Original Gangsters Of Running (Janet Heinonen)
My father, Ethan Newman, and [Bill] Bowerman ran for Bill Hayward and were the slowest members of the University of Oregon freshman mile relay team in the early 1930s. I upheld the family tradition by never breaking 70 seconds in the 440. Bowerman’s jogging program in the mid-’60s encouraged me to try the longer distances, and I became a daily runner and jogger when I was fifteen. I ran track without distinction at the UO for Dr. Lois Youngen’s track teams, and I ran a few cross country races with what was called Bowerman’s Hamburger Squad, an assortment of male runners, clearly not varsity material. – OTC Newsletter
One reason Eugene, Oregon, is “Tracktown USA” is a native daughter, her name synonymous with running in those parts of the Willamette Valley. (Seen above crossing Historic Hayward Field’s finish line of the 1981 Nike Marathon in a PR 3:00:15.)
Janet Newman Heinonen earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of Oregon. Serving in the Peace Corps with husband Tom, she coached track in Chile. She was the University of Oregon’s first women’s sports information director.
Janet raced her debut marathon in 1970, among the first one hundred women in the history of the world to finish an official marathon race. Have to say ‘official race’ because I can just imagine more than a few ladies in history have gone that distance or more. Just to save their own skins. Or their babies’.
She promoted the sport out of love. Janet lobbied for women’s distance races in the Olympics. She wrote Sports Illustrated Running for Women A Complete Guide, and co-authored All About Road Racing with Mr. Heinonen. She published a newsletter on the politics of international track and field for sixteen years. She was a contributor and online editor for “Runner’s World.”
When did you start running and why? Tell me everything.
I enjoyed the four-block run around my elementary school for the President’s Physical Fitness Test. My school was/is seven blocks from Hayward Field. My fifth-grade student teacher was married to UO runner Dyrol Burleson, who visited our class. We enjoyed watching him race at UO meets.
All-Comers track meets were available each summer for all ages since the mid-1950s. Bowerman’s jogging program was getting underway a few years later and people in the neighborhood became enthusiasts. Our proximity to a running-for-all ethos was unusual.
Funs runs and road races flourished locally and I worked at the first Blue Ribbon Sports store in Eugene, which sold running shoes – and not just spikes! Of course, I was proud of my own pair of clunky spikes for high school track. Training shoes that ultimately provided needed cushioning allowed folks of all kinds to run with less risk of injury.
I watched the emergence of the Nike swoosh, while working at BRS, and remember the day that Japanese business men from Onitsuka (Tiger) visited. We had to quickly remove all the shoes on display with the swoosh.
I supposedly have the first Nike shoe to cross a finish line – in an intramural cross country race, which finished behind Hayward Field in 1972. The shoes had been cobbled by BRS founder Geoff Hollister and Jim the Shoe Doctor. The uppers were indistinguishable in terms of right or left, had no innersole but did have two pieces of rubber waffle material glued to the sole and curving slightly to cup the upper.
They were not comfortable.
One of my shoes disappeared while on display at the UO’s Casanova Center and the other is now secured safely on display at Bowerman Hall at Hayward Field.
Of other notes – we clerks at The Athletic Department (new name for BRS) not only used a hot press to put names on the back of t-shirts, we used felt-tip markers to fulfill team orders for court sports shoes. We colored in the light gray swooshes on each shoe in the appropriate team color.
I also traveled with others from the store (including Steve Prefontaine) to speak with regional high school kids about running shoes and racing in general. My own running had increased to the extent that I ran my first marathon in 1970 – with mono and a very low hematocrit (not much research about women runners in those days).
5:40 was certainly not stellar, but I found out decades later I was one of the first 100 women in the world to run a recorded marathon. (Source: UK statistician Andy Milroy).
Running with a healthier body, I dipped under 4:00 in 18-some subsequent marathons. I came within fifteen seconds of breaking the three-hour barrier in the 1981 Nike/OTC Marathon. Also ran sub-3:20 at Boston in 1975.
I had headed to Puerto Rico in 1973 for Peace Corps training with new husband Tom. We were supposed to go to Chile to coach runners in anticipation of the Pan American Games there. Unfortunately, Salvadore Allende’s Marxist government was overthrown and the national track in Santiago was used to detain political prisoners. When we arrived, the Games had been cancelled, political prisoners (those who had not been “disappeared”) now milled around the fenced gardens surrounding embassies, armed men and tanks were not uncommon in the streets and we did not have much of a mission.
We bailed out to return to Eugene and I was eager to be part of the growing popularity of women’s running. (Tom would become the UO women’s track coach for 28 years.)
It was wonderful to be at Hayward Field in the heyday of the first three Olympic Trials (1972, 1976 and 1980) and its resurgence with four later Trials and with the World Championships – and certainly Kenyan runners!
From 2010-2018, I served as Deputy Director for a college access program for low-income students in Kenya, at the request of Mike and Lillian Boit, who lived in Eugene while Mike pursued his doctorate at the UO. We were a host family for the Boits and had kids about the same ages. Our program included a running component to see if any of the students might be college scholarship material. We ran a summer camp for students in the high-altitude tea country of Western Kenya. While a few did earn athletic scholarships, the rest were successful because of their test scores and personal stories.
Some 64 students I worked with were accepted with full-need scholarships, primarily at Ivy League and Little Ivies. There seemed to be 13:30 5K runners everywhere you looked as the area attracted those who hoped to make the big time, some living in extreme poverty as they trained. Only a few would make it.
Running became a normal part of my day, and still is… only not very far and not very fast thee days. I was fortunate because so many people in my community encouraged runners like me. No one ever told me I couldn’t run a race because I was a woman.
In 1968, my running partner Judy Armstrong (now Erwin) and I ran the Seaside Beach Run 8-miler in the men’s open division, because there was no women’s division. The race director wanted to make amends and offered to present us our awards at the halftime of a UO men’s basketball game in MacArthur Court.
Judy visits annually from New York and we went for a fast-paced walk just a few weeks ago… fifty-five years after Seaside.
Friends made and miles run have kept life interesting.
As a Eugene Register-Guard headline read when I was fifteen-years-old and making news by running in the Jogger’s Mile (yes, a whole mile!) in All-Comers meets: “What Makes Janet Run? Shapely Coed Says It’s Fun”.
2021, Renton, Washington.
Putting the fun in a fun run with granddaughter Liana.
As Grandpa Tom tries desperately to keep up.
Miles of smiles.
Janet Newman Heinonen
Birth date 10 Jan 1951 Citizenship United States
Performances