For Benji Durden, writing is like pulling teeth.
He is also battling cancer, but calmly enough so you don’t want to complain to him about your achy knees.
He’s still doing more mileage than you are. Training for the Honolulu Marathon. Him, not me.
Anyway, I evidenced zero umbrage about some missing deadline. Not to worry.
Like that famous running shoe company famously preached to us, there is no deadline.
In 1975 I wanted to run in the 1976 Olympic Trials. The only problem, I didn’t have a qualifying standard for any event. Using the Gardner and Purdy tables in their book Computerized Running Training Programs, I determined my best performance for the year was a 14:19.5 for three miles, worth 845 points. Looking at the equivalent performances for 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, I could see I was not anywhere nearly fast enough to make the Olympic Trails standard for those events. I would need to improve roughly 150 points. But, if I tried for the marathon, that standard only required I improve 30 points. Of course, that meant I needed to finish a marathon.
I had tried the Atlanta Track Club Marathon on Thanksgiving of 1974 and after the first lap (about 13 miles) of a really hilly course I decided running marathons wasn’t rational and called it a day. As it was nearing Thanksgiving again, I chose to use that marathon to see where I was for the distance. It wasn’t a brilliant debut at 2:36:19, but it was a start.
For my next marathon, I picked the Florida Relays Marathon 3/6/76 in Gainesville, FL. Going out at sub-2:20 pace, I began to seriously struggle late in the race, since I was under-trained and the temperature was soaring. Finishing in 2:37:19, worth maybe 728 points, I knew I was out of time to qualify for the Trials. I went back to running local road races.
That fall I was in really good shape. I had run several road races that were “equal” to a sub-2:23 marathon, the 1976 Olympic Trials Standard. I looked around for a marathon to give it another go. I chose the 10/16/76 Rice Festival Marathon in Crowley, LA. At the 1975 Rice Festival, six runners had run sub-2:20, so it looked like a fast course. The 1976 Rice Festival was to be the AAU Marathon Championship. It was also within driving distance of Athens, GA.
My training buddy Mike Roberts and our wives hopped in the car and headed to the race. I sat in the back eating carbs, including pomegranates, while the others took turns driving to let me rest.
Race morning rolled around to a cloudy, misty morning. I had no specific time goal in mind, so I let the leaders go and ran within myself. The mist shifted to a light rain and visibility was very limited. At some point, I began to see the odd runner ahead through the mist and rain and would pass them by.
Around halfway I saw Lee Fidler ahead. As I got near him, he bolted for some trees for a pit stop and I went on, figuring he would catch me later, but no one did catch me.
Around twenty miles, I saw Barry Brown, who had won the ’75 race in 2:16:43, ahead. As the rain began to taper off, I caught Barry. He looked over at me and said “Damn, it’s Durden.” He then dropped out of the race. He was the last runner I saw, as I continued running strongly to the finish with no idea of my place or projected time.
At the finish I was 2nd in 2:20:23, 5:08 behind Gary Tuttle.
I experienced some “lumpy farts” during the race. Cleaning up in the shower post-race, I found I had a quantity of pomegranates seeds in my shorts; the rain had washed everything else away. [Follow me at jackdogwelch.com for more of this crap. Ha!]
At the awards ceremony, I met a man named Geoff Hollister. He wanted to know where I gotten the shoes I wore for the race. They were Nike Elites given out at the Marathon Trials. Jeff Galloway had gotten a pair that didn’t quite fit him, so he gave them to me. I told Geoff that Galloway had given them to me. He was satisfied and recruited me to run for Nike.
I was now a marathoner with a shoe sponsor.
1975 Rice Festival results https://more.arrs.run/race/20580
1976 AAU Championships ditto https://more.arrs.run/race/16641
“A long and lonely journey,” remembers Gary Tuttle.
Benji hammered the roads and the rest of road racers for years in Nikes, supplied by Geoff Hollister.
Gary Tuttle and I tied at the World X Country Championship Trials. He loaned me a pair of Asics tiger spikes at the Worlds In Rabat, Morroco. The Asics fit like a glove and I raced like a fellow with nothing to lose.
After the race, I asked teammate Jeff Galloway if he might be able to get me a pair of Road Racing shoes as I planned to race Boston the Next month. World Cross- Country Champs were held in March. Pre sent me the Nikes I won Boston in.
Again, the shoes fit like glove. – Bill Rodgers