Three course records, two American records, Larry Bird and a private jet.
March 14 & March 15, 1981
Runners are supposed to stop and take a rest sometime. Particularly road runners, given all that hard pounding on the pavement. Patti Catalano ignores that shibboleth, and just keeps hammering away.
Just like everybody else, she’s getting ready for Boston, but instead of hiding, she’s setting records.
That’s what I wrote over four decades ago. And I can’t help wondering, has any other athlete had a better weekend in road racing history. Willing to entertain worthy challengers but as an old romantic, my money is on the Dillon Gang.
Catalano (Yawn): 15K Record
Jacksonville, Florida, March 14 – Some 6 minutes after Dan Dillon outkicked Jon Sinclair to win the Jacksonville River Run 15K in 43:34, what’s this? Oh, it’s just Patti Catalano breaking another American Record.
Just another day at the office for Catalano as she clocked 49:33, 10 seconds under her own AR set last year in Portland. Accompanied by Joan Benoit until the 1M mark, Patti surged ahead and just kept pulling away.
Catalano, currently training 140+ miles weekly in preparation for Boston, was simply too strong for Benoit, who held 2nd with a fine 50:29. Catalano said,”I even surprised myself.” Probably few others felt the same.
The men’s race was dramatic all the way. After an opening mile of 4:32, the lead pack was comprised of Steve Floto, Benji Durden, Ric Rojas, Jon Sinclair and Irishman Louis Kenny. At 2 &1/2 miles, through a veritable chicane of residential streets, Floto pushed the groove. By 4M, Floto, Rojas, Sinclair and Dillon were alone. Together.
By 5 & 1/2 miles, Floto had fallen back and Sinclair set the pace alongside Dillon with Rojas drafting the duo. At the bottom of half-mile-long Hart Hill at the 6M mark, Sinclair and Dillon upped the tempo to try to break Rojas. He broke. With the leaders passing 10km in 28:45, all Rojas could do was watch them pull away.
For the next 3 miles or so, Dillon and Sinclair hammered one another, with Jon looking much the smoother runner. Fortunately for Dan, road racing is not judged on form, but on who gets there first.
When Sinclair began to go for broke with 75y left, Dillon responded by lowering his head and sprinting as if possessed (sportswriter’s cliche No. 148). He plowed across the finish with his 43:34, 3 seconds up on Sinclair.
Dillon expressed understandable elation. “I’m really happy about this win. It was tough, both mentally and physically, but I was looking for a tough run. This should help me get ready for the IAAF Cross Country race.”
There must be an easier way to prepare.
Other notables mentioned in the agate type included Dick Beardsley, 6th in 44:49, Bob Hodge 9th 45:24 and Benji Durden, 13th 46:06. Can always claim they were playing through.
Can You Remember The 1981 Jacksonville River Run 15K, Dan Dillon?
Dan: A couple of weeks prior, Bob Sevene told me that race director Buck Fannin called him and invited me down to compete in Jacksonville, I was slightly surprised. (Buck’s main objective calling Sev was to get Joan Benoit down there.) While I had some decent cred as a cross country runner and a little less perhaps as a track runner, I didn’t yet have any major national road racing success on the resume.
But Sev and I agreed that the race fit very well into my prep for IAAF World XC. In prior years I’d used a local 15K in Swampscott, MA as a tune up around that time of year. My base was fantastic at the time, years of 100 to 125 mile weeks. Years.
My old GBTC training partners Bill Rogers and Bob Hodge had both won the race in previous years and recommended it as “a flat fast course that won’t beat you up too much.” World XC in Madrid a couple of weeks later was my main focus.
Before the race I vaguely remember seeing fellow Athletics West Bostonian Patti Catalano warming up near the start. I didn’t think too much about seeing her there that morning at the time. I knew Patti a little bit from the AW Boston running scene, but since at the time she was married to and being coached by Joe Catalano, not Bob Sevene, we only crossed paths occasionally in those days. Plus, Nike had Patti focused on road racing and I was setting XC and track goals. Roads for me were mostly used as work toward these other goals.
The early pace seemed very easy to me. I was just running by feel, without thinking about pace at all. I was aware Ric Rojas had just set an American Record at Gasparilla a couple of weeks before and remember how I much I respected Jon Sinclair’s impressive National XC win in Pocatello the year before. They both had vastly more road racing experience than I did, so I had no plans to pick a fight early.
When I heard we passed 10k at 28:45, that was the first time that morning that I even thought about the pace. I had a couple of track 10K races between low 28 and 28:30, so I tried to remind myself that the 10k marker might not even be in the right place. I continued to disregard the pace altogether. I just thought it was important that I needed to stay calm.
I do recall the pack had gotten pretty thin.
The old course used to make that wide turn before the Hart Bridge so at that point I was able to get a good look behind me and see that Ric seemed to be weakening, leaving me with just Jon to worry about in the final mile.
Coming off the bridge I remember visualizing some high school relays my coach used to make me run. I’d hated them. Too much pressure, I always thought.
While I enjoyed running miles and two miles, Massachusetts high school rules prohibited a runner from running a distance race double. The quarter, however, was considered the longest “sprint” and was therefore ok. So, every meet I was asked to do a sprint/distance double for the team points. By my senior year I was constantly running my legs in the low 50’s. My coach even made me anchor a few of those darned things. Did I say how much I hated it?
In my visualization coming off the Hart Bridge, I reminded myself of a few times when I “ran out of gas before the tape” anchoring a relay. I decided to wait until I could see the writing on the tape to make my final push so that couldn’t happen.
After the race I seem to recall talking to Jon. He said he could sort of remember someone telling him the story of me outkicking Alberto Salazar to win the state XC championships, but he never really thought much about it again after that. I confided to Jon I had a little experience doing the mile relay in high school and he replied that he wished he knew that while we were going over the bridge.
After the race someone told me that I’d broken Rodgers course record by 63 seconds.
I remember thinking “No way, that can’t be right!”
That was when I started to realize what a special race I’d had.
Did you wait until you could SEE the writing or did you wait until you could READ the writing?
Dan: Very funny you should ask. I wasn’t confident I could read that fast while sprinting, so seeing it had to suffice!
Dan: But I didn’t even get a headline because Patti broke an American record. I just broke a course record. That doesn’t even really mean anything.
Patti: I only broke my record by a couple of seconds but it was still an American record and they were all, you know, all happy about it, but I didn’t even see anything. I come through the chute, they have my trophy, and Buck Fannin is standing there, and I shake hands.
Right nearby, I mean close, there’s a limousine with the door open and a chauffeur, so I get in the car and they take me to the airport and I get into a private jet.
Patti: A private jet. This was like, awesome! This was like, I made it! It was like great but you don’t think ahead of the time, you’re just like … because you know, I’m kind of, I’m thirsty, I’m tired, you know … so I get the private jet and it’s great because I can put out my feet and it’s a pilot and a copilot. They’re young. They’re like, so what did you just do? Benji Durden is with us, so he tells them, well, you know, she just set American record about a half hour ago. And the pilots are ‘A-oh, really? That’s who we have in here? Ooh!’
So we go through New York and we pass the Twin Towers! We went right in between them, like awesome! And I’m glad Benji was there because he can vouch for it. Then I came home, I went to Boston Logan, they got another limousine, and they put me right back at the Boston Garden at the bar. I was there by 3:30. Isn’t that great?
Dan: And the next day she wins in another American record.
On The Road
Catalano Hot At 5M Too
Boston, March 15 – No one even suggested Joe Catalano might be exaggerating about his wife’s weekend. “An unbelievable, incredibly awesome experience” might even seem somewhat restrained.
After setting a 15K AR in Jacksonville on Saturday morning, Patti hopped a plane home to appear at a 4 p.m. clinic. The next morning, she toed the starting line of the Shamrock Classic 5M, and 25:48 (5:09.6 per mile) later she had her second national best in two days.
Catalano felt flat and heavy-legged in her pre-race warmup, but she started the race strong – the way she always seems to do these days. She hit 1M in 5:17, slowed by a headwind, but just ignored it.
Finishing 47th in a field of some 4700, Catalano paid little attention to much of anything. Day in, day out – and literally so on this weekend – has little reason.
Greg Meyer duelled with Bruce Bickford in the men’s race before making a strong move over the final 1000m to win by 5 seconds with 23:03.
Bickford led as the “45 dingbats” had finished their best media-mongering sprints. He surged at 1 1/4 miles and only Meyer and Benji Durden went with him. When Bick went again at 2M, only Meyer held on.
As for Durden, who had also raced in Jacksonville. “Bruce made a nice surge: it impressed me. I couldn’t respond. I thought, ‘If I keep this up, I might be able to make it to the end of this street.’”
Bickford surged again at 3M (13:54) and once more at 4M but it wasn’t enough. “I ran tough, but Greg just hung in there. There wasn’t much I could do. Today he was just a better runner.”
Can You Remember The 1981 Shamrock Five Mile, Patti Catalano?
Patti: The next day, yes, I did! It was great! Benji and I had a pizza and I woke up tired and sore and I looked at Benji and said, I don’t know if I can do it, I am so …. I was just so tired and so sore and it took me a long time to warm up and it was really cold. It’s so windy my hair was straight out. You can see it on video, there’s a film somewhere. I have my head down and I’m fighting it like this, leaning sorta, so the wind will bounce off my shoulder and I run a 25:48 for a new American Record for five miles.
I had a lot of fun. The challenges were the time I did – and nobody’s done it since! – nobody’s done it! I did a world record and then a American record, or even say just two American records, the same weekend. 15K and then five-miles. Nothing I really planned.
Buck Fannin called, the race director of Jacksonville River Run, called. This is when you just called and you answer the phone, yeah, hello, no agents or anything. He said, Patti, we’d love to have you come down here to Florida to run in our Jacksonville race. Oh, that’d be really great, I said. When is it? He tells me the date, it’s only like a month before.
This is when you called, there’s no months-ahead, it’s just weeks ahead, or it could even be the next weekend. I said, oh, gee, I’d really like to, but I’m doing the Shamrock Classic, a five-mile for the Celtics and I have to do a clinic Saturday night, was it Saturday? Yeah, Saturday night.
Dan: Shamrock was Sunday. His race was Saturday.
Patti: And his race was Saturday. I said, no, I really can’t because I have to be at this event. I’m going to talk with Larry Bird, you know, isn’t this great. He says, oh, okay, you know, alright. He calls back like a day later and he says, Patti, if I could work it out for you to be here, will you be here? I said, sure! So he says, I’ll make sure you’re back. What time is your clinic?
This is when we called them clinics then. It’s like four o’clock or something, at the North station with the Celtics at the Boston Garden. The doors to go into the Garden, next door to that was a bar, and that’s where we were all going to meet and you know, all the women was having a beer with the public, that’s all it was, really.
So I said, sure! I flew in, I guess, Friday morning or something and Saturday’s the race. I had no idea what Fannin was going to do. So, the gun goes off, I run as quickly as I can, I set a new American record. Joanie’s there, Lorraine Moller’s there, Jackie’s there, everybody’s there! But you know, I had things to do.
Dan: I was there!
Patti: Oh yeah! Danny was there! Danny won! I didn’t even know it until our first date. I have both trophies up in there in the other room.
Dan: I won the men’s race.
Patti: So it was great. It was a great weekend, and no man or woman has done anything like it since.
The Hug
The 1981 Jacksonville River Run 15K had a lasting impact on both winners. Patti Catalano and Dan Dillon are forever linked by those victories and so much more. Here’s the story as told by Dan.
Sometime around the late ’80 or early 90’s, Patti had disappeared from the Boston scene for a couple of years. Rumor had it she was living in a cabin in Vermont. Doing who knew what.
Very few of the people in the Boston running community knew anything about it.
Almost all of my morning runs in the late 80’s and early 90’s were on the dirt trails of the Middlesex Fells Reservation just north of Boston. One morning I was about halfway through my 10-miler and saw a figure coming toward me from the opposite direction. At that early hour I was sort of used to having the trails to myself. As this other runner got closer, a woman, she started to look familiar.
“Danny?!” She asked.
“Patti?” I replied.
I immediately changed directions, so that we could catch up with what had been going on with each other’s lives, since we’d last seen each other several years ago. Turned out she had just sold her business in Vermont and moved back to the Boston area where she was living in a property that abutted the reservation with a group of friends.
I briefly ran into her on a couple of other occasions on the trails in the following weeks. After that I didn’t see her in there again. Patti had vanished. Again.
Fast forward a few more years…
In mid-August of ’92, after we were both sort of retired from our “professional” running careers, we happened to run into each other outside a downtown parking garage in Boston where I was working at the Jewelers Exchange Building.
Patti had moved out to Newton and had been working as a nanny for a couple that owned a wholesale jewelry business in the same building one floor below my office. We greeted each other excitedly like old friends would.
Patti said said something like “Hey, I saw your wife’s name in the Falmouth results, but I didn’t see yours. Didn’t you run?”
I sadly explained I hadn’t been doing much running lately, and added that I was suddenly single again. Patti wrapped me up in a hug that was sympathetic and at the same time electric.
On our first date, two days later, I saw the Jacksonville ’81 trophy at the home where Patti was staying as a live-in nanny. I jokingly said “Hey, there’s MY trophy!”
Patti didn’t remember we had both won that day. I reminded her of how her American Record performance that day was above the fold in the press while she had relegated my mere course record performance to below the fold!
She reminded me that she set another American Record in Boston the very next day! I had let that amazing fact slip my mind.
During that time she was in the middle of a phenomenal stretch of running 48 races in 52 weeks, winning 44 of them. Several World and American Records among them all.
We were married five days after what we refer to as “The Hug”.
How long between the hug and your marriage?
Five days.
And if you feel shocked by that, imagine how I felt! I was still ultra bitter about the failure of my first marriage. I had just gone out days before to Ethan Allen and bought a twin-size sleigh bed. Swearing to myself that I had no reason to “complicate” my life ever again.
But the powerful vortex of the hug was that undeniable and irresistible.
My daughter’s home birth occurred on that sleigh bed a few years later. Ha ha!
You are a lucky man.
I truly am.
Twenty-seven (27) years later we have a grown son and a daughter and still enjoy our long runs on the rural backroads and wooded trails in Windham, Connecticut.
From time to time Patti is still asked to do some public speaking at running camps and such. I sometimes tag along. Whenever I am asked about my running recollections, I usually like to remind the young athletes of two things that were “take aways” from my Jacksonville ’81 race.
First, work hard to improve the aspects of your running arsenal that you know to be your weak suit. Even if you hate doing it. If it’s hills, do more hills, if it’s speed, work on speed, endurance, work on strength….
Next, don’t expect your PR’s or records to come as a result of pushing through tremendous pain in a race. It probably won’t come like that. The top runners that Patti and I have known over the years share a common experience with us. Most of the pain comes in the months and weeks of intense preparation before race day.
Many times the records happen on the day that you lose yourself in the competitive moment. You reach that point early in the race where you expect the pain to start. But it doesn’t start yet. You slowly begin to push a little harder expecting the pain to come at any time. But still it doesn’t come. Before you know it the finish is right there, but there is nowhere near the pain you expected.
You can look back at the workouts that you repeated over and over pushing yourself, but that yielded less than the result they were supposed to. That’s where the pain was, right where it belongs.
Right where it belongs. Like those two trophies side by side.
Feel a bit like Miruts Yifter in 1971 when he appeared to outkick Steve Prefontaine in a United States vs Africa match in North Carolina before realising he had timed his sprint finish one lap early.
But wait! There’s more.
Hi, Jack, Patti here.
Well, yeah, sure, I guess. Five days does sound short, but we were adults. lol!!!! And there’s a tad more to the story.
1978. Franklin Park . The New England Collegiate XC Championships.
At the time I was going to a lot of cross-country races to learn and see racing. How it developed, who made a move, who answered the move, who ran with heart and the outcomes.
This race, the talk was about a new kid from Ireland running for Providence College. I watched and followed along the race course with Jack McDonald, the Athletic Director for Boston College.
The race was fierce. Gerry Degan, John Tracey, this new kid from Ireland, Dan Dillon, all up front battling. INTENSE and exciting. I was witnessing true pure racing.
I don’t remember Danny taking the lead. I do remember him running with an intense ferociousness I hadn’t seen before. I knew this was what I was wanting to see. Danny finished third behind John and winner Gerry. At the finish line at the “cage,” the PC team had gathered and were changing into sweats. I just had to go meet “the kid from Ireland.”
I was so nervous that I couldn’t talk to Dan.
Couldn’t even look at him.
We all thought he was from Ireland. I listened to him talk to his teammates, congratulating them and he sounded normal. No accent. I forget how we all found out he was really a local kid, Chicopee Comp. He beat The Rookie, AlSal at the State xc Championships his senior year.
So I stood next to him while he was changing his socks, while I chatted with John Tracey. (John and I still laugh about it. We see each other once a year at Manchester, CT Thanksgiving Day race.)
Off Danny went to warm down with the team.
Later that night on Channel 5, the sports segment ran a piece about the race. LOL!!!!! ‘Patti Lyons was in attendance to WATCH PC win the championships.’ And they showed a brief clip of Gerry winning and an interview of me.
Now Danny and I both ran for Athletics West. He ran the XC side, I ran on the road side as NIKE only wanted me on the roads. So we really never caught up again with each other until August 13th, 1992.
I had been married and divorced once again. Third time. This time, I had to live through – and overcome – homelessness.
I had packed all of my stuff to take to my brother’s house in Colorado. I was going to go help with running on an Indian Reservation. I didn’t know which one; it didn’t matter as I was trusting the universe.
I was a nanny of sorts for a family in Newton. I wanted to go to say goodbye to everybody at the Bill Rodgers Running Center, so the lady of the house, Nitza, drove me to town and we parked in the Jewelers Building garage. Her hubby was a diamond dealer. We were standing waiting for our car to come down when I noticed a huge white SUV drive up near us and I glanced over and I recognized the profile…DANNY DILLON. Told Nitza I’d be right back. I know that guy and I want to say, HI!
After Danny parked his car, I called his name. He turned and looked right me and smiled and said “Patti, how good it is to see you.” We gave each the familiar hug, ya’ know the one you do to all of your peers. The greet hug. I asked him how come he hadn’t run Falmouth as I saw his wife’s name in the results. “We’re divorced, I didn’t run it”.
I went to give him a sympathy hug… but… but… something transpired in that briefest of moments. It was electrifying. I felt something I never had felt before.
Meanwhile, my ride was beeping the horn, time to go. I fast-talked to Danny I was going to live on an Indian reservation to start a running program and he should come with me.
I’m leaving in two days.
We exchange numbers.
I immediately call him when I get home. I felt it! This is him…this is the one. OMG! OMG! OMG! I’m praying now that he felt it too.
When I call, he tells me he can’t get together until Thursday! (I’m leaving Thursday in my VW Bug with my Golden Lab Molsen) Hmmmmmmmm, okay, I say… thinking I’ll just wait. But I’m furious. How in the heck could he not act on the hug. OMG! Did I not read it right?
Hmmm.
Thursday came, he was early. I wasn’t ready. We took the kids out to the park. All the kids in the neighborhood came over as I was the grownup who played like a kid with the kids. We all had fun.
Danny and I interviewed each other on the Mystic River the day away. I told him, I wanted to be an at-home mom, to have home-birth and home-school the kids. He was so happy for all of it. The only thing he wanted for me was to register to vote. DONE!
I told Nitza and her husband Kobe. He was a rabbi. He married the two of us immediately. And we drove out to Colorado, got my stuff from my brother’s, and moved around in the Southwest. No, we didn’t have a running program. We fostered kids instead. We took the foster route thinking I’d never get pregnant. I was “older.”
Two months into our marriage, I was pregnant. Our son was born in June.
Which brings us to the end of the greatest weekend in road racing history.
Three course records, two American records, Larry Bird and a private jet, twenty-seven years of marriage and two kids.
I think we have a winner. Couple of them.
