5 Decades of Sub 3:00 Marathons

That is me and Runner's World editor Amby Burfoot before the 2000 Boston Marathon (long story here). That is a picture of him in the background winning the 1968 Boston Marathon.

So Amby Burfoot and Gary Allen have recently created a Facebook page called "5 Decades of Sub 3:00 Marathons." If you are on Facebook check it out. The premise behind the page is to find marathoners with the speed and longevity to have run a sub 3 hour marathon in five straight decades. Amby wrote about Gary Allen and added a  few names of runners who he knows have achieved this feat here. I would assume hundreds if not thousands have accomplished this (and maybe they have) but there are only a few names on the list so far. The names include Derek Turnbull, the late Larry Olsen and a few others. A few name runners are also ready to achieve this feat at the start of this coming decade. Interestingly enough, even the great Johhny Kelley did not quite achieve the 5 decades of sub 3 hours. He missed it by 3 minutes in his fifth decade.

I had already thought about the fact that I am approaching the running of a marathon in my fifth decade (post -see the last paragraph).

So I got to wondering if I could place on this list. I lost the list of marathons I was trying to keep over 10 years ago due to a hard drive crash and I have never tried to start the list going again. I know I have done about 40-50 of them, I just have to do some research and get all the times and dates correct. At first I thought that I would just miss being on the list (if I could run a fast marathon this decade-by less than 5 minutes, but I am thinking the last 10 years went by too quickly and times I thought I ran a few years ago where much further back in time).

This is the list I can come up with for now.

1970's November 25 1979 Philadelphia Marathon 3:03:57 (close!)
1980's April 26, 1981 Lake County Heart Fund Marathon (Illinois) 2:48:36
1990's September 28,1997 Clarence Demar Marathon 2:56:11
2000's Octber 15, 2006 Bay State Marathon 3:09:30

So unless I find a missing faster marathon. I can join the sub 3:10 club as soon as I go sub 3:10 this decade.

Another way to look at decades of running is to go by teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and if needed sixties. This is probably a more fair way to count decades as it relates to personal decades and not just a point on the calendar. According to this way of counting races. I have come up with this list showing that I have already accomplished 5 decades of marathon running.

Teens: Dec. 3, 1977 (18 years old) White Rock Marathon (Dallas) 3:25:44
Twenties: April 26, 1981 (21 years old) Lake County Heart Fund Marathon 2:48:36
Thirties: September 28,1997 (38 years old) Clarence Demar Marathon 2:56:11
Forties: Octber 15, 2006 (47 years old) Bay State Marathon 3:09:30
Fifties: October 25, 2009 (50 years old) Cape Cod Marathon 3:22:44

Well I got in five decades, but I am not that close to a sub 3 hour club. According to this list, I am in a sub 3:25 hour club for 5 decades).

I wish I thought of going for such a feat in the previous years. For example I didn't decide to run the Bay State Marathon (fastest in my 40's) until a spur of the moment decision the night before. I took it easy the first half and lost about 3 minutes waiting for port-a-john halfway through. I ddn't race and recovered nicely enough to run 8 miles the next day and a marathon (only 12 seconds slower the next week). I did no training run over 16 miles before that race either. In fact, I have never truly trained for a marathon by following a marathon training plan in all my years of running. I never did any runs over 16 miles training for marathons until 10-15 years ago, although I often ran back-to-back marathons throughout the years.

So, like most things running related with me, I get close to achieving something, but never close enough. It reminds me of a great song by The Alarm called "Close." "I've been close, closer than close, so close, not close enough."



BUT WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE!!!!!!!

I started thinking about decades. There is some debate about when a decade officially begins and ends. According to the experts, a decade really begins on the first year of the decade such as 2001 or 2011.

"The new decade will start on January 1st, 2011! There was no year 0 (our calendar went from 1 BC to 1 AD with no 0 inbetween). So the first decade started with the year 1, the second decade with the year 11, the third decade with the year 21, and so on.
If the calendar didn't start in the year 0 how can you say it ends in 9? This decade and century started on January 1, 2001 and ends December 31, 2010. "

If we use this as our criteria, I actually have a chance to run five decades of sub 3 hour marathons. Can I do it? It might be close, but will I be close enough?

Here is a picture of the 1980 Gill Dodds Marathon  listed below. Back in 1980, you had to run a sub 2:50 to qualify for Boston (see a Runner's World daily news article from last year referencing my blog) . I missed it by 7 seconds. I did run into a parked car with less than one mile to go, stopping me for a few seconds and then after running onto the track for the finish in the stadium, I assumed we were to do a full lap like in the Olympics. No, as I went to finish the lap, I didn't notice that at the top of the track you were supposed to run onto the infield and finish on the football field. I lost a few more seconds turning around to finish correctly. Close, but not close enough to run Boston the next year. Oh yeah, I finished 11th. The top ten got awards. Always close!

Take a look now at my results according to this "mathematic" definition of a decade:

Decade starting in and ending in...
1971-1981 June 1980 Gill Dodds Marathon (Ill.) 2:50:07
1981-1991 April 26, 1981 Lake County Heart Fund Marathon (Illinois) 2:48:36
1991-2001 September 28,1997 Clarence Demar Marathon 2:56:11
2001-2011 Octber 15, 2006 (47 years old) Bay State Marathon 3:09:30

BUT, I still have until the end of this year to go sub 3:00 in my fourth decade. Someone explain to me if I have my math wrong. Can I do it? There is a good possibility. I am finding the balance in my muscles that have been missing for years. If I can train without getting injured, I believe by the fall, I could go sub 3:00 with effort and dedication. In fact, if I decide this is a worthy goal and my math is correct, then maybe I will have to follow a marathon training plan for the first time in my life! Then I would have to do a sub 3 hour one more time after the "new" decade begins in 2011. It sounds like I might just be developing a running goal in my mind. This could get fun, but would probably be noteworthy to no one else but me. It is a goal, however,  and this old runner could really use one. If not. I am keeping fit until my 60's and going for 6 decades of marathons, but I really do not want to think about that just yet!

And I might add, I may not have been very fast, but I guess I have had longevity in the sport!

First Marathon: 1977 Dallas White Rock Marathon

It was 31 years ago today that I ran my first ever marathon. I had just finished up my freshman cross-country season at Wheaton College in Illinois when I was invited to go down to Dallas to run the White Rock Marathon. Wheaton College was interested in building a new Fitness Center at the college so some faculty members where going down to Dallas to visit Dr. Ken Cooper, the author of "Aerobics", and his fitness center. I decided to join the group to run the marathon and so soon after Thanksgiving break we piled into a couple of cars for the long ride. It was not a pleasant drive as we were crammed into a car and I had a case of bad food poisoning or something that made me live for those rest stops.

We first stopped in Oklahoma to visit a fitness center at Oral Roberts University. After arriving in Dallas we had a private tour with Ken Cooper of his facility. That night we had dinner at a pizza restaurant and Dr. George Sheehan walked in. He sat at our table and we enjoyed some conversations with him. The day before the race we went to seminars where we heard many guest speakers. This is probably where I first got interested in the science of running.

Mike Pollack from the Human Performance Lab gave a talk on elite runners. From my notes that I still have, he talked about scientific tests that had recently been done on the elite American runners. He talked about the muscle biopsies as well as maximum oxygen update tests. We learned that better performers had more slow twitch muscles. He gave an example of Frank Shorter having 80% slow twitch fibers. He said good runners had an average of 70% slow twitch fibers. However Don Kardong, who eventually placed 4th in an Olympic Marathon, had only 50% slow twitch fibers. When measuring the maximum oxygen uptake he said that 70 mls seemed to be what elite runners had. The highest that he measured was Steve Prefontaine with 84.5 . He said that there was no difference between the measures of lactic acid and blood pressure when comparing elite athletes with others. The one thing he mentioned was that efficiency is what "does it". An elite athlete was able to run efficiently as well as have less than 5% body fat. "Streamlined is better for competition". He did end by stating that many things make an athlete elite so, "don't put all your eggs in one basket."

I found an article from the IAAF from 2006 that talks about a 1976 study that including Michael Pollack's studies. It says this:

"Back in the 1970s, Dr. Michael Pollack and other physiologists, collaborated to study the top US distance runners of the era, such as 1972 Olympic champion Frank Shorter and Steve Prefontaine. The data gathered from these athletes, such as muscle biopsy samples and oxygen consumption data, provided a profile of the make up of top endurance athletes but also created almost as many questions as it answered. Foremost among them, perhaps, remains the issue of what is lumped into the term "running economy." It is sort of a catch all term used to record the fact that an athlete can run at a given speed at a given cost. Some runners can run at higher speeds seemingly because they have a greater ability to process oxygen. They have a higher VO2 max. Others, with lower VO2 readings, can run as fast or faster, presumably because they are more "efficient." But what makes them more efficient? What allows them to generate as much or more power and maintain their speed for as long or longer than other athletes? These are the mysteries that future studies may discover. These are the questions that may be answered by research into the "triggers" of athlete's physiological adaptations to the training they endure to reach the heights of athletic excellence."

It was very interesting to hear about the cutting edge research going on at that time. Dr. Sheehan gave a talk on overuse injuries and gave out the mantra to "know yourself" something I am still trying to figure out in this blog. Dr. Steve Subotnick talked about podiatry. Bill Morgan gave a talk on psychological considerations for running. I always remember him talking about runners who disassociate as they run; they think about other things. He said world class runners associate as they run. They constantly go over strategy, monitor their bodies, and focus on relaxation.

Then we had the marathon. December 3, 1977 was hot and sunny in Dallas, Texas. We drove out to the starting area around White Rock Lake. I had never run more than 16 miles in my life. We drove down from cold Chicago and were not ready for the heat. I also had a knee injury that was giving me pain. I don't remember too much of the race. I guess it was going well the first bit except my knee kept hurting and I wasn't sure if I could finish. Halfway through the race my knee stopped hurting and I have been fortunate to have good knees since that day as the pain never returned. I remember slowing a lot in the last few miles. I finished in 306th place with a time of 3:25:44. I learned two things. Number one: never wear a shirt with stitched on letters on the front during a marathon.Number two: always wear band-aids so you don't bleed. The shower after that race was very painful. The winners of the race where John Lodwick in 2:16:43 and Marianne Pugh in 2:56:55. Other notable finishers were Ron Tabb in 3rd place with a time of 2:22:01 and Penny DeMoss, of Runner's World fame, in 2:56:58.

I had bad running form even back then, but this was 10 miles further than I had
ever run!

Wheaton College runners (none of us were even good enough to be JV runners) were Dean Nervik (3:19:09 -I wasn't happy when he passed me), Dale Anderson (3:53:48), and Ron Vlieger and Tim Johnson (both in 4:18:39 and just seconds behind the legendary Walt Stack). Dr. Cliff Schimmels ran 3:58:56. I was only 18 years old and I was impressed that an older roundish man could even run that far. He was only 40 years old at the time but seemed ancient for a runner! Even though Wheaton College did not have a woman's cross-country team at the time we had a good female runner join us. Susie Sandstrom finished in 3:29:23 as the 12th overall woman and second in the under 19 years old age group by only 4 seconds.

Dale Anderson, Ron Vlieger (behind), Susie Sandstrom, Dean Nervick, me, Tim
Johnson (behind), Cliff Schimmels

Other notable finishers were George Sheehan who at 60 years old ran 3:17:19 and Alex Ratelle, who at 53 years old finished in 2:36:46 for 19th place overall. 909 runners participated in the marathon. Tony Sandoval won the accompanying half-marathon in 1:09:02. It was a long drive back to Illinois, but I was happy. After 4 1/2 years of running I had finally won something. Every finisher got a small trophy of a shoe on a piece of marble. I have run about 40 more marathons since that first one in Dallas. Wheaton College did build a fitness center, but it was completed after I graduated.