Archive For The “Running Free” Category
Come alone. Do not wear your watch. Do not count your reps – it doesn’t matter. Chapter 17 OLD JOE “This is where you will work on speed,” Coach Benlehr told them. Diana, Chuck, and Chris looked out upon the gently sloping lane. Blanca Peak stood high to their right, the…
“Ten years ago, several Chinese women re-wrote the distance running record books, crediting a diet of turtle soup and caterpillars for the breakthrough.” Chapter Fifteen AUGUST “Good evening, sports fans, and welcome to the Cable Sports Network’s ‘World of Sport.’ I’m H.R. Javitts. “LaDewayne Morris, HIV positive, but still showing no symptoms of…
I don’t want to win unless I know I’ve done my best, and the only way I know to do that is to run out front, flat out, until I have nothing left. Winning any other way is chicken shit. – Steve Prefontaine Waited until the Olympic Trials concluded before telling you about Brad Fawley’s…
The one-hour run is rarely contested. In the 1950s, Emil Zatopek, then the world-record holder over 10,000 meters, competed in two sixty-minute races to chase the world records for fifteen kilometers and ten miles. The Czech legend became the first man to better twelve miles for the hour, a mark that stood for nearly twenty…
This great lady is an Original Gangster Of Running. Sara Mae Berman – street name “The Notorious SMB” – a pioneer so early a trail blazer, the route almost grew back over before other women followed her lead. I never thought of myself as an athlete. I married at nineteen and a half (Larry was…
Hard things take time to do. Impossible things take a little longer. – Percy Cerutty Chapter 12 PORTSEA SIERRA When he read Calvin Benlehr’s ad in Runner’s Gazette, Chris Nikolas Fed-Ex’d him a letter that afternoon. He quit his job in the mailroom at the State Capital in Bismarck that Friday, and next day,…
It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit. – George A. Sheehan I started running in February 1972. Basketball ankles so bad I couldn’t move laterally….
The East Regional. This was not the Buckeye Games. This was not the Penn Relays. This was the toughest track meet east of California. Dozens of Olympic hopefuls were bringing their hopes to the starting line, racing for a breakthrough performance, striving for a qualifying time to enter the Trials, just thirteen months away. Chapter…
I actually had the distinct “pleasure” (probably the wrong word) of racing (no, that is absolutely the wrong word) Bob Schul, Jim Grelle, George Young and a team of LATC pacers in an all-comers mile in August, 1964, at Pierce Jr. College in Woodland Hills, CA. – Jeff Johnson We lost one of the greats…
More rare than a white sprinter in America is the Black distance runner. Equally rare is the college coach who will encourage an athlete to pursue an individual goal instead of forcing them to “Do-it-for-the-team.” – Ken Davis Chapter Ten CECIL MEDLEY Cecil Medley was the fifth Cecil Medley on his family tree. His…