I was watching the 2017 Chicago Marathon on television. Thinking this sport has come a long way. Thinking how much I loved the old days. Thinking how much I loved the old stories. - JDW
The Marathon Man
A former marathoner sings the praises of a book on distance runner Buddy Edelen
AUG. 17, 1992
Let an old marathoner commend to you a surefooted book. A Cold Clear Day, the Athletic Biography of Buddy Edelen, by Frank Murphy, moved me with what I didn’t know about an important American marathoner. Then—and this was far more difficult—it moved me with what I knew perfectly well about runners under stress, holding themselves together, reduced and revealed by the longest Olympic distance.
Edelen was the first American marathoner to train according to the simplest, hardest truth of our race: It goes to the swift. The marathon’s history is not simply a story of runners building greater endurance. It is a story of how men learned to sustain ever-higher speeds over the 26 miles and 385 yards. The Europeans led the way. Finland’s Hannes Kolehmainen, the 1912 Olympic champion at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, used his track skills to win the 1920 Antwerp Olympic marathon in 2:32:36. The lesson was affirmed when Czechoslovakia’s Emil Zàtopek won the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. His marathon time was 2:23:04. Eight years later, in Rome, Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila ran almost eight minutes faster, 2:15:16. “Bikila used his speed tactically,” writes Murphy, “by picking a moment at 40 kilometers [with about 1¼ miles to go in the race] and moving. In so doing, he changed the marathon from run to race.”
Yet American runners didn’t seem to get it. Most of the post-World War II U.S. distance men gravitated to the marathon because its daunting length let them escape from the milers and three-milers they couldn’t beat on the track. They gloried, perversely, in being called plodders. The best American finish in the four Olympic marathons from 1948 through 1960 was Vic Dyrgall’s 13th in 1952, about 10 minutes behind Zàtopek.
Then came Edelen. A habitual over-worker, he won the 1958 Big Ten two-mile title in 9:03 for Minnesota, and after graduating in 1960 he moved to England to race and train. He balanced 30-mile training runs with interval workouts of as many as 30 hard 400-meter repetitions. He raced both cross-country and track distances as short as 800 meters. And in June 1963 he won the Windsor to Chiswick marathon in 2:14:28, becoming the first American in almost 30 years to hold the world best for the distance.
I was then an Oregon sophomore, a two-miler with dreams of marathoning. So I took my own 30-mile runs, imagining that I was hanging with Edelen, that an Olympic stadium was looming. Six years later, marathoning had so advanced that when I broke Edelen’s American record in 1969, with a time of 2:13:27 in Fukuoka, Japan, I placed only seventh.
I mention this to establish the right to say that Murphy’s reconstruction of Edelen’s thoughts while running the 1964 U.S. Olympic Trials marathon in Yonkers, N.Y., is both believable and affecting. The temperature was 91°, genuinely life threatening. The course was hilly. Edelen moved away from the pack at 10 miles and held to an unrelenting yet always-tempted-to-relent frame of mind.
In the last miles he composed his own obituary, listing himself “after today” as a member of the 1964 Olympic team. He yelled, “How much farther?” at his coach, Fred Wilt, with such unexpected force that he lamented the waste of energy. He drilled himself by thinking, You are one tough bastard. Say that over again and say it slow. Say it one word at a time. You…are…one…tough…bastard.
Edelen won the trials in 2:24:26. He had driven himself so hard, fighting down doubt after doubt, that he finished an incredible (and unnecessary) 20 minutes ahead of the next man. Five days later, unwilling to rest, he ran 20 440s, and the day after that he felt the first tightening from the sciatica that would end his career. Running in pain all the way, Edelen finished sixth in the Tokyo Olympic marathon five months later. By rights he could have been second to Bikila.
Yet Edelen’s demonstration of what an American runner could do produced an outpouring of followers. Billy Mills and Bob Schul won the 10,000 and the 5,000, respectively, in Tokyo. They inspired Frank Shorter (who in 1972 became the first American to win the Olympic marathon since 1908), Gerry Lindgren, Marty Liquori and Steve Prefontaine. They, in turn, inspired Bill Rodgers, Craig Virgin and Alberto Salazar. So Edelen stands alone. But none of the rest of us does.
Stumbled across a proud note on the Chelmsford Athletic Club.
At least four club members have met The Queen. Only Buddy has greeted her with ‘Hi! Queen!’
South East Essex would be different after Buddy’s last run in England on July 27 1965. For five years the neighbourhood had set its clock by Buddy’s morning run, his evening return, his trot down the street for a paper, and the tidbits of food he called dinner; his back-and-forth jaunts along the sea front. People grew accustomed to his haphazard dress, the bizarre collection of torn sweat shirts strangely lettered, his dark socks stuck into old shoes, the backward lean in as he ran, and twisted arm. Through it all the friendly word and a smile; always the acknowledgement that he was a guest in their country.
The streets would be quiet, like those rare days without a breeze off the sea front, just enough to make a person pause, notice the stillness and then move on.
“I would like to request a few lines to express through the medium of the Athletics Weekly magazine my appreciation and gratitude to all the athletes officials and friends I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with since 1960. The opportunity of living in England has not only enabled me to develop into an international distance runner, it has afforded me the chance of making many close friendships which I shall cherish for many years to come. I know my coach Fred Wilt would like me to convey his gratitude as well, since it was at Fred’s suggestion that I first decided to come to England. The experience I gained through four years of active participation in British athletics contributed immeasurably in helping me to represent the USA in the Tokyo Olympics, and for this alone I feel indebted. I shall be returning to the USA to begin work on my Masters degree in Colorado, and I must admit that it is with considerable reluctance that I shall be leaving. I would like to convey a special thanks to the officials of the BAAB and the ECCU for their kind cooperation and help; to Mel Watman, Sam Ferris and others on the Athletics Weekly staff who have given such generous coverage to my performances over the road, track, and country; to the athletes and officials at the two clubs I have been affiliated with – Chelmsford and Hadleigh – and finally to the many other athletes and friends I have made over the past five years.
“Thank you all very much.
“Yours sincerely, Buddy Edelen”
Buddy Who?
Buddy Edelen might’ve been the original Original Gangster Of Running. “When he ran, a change came over him,” Fred Wilt wrote about Edelen. “You could see the amiability in him right to the time the gun sounded. Then his eyes darkened, his features flattened, his chest expanded, he stood up a little straighter. As the race progressed he had a quality almost like meanness. He just would not let up.”