Hi, there! Thanks for stopping by.
This is Jack D. Welch, and I wrote WHEN RUNNING WAS YOUNG AND SO WERE WE.
Turns out making this promotional audio for the book might be almost as challenging as writing the book itself.
The original running boom is often attributed to the gold medal marathon victory of Frank Shorter at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
I missed that race because, well, I was out running. I began running a few months earlier.
Felt like I had invented running, because it was so rare to see anybody running on the roads in those days.
Nobody really, except for the occasional kid looking to earn a varsity letter.
And then running took over my life.
I quit my job and moved my blonde wife, my white poodle and my green VW bug to Flagstaff, where I ran thousands of miles at high altitude.
Then on to Oregon, to be closer to the magic of Prefontaine and Hayward Field.
And just because of my love of running, I became the co-founder of Running magazine, director of public relations for Nike, senior editor of road racing for Track & Field News, and part-owner of the Oregon Runner specialty shop.
Meanwhile, I finished 93rd in the national marathon championships. I ran alongside many of the greats like Alberto Salazar, Don Kardong, Mary Decker and Benji Durden. They were awful hard to keep up with and they were going easy on me.
I raced the original marathon route in Greece. I covered the sport for almost three decades, I was on the press truck, at the parties, behind the scenes, and track-side for some of the best performances by some of the greatest runners in history.
I am tired of talking about myself, so imagine you are more than tired hearing about me.
Let’s talk about the book.
Profiles of some of the top men of the era, guys like Dick Beardsley, Greg Meyer – I had dinner with Greg a night or two before he won the 1983 Boston Marathon. He picked up the check.
Mark Nenow, Steve Spence, Mark Curp.
Bob Kennedy, the first non-African to run under 13 minutes for 5 kilometers.
Chris Fox, an amazing runner who was a top competitor for 25 years.
Twenty-five years is a long time to stay in the game and this book tells you how he did it.
If you don’t know these athletes, well, that’s part of the point of WHEN RUNNING WAS YOUNG & SO WERE WE.
There are personality pieces of some of the top women, pioneers of the sport like the incomparable Lynn Jennings and Patti Catalano, a chubby smoker who began jogging to lose weight.
In 1980 Patti had one of the greatest years any runner ever had, before or since, setting many national records, while winning a dozen major road races that year.
And there’s an interview with one of America’s top racewalkers of the day, Michelle Rohl.
Walking is almost as good as running, maybe better as you age.
Ingrid Kristiansen, simultaneously the world-record holder at 5K, 10K & the marathon, is another interview, as well as candid, never-before-published conversations with outspoken Marc Davis and the legendary Gerry Lindgren.
“Buck Naked”, a profile of Nike founder Phil Knight, is accompanied by the original source material, unedited.
Knight is hard to get to, but he sat down with me for an hour or so.
Same with Nike’s first employee, the reclusive Jeff Johnson. It was Jeff who came up with the name “Nike”.
Jeff also invented the full-length mid-sole, which has certainly benefited millions of knees over the years.
Jeff, among the earliest photographers of the running scene, contributed many of the photos in this book.
Additional insight is provided by Helen Rockey, the first female CEO of a major running shoe company.
There is a chapter on training which, humbly speaking, might just be worth the price of admission all by itself.
My first published article, – co-written with Dr. E.C. Frederick – originally appeared in Runner’s World in 1975.
After The Work, The Rest Is Easy is a seminal article of training wisdom, wisdom which remains valid today.
In a sentence…it is not enough to train hard, you must also learn to recuperate well.
At The Races is a chapter which tells the tale of the First Women’s USA Olympic Marathon Trials… I was on the press truck.
On a different press truck, I rode beside Steve Scott & Seb Coe at the Cascade Run Off.
There’s a piece about being treated like an invited athlete at the Honolulu Marathon.
I was actually in the van with the Nike corporate team as Salazar prodded the likes of Jon Sinclair to a Hood-To-Coast Relay race record which still stands some 20 years later.
There’s much more, of course, but I’ll stop with mention of the final chapter, simply entitled “The Greatest.”
In my mind, and you are welcome to differ with me, the Mt. Rushmore of distance running is made up of Joan Benoit, Mary Decker, Alberto Salazar & Mr. Steve Prefontaine.
WHEN RUNNING WAS YOUNG & SO WERE WE gets you real close and real personal with all four.
Oh, hey, look!!! The rain stopped – I gotta go for a run. See you at the races.
***
The ad never ran. Maybe sounded like I was reading from a script. Inauthentic perhaps. Apparently, I didn’t sound like me.
Maybe my voice is weird and, as you might’ve guessed, I am uncomfortable talking about myself.
Or maybe nobody believed it all.
Notice the crowd looking at someone more interesting.