finished fifth but insisted that nobody had overtaken him all day" and another American who claimed to be run over by a cyclist as he was gaining on the leaders. In the 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis, the first place finisher traveled most of the route in a car. The eventual winner of that race used strychnine as a performance enhancer. That is just a brief introduction to Olympic marathoning prior to the London 1908 games.

Of course, London 1908 was the race that officially determined the full distance of a marathon to be 26 miles 365 yards due to the Queen who wanted her children to see the start of the race and then she herself wanted to have the best seats in order to see the finish. The distance of the race was stretched out to accommodate her whims. The finish line crowd included the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who was an interested spectator. Those extra added yards would lead to the eventual undoing of race leader Dorando Pietri. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle later  penned these lines after the arrival of the race leader:

"We are waiting anxiously, eagerly, with long, turbulent swayings and heavings, which mark the impatience of the multitude. Through yonder door he must come. Every eye in the great curved bank of humanity is fixed upon the gap. He must be very near now, speeding down the streets between the lines of shouting people. We can hear the growing murmur. Every eye is on the gap. And then at last he came."

It is definitely worth the read to head over to the article, even if you think you know all about what happens at the finish. A wave of anti-Americanism at the British games created an atmosphere where Pietri "had" to win the race in order to beat the fast approaching 2nd place runner, who just happened to be an American.

With an American victory the only alternative, every man, woman and child in the stadium would have happily picked up Pietri and personally carried him over the line. And that, more or less, is what happened, with the Italian bundled to glory by a posse of Brits.

There is a wonderful collection of 14 photographs from the race which can be found here.

Here is a newly published book on the 1908 Olympic Marathon: Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze.



This video has pictures and some video footage of the 1908 Olympic Marathon including video of Pietri stumbling into the stadium and at the finish. I am not sure what Jim Peters and Abebe Bikila are doing in some of the footage.



 This is all video footage of Pietri and the marathon. I can't understand the audio.



The first song Irving Berlin ever wrote was called "Dorando" about the Olympic runner. You can listen to it here if you are in England. I think "White Christmas" was a much more "mature' song.

I feel-a much-a bad like anything
All the night I nunga canna sleep
It's a my pizon Pasquale
He say we take da car
And see Dorando race a-"Long-a-ship"
Just like the sport, I sell da barbershop
And make da bet Dorando he's a win
Then to Madees-a Square
Pasquale and me go there
And just-a like-a dat, da race begin

[Refrain:]
Dorando! Dorando!
He run-a, run-a, run-a, run like anything
One-a, two-a hundred times around da ring
I cry, "Please-a nunga stop!"
Just then, Dorando he's a drop!
Goodbye poor old barber shop
It's no fun to lose da mon
When de son-of-a-gun no run
Dorando
He's a good for not!


[2nd verse:]
Dorando, he's a come around next day
Say, "Gentlemen, I wanna tell-a you
It's a one-a bigga shame
I forgot da man's a-name
Who make me eat da Irish beef-a stew
I ask-a him to give me da spaghett
I know it make me run a-quick-a-quick
But I eat da beef-a stew
And now I tell-a you
Just like da pipps it make me very sick