A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword. – Robert Burton
Among athletes, road racers are notoriously outspoken.
Underpaid and overworked. It was great fun.
You’re alone off by yourself, and there’s a lot of pain, and plenty of time to think.
The following appeared in the ROAD section of “U.S. Scene” in T&FN. February 1982.
Bill Rodgers announced in late January he will try to make the 1984 Olympic Team. “My goal is to stay consistent,” Rodgers told Lewis Freeman of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “If I stay uninjured, I think I can run 2:10 for at least three to five years more. I can’t run 2:08; I know that. I just want to make [the team], to get there. Then I’ll see how I do.”
Bill did not make the team. John Tuttle, Pete Pftizinger and Alberto Salazar did.
Alberto Salazar knows he has arrived. “There are just a million opportunities,” Salazar commented to Blaine Newnham of the Eugene Register-Guard (to which Newnham remarked, “Not to mention a nearly like number of dollars.”)
Salazar continued, “There are easy races galore, ones I really wouldn’t even have to run hard to win. Absolutely, I could be busy every weekend.”
Greg Meyer has some pithy comments to make re Craig Virgin’s frequency of racing on the roads. Meyer told New England Running: “He’s not a road runner. He’s a track runner who runs the roads occasionally. He would be up there [in road rankings] if he ran the roads all year long, but he chooses not to do that.
“If you’re not at the major events, it’s hard to be ranked.”
“Bay-to-Breakers isn’t a major event. It draws a huge crowd, but it’s a circus. It’s not that highly competitive. Peachtree is getting more competitive, but I don’t think Virgin deserves to be ranked with the guys that run week in and week out, racing twice a month.”
I asked Greg Meyer if he had any thoughts or memories about the quotes and he replied with an even pithier comment.
Gosh, we were all feeling our oats back then.
Greg Meyer 10/15/2020
I asked Bill Rodgers the same question.
Some great quotes for sure!
I’m hoping Alberto gets good news from the Court of Arbitration for Sport in November.
Greg’s words were a bit inflammatory about Craig, but accurate.
I think today’s stories are so well hidden by agents and federations.
Bill Rodgers 10/15/2020
Took me longer to hear back from Craig.
I always have admired Greg Meyers. He was actually in my two-mile race on that hot day back in June of 1973 in Chicago on a 90-degree day on a shitty asphalt track, when I finally broke Pre’s national two-mile H.S. record – without a pacer – and led the whole damn way to hit 8:40.9. Matt Centrowitz was also under 9:00 but a ways back and Greg was somewhere around 5th.
Then, in the Big Ten, Greg was in my class and I was so doggone lucky to beat him and Herb Lindsay and Stan Mavis and Billy Donakowski and Tom Byers and Steve Plasencia and a host of others. That was one of the finest collection of distance runners from coast to coast, but we got overlooked by so much of the “mainstream running media,” which was fixated on Villanova and Oregon, etc.
I found a way to beat all of these guys, although Greg passed me at NCAA X-C at Indiana my sophomore year at the end. That’s when I went out and tried to beat Nick Rose and then died badly. Later, all of these guys (and some I didn’t mention above) went on to populate the Top 10 list in USA in so many middle and long distance events for Americans for nearly a decade after graduation! I’m so proud of these guys.
Anyway, Greg was my roommate at Glasgow, Scotland for my first World Cross Country Championships where I finished sixth in the muddiest major race I ever competed in.
Greg was one of the few guys who actually called me in 1982 when I returned home from hospitalization in Germany. I had gotten a tremendous urinary tract infection (caused by a kidney stone that wouldn’t drop) en route to the World Cross Champs in Rome that year as the defending champ. I almost lost both my right kidney and my life over there. I have never forgot his kindness of that call.
Finally, Greg did something in 1983 that I had always wanted to do. He ran a sub-4:00 mile indoors that winter and then broke 2:10 in the marathon to win Boston that spring. That is quite a feat of competitive range and was one of the few goals I never accomplished. Greg did do it and kudos to him!
Herb grew into such an impressive road racer after he moved to Boulder and started training there in 1979 or so. I beat him so badly at the 1980 Olympic Trials 10,000 with a meet record that stood for 24 years. Herb went back to the roads and never set foot on the track again until 1984 in another ill-fated bid to qualify for an Olympic Team. But, his road racing results were extraordinary.
And he had great range, too! Did you know that he was the Big Ten mile/1500 champ two or three times? Never won a 3,000, 5000 or 10,000 in our conference during all his years at MSU. Despite what he did after he graduated!
Finally, Plascencia went on to make two Olympic Teams and close to a third in 1996. Steve was overshadowed in the Big Ten by Greg and Herb and me, too, but never gave up. Steve is the epitome of “every dog has his day… if he hangs in there long enough!” Ironically, neither Meyers, Lindsay, or Byers made even one Olympic Team, but did well nevertheless.
Craig Virgin 11/11/2020
John Walker feels countryman Rod Dixon can run a quick marathon: “I think Rod could run 2:10 if he wanted to, but I don’t think 2:10 is that great a time.
“The big problem in the U.S. is that everybody thinks about the marathon and nothing else. I think you will find in the U.S. that once the milers and 5000 move up and run road races, the road boys will be pushed right back to nothing. I think it’s only a matter of time.”
Yes, I remember these quotes.
Bay to Breakers in the 80’s – 90’s was big and fast.
John W really wanted to run some road races in the 80’s. [He] realized it was better to stay on the track as the times got faster at 5k, 10k and the 1/2 marathon.
Rod Dixon 10/15/2020
Thought comes to mind, especially for you homeschoolers who haven’t seen grandma or grandpa lately, make sure you get them to tell you stories about when they were the baddest hombres in the business.
Sometimes Nana and DooDah, Mema and Papa, are telling the truth.