Original Gangsters Of Running (Dan Dillon)
“The faster you’d go, of course, the more you get to see.“
OGORs is about an attitude as much as anything. Dan Dillon had that.
He was every bit as graceful as Zatopek, some say. I think he was marvelously expressive, pushing with every fiber of his being.
In his defense, when he raced cross-country, the surface was uneven.
As is life. Dan Dillon was the fastest kid in grade school. We are talking talent.
As a middle-aged man, he was still testing himself. We are talking persistence.
Dan is a dog lover and apparently the dogs ate his questionnaire. He didn’t need it.
Thanks for the invite to be a part of the OGOR.
Hmmm. I should know the answers to all of these questions without much thinking or reflection, but I suspect my advancing age will cause me to answer them in different way than I might have a while back.
You forgot your favorite song of the era, your top comedian and a motivational quote, something philosophical the kids can put on their mirrors to see every day. But that’s okay, the kids can find their own quotes.
I was born in Vermont in 1957. I grew up an Air Force brat in Vermont, Maine, Wyoming, and Alaska. I was the middle of three brothers a little over a year apart in age. (We also had a couple of younger sisters.) There were always vast open areas of wilderness to explore nearby and for a good portion of our childhood we didn’t even own bikes. So after school the three of us would set out on foot to explore. And the faster you’d go, of course, the more you get to see. But we always had to be home in time for family dinner at 5:30. I’m sure I was capable of running for miles and miles before the age of nine or ten.
In the late 1960’s, Dad was transferred from Wyoming to Alaska. The gym teacher at Taylor Junior High on Eielson A.F.B. required every class to start with a 1.1 mile run, down around a pond and back. Very rarely did he make exceptions for weather. The first four guys to finish got to be team captains and choose their teammates for the two half-court basketball games, floor hockey, volleyball, or whatever.
I’d race my butt off around the pond, so I’d have the first pick and a better chance to be on a winning team. I never once lost the race back to the gym. Back then the idea that the altitude in Wyoming and Alaska might have an effect on our young cardio systems would naturally have never even occurred to us.
Then after school it was often another “exploration run” with brothers, Jim and Brian. But I still didn’t think of myself as a runner yet. I was just an everyday team captain of some random sport.
Fast forward to 1970 and Dad got new orders again. This time it was to a base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Chicopee was a suburban city, with two fairly big high schools (Over five hundred baby boomers graduating from each school back then). The Air Force base we lived on abutted a huge state park, so there was some open wilderness. We didn’t have a chance to explore it before the school year started.
I was supposed to be starting as a freshman at “Comp”, short for Chicopee Comprehensive High School. Jim was going to be a Sophomore. We both tried out for football when fall sports began. We must have been the joke of the team, since we couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds or so. Before long, Jim decided he would try some different sports where he might actually see some playing time. I kept taking my lumps on the football practice field for a while.
On the bus ride home from school one afternoon, Jim said, “Dan, you need to quit football, you’re never going to see any playing time. Come tomorrow with me to try Cross Country. You’ll be really good at it, I promise!”
“What is Cross Country?” I asked.
“We take the bus up to the State Park and run through the woods and fields. It takes us a little over an hour.”
“What? Just run? No ball? What the hell kind of sport is that?”
When we got home, Jim loaned me a pair of his cheap “running shoes”. They looked like Adidas, only with four stripes instead of three. I jumped up and down in them a couple of times. They felt light, soft, and cushioned, not hard and stiff like football cleats. More like the basketball or tennis sneakers we had always “explored” in.
I was thinking he’s right about the football thing.
After school the next day, we go to the park. A small group of mostly skinny kids are gathered around the guy with a clip board I knew to be the gym teacher. Alex Vyce. I’d been told he was one of the best basketball coaches in Massachusetts, but since his pay was capped, they gave him the Cross Country and Assistant Track coaching jobs instead of a raise.
Coach Vyce says, “OK, long runs today. Freshman and JV, you are going down the dirt road over there until you get to the second steel gate, then turn around and run back here. Go easy. I want you to try to go the whole way without any walking. It’s about four miles. Varsity: Jim Roy and Jim Ash (team Co- Captains) know the route up the hills, down to the lake, around and back here to the parking lot. That’s about ten miles. NO WALKING! If you’re on varsity now, you should be able to do this.”
I watched my brother walk bravely over to the group looking toward the hills and the lake. I realized he wanted badly to be on the varsity team. Then I looked at the group looking toward the flat, boring- looking dirt road I knew led toward those steel gates. I realized, as a freshman, that’s where the coach would expect me to go.
But I think for a second. Even though this coach had me in his freshman gym class a couple of days this week, he probably doesn’t even know who I am. It’s my first day here at practice and my brother didn’t even try to introduce me to him. And I’ve always been able to keep up with my brother Jim. Always.
So, I commit in my mind to go off to the lake and back.
The first mile or so I just follow as my brother runs along with the group. Up front the two co-captains are running and chatting and then my brother starts joining in the conversation with them. The pace feels really easy. The guys are funny. So, I join in with a joke or two. Before long I realize we’ve turned around the lake and we’re heading back toward the final hills.
I tell a couple more jokes to pass the time.
As we arrive back at the parking lot I turn and realize the three Jims’ and I have finished with a bit of a gap between us and the rest of the Varsity runners. We coast to a stop next to Coach Vyce and his clip board.
Jim Ash puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Coach, we found one! We kept picking up the pace to try to get him to stop telling his stupid jokes but he just wouldn’t stop talking.”
That is the day I learned I LOVE cross country.
By the end of my freshman year I was running the two-mile under 10:30 on the track and by my sophomore year I got down to 9:26. Junior year, I was second in the Mass State XC Championship to Stetson Arnold of Southwick.
My senior year I went undefeated, winning States by three seconds over Alberto Salazar, who was at Wayland HS then. I’d only raced out in western Mass. and Al was winning everything east of Worcester. As I recall, both Alberto and I went into the State Championship Meet undefeated and having set course records on about every course we’d run that year. This win was easily the highlight of my high school career. Al was a Junior when I won and he went on to win States the following year. My younger brother Brian would win States the year after Alberto.
I would race Alberto many times in the following years, and to my recollection I never did beat him again. I’d have to say I considered him a true friend and was honored to be a teammate of his while running for the Greater Boston Track Club, Athletics West, and the US National Cross Country Team. But even then, in my mind, I was always secretly trying to find that feeling of beating him even just one more time. It never happened.
Al advocated for me to get my first pair of “free” Nike running shoes. He also lobbied to get me into some fast 5 & 10K’s on the track in Eugene where I ran both of my PR’s.
I also have to say I had a similar friendship/rivalry with John Treacy of Ireland. We were on the team at Providence College together for several years. During that time John won two World Cross Country Championships, Glasgow 1978, and Limerick 1979. He consistently made All American while at PC and I tried feverishly to follow in his footsteps.
I won the Senior Men’s US Cross Country Trials in Atlanta in 1978 as a twenty-year-old. However, I was unable to make the trip to Glasgow. It would have been my first US Team, but – the same day my passport arrived in the mail – I was diagnosed with a bad case of Mononucleosis/pneumonia. My GBTC teammates Randy Thomas and Bill Rodgers ended up making the trip without me. A sad day for me, but I was so happy for John Treacy’s huge win.
I would finally beat John – for the first and only time in my life – at the World Cross Country Championships in 1980 in Paris. It was a sub-par race for him that day. I was twelfth, and John was also in the top twenty. Again, I think this was the one and only time I would beat John. He’d, of course, go on to win Olympic Silver in the Marathon in LA.
The trick to this cross country running thing for me was to always surround myself with a fun bunch of guys to train with, athletes slightly better than I was. After High School I was rarely the best guy on any of my teams. At Providence there was a steady stream of top Irish or British talent coming in every year. Two-time Boston Marathon winner Geoff Smith arrived there, just as I was leaving.
The late 70’s. The GBTC team I was on won Nationals by the lowest score in history. Alberto 1st, Bob Hodge 3rd, I was 4th, Greg Meyer 5th, and Randy Thomas 12th. I think we even had Olympians like Pete Pfitzinger, Bruce Bickford, and Mike Roche as non-scoring members of that team. Not to mention Rodgers, who in ’75 had won a World XC Championship Bronze Medal and didn’t even make the trip!
In May of 1980 I graduated from Providence College, then ran the Olympic Trials for GBTC in Eugene a few weeks later. I ran an okay 10K, but came back to run a much better 5K final a couple of days later. Anyway, it was good enough for Nike to ask me to join Athletics West. I would end up being a key player on several of Athletics West’s US Championship XC teams over the next few years. I qualified to compete in the Olympic Trials again in ’84 and ’88, but never improved on my 1980 efforts.
One of the most personally satisfying teams for me was the ’88 National Championship XC team I was on with Nike Boston. I had been cut from Nike’s “Professional” AW team. But Nike offered to allow me to run on their newly formed local Boston “amateur” team. No more paychecks, but still “free” shoes! I would return from Eugene to Boston with my longtime coach Bob Sevene. We’d be mentoring a group of local and up-and-coming runners.
That November, Nike sent their Pro AW team led by Pat Porter to North Carolina for Nationals. Nike had pretty much cut any distance guys who hadn’t made the ’88 Olympic Team. Well, we caught them by surprise. The amateur team consisted of some relatively unknown Boston local guys like Fernando Braz and Paul McGovern. I was the only Nike Boston guy who had been on a US National Team at that point. But we had a couple of secret weapons – Mark Coogan, who had just graduated from Maryland, and Bob Kempainen who came out of Dartmouth. Of course, they would both go on to become members of the US Olympic Marathon team a few years later.
David slays Goliath.
That doesn’t answer all my questions, Dan, I told him.
Hmmm. Ok. A little more about how the sausage was made.
“Sausage?” You can see what I’m dealing with here.
When I arrived in Chicopee in 1971 the H.S. XC coach was trying to learn how to train distance runners in his spare time. But he had his hands full since Comp was a Basketball State Finalist in the Mass Tournament in those days and he was head coach. The JV XC team was actually composed mostly of his basketball players he “asked” to run XC, so they would be in better condition when the winter season started up. He must have read about how Jim Ryun did loads of repeat 220’s and 440’s, because that was our anaerobic staple workout. I supposed this was what most of the kids I was competing against were also doing.
I didn’t begin to try to keep track of how much distance I was actually running until my senior year, when I guess I was probably up to 75 miles a week. And probably thinking I was doing much more than that.
After seeing I was able to consistently run sub-60-second 440’s in workouts, the coach got the idea of making me run either on the 4×440 relay or in the open 440 in every meet. (In Mass. we were only allowed to run one race 880 or over, but you could run multiple shorter races.) Since we only had one or two guys each year on our team who could even race a 440 at 55 or under, I often got some pressure to earn a few of those badly needed points.
After running a 9:26 two-mile as a sophomore, I started to attract the attention of a few college coaches. My guidance counselor would say he was not at liberty to tell me who they were because colleges were not allowed to recruit until I started my senior year. My counselor would just advise me to take more college prep courses whenever I’d ask him if I could fit an auto shop course into my schedule that semester. This might be why my Dad (an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant) encouraged me to buy a broken-down ’64 Chevy Belair for $50.00 from one of his Air Force pals. That way, anytime I asked him for help with Algebra II, he could say, “Well, we could do that, or you know, I was able to find that timing gear at the junkyard last weekend. So, your choice…”
When senior year finally rolled around, I had a bunch of track scholarship offers. One evening I organized the colored college brochures into piles on the living room coffee table. I asked my dad if he would help me go through them after dinner. So, post-ice cream, I went in and sat on the couch. My dad entered the room, looked down, and didn’t even sit.
He asked, “So, which one is the most expensive?”
“Providence.”
“And none of these would cost you anything?”
“Free tuition, room & board, books, a laundry allowance, any travel.”
“It sounds like Providence then.” And he was gone.
I had finished second to Stetson Arnold at the State XC Championship my Junior year, and he had passed on Oregon to go to Providence. After I won the State XC in the fall of my senior year I went on a couple of training runs with Stet in Southwick, when he came home to visit around Christmas time. He seemed to be thriving at PC and said he was learning a lot about the European Cross Country scene from his Irish teammates, John Treacy, Mick O’Shea and Mick Byrne. I was convinced his idea of staying in New England for college – think weekend trips home – would work for me, too. Plus my Mom and Dad would still be able to drive to see a lot of my races.
Providence was a good fit for me. I quickly learned what I thought were “90 mile weeks” of training back in Chicopee were a little exaggerated. But I was able to make the Varsity Team as a freshman, fall of ’75. Stetson and I even helped Providence qualify for the NCAA National XC Meet at Penn State.
Stet had warned me the coach at PC was not the most knowledgeable, but was a good recruiter. I realized that the quality of athletes I had as teammates and what I was learning from training with them would more than make up for any lack of input and advice I was getting from the coach.
That spring Stetson announced he would be transferring to UMass in the fall. Oh well. By this time I was adding a morning run most days to get my mileage up, and increasing the intensity of my afternoon interval sessions. I started to hear rumors of other top European talent PC was recruiting. It was obvious I’d have no shortage of training partners. I thought I would just need to keep working and improving to keep up with whoever was added to the roster.
By fall of 1977, my Junior year at Providence, it had become obvious the US Collegiate running scene was now a World Class endeavor. UTEP had a Kenyan team. Henry Rono and others had shown up at Washington State, and Providence was having to fight for the top Irish talent with Arkansas, Villanova and others. I knew I had to up my game again.
I had become able to outdo John Treacy in some workouts. Gerry Deegan, a 23-year-old veteran talent from the Irish National XC Team, had just shown up on the PC campus as a freshman. He was also a very hard trainer. Almost never an easy day.
Treacy on the other hand mixed in several easy runs a week. On those days I usually tagged along with Gerry to up my workload. We were now all running well over 100 miles a week, with the interval sessions lasting over an hour several days a week.
Gerry upset John by a couple of seconds to win at the New England Collegiate Championships at Franklin Park in Boston that fall. I would finish fourth, just missed the podium. At NCAA’s, on the Washington State home course a couple of weeks later, Henry Rono won, Treacy was second, Deegan third and I think I was thirteenth. It was my first time making Division 1 All-American, and a big boost to my confidence.
I thought I was handling the increased workload well.
with a smile & Bruce Bickford
A couple weeks after we returned to the PC campus following NCAA’s there was a tragic fire in one of the dormitories in which seven female students died. One was a good friend of mine with whom Stetson Arnold and I used to sing and play guitars. Fall final exams were cancelled and all students sent home for Christmas break early.
Instead of heading back to Chicopee though, I decided to take a sabbatical spring semester away from PC. I headed up to Boston to join the Greater Boston Track Club. I knew many of the runners there and was aware of the success Bill Squires was having. I had worked hard for my new found successes and was curious what training under a real coach would be like. I took a minimum wage job in the New Balance factory on Everett St. in Brighton and lived in a small apartment with Vin Fleming and Randy Thomas near Bill Rodgers Running Center in Cleveland Circle. I was running to and from work, and pushing myself hard in all of the GBTC evening workouts. Now I was logging 120 to 130 mile weeks.
Coach entered a bunch of us in the US XC Team Trials in Atlanta the last weekend in January.
I’d never run a 12K XC race before, so I told myself I’d just try to follow my GBTC teammates for as long as I could stand the pace and see what place that brought. By ten kilometers, Randy, Billy and I were in the lead pack controlling the pace. We opened a small gap on the field and talked about trying to have a three-way tie at the finish. But right about then Billy seemed to be having a problem staying on the pace. When I looked back, the field seemed to be closing the gap. Randy and I went on to tie for the win, and I think Billy was fourth or fifth in the end.
But the combination of higher mileage, higher intensity interval workouts, long working hours in the factory, and too many leftover pizza breakfasts led me to Mono/Pneumonia a few weeks later. I would unfortunately have to tell the AAU I would not be able to make the trip to Scotland.
By late spring and summer I would begin to use every GBTC workout, local road race and all comers track meet to rebuild toward my return to Providence. That fall I would win the New England Collegiate XC Championships at Franklin Park in Boston, and go on to make All-American again at the NCAA Meet in Wisconsin. I carried a heavy training workload through the fall without cutting back much for these races. My primary concern had become making it back on to the US National XC team that spring.
I did indeed make the US Team, heading for Limerick in March 1979. It was a memorable trip as I would be able to spend time in Limerick with not only my US teammates, but with my Irish PC friends, John Treacy, Gerry Deegan and Mick O’Shea in their home country. In probably the muddiest race we’d ever run in, John successfully defended his title as World Champion in amazing fashion. The meet officials could barely keep the Irish fans from trampling the finishing chutes. Hundreds of spectators poured out of the stands onto the race course after their countryman had won again. I believe I finished in around 30th or so with one shoe on. But I was pleased to have finally finished a World Championship.
I’d end up making seven US XC teams during the late ’70’s to mid ’80’s. Nike/Athletics West Coach Bob Sevene took up where Squires left off after I left Providence. We continued the 120 miles a week average sort of thing that had been working for me. But we had replaced some of the longer track interval work with repeat 1 to 1.5 mile repeats on a public golf course in Weston. Four- to six-mile tempo runs on the roads were also not uncommon. Sev had us do some weights, mostly Nautilus, three times a week. We did “the Sprint Drills” mixed with our hill repeats during part of each preseason buildup.
Though I qualified for the US Olympic Trials for track in 1980, ’84, and ’88, I was never able to improve on my 1980 finishes where I ran a decent 10k final followed by a pretty good (fifth, I think) 5k final a few days later. After the track trials of 1988 in Indianapolis, I made a quiet exit from serious competitive running. But I kept running for recreation, as I still do today.
However, I did “accidently” get back into pretty good shape around the time I turned fifty years old. At the time, our son Aaron and daughter Raven had been running some cross country and road races and Patti was coaching the “Connecticut Homeschooled Harriers” we had formed. We usually had about fifty kids in the club.
Around then, Patti got invited to the Honolulu Marathon to be inducted into their Hall of Fame. She’d won the race four times, setting a course record each time. So, Patti and I started to do some decent mileage weeks in preparation for the trip. We maybe got back up to about 100 miles of mostly easy to moderate paced distance. We might have mixed in a few hill sessions. We both entertained the idea of running in the race for the fun of it. Well, Patti got injured and couldn’t, but I decided to run it anyway. I was surprised I could still manage sub-three hours and win my age group there.
When we returned from Hawaii I continued to do some decent mileage, as my schedule would allow. A local state park had many fences and hedges I would go out of my way to jump over just for the hell of it whenever I ran through there.
Then one morning while scrolling through the Let’sRun forums, Patti and I stumbled onto a thread from Bob Hodge, one of my GBTC teammates from the old days. He suggested a challenge to see if any of us could still break a five-minute mile as an over-fifty runner. Well, we happened to be taking our Homeschooled Harrier kids to an indoor all-comers meet at Brown that week, so I decided to bring a pair of my old spikes to see what would happen.
4:58! What do you know?
I kept running on my own and with the Harriers from time to time and ran another sub-five minute road mile that spring.
Then the summer came and I was still getting in some decent distance and an occasional hill repeat session. It just so happened the USATF Masters National Championships were going to be in New England that year, up at the U of Maine. I entered the 1500 and the 3000m Steeple.
Aaron started following me, jumping over the fences and hedges as we ran through the park. After a few weeks of that, he ended up winning the USATF New England Junior Olympic 3000m steeplechase. I’d win Nationals Steeplechase and finish in the top five in the 1500m a couple of hours later.
Injuries? I can recall only three.
While I was living in Eugene in 1984 I had a stress fracture of my pubic bone at the adductor attachment point. I missed out on World Cross Country in March and many critical training weeks going into the Los Angeles Trials.
After my disappointing eight place finish in the ’85 Boston Marathon, I tried to rush my comeback to get a track 10k qualifying time for track nationals. Damaged my knee and had arthroscopic surgery.
From age 37 to 47 (1994-2004) I had a misdiagnosed chronic stress fracture of the right navicular bone. I could let it “heal” for weeks or even months by not running, but within a few days of resuming running it would get aggravated again. I saw many doctors who incorrectly told me it was “tendonitis” or some such thing or bruising from tying my shoes too tight. I had several x-rays. Nothing showed up on them. I finally insisted on a nuclear medicine bone scan and other tests which revealed the stress fracture and much “old injury” scar tissue. So I took several months off from running and even any unnecessary walking to let it heal correctly. To rehab I ran for the first several months only barefoot on grass. I needed to break up the scar tissue in that area by manually moving the surrounding small bones and keeping the arch hyper mobile. I finally got back to the point that I could run in minimalist shoes or super flexible racing shoes. Even today I do not wear anything but thin-soled racing flats or Oofoos.
Let me know if you need any more than this. You’ve given me a good start on my autobiography!
Personal Bests
