Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. – Edward Abbey
Birth date 20 Sep 1949
When did you start running and why?
I’m a Vermont country boy who grew up in a small town when television was in its infancy – a snowstorm in a box – and kids spent their time playing outside with friends in the neighborhood. In small town Vermont parents didn’t worry too much about you. Just get home before dark. I walked or ran everywhere I went, including to school about a mile away. I didn’t even have a bike. When we moved to Barre, Vermont, I was in the fourth grade and we were even farther out in the country, high on the hills above the town. I spent a lot of time just running around in the nearby woods and fields with my two dogs. I got an early start on my aerobic base.
In seventh grade we moved to Brattleboro and I was enrolled in a very small Catholic school, thirty-two in my graduating class in 1967. Basketball was the school’s sport with a fairly successful history. I made the high school team but spent most of my time warming the bench. If there was a Silver Sliver Award I would probably have my name engraved on it. But during my sophomore year the coach decided a cross-country team would get the basketball squad in shape for the more important season. It was pretty evident running was a sport where I had some real potential.
Unfortunately, the coach was much more informed about basketball than running and practices were always the same. Run from here to there. The training course we used was a loop and – as soon as we were out of his sight – half the team would race cross lots through the woods and wait for me to come around, at which point they would take their turn jumping onto the course to finish the loop.
I worked pretty hard and raced pretty hard and finally qualified myself to run in the state meet as a senior where I placed 21st. The coach actually asked me if I needed him to come to the meet. Fortunately, my dad was very supportive as he’d run XC for a season at the University of Vermont back in the 30’s.
I decided to go to UVM because they had a running program and because my dad and older sister had graduated from there. UVM had a Varsity and a freshman team and I made the freshman team. We weren’t very good and had difficulty even competing against Burlington-area high school teams but at least now I was getting a little real coaching. The camaraderie was the best part, especially for a kid from a small school in a small town who was now on a big college campus. It was like having a small family.
As a sophomore I made the varsity and we had a superstar from Ohio who was pretty highly touted. Partway through the season he began to struggle during a dual meet. In the final uphill half mile, I passed him and then went on to pass the opposing team’s lead runner. To everyone’s amazement including the coach, I won. He dubbed me “The Toughest Thing on Two Feet.” That was the beginning of the growth in my self-confidence as a runner and leader within the team. The team continued to improve for the next three years, culminating with our second place finish in the Yankee Conference and a fifth place finish in the New England Championships.
A really significant event took place during my sophomore year, 1969. During the Christmas break a friend form high school cross country invited me to see a movie with him at his church in Brattleboro. The movie was, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” based on Alan Sillitoe’s book. The movie is a social commentary as well as an interesting running story. Then my friend told me he was going to enter the Boston Marathon in the spring and suggested I try it as well. The challenge was irresistible, so I went back to UVM, told my coach about my plan to run the marathon in the spring instead of running indoor track, “trained” and ran. I ran a 2:53:36 and placed 110th out of about 700 or so finishers, I think. At that time I believed it was a once in a lifetime experience. Before the 1970’s, running careers generally ended after you graduated from high school or college.
A Return to Running and Its Dreams
The Viet Nam War weighed heavily on our lives in the late 60s and early 70s. I had sat around drinking beers with a large group of guys during my junior year to watch the draft lottery and to get a look at what fate might have to offer me after graduation. September 20, number 63, might as well have been number 1. In the spring of my senior year I travelled to Manchester, New Hampshire, for my draft physical carrying a small note from my eye doctor explaining I had an eye virus they were treating me for. Obviously, I was in great shape, as potential draftees worked our way through the various stations, bend over and spread’em, etc. As we readied to get back on the bus to return to Brattleboro, I was called back for a final meeting with one of the doctors.
The result was a temporary medical deferment which ultimately led to a permanent deferment when the virus flared up again later in the fall of 1971. They knew what they were doing I guess because my vision in that eye has gradually been reduced to legally blind in one eye. As I pulled back onto campus I spotted one of my track teammates and yelled out the car window to him my good news. I asked him if he wanted to bike tour through Europe with me after graduation and the next grand adventure was set in motion.
We had a great time in Europe but had to cut the trip short, as he got a call from his conscientious objector board of review. I found a job as a carpenter and spent the next year and a half earning money during the day and drinking money away after work. Work hard, play hard, but not train hard. At some point I finally started to come to my senses and decided to return to school and get a degree in Industrial Arts Education. Maybe Tim Hardin’s singing of “If I Were a Carpenter and You Were a Lady” at Woodstock were echoing around somewhere back there in the mist.
The return to campus sent me back into the world of running and the second phase of my running career began. I had a couple of ugly breathless back of the pack finishes but finally met up with my old friend Larry Kimball who was living in the area. Along with Larry and a couple of other friends I started to actually train and race again. We set a goal of running Boston in the spring of 1973. The period of social distraction may have been something that I needed at that time so I really have no regrets. We trained pretty hard, often twice a day and come April we headed down the highway for Boston.
Jon Anderson won the race in 2:15:03, Tom Fleming second in 2:17:03, and Olavi Soumalainen was third in 2:18:21. I finished a respectable 92nd in 2:45:03. On the trip back home I asked Larry, the Vermont running guru with a photographic memory, what he thought it might take to qualify to compete in the ’76 Olympic Marathon Trials. In a flash, Larry said he expected a 2:30:00 might be the cutoff point. Only 15 minutes faster? The seed was firmly planted.
[I was there in ’73, about four hundred places back. It was way too warm. Way. Mr. Dimick must be the first racer not to mention the damn heat. What does that say, I wonder?]
So now I was entering a brave new world, the world of road racing with a new and unbelievable goal to make it into the Olympic Trials in 1976. I went to seriously training twice a day, upping my weekly mileage, adding in interval training on the track and using hard fartlek sessions. I also accepted a teaching position back in Brattleboro, so now I was pretty much training alone as I have been throughout my running career. A Solitary Man.
This was the era when the AAU pretty much ruled the running world, so naturally I raced in as many of the NEAAU and AAU Championships I could reasonably get to. Racing improved over time. In 1974 my buddies and I crammed into a VW Bug and drove to West Virginia, for the 2nd annual Charleston Distance Run and the inaugural induction ceremony to the new National Track and Field Hall of Fame. The following year I was running well enough to have my expenses paid to fly down for the race. I raced well and kept moving up through the field and when I passed ’72 Olympian Jeff Galloway near the finish I was really psyched. I ended up in sixth place. The real thrill was when Jesse Owens placed the medals on the top ten finishers standing on the podium.
The summer of 75, a running odyssey
1975 was one of the most exciting times in my ten-plus years of active road racing. March was a great month with a close second to Bill Rodgers at the Amherst 10-miler, finishing ten seconds back. A week later I came close to John Vitale, placing second to him 14 seconds back and at the end of the month I finished 4th in the AAU National 30K behind, Vitale, Rodgers, and Fleming. I ran a 1:33:55 breaking the unofficial 30K record along with the other three.
Buoyed by these good results I found a friend, Lynn Capen from UVM to set out for the National 25K Championships in Buhl, Minnesota that summer. The plan was to race in Buhl, travel on to visit his old high school coach who had a ranch in Prey, Montana and was working as a ranger in Yellowstone and then head south to visit a lady friend of mine in Boulder, Colorado.
There was a great article by David Kayser in the September 1985 issue of Running Times entitled The Summer of ’75, A hard-core road runner fondly recalls the year he journeyed to Buhl, Minnesota for the National AAU 30 Kilometer Championship.
Lynn and I loaded our tent, sleeping bags, and gear into my brand new Dodge Dart Sport and headed first north to Canada and the west to Minnesota. Dave describes the virtual zoo that surrounded the race in Buhl and associated scene of our gathering in nearby Hibbing at Race Director Jim Randall’s home. It is a classic description of what it was like to be a hard core runner in the early days of the running boom. I raced okay and finished third behind winner Steve Hoag and second place Bob Fitts. I got to be friends with Steve and we stayed at his place in Minneapolis on our return trip.
The visit to Montana was also classic. We rode horses on the ranch, visited the park and went dancing in a saloon in the town of Prey, population about 50 I think so the supply of ladies to dance with was a bit limited but it was fun nevertheless. On the trip south we got out of the car up on Togwotee Pass, elevation 9,658, and tried a short run. We started laughing at the lack of oxygen and the run lasted about fifty yards. Boulder was an unexpected bonus for us. During our second training run along the Flat Iron Trail we came across another runner who invited us to join him for an interval training session with a group of runners down on the College campus. The runner’s name was Gary Bjorklund. Gary was living with a trailer full of like-minded runners, all hoping to make an Olympic team.
The guy in charge of the interval work was another fairly good runner, Frank Shorter. We had a couple of weeks of outstanding training at altitude with Shorter, Bjorklund, Mike Slack, Pablo Vigil and many others. Frank invited us to dinner at his home one evening and pumped me for information about what Bill Rodgers might be up to. Frank had actually gone to high school at Mount Herman, a private prep school about fifteen miles south of my high school but our paths never crossed in those days.
At the end of this spectacular week we loaded the back of my car with cases of Coors Beer for our friends back in Vermont and headed back to Steve Hoag’s home in Minneapolis for a couple of days of running with him. We ran one day with Steve’s good friend, ’68 Olympic Marathon runner Ron Dawes and that was pretty cool as well.
In the meantime I’d been invited to Cudahy, Wisconsin by one of the runners I’d meet in Hibbing to race in the USTFF National 10 Mile Championship. The race favorite was defending champion and outstanding track runner, Glenn Herold. It was a very hot day and Glen struggled a bit. I won the race in 50:27, about a minute ahead of Herold to cap off an epic journey to the west. I don’t think much of the Coors made it back to Vermont, however. The exceptional training and racing set me up well for the race a few weeks later in Charleston, West Virginia, and the trip with Larry Kimball to the International Rice Festival Marathon in Louisiana in October. There I hoped to achieve my goal of qualifying for the ’76 Olympic Trials.
Meeting the goal
The qualifying standards for entering the Olympic Marathon Trials in 1976 were 2:25:00 qualifying and sub-2:20:00 would earn you an expense-paid trip. Larry Kimball and I decided the Rice Festival Race would be a good race on a flat course, so we booked our flights and headed south. There was a good quality field of runners and I went out with the leaders with one goal, get home in under 2:25:00. As we raced along I realized that if I hung with the lead group I’d have a shot at the sub 2:20:00. It was close but I sprinted down the stretch to the finish line and crossed the line in 2:19:51.
It was the best nine seconds that I never ran! What would have seemed like an impossible dream as a college runner was now a reality, I would have an opportunity to race against the best in the nation at the 1976 Olympic Marathon Trials in Eugene, Oregon in the spring. Larry and I and Bill Haviland, another qualifier, headed straight to the French Quarter where we celebrated our success. Little did I know that my return to New Orleans in 1979 would be a truly extraordinary return.
Biggest disappointment?
Like most athletes I had a lot of ups and downs but I would say my biggest disappointment was the 1976 Olympic Marathon Trials. I’d had a dreamlike year in 1975-76, starting with the epic running adventure in Minnesota, Montana, and Colorado during the summer of ’75. My confidence level was at a high point and racing had been going very well as the National 30- Kilometer Championships in Albany, New York arrived. The race was exceptionally fast. The early pack of Bill Rodgers, Tom Fleming, John Vitale, Amby Burfoot, myself and others flew away from the start with a bit of tail wind. Bill won the race in world record pace, finishing in 1:29:04 or about 2:04:13 marathon pace. Tom Fleming was second in 1:30:59 and I was third in 1:31:46.
Based on the finishing time and place I suddenly realized, not only would I achieve my goal of running in the Olympic Trials but I had a legitimate chance of actually making the team. I was ready for the trials or so I thought for about twenty-four hours; the next day my Achilles was so inflamed, I could barely walk. I tried everything I could think of to recover and prepare. Stationary bike, physical therapy, a month of resistance pool training, etc., to no avail.
I flew to Eugene and ran the race, finishing near the back of the pack in 43rd with a time of 2:33:50. My friend Steve Hoag, also injured, ran along with me but ultimately dropped out. Bill made the team and Tom Fleming finished 5th and Amby Burfoot finished 10th. I’d had a shot but it wasn’t meant to be.
Toughest opponent?
I guess I was a pretty good distance runner and had a really rewarding running career with some very bright flashes of what greatness might feel like but I don’t feel I quite made it into the top tier on a consistent basis. But without question the one opponent I had the good fortune to both train with some a bit and to compete against often was Bill Rodgers. Associating with Bill brought me to a higher level of confidence and achievement. We are about the same age and started our post-collegiate racing at about the same time in the early ’70s.
I can recall the first time I saw Bill. He was sitting on the high jump pit at the indoor track at the University of Vermont. Not warming up but rather intently studying a heavy text book I think on his way to an advanced degree in special education. As part of his conscientious objector service, he was working at a special needs facility in Massachusetts. We all needed to find some way to support ourselves at that time before the good runners received shoe company sponsorships.
I can’t recall how Bill did in his race but I was impressed with him as an individual beyond his running ability. I had several opportunities to compete against him in New England as we both were starting out. I came close a couple of times before he entered another universe in the world of running.
I had recently come across an article quoting Bill that elevated my self-image significantly at the time. It was in a news article prior to the old Charlie’s Surplus Race in Worchester, Mass. before the ’76 Trials.
“He (Bill R.) is sticking to his Olympic training routine right up to race day and will be fairly tired going into it. ‘If John Dimick shows up, he could easily beat me.’”
If that wasn’t enough to really get my competitive juices flowing when I read that, then I don’t know what could. We’d gone stride for stride in several races before Bill ultimately put the hammer down and floated away. I visited Bill a few times at his home in Medford to train and occasionally party along with the Greater Boston crew. We went on one 17-mile training run that was more like a race. Afterwards we sat in his kitchen having a chat while Bill ate mayonnaise straight from the jar. At that time it was one of his favorite recovery snacks, I think.
My association with Bill really helped me to climb up to a higher level than I thought was possible and I’d like to thank him for that. When I had the opportunity to travel to Kyoto, Japan along with another good friend, Pablo Vigil, I received a telegram from Bill wishing me luck. That race was a week after my son Michael was born and I’m afraid it wasn’t one of better runs but it’s still pretty cool to get a telegram from arguably the best marathoner of that era. I’m sure Bill Rodgers was the toughest competitor that many runners in my generation had the honor to compete against.
Most memorable run?
The 1976 National 30K was pretty memorable and the 1978 BAA Marathon was a real high but they can’t top my only marathon win, the USTFF National Marathon Championship in New Orleans in 1979. The whole scene was a bit bizarre, starting with my wife and I having to split up midway, due to some airline problems. To set the scene you need to know that the policemen in New Orleans went on strike just before Mardi Gras was about to begin. We were called together that evening by the race organizers and told – due to the strike – the marathon wouldn’t take place and we’d be running a 10K instead. With that we all headed back to our rooms.
A short time later we were called back to a second meeting. The race timing company had done some work and discovered the 24-mile long twin causeway across Lake Pontchartrain had measured benchmarks at each end. It would be easy to certify the remaining distance at the start and finish. Due to some incredible efforts, the race organizers got permission to hold the race on the causeway. One side could be closed for the race, making policing of traffic pretty simple and now the marathon was back on. Just don’t miss the bus to the start.
Race day was wet and windy but fortunately the wind was out of the north and at our backs. I didn’t know too many of the other runners but I’d been around enough to recognize Ron Hill for Great Britain, one of my marathon heroes from “Visions of Eight, “ the 1973 documentary about the 1972 Olympics in Montreal.
The race itself was surreal. It might be compared to competition during the current pandemic. Twenty-four miles with zero spectators. Nobody.
The lead pack broke out fairly quickly and wheelchair athlete, Bobby Hall, blew away and was soon out of sight. This may have been the first time in a major marathon the wheelchair athlete finished much faster than the runners on foot. Bob went on to design high tech racing wheelchairs and it’s expected the wheelchair division will be significantly faster than the elite runners.
I ran the first ten miles with Ron Hill and when we ran past the feed zone I made my move and opened up a lead. For about ten miles you could not see either shoreline, due to the Earth’s curve.
I was racing alone with only the seagulls for company. Every so often the traffic on the other causeway would pass by going one direction or the other, honking and tooting encouragement and then back to the eerie silence. At times I thought I could hear the sound of footsteps but it was only the echoes of my own steps bouncing off the bridge abutments. I think I might have been hallucinating just a bit.
Finally, I could see the southern shoreline and the end of the causeway. I struggled for a bit with side cramps and I knew my feet were being shredded by blistering but, as I reached land, I realized I was going to win this race. The course turned right and then turned right again and I was sprinting toward the finish. I couldn’t quite comprehend the time I was reading on the clock above the finish, 2:11 and counting.
I crossed the line in 2:11:53, the fastest marathon in the world that year at that point. Bob Hall rolled back to congratulate me and a bit later Ron Hill crossed the line in third and congratulated me as well. It was a pretty proud moment for me.
My wife Lynne and I were both working in education, so we both had the following week off. Part of the deal in my racing there was, if I won, the race organizers would pick up the tab for the flight down and back and put us up for the week. Although it was a bit rough walking on my shredded feet, we had a great week and this was by far my most memorable race.
What would you do differently if you could do it again?
If I had the opportunity to do it again, I think I would have benefitted from having good coaching, like Bill Squires provided for the Greater Boston Track Club runners. I was very isolated up in Vermont and the bulk of my training was by myself. I trained hard and fast too much and a good coach might have had me back off more and get more rest.
I used the hard day – easy day approach. All of my training was pretty much determined by what I could learn from reading coaching books or writings in Runner’s World. I also tried to pick the brains of good runners like Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter.
I worked full time as a teacher throughout my racing career, so my training, distance, etc. was somewhat restricted by my job and time element. I was fortunate to be in a school system that made some allowances for me to travel a bit and I’m very grateful to them.
Favorite philosopher? Quote?
I’ve always liked being outdoors far from the madding crowd. Cycle touring through Europe, backpacking in Glacier National Park, trekking along Vermont’s Long Trail, hiking into the high peaks of the White Mountains or in the National Parks of the Colorado Plateau, canoe trips to the Quetico Provincial Park in Canada or down east in Maine. I like grand adventures and epic odysseys like the western running trip of ‘75.
Quote:
I’ve read a fair amount of work by Edward Abbey (1927-1989) who was a park ranger and essayist in the southwest of the U.S. He’s considered a strong influencer of the modern environmental movement. I particularly enjoyed two of his books, Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang.
“A man on foot, on horseback, or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized vehicle tourist can in a hundred miles.”
I guess that means the OGORs have that pretty well covered with 100 miles or more a week training.
Special song of the era?
The Beatles arrived on the American scene when I was a freshman in high school, so the rapid changes in music in general were the background sound during the development of my running career. There was so much music and so many great songs, it’s difficult to isolate anyone in particular. My crazy attendance at the Woodstock Festival colored my experiences for several years. The Eagles were on the radio constantly during the great western trip of ’75. Out of all of the great groups I guess I’ve always been partial to Crosby, Stills, and Nash and later Young. Of all of their many hits I’d say I like “Wooden Ships”.
Favorite comedian?
I think I tend to be a pretty serious guy. I never spent a lot of time with comedians but I’ve always had a good time watching Chevy Chase’s movies. “Funny Farm” was actually filmed just up the road in Townsend, Vermont and I knew a couple of locals who they hired as extras. It’s still a bit of a joke around here. When the filming was finished, they had to replace all of the trees on the town common. The film called for fall foliage, during the summer filming, so the film crew sprayed the green leaves orange and killed the trees.
What
was your ‘best stretch of running’?
And so why do you think you hit that level at that time?
I think I had two pretty good stretches of running. The first period was 1974-1976 when I was developing fast and trying to make the ’76 trials. It was the true beginning of the running boom set off by Frank Shorter’s Gold Medal in Munich. The injury to my Achilles slowed me down for a bit and sent me off to the mountains, hiking and sorting things out for a bit until the embers flashed back into flames again in 1978.
The second phase was 1978-1981. The breakthrough race at Boston got me started. An Athletic Assistance sponsorship from Nike opened up several new doors and the Mardi Gras Marathon 2:11:53 was the race that took me around the world, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Kyoto, Berlin and a few others. I had my ups and downs but by and large I was pretty consistently finishing somewhere in the 2:15 to 2:17 range.
The competition was much stiffer during this phase and I was getting a bit older, always had a full-time job, and starting my family of three children. I ran my final marathon in 1983 at Boston in one of the best American marathons ever in my opinion. I finished in 2:15:23 for 26th place with 24 American runners ahead of me, I believe. I qualified to compete in my third Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984 but I was continuing to fight injuries and opted to call it a day.
What was your edge?
I take great pride in being one of Vermont’s good distance runners. I always was proud to be a high achieving runner from a state more noted for its great skiers. I almost always wore a green kit in honor of representing the Green Mountain State. I felt a bit like a Robin Hood-type character who would sneak down out of the mountains and quietly run away from the pack and take the prize back up into the hills. It was a bit of a mystique that I encouraged. I also believed I had trained harder than the rest of the field. Training twice a day, often in the dark in below-freezing temperatures, 100 miles a week.
What supplementary exercise did you do?
Brattleboro, Vermont is about ten miles south of Putney. Putney was the epicenter of Cross-country skiing in the United States during the 60s, 70s and 80s. John Caldwell was a cross-country skier who skied for the USA in the 1952 Winter Olympics. He went on to write several books and has been called the “guru” of Nordic skiing in North America. His books were published by Stephen Greene Press.
Stephen was my neighbor. When I started running XC in high school he bought me skis, boots, and poles, so I was introduced to the sport at the same time that I started competitive running. If I had attended the public high school instead of the tiny private Catholic school, I might have opted to go in that direction. I was surrounded by young skiers who ultimately made several Winter Olympic Teams. Lynne, my wife, and I drove up to Lake Placid in 1980 to watch the Olympic Relay Race. The team was made up of four friends who lived within a ten mile radius of my house in Guilford. Tim Caldwell, Stan Dunklee, Jamie Galanes, and 1976 silver medalist Bill Koch. I felt like I was the black sheep of the area as a high performing runner amidst all of the local skiing greats.
That was motivating as well. I skied for UVM during my senior year and coached a couple of seasons of high school Nordic at Brattleboro Union High School. I believe it was classic ski training with the high school team in 1978 that helped get me ready for my breakthrough marathon race, the 13th place 2:15:53 at Boston in the spring. I also used a regular light weight room training routine.
For the past ten years I’ve spent a lot of time road cycling and find I can recreate the training effect I missed when I gave up serious running due to continuing injuries. I’m still pretty close to my old running physique today at 5’8” and 130-135 lbs. F or my age group I’m a pretty good hill climber and there are no shortage of great hill climbs in my area of the world. Cycling doesn’t tend to hurt you as long as you “keep the rubber on the road.” I also do a fair amount of hiking along the Appalachian Trail, Vermont’s Long Trail and in the high peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
The Next Best Sport to Long-Distance Running. When the Snow Flies and the Urge to Run is Strong Cross-Country Skiing Can Provide a Good Substitute
Runners World article, December 1979.
The article explains the basics of Nordic skiing as an exercise in the winter but the segment I think is interesting from a personal standpoint in my running career is as follows:
“In the 1977-78 season, I coached the cross-country skiing team at Brattleboro Union High School in Vermont. I skied with the team each day, averaging about 70 kilometers a week in addition to 70 miles of running. The ski training was performed at three-quarter effort, with at least two five-kilometer sessions at top effort each week. I also tried to run at least one hard fartlek session a week. I maintained this training routine for most of December, January, and February.
“At the close of the season, I jumped into the 15-kilometer Washington’s Birthday Ski Race and aggravated a slight knee injury. I had to reduce my total training mileage to about 25 miles per week of slow running at the end of February and the beginning of March. The knee recovered in time for Boston, but I was skeptical of my conditioning because of the injury. I ran 2:15:58 for 13th place that day. I believe that the overall strength, conditioning, and cardiovascular efficiency through a hard season of skiing and running carried me through.”
The 1978 BAA Marathon was a real breakthrough race and ultimately led to a Nike Athlete’s Assistance sponsorship, travel and gear.
Note on coaching: I stopped coaching two years ago, in 2018 after having coached for a combined total of 68 seasons of Cross-country Running, Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field, and Nordic Skiing at Brattleboro Union High School in Vermont. Over 40 years. I had several individual Vermont State Champions, a couple of New England Champions, A couple of athletes who went on to do well as Individuals in the NCAA National Collegiate Championships and one former runner who made the U.S. World Junior Cross-Country Team that competed in Barcelona. Great kids and lots of fun.
What was your toughest injury and how did you deal with it?
My toughest injury was the Achilles strain just before the ’76 Olympic Marathon Trials. I tried physical therapy, weight training, training on an exercise bike, and resistance pool training. For the pool training I traveled to the Northfield School for Girls in Northfield, Massachusetts. This was the sister school to Frank Shorter’s high school at Mount Herman. The track coach there rigged me up with a waist belt with surgical tubing that we attached to the side of the pool and I would run in place in the water. More than anything else, I tried to keep my head in the game but ultimately it was much too close to the important race for an adequate recovery.
The artist as runner or vice versa?
What do you do when you’re no longer able to “run like the wind”? For years you’ve had a sense of self-worth and importance and perhaps even a brief taste of fame from working hard and climbing up to the top of the rankings. But inevitably at some point we all start to slip back down into reality. We all age.
In my case, I’ve always achieved a bit of satisfaction, success and reinforcement from my ability to draw. As I noted earlier, in the fifties television, etc. wasn’t the great influence it became later on. Computers, internet, social media, and electronic games were all just science fiction then. Kids played together or read books. I could create my own imaginary and fantastic worlds by drawing. A few years ago, a childhood friend who later was a college roommate sent me a packet of little car drawings I’d given him back in second or third grade. They weren’t anything too special except that he’d valued them enough to hold onto them for over fifty years. I won a few school and local art contests back then. The public schools were much more supportive of the arts than the Catholic school I attended and the art work was put on hold until college.
When I got to college I loved the running and it was the part of my college experience that I focused on the most. I was history major with a political science minor and I wasn’t a great student by any assessment. We’d been through several years of the Beatles and the growth of Rock and Roll and in 1968 we entered the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. During the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college an old high school friend was getting married and he asked me and another old classmate to be in the wedding party. After the wedding we were waiting for the bridesmaids to gather up their belongings and we had big plans to drive them back up north to where they lived. He suggested we go for a ride on his motorcycle while we waited. It was a bad, bad, bad idea. We’d hardly started when instead of curving left with the road, he went straight and we were airborne over the town yard sand pit. I ended up in the woods seventy-five (75!) feet away with a broken collarbone. Consequently, I had to give up my summer job working in the local lumber yard. It also left me with several weeks of freedom.
A couple of weeks later a lady friend of mine was having a birthday get together and I headed up for the weekend. We were watching a music concert on the television and I commented it looked like fun. I’d like to go to one. My friend said there was one coming right up across the state line and maybe I could check it out. I was never a real music nut but it has always been background noise for my imagination. Always one to try to impress a nice looking young lady, I told her I was going to check it out and go. I’m not sure she was impressed. So a week or two later I tossed a few things in a knapsack, threw it over my good shoulder and stuck out my thumb heading west toward Woodstock, New York where I thought this concert was going to take place. When I caught my second ride the driver asked me where I was heading. When I told him he started laughing and told me that it wasn’t being held in Woodstock, it was on a little farm in Bethel, New York, and did I realize traffic getting into the place was backed up for forty miles? Perhaps a bit of hyperbole there but he said he knew the area well and he’d take me there. So the naïve little cross-country runner from Vermont ended up at what is arguably the most famous rock concert of all time and as you might expect, it was a mind-altering experience in every sense of the word.
Once I got back to UVM I decided to change my minor to art. I started out by signing up for basic drawing. The class was a bit dry at first but when we got to the life drawing part – the part with the very attractive model – I was sold. I remember taking a few of my drawings back to the fraternity where I was living and having the guys ask if I was getting credit for this class. My answer was ‘of course’ and I was working extra hard to get an A++ on this part.
I liked the instructor a lot. He was a gnarly-looking guy, not much older than me. He became a noted instructor of printing and lithography; I studied stone lithography with him until I graduated. In retrospect, this new direction as an artist and hippie wannabe didn’t exactly lead me to my best athletic performances at that time but it was a lot of fun.
My career in education always allowed for a considerable amount of creativity. When I finally retired from teaching after thirty-seven years – when I turned sixty – I was looking for some type of disciplined activity like running had been. I took a few painting classes and I approached this return to the art world like a business of sorts.
It’s been a grand experiment and very rewarding. I do okay and get a fair amount of positive feedback. My work has been picked up by a good local gallery, I have a website, http://www.johndimickartist.com, I get into some juried shows and occasionally win a prize but I keep it all in perspective. It’s intended to be fun, so I’m not as disciplined as I was with my running career. I meet new and interesting people and paint with a nice friendly group.
Family, cycling, hiking, skiing, painting and more.
Life is actually pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2e2kC-geMI
Some of my stats
440 yards 52 seconds UVM
880 yards 1:57.1 UVM
1 mile 4:12.6 UMASS, Amherst
2 mile 9:16 UVM indoors
5 K 14:31 Dartmouth Indoors
5 miles 23:47 Lowell, MA
10K 30:10 Keene, NH (lead car led me down a side street unfortunately)
10 Mile 49:09 Cherry Blossom
Half Marathon 1:05:55 San Juan 450
15 miles 1:18:56 Charleston, WV
25 K 1:19:40 NE AAU 25K, Holliston MA
30 K 1:31:45 Nat AAU 30K, Albany NY
Marathon 2:11:53 New Orleans 1979
University of Vermont Athletic Hall of Fame
Run Vermont Hall of Fame inducted 2011
Keep Moving!
On his website, John Dimick describes himself this way. I might add ‘excellent dude.’
John S. Dimick
Teacher, Runner, Coach, Painter
The Dimick family moved to Brattleboro in 1961 when my father, Everett Dimick , was hired as the Principal of the new Brattleboro Junior High School. I grew up in Brattleboro and graduated from the next to the last graduating class of St. Michael’s High School of Brattleboro in 1967. I graduated from the University of Vermont in 1971 with a history major and art minor specializing in stone lithography under the direction of Bill Davison. Long distance running was an important part of both my high school and college experience.
After graduation I biked around Europe with a friend and when I returned I worked as a carpenter in Guilford, VT. for a year. I returned to UVM in 1972 and received a teaching certificate in special education and industrial arts which led to a career in education teaching in Brattleboro, teaching special education for 16 years and middle school industrial arts and technology education until retirement from teaching in 2009. I pursued my passion for distance running for many years, qualifying for three U.S. Olympic Trials in the marathon along the way.
After retiring from a very disciplined running career in the mid-80’s, I took up watercolor painting studying under the direction of Maisie Crowther. Throughout my teaching career I coached Cross-Country in the fall and Track and Field in the spring and I have finally retired from coaching after 42 years and 68 seasons. I have enjoyed drawing, both free sketching and technical drawing all of my life.
Recently I have rediscovered my paint brushes and I am currently working primarily in watercolors. I work at my studio at home and also I spend time painting with the Brush and Palette Painters, a group of watercolor painters at the Gibson Aiken Center in Brattleboro. I am a member of the Vermont Watercolor Society and have recently been awarded signature member status.
copyright John S. Dimick
The University of Vermont Hall of Fame describes him thus.
John S. Dimick 1971 – Cross Country, Skiing, Track and Field
Though he was a stalwart cross country runner as an undergraduate, John Dimick’s finest athletic moments have been post-UVM, and he continues to register notable achievements as a world-class marathoner. At UVM, Dimick, a 1984 Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, earned three varsity letters in cross country and two each in indoor and outdoor track.
He co-captained cross-country in 1970 (with Perry Bland, currently women’s ski and cross country coach at UVM), when he was also a member of UVM’s cross country ski team. As a junior, he was the state champion at 880-yards, and he won the now-classic Archie Post five-mile race his senior year, 40 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. In his sophomore year, Dimick bypassed the indoor and outdoor track seasons to prepare for the B.A.A. (Boston) Marathon, planting the seeds for what would prove to be an illustrious long-distance running career. He placed 92nd in that, his first marathon, at a time when marathon running was thought to be a sport for half-crazed adventurists.
Since then, as his sport continues to grow in popularity, Dimick has qualified for the Olympic trials in 1976, 1980, and 1984, although an injury kept him out of this year’s trials. He continues to run Boston, obviously, and finished 13th in 1978 and 26th in 1983, with a time of 2:15:23. In 1979, he qualified for the Olympic trials with a 2:16:31 clocking at the Nike-Oregon Track Club Marathon. His best time ever, however, came in 1979 at the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans, where he ran a blazing 2:11:53, at the time the ninth-fastest time ever in the United States and the 18th best in the world. He has excelled internationally as well, placing second in the Copenhagen Marathon n 1981, and fourth at the Berlin Marathon that same year. In 1979, Dimick was named Vermont Athlete of the Year by the Vermont Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
Dimick is a teacher at Brattleboro Union High School, in the Diversified Occupations Program, a vocational program for mentally handicapped students. He is also the head coach of women’s track and field at BUHS. He and his wife, Lynne (UVM ’71), and their children, Elizabeth and Michael, live in Guilford, Vt. Michael went on to become a student-athlete at UVM also in track and field.
| Date | Finished | Time | Flags | Type | Distance | Site | Race | Prize money | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 May 1983 | 1 | 30:38 | RD | 10 km | Maynard MA/USA | Maynard Elks | |||
| 18 Apr 1983 | 26 | 2:15:24 | a | RD | Marathon | Boston MA/USA | Boston | ||
| 19 Mar 1983 | 8 | 37:13 | RD | 12 km | Holyoke MA/USA | St Patrick’s Day | |||
| 17 Mar 1983 | 2 | 30:27 | RD | 10 km | Cambridge MA/USA | Red Cross Challenge | |||
| 27 Feb 1983 | 1 | 51:33 | RD | 10 mi | Amherst MA/USA | Sugarloaf Mountain AC | |||
| 25 Jul 1982 | 4 | 40:22 | RD | 12.87 km | Stowe VT/USA | Matt’s Union Bank | |||
| 27 Sep 1981 | 4 | 2:20:45 | RD | Marathon | Berlin GER | Berlin | |||
| 22 Aug 1981 | 1 | 30:50 | RD | 10 km | Fredonia NY/USA | Fredonia Farm Festival | |||
| 26 Jul 1981 | 7 | 42:29 | RD | 12.87 km | Stowe VT/USA | Moriarty Matt’s | |||
| 20 Jun 1981 | 2 | 2:15:11 | RD | Marathon | Copenhagen DEN | Copenhagen | |||
| 14 Sep 1980 | 1 | 31:29 | RD | 10 km | Brattleboro VT/USA | Famolare Turning Leaves | |||
| 26 Jul 1980 | 3 | 35:31 | RD | 11.265 km | Purdys NY/USA | Dannon Road Runners Club | |||
| 24 May 1980 | 17 | 2:16:07.5 | a | RD | Marathon | Buffalo NY/USA | US Olympic Trials | ||
| 26 Jan 1980 | 19 | 31:47 | RD | 10 km | Hamilton BER | Bermuda | |||
| 10 Nov 1979 | 9 | 1:19:45 | RD | 25 km | Youngstown OH/USA | International Peace Race | |||
| 30 Sep 1979 | 1 | 1:01:29 | x | RD | Half Mara | Hanover NH/USA | Dartmouth Medical School | ||
| 09 Sep 1979 | 16 | 2:16:30 | RD | Marathon | Eugene OR/USA | Nike-OTC | |||
| 26 Aug 1979 | 1 | 38:35 | RD | 12 km | Bennington VT/USA | Bennington Battle | |||
| 06 May 1979 | 1 | 51:57 | RD | 10 mi | Bennington VT/USA | Bennington | |||
| 01 Apr 1979 | 7 | 49:10 | RD | 10 mi | Washington DC/USA | Perrier Cherry Blossom | |||
| 17 Mar 1979 | 13 | 37:16 | RD | 12 km | Holyoke MA/USA | St Patrick’s Day | |||
| 18 Feb 1979 | 1 | 2:11:53 | a x | RD | Marathon | Metaire LA/USA | Mardi Gras | ||
| 27 Jan 1979 | 17 | 31:40 | RD | 10 km | Hamilton BER | Bermuda | |||
| 24 Sep 1978 | 3 | 1:07:38 | RD | Half Mara | Manchester VT/USA | Maple Leaf | |||
| 10 Sep 1978 | 11 | 2:17:51 | RD | Marathon | Eugene OR/USA | Nike | |||
| 20 Aug 1978 | 30 | 34:46 | a | RD | 11.265 km | Falmouth MA/USA | Falmouth Road Race | ||
| 08 Jul 1978 | 3 | 53:49 | RD | 10 mi | Lake George NY/USA | Adirondack Distance Run | |||
| 02 Jul 1978 | 1 | 44:53 | RD | 14.2 km | Killington VT/USA | Perrier Killington | |||
| 17 Apr 1978 | 13 | 2:15:57 | a | RD | Marathon | Boston MA/USA | Boston | ||
| 31 Jul 1977 | 3 | 51:47 | RD | 10 mi | Lake George NY/USA | Adirondack Distance Run | |||
| 04 Sep 1976 | 1 | 25:11 | RD | 5 mi | Burlington VT/USA | Archie Post | |||
| 22 May 1976 | 43 | 2:33:50 | RD | Marathon | Eugene OR/USA | US Olympic Trials | |||
| 28 Mar 1976 | 3 | 1:31:46 | a x | RD | 30 km | Albany NY/USA | Bankathon | ||
| 18 Oct 1975 | 6 | 2:19:51 | a | RD | Marathon | Crowley LA/USA | Rice Festival | ||
| 30 Aug 1975 | 6 | 1:18:56 | RD | 15 mi | Charleston WV/USA | Charleston Distance Classic | |||
| 05 Jul 1975 | 3 | 1:24:05 | RD | 25 km | Buhl MN/USA | AAU Championships | |||
| 21 Apr 1975 | 73 | 2:26:26 | a | RD | Marathon | Boston MA/USA | Boston | ||
| 23 Mar 1975 | 4 | 1:33:55 | a x | RD | 30 km | Albany NY/USA | Bankathon | ||
| 07 Sep 1974 | 1 | 26:17 | RD | 5 mi | Burlington VT/USA | Archie Post | |||
| 15 Apr 1974 | 153 | 2:38:42 | a | RD | Marathon | Boston MA/USA | Boston | ||
| 19 Sep 1970 | 1 | 26:43.6 | RD | 5 mi | Essex Junction VT/USA | n/a | |||
| 05 Sep 1970 | 1 | 26:43 | RD | 5 mi | Burlington VT/USA | Archie Post | |||
| 21 Apr 1969 | 110 | 2:53:36 | a | RD | Marathon | Boston MA/USA | Boston |
