On The Road. Track & Field News. February 1982.
$10,000 For Durden & Binder
Houston, January 24 – It might be somewhat a difficult question. Is the 30-story atrium of the Hyatt Regency more impressive than a $10,000 First Prize for the Houston-Tenneco Marathon?
For the top runners in this, the initial event on the 1982 ARRA circuit, there was no question. Money seems to bring out the best in marathoners – maybe it’s just the opportunity to receive honest payment for work well done.
Or maybe it was the shopping tour through Neiman-Marcus with $60 ties (100% silk with an oil-well motif in 22-carat gold thread) and $72 socks.
Bill Rodgers had told a friend before the race that the favorites were South African John Halberstadt, Dick Beardsley, John Lodwick and Benji Durden. Unspoken was that Billy himself would also be a factor.
Lodwick galloped to the front, passing the first mile in 4:56. Dave Smith, Chuck Smead, Gordon Minty and Jon Anderson accompanied the pre-race favorites, as Lodwick passed 2M in 10:00 and 3M in 15:02 to build an 80 meter lead. With Herm Atkins and Beardsley leading the charge, Pastor Lodwick’s lead had dropped to three meters. No lead at all really.
Rodgers seemed to get a little frisky in the first six miles, appearing to burst ahead briefly once or twice. Durden, obviously feeling it was much too early to play games, went to the front at 37:30, hitting 8M in 40:03.
At this point the pack consisted of Durden, Atkins, Beardsley, Halberstadt, Smith, Anderson and Rodgers, with Lodwick now 75 meters back.
Passing the Texas Commerce Bank (51 degrees) and 10M in 50:05. Durden surged and only Beardsley could go with him. The other immediately fell twenty meters behind. The next mile went by, the clock read 54:50, which you mathematicians will note is a 4:45 split. (Be advised Durden remembers the mile times as “strange data… really weird.”)
“The first few miles for most part was us just sorta socializing,” Durden said. “Then we made little test surges to see who wanted to set the pace. I went first.”
Durden and Beardsley hit halfway in 1:06:11, with Rodgers and Halberstadt just twenty meters back. Durden looked back at the turn and said to Beardsley, “They’re gaining at us.”
A mile later, there were four in the lead pack.
“Every two minutes, one of us would change the lead,” explained Durden, who passed 15M in 1:14:34.
Halberstadt couldn’t hang on – he had never taken his turn – and when Beardsley surged at 16M (1:19:29), Billy faded with a thumbs-down gesture of resignation.
“We started doing two-minute drills again,” Durden explains, “but at 18M (1:29:08) I noticed Dick didn’t come up for his turn and I took off alone.”
By 20M, Durden’s lead had already grown to 35 seconds.
“I wasn’t able to push myself,” Benji said. “Maybe a 2:10. I just couldn’t mentally make myself work harder.”
Alone, into a headwind, he didn’t have to work any harder as he cruised to a course record 2:11:11, his second fastest time ever.
After Beardsley (2:12:42) and Halberstadt (2:13:09), Anderson took fourth (2:14:19) after chasing Rodgers (2:14:51) down in the last few miles.
“When I saw Billy with three miles to go,” he recalls, “I said to myself, ‘That man has a $1,000 of my money.”
My diary says that it was a “rolling course.’
Nice to know I chased Bill R down at the end, as that was surely the only time that happened.
Jon Anderson 9/26/2020
Benji remembers.
The morning started out a bit scary.
The race started just outside the door of the Hyatt Regency Houston where we were staying. I had a very high room near the top. About thirty minutes before the race – I don’t normally do any warmup running before a marathon, 26.2 miles. letting the first few miles work for my warmup – I went to the elevator to head down and waited, and waited, and waited….
Eventually, I began to panic and headed for the stairs. I ran down many flights of stairs and got to the start with just minutes to spare.
I remember Billy began surging early, which was annoying since we had a lot of race to go. I knew we had to respond to his surging. If we didn’t, his confidence would grow.
I turned to Beardsley and said as much. There was a clock on the back of the lead vehicle and I suggested we alternate keeping the pace honest, rotating every two minutes until we were ready to race. That was what we did for about ten miles. We had been running over five-minute pace through ten miles, but Dick & I quickly got pace under 5:00.
I have notes. Our splits were 4:57/10-11, 4:50/11-12, and 4:59/12-13.
It was a two-loop course. As we started out on the second loop, Billy’s girlfriend Gail, who was riding on the back of the lead vehicle, yelled at him, “You’ve got this, Billy.” I responded, “You wanna bet?!”
Dick and I continued our rotation leading every two minutes with Billy and Halberstadt just hanging on. Our splits were 4:54/13-14, 4:52/14-15, 4:56/15-16, 4:48/16-17.
I didn’t notice when BR & JH dropped off, but after seventeen miles, when it was Dick’s turn to lead, he didn’t come up. I pushed on for a couple of miles but the race was over (4:50/17-18, 4:53/18-19, 4:57/19-20).
I knew I had won and wasn’t focused on my time. I mostly talked with the press in the lead vehicle over the last 10K, slowing to around 32 minutes.
Looking back these many years later, I probably had my best marathon performance that day. I think if Dick had stayed with me sharing the lead till the end, we could have both been sub-2:10.
But the past is what it is.
Benji Durden 9/26/2020
Rodgers remembers.
I just looked in my log book and saw that I commented Alberto may be the top distance runner in the World at that time.
I was actually with the leaders at two and three miles. I also wrote last three miles were really tough.
The following year is when I believe Alberto took his AR down to 28:03; Greg Meyer set his road PR in 28:12, and I set my road PR of 28:15.
I didn’t mean Alberto was using reindeer blood when I mentioned Lasse Viren. Of course, utilizing one’s own blood as a recovery /training method was not banned by IAAF until after the ’84 Olympic games.
Bill Rodgers 9/28/2020
Laurie Binder now has $10,000 of Tenneco’s money, as she crushed a disappointing field in 2:40:56. She wasn’t too disappointed herself, although she had hoped for 2:32.
“I went out for the win,” she said. “I started to tighten up at mile eighteen. About the last ten kilometers, I felt pretty uncomfortable, but I hung in there. I wasn’t really challenged. The last seven or eight miles, I ran by myself.”
All the way to the bank.
The half-marathon two weeks before the big distance is still an approved method of evaluating one’s fitness.