All I want to do is drink beer and train like an animal. – Rod Dixon
Think it was 1980, in Purchase, New York, at the headquarters of a carbonated beverage company, when Rod Dixon and I first crossed paths. He was an invited athlete and I was happy just to get in the door. Later we partied together at the Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon. Well, maybe not actually ‘together.’ My back and his back were often back to back.
Not like we ever hung out.
Disneyland. 1983 maybe. Swallow some water in the pool, I pop up, gasping, wiping my face, and Rod Dixon, the famous athlete I don’t really know, who had no idea I was in LA and who I haven’t seen in a couple of years says, he says something like “Jack? Mate! How’s it goin’?”
I thought that was cool. Still do.
Back in the day, I thought Rod Dixon had arguably the greatest range of any distance runner in human history.
Still do.
When did you start running and why?
I started running not long after I could walk. I remember my mother saying “young Rodney” just can’t keep still – he runs all around the house and the farm property. I knew in primary/elementary school I loved the athletics and my brother who’s three years older, joined the running club when he was 13 and that was something I wanted to do when I was the same age. I played soccer, rugby, basketball, field hockey but most of all I just love the running. Cross-country at school, that was something I just loved the most.
Toughest opponent and why?
Growing up in Nelson, New Zealand, at a young age, my good friend Roger Sowman was always beating me. I just knew, one day I was going to be able to maybe beat him. That kept me motivated.
I had a lot of really great races against a lot of great runners and to single anyone out doesn’t really determine or identify the toughest opponent. Every race produced some great athletes to run against and our friendships grew from that. All over the world from different countries at different races.
Most memorable run and why?
I’m going to say every race every run was memorable. The 1972 Olympic 1500 in Munich was incredible. Ranked 42nd in the world and finishing with the bronze medal. The 1500m at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, Christchurch, New Zealand – 4th in the race and 5th fastest time in history. [not a typo.] Of course, the 1983 New York City marathon and so the incredible journey continued.
Biggest disappointment and why?
Disappointments gave me the strength to be the best I could be in the next race. Possibly the “biggest disappointment” was 1976 5000 meters in Montreal Olympic Games.
That one must have made you REALLY strong.
What would you do differently if you could do it again? Why?
Montreal 5000m, I’d take control of the race at 300m. The long strength finish, rather than rely on a sprint close to the line.
Favorite philosopher? Quote?
“Learn by Doing”- Sir Edmund Hilary.
Special song of the era?
Rolling Stones – ‘Start Me Up.’
Favorite comedian?
Robin Williams.
What was your ‘best stretch of running’? And so why do you think you hit that level at that time?
The best stretch of running ,or training as I would put it, was definitely once I committed to the 1983 New York City marathon. That was 23 weeks of absolute focus every day, every mile, every minute. Probably the first time I had given so much time exclusively towards one event.
What was your edge?
Consistency in training day by day knowing the next three days was based on the last four days. I started to realize how important consistency was. Step by step. That’s how you climb Mount Everest and that was the inspiration I got listening to Sir Edmund Hillary.
What supplementary exercises did you do?
Cross training yoga, gym work-flexibility, low weights-high repetitions.
What was your toughest injury and how did you deal with it?
Possibly the most frustrating injuries were patella tendinitis, Achilles tendinitis.
How did you solve the problem(s)?
Interestingly, it was more of an ABC – Agility Balance and Coordination skills to ‘solve’ the problem.
I think in some parts it was the body adjusting to the training and also a lot of it was based on shoe design/manufacture. The shoes back in the 1960s and 1970s just were not good for training and a lot of the injuries and stress were a result of poor design, materials, sole design and instability.
Fortunately, I was able to work with a German shoemaker here in my hometown and we were able to make adjustments and add concepts to the shoe to make them more comfortable, more durable and more adaptive to the conditions I was running in.
Additional ‘therapy’ was also massage therapy and orthopedic foot support. Chiropractic and physical therapy helped to maintain consistency in my stride and foot strike.
Your current routine?
My current routine or daily exercise is based around mountain bike cycling. I do the odd “jiggle jog” thirty to sometimes forty minutes, maybe once or twice a week.
My mountain biking, I can go out for two to three hours almost 6 days a week, incredible environment.
I’m at Tokongwhau near the Able Tasman National Park Nelson New Zealand and so there are just hundreds of wilderness trails, mountain trails and MT bike trails and the Kaiteriteri mountain bike park.
I still do my yoga and cross training and mobility exercising. I try and get in two or three swims a week down at the beach. Of course, general activities, e.g., track cleaning/clearing, tree trimming.
I will visit a school during the week. That often takes a bit of a run ’round the the course with the kids. We’ll also do exercises/activity ABC Agility, Balance, Coordination skills.
The key is healthy eating, exercise. That’ll lead to health and wellness.
Dixon was born on July 13, 1950, in Nelson, New Zealand.
He first represented New Zealand at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich , finishing third in the 1500 meters.
A few weeks after Munich, Rod was in London at a post-Olympic track meet at the Crystal Palace and both Dixon and Steve Prefontaine were entered in the two-mile.
“Pre was coming down from 5,000 and I was stepping up from the 1,500,” says Dixon. “I sat on him and outkicked him at the end. He broke the American record, I broke the Commonwealth record, but Pre was upset at me for not sharing the pace. I walked up to him after the race to shake his hand and he called me a f*ckin’ Kiwi and he stormed off.”
At the 1974 British Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, Dixon finished fourth in the 1500 meters. His time of 3:33.89 (officially 3:33.9) was the fifth fastest ever at the time and remained Dixon’s lifetime best for the distance. He then moved to the 5000 meters and was ranked first in the world for the event in 1975 by Track & Field News magazine. “The Bible of the Sport.”
In the 5000 meters at the 1976 Montreal Olympics Dixon finished fourth behind four-time Olympic Champion Lasse Virén, teammate Dick Quax and Klaus-Peter Hildenbrand whose last second dive/fall denied Dixon a second Olympic bronze medal.
After missing the 1980 Summer Olympics due to the boycott. Dixon took third place at the 1982 IAAF World Cross-Country Championships. Dixon turned to road-running and was among the most successful athletes on the US road racing circuit in the early ’80s. He won the Falmouth Road Race (1980), Bay to Breakers (1982 & 1983), the Lynchburg, Virginia 10-miler (1981 & 1983), and the Philadelphia Half-Marathon (1980, 1981).
His inevitable move to longer distances culminated in his 1983 marathon victory in New York City. He finished 10th in the marathon at the 1984 Summer Olympics.
Unable to compete due to an injury, Dixon guided a blind runner in the 1985 Bay to Breakers. Which has to be hard to do amongst that chaotic circus.
At the 1985 New York Marathon, Dixon served as the first host for the participatory “Helmet Cam” as he followed the lead pack for a mile during the race.
ABC Sports outfitted Dixon with five pounds of gear for the event. Rod needed to keep pace with the lead runners, bearing the extra load, while remaining within two-hundred yards of the broadcast team’s chase vehicle.
“I see the race from a runner’s view; most people see it from a spectator’s view. Hopefully, you will be able to see the race from my eyes now,” says Dixon. “You will understand what is going on out there all the time, the positioning . . . looking five or six moves ahead. I want to tell why a runner looks strong or why he seems to be weakening. You might sit in a studio and see these but you can really only get the feel for it with you are running along with them.”
The boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics led Dixon to become embroiled in a savage row with the NZ Amateur Athletic Association. He got wind of the boycott some time before it was officially announced and confronted NZAAA over it. Teams were in their final preparations and some athletes were leaving their jobs so they could compete without any idea there would be a boycott. Dixon felt the New Zealand government had no business meddling in the Olympic games and the athletes should have been consulted and been part of the decision-making process. This rift lead to Dixon relocating to the US to compete in the road racing circuit.
After winning the New York Marathon, Pan Am put his name on the side of one of its 747s and gave him a self-write ticket – for first class. He was known to ask a friend, “Want to go to Zurich tonight?” And off they’d go, for dinner.
Definitely, OG.
OCTOBER 31, 1983 Sports Illustrated
THERE WAS NO NIXING DIXON
ROD DIXON’S CLOSING BURST WON THE COLD, WET NEW YORK CITY MARATHON
By CRAIG NEFF
After 16 cold, drizzly miles of Sunday’s New York City Marathon, Geoff Smith looped down off the Queensboro Bridge onto First Avenue and was greeted with a roar. He had all but shed one of the largest fields in marathon history—more than 15,000 starters—with a devastating 2:06:25 pace that, if he could sustain it, would give him, in his first marathon, a world record by nearly two minutes. And so, as he entered Manhattan, he was consumed by the crowd noise. Despite the rain, people had come out en masse and decorated the area with a dazzling autumn foliage of slickers and umbrellas. “It all felt so good,” Smith said later, wistfully. “I just seemed able to float away.”
But Smith hadn’t shed everyone: Tanzania’s Gidamis Shahanga, whom he’d overtaken on the bridge less than a mile before, lurked several yards behind. Shahanga, 26 and a senior at Texas-El Paso, is the NCAA 5,000- and 10,000-meter track champion; on Sunday he’d scorched through Brooklyn and Queens, pulling Smith, 29, along at what seemed a suicidal pace. Now, as Smith floated north toward the Bronx, Shahanga shadowed him.
New Zealand’s Rod Dixon came off the bridge third, in desperate pursuit of the pair 120 yards ahead of him. Dixon, the prerace favorite, was already nursing a right hamstring he’d strained on slick pavement at five miles. Here, in an effort to gain on the leaders, he put on a surge—and almost lost control, stretching the muscle to the brink of tearing. “I hit another slippery patch,” he said later. “My right leg shot out from under me.” Dixon caught himself and then accelerated some more. He had come to the race off months of hard training in the forest near Reading, Pa., where he currently lives, hoping to shatter Alberto Salazar’s two-year-old world best of 2:08:13. He had also brought to New York a streak of 19 consecutive road-race victories at distances ranging from five to 10 miles. That was his obsession: winning. A 1972 Olympic bronze medalist at 1,500 meters, a onetime 3:53 miler, a hardworking and hard-partying and hard-as-nails competitor, the 33-year-old Dixon saw New York as the capstone of his wide-ranging running career. But only if he won.
With Dixon and Shahanga chasing hotly after Smith, and with Grete Waitz of Norway running masterfully toward her fifth New York women’s title—she would finish in 2:27:00, nearly five minutes ahead of runner-up Laura Fogli of Italy—the 1983 marathon was at last dispatching some considerable prerace worries: that its field was too weak; that fan and media support might consequently wane; that a new challenger, the rapidly growing America’s Marathon/Chicago, which offered $135,000 in legal prize money and was held only one week before, might be taking over as the major race of the fall. “I welcome the so-called competition from Chicago,” New York Marathon Director Fred Lebow had said. “Chicago is throwing all kinds of money around to buy top runners, but they cannot buy the vitality of New York. New York is magic.”
But because of Olympic training and offers from Chicago, most big-name marathoners had performed a vanishing act on Lebow. Salazar, the three-time defending champion, canceled out because the race didn’t fit into his training schedule. Four-time New York winner Bill Rodgers chose to run in Chicago, as did 1983 Boston champ Greg Meyer and a score of other good runners. Neither world champion Rob de Castella of Australia nor women’s world-record holder Joan Benoit had any interest in New York. Says a Lebow acquaintance, “Fred was panicking.”
What made Chicago more attractive to some of the runners was not just its purse but also its numerous under-the-table appearance payments; New York is said to hand out $200,000 in sub rosa prize money but very few appearance fees. “We spread our money around,” said Chicago Marathon Coordinator Bob Bright, adding, “I think Fred’s program is showing a little wear.” Bright also said, “They’re getting a reputation for going roughshod on athletes there, and it’s starting to hurt them.”
But the only hurts showing on Sunday were Dixon’s right hamstring—he kept reaching down to grab it every few minutes—and both of Smith’s hamstrings, which began to spasm in the Bronx, at 20 miles. “They started cramping up so bad I didn’t know if I could finish,” said Smith, who had put away Shahanga at about the 17-mile mark. Smith, a native of Liverpool, England, is a senior at Providence College and a relative latecomer to running. If nothing else, he’s gritty—and now he had to be.
Dixon was closing fast, moving into second place at 18 miles and shaving Smith’s lead steadily as the two crossed back into Manhattan. Smith’s pace was slowing. At 20 miles he led by 500 yards; by 23 miles, the gap had been narrowed to 75. Through Central Park and around its border Dixon stalked his prey—”Better the hunter than the hunted,” he would say—until with half a mile to go he was only 30 yards from the lead. Dixon had cannily run tangents on the turns along the windy park road, thereby saving yardage. Smith hadn’t. “My mind wasn’t there,” Smith would say later.
At precisely 26 miles, Dixon caught his rival and surged past. “He didn’t respond, and that gave me a charge,” said Dixon. Smith was wobbling, his legs causing him what he later called “complete agony.” He would stumble across the line in 2:09:08 and collapse.
Dixon hit the finish at 2:08:59, a two-minute, 22-second improvement over his only previous marathon, in Auckland in 1982. Exuberant, he fell to his knees, blew a two-handed kiss to the Lord, bowed his head onto the New York pavement, stood up and then jumped as high as he could—arms thrust upward in triumph. He planted another kiss on Waitz when she crossed the line.
Smith, having run the fastest first marathon ever, 33 seconds better than Salazar’s 1980 New York performance, sat motionless in the pressroom, his hamstrings so sore he could not touch them. “This was the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life,” he said softly.
Dixon explained what the race had taught him about marathoning.
“That it’s bloody hard,” he said with a laugh, leaving one lesson unspoken: A marathon can also be bloody satisfying.
Personal bests
| Distance | Time | Place | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 800 m | 1:47.6 | Rome | 1973 |
| 1500 m | 3:33.89 | Christchurch | 1974 |
| 1 mile | 3:53.62 | Stockholm | 1975 |
| 3000m | 7:41.0 | Milan | 1974 |
| 3000 m Steeplechase | 8:29.0 | Oslo | 1973 |
| 2 miles | 8:14.4 | Stockholm | 1974 |
| 5000 m | 13:17.27 | Stockholm | 1976 |
| 10000 m | 28:11.0 | Atlanta | 1981 |
| Half marathon | 1:02:12 NR | Philadelphia | 1981 |
| Marathon | 2:08:59 | New York | 1983 |
Performances
The Day After This Piece Originally Appeared, I Get A Note
It’s from Rod.
Great read and incredible list of races/championships, etc.
There are quite a few races I never ran though and also missing are the ones I did run.
My biggest “last thrill” was in 1995 winning World Masters 1500 and 5000
(results shown here)
