The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain. – Dolly Parton
Not even a hat. That’s me, in the white jacket and red pants on the right. The tall guy.
Standing next to my girlfriend, who went on to marry a doctor.
Really loved that young woman, but not more than I loved running.
Which explains why I am standing in the rain cheering Ron Tabb down the finishing straight of Historic Hayward Field.
Might’ve been my job, too.
That photo came as a surprise to me, so I asked Ron what he remembers when he looks at the scene.
“A disappointing finish at the 1982 Nike/OTC Marathon,” he told me. “Too many miles training with my then wife, MDT, and not enough miles focusing on my own marathon training.
“A few months later in April, I would go on to run second at Boston, while training with Alberto.”
I was working!! Here’s an excerpt.
“I don’t know why we didn’t go after them sooner,” Mike Layman mused after finishing fifth in the men’s division at 2:13:14. He was referring to a pack which had chased Odis Sanders and Ron Tabb, occasionally at quite a distance, for much of the race. The answer probably has something to do with large sums of above-the-table money and credibility.
At Nike/OTC, you earned your bucks by how you ran that day, not how you’ve run in the past or by how many times you’ve gotten your picture in Track & Field News. As for credibility, well, quite simply, neither Sanders nor Tabb was considered a serious threat to the likes of Rodolfo Gomez or defending champion Benji Durden.
Sanders had ten seconds on Tabb at 15M (1:15:10), but what’s this at 27km? It seemed the pack was beginning to take Odis a little more seriously. Sanders maintained his lead as he passed 20M in 1:40:14. The Pack (soon to be a movie made for television) was a full fifty seconds in arrears.
Evidently, at this stage of the race, the runners had to start figuring out how to get to storied Hayward Field first. A move by Paul Cummings at 1:44:30 succeeded in limiting the winner’s identity to himself, Durden, Gomez, Layman, Hailu Ebba and Dan Schlesinger.
As you can see, the two pacesetters were being written off; particularly at 1:46:15, when The Six-Pack swept past Tabb, as if he were smuggling gold bullion in his tennies.
That’s the last mention of Ron until the agate type.
| 15 | 2:15:26 | Ron | Tabb | USA | 07 Aug 1954 | $400 |
And just a few years ago…
I apologized to Ron Tabb for my flippant commentary.
“Nothing here for me to get worked up about,” he said. “I hadn’t done anything since winning Paris in May of ’81, so you were telling it like it was. Not bothered at all by your comments.”
Ron had some comments of his own about that rainy day in Eugene.
1. Dick Brown talked me into letting him coach me. I had been self-coached since after college in ’77. He was coaching Kevin McCarey, Jeff Wells, and John Lodwick at the time, so I agreed to give it a shot. In the end, all of us sucked in the OTC marathon and I left afterwards.
2. My grandparents came out to visit Mary and I and it would be the last time they’d see me race in person.
3. In February of ’83, Dellinger began coaching me and I ran 2:09 at Boston in April and beat Benji. Obviously, I had the ability, I just needed a recipe. Later in May, I’d beat Gomez at Prefontaine Invitational in the 10K.
Might’ve been the next spring, I asked that young woman to marry me.
She said ‘yes’ but her parents said ‘no’ and she loved her parents as much as I loved running.
Bought the ring at the Washington Square Mall.
Remember a conversation with the sales clerk who assured me the ring was completely refundable.
So, I can’t say I was surprised.
But I was broken-hearted.
She went her way and I climbed into my car – a 1978 BMW 530i – and turned on the ignition. The Blaupunkt sprung to life.
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
Well, you just might find
You get what you need.
My life has an actual soundtrack.
I remember that.
