Success rests with having the courage and endurance and, above all, the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, I found my hero and he is me. – Dr. George Sheehan
Cobbled Together Near The Gulf Of Me
Some days you are just not feelin’ it. Be honest. But you do it anyway.
Anyway, came across these notes. Guessing 1979. Judging by content and context and incomplete recall. Seems like a journal entry followed by a slice of autobiography. Introspection and memories.
So, here it goes.
What was your biggest disappointment? What would you say to your younger self? What advice would you give?
Running is an art, a craft, a method of expression. Running is science, an experiment.
A race is a performance.
Becoming a runner is an invention of one. This is my “problem” with becoming the best runner I could have been. I could never find my role, my balance, just the right ingredients. The right equation…
If I had to do it all over again, I think I would be less the philosopher and more the scientist. Which is odd perhaps, as I knew more about the science of running than most folks back then. Not that there was all that much really. (Remember steak before the big game?)
So, I decided to be more scientific, but any experiment which starts with the equation broken-down older guy = fast times seems likely to blow up in your face.
But I digress. Or do I?
Running Changed My Life
I weighed 235 pounds when I was discharged from the United States Air Force. Loved my wiener schnitzel, kartoffel salat und bier. [Remember Prague Spring? How about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia?]
After losing seventy pounds, I began running in 1972 at the Kearney Center YMCA in Danbury, Connecticut. Indoors. Twenty-five laps to a mile. At the time I was a fanatical basketball player, the cause of my two injured ankles. Tough to play hoops when you can’t move sideways or cut or jump. At my best, I had a four-inch vertical.
There was a basketball game going on and I simply could not play. I could only move forward. Probably backwards, too, but I hardly ever do that.
There was a short man with a barrel chest and a thick thatch of dark hair. Spectacles. And he was running and running around and around the court.
I was so antsy, I decided to follow him. And Joe Komaromi kept picking up the pace. I was lean and I was young, but I was not a runner. Six-foot-three with bad ankles, not the recipe for successful indoor running.
That was my first five-mile run. My knees hurt now thinking about it. 125 laps. The big goal, it turns out, was a free t-shirt if you ever reached the then unimaginable total of 100 miles. I still have that shirt.
My first race was the Memorial Day [Not Quite] 5-Miler (35:35) in Greenwich, CT and my first marathon (3:22:43) was the 1973 John W. English in Middletown, CT. The next month I ran my first BAA in 3:19:23. Jon Anderson and Jacqueline Hansen, both of whom became friends of mine in later years, won the event on a very hot day. Very hot.
I have actually lost count of the number of marathons completed, something like twenty, with a 2:46:07 PR. (And I was injured, too.) I have raced the original course from Marathon to Athens, Honolulu several times, and first broke three hours placing 93rd in the USA National Championship at Yonkers. Tough course in the rain. Finished behind Ted Corbitt and in front of Nina Kuscsik,
I put in my ten years of hard competition, including many hundred-mile weeks. Not enough and too many. I was never very fast; the mind was strong, but the flesh was slow. I had my left patella surgically rearranged and began to jog when life and pain permitted.
I haven’t paid retail for a pair of running shoes since 1977, the streak I’m proudest of. [No longer true. Bought some Hokas for medical reasons] When I could no longer jog, I became a power walker. Today I bike an hour or two most every day, pushing myself as if I was still getting ready for 26.2 miles on foot. [Gave the bike away.]
If you grew up reading Track & Field News, you probably grew up reading my race reports. It’s a great magazine – always has been – and copies, often multiple, were available FREE in every library of every high school and every college and every university in the USA. I was honored to serve as Senior Editor (Road) at Track & Field News for a dozen years.
Earlier, I was the co-founder (with Dr. E.C. “Ned” Frederick) of RUNNING, which was the nation’s third running magazine after those created by Browning Ross and Bob Anderson. The quarterly, sub-titled The Thinking Runner’s Magazine, was Ned’s idea.
I love the sport.
End Of Notes
I love the sport and the people. The feelings. The lessons.
Notice no mention of Flagstaff nor Nike nor When Running Was Young & So Were We. Must be notes from the Seventies. No mention of our store, OREGON RUNNER. And if you are reading this for college credit, please make a note of the humble brag whereby I manage to include some omissions. Couple of which hadn’t happened yet.
As a philosophical type who failed high school chemistry, only seems appropriate I should approach running like Johnny Appleseed on acid.
Looking back, I would hope to forego running when injured and I would practice art daily.
Even if I have to dredge up some younger words and launch from there like I was startled by the starter’s gun. Share the words of a wiser man. Whatever. A bad run is still a run.
Looking back at looking back, I was injured when I started.
Get out the door. Write something. Put a date on it. Mea culpa. Make new mistakes.
Running into Old Age by George Sheehan
I first came upon the aging process in a race. I felt no sense of advancing years in my day-to-day activity. My work week was unchanged: I wrote, I traveled, I lectured. Some people marveled at my energy and endurance. It was my weekend race that finally told me I was no longer young. The changes that come with age are subtle-but not to a runner. My 10-K time measures me quite accurately. Any change in performance dictated by age is precisely recorded in minutes or seconds on the digital clock at the finish line.
“Crumbling is not an instant’s Act,” wrote Emily Dickinson. And the physician in me knows that almost 90 percent of my liver has to be damaged before its impairment is apparent. The body has enormous reserves to call upon. But in the race, I call on all my reserves. I am operating at full throttle. The least diminution in function becomes evident. The race, therefore, is the litmus test for aging. Long before anything else goes, race times signal the approach of the last stage of life. A look at my weekly race results will tell you bluntly that I am no longer middle-aged. I am now a full-fledged citizen of the country of the aged.
Three years ago when this happened, I refused to believe it. Running had been my fountain of youth. For years I thought it was inexhaustible, like the never-empty cup of coffee some restaurants offer. After I began running in my 40’s, I quickly became 32 years old and stayed that way. Decades came and went, and I was still in my prime. When my 10-K times slowed down and I began to run personal worsts instead of personal bests, I took stock. It was not age, I told myself. I had been 32 years old for the previous 20 years and did not intend to get older. All I needed was more training, some hills and speedwork, and I would be back to my best.
I took up arms against age. I increased my training and within a single Thanksgiving holiday ran four races. Each race I ran a little faster than the previous one, but never near the times I had registered the year before. And I was no longer in the top third of the field-now, I was well back in the second half of the pack.
How did I feel about all this? Terrible. And don’t remind me that most people my age have run up the white flag. Do not tell me I can still outrun the average person twenty years younger than me. Do not point out that age has compensations that will more than pay for the lost few minutes in the race. I am rebuilding my life on those thoughts. But first, help me bury the runner I once was, and then we can talk about what the future holds. Apparently, it still holds plenty.
My initial depression has receded. I realize now that there are more things at stake than setting a personal best in a road race. I can even answer truthfully (and this is the most difficult part) when someone asks me, “What was your time, Doc?” My times continue to get slower and slower. And, therefore, the “me” that I am is different. But the me that I am has developed insights and wisdom that I did not have before. What I have lost I can afford to lose. What I have gained is something I cannot do without. The race, however slow my times, remains an ever-changing learning experience. Whenever I race, I learn something new about myself and those who race with me.
I will never be 32 years-old again, but it no longer matters, because I’ve learned that winning doesn’t matter, it’s running that counts. And when I push to the limit, I am a boy again-an untried youth listening to the wisdom of my body.