Marathon Man

by Bill Rodgers

  FOUR YEARS EARLIER

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  For two long-haired, Frisbee-playing bikers in search of groovy times, Boston was heaven. We weren’t loose and freaky enough for San Francisco, with its be-ins and radical politics and nude acid parties. After all, we were regular, middle-class kids from outside Hartford who drank cheap beer and smoked Winstons. We were happy wasting a sunny afternoon in the Boston Commons, watching the beaded hippie girls dancing barefoot, or hanging out at Jack’s Bar in Cambridge, where you could get free peanuts, listen to some down-and-dirty blues band, all the while safe in the knowledge that most of the bar knew Carl Yastrzemski’s batting average.

  It was a summer night in Boston in 1971. Jason and I were walking home from Jack’s Bar in Cambridge. A couple of Irish kids with pasty faces, long hair, and Boston accents, fresh out of college, rooming together on Westland Avenue. The scent of Jack’s Bar—mostly cigarettes and peanuts—still clung to our jeans as we walked through the city late at night, cracking wise the whole way.

  “Those girls at the bar were so into us.”

  “Yeah, right up to the point that they left with their boyfriends.”

  “Ha ha. So close, man. So close!”

  We walked a good ways down Mass. Avenue until we reached Westland Avenue. Something kept us from following it down to our dumpy little apartment though. How the idea came into being, or by whom, Jason or myself, is unclear. What is certain is that a decision was made to walk our slightly inebriated selves a couple blocks up to the Prudential Plaza and run across the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It was a fluky thing to do. Like stopping to serenade a girl from outside her window.

  After a short walk up the street, we reached the plaza and stopped in the shadow of the massive Prudential Building. This is where the finish line of the Boston Marathon was every year, at least back when Prudential was still a main sponsor of the race.

  Our plan for running the end was poorly conceived. Nothing like the elaborate ruse pulled off by the late, great George Plimpton when he was a Harvard student in the 1940s. Long story short: Plimpton had applied to the school’s exclusive journalism club and was told the price of initiation was running the Boston Marathon. On race day, Plimpton blended in among the throngs of people gathered along Beacon Street to catch a glimpse of the runners as they came down the home stretch. The moment the leader came into view, Plimpton leaped onto the course behind him, wearing running shorts and sneakers. The startled runner used a big finishing kick to hold off the lanky kid with the stiff, goofy-looking gait. Moments later, in the press tent, Plimpton fessed up. At once, the winner lunged at him, but was held back before he could take off Plimpton’s head.

  When Plimpton made his infamous dash, he had the advantage of an actual finish line to cross. We couldn’t find any marker on the street, so we had to eyeball the spot. Fortunately, only a few months earlier we’d driven our motorcycles to the finish line area, where we found a spot along the course to watch the runners’ final push to glory.

  A hundred yards from our imaginary finish line, Jason and I assumed the starting stance, which was really no starting stance at all. More like two guys in street clothes with their arms dangling at their sides. This would be my first “competitive” race since the winter of my senior year at Wesleyan when I raced a sub-9:00 two mile at the Coast Guard Academy. I had just accomplished my personal mission to break the nine-minute mark and I had been elated. Everything changed after that. I quit going to track practice. Gave up running. I had good reasons. At least, they were good reasons to me.

  We sprinted down Ring Road and past the huge statue of Prometheus Unbound that stood in the reflecting pool in front of the Prudential Center. I glanced over at the Greek titan who’d stolen fire from Zeus’s lightning. I wish I could say a steady stream of brilliant light shot from his outstretched finger, zapped me in stride, back into life, awaking me at once to the true destiny that awaited. But it would be a lie to say that Prometheus spoke to me in that moment. That Jason and I went back to our apartment and started planning our comebacks. Or that the next day I quit my dead-end job at the hospital, stopped going to bars, stopped smoking cigarettes, and started making something of my life. We had our selective service jobs to do, and that was it. There was nothing beyond that.

  I heard the sound of my feet hitting the concrete as we sprinted across the imaginary finish line, falling to the ground, laughing our heads off. Chalk the whole incident up to two former runners who’d had a few drinks at the bar. We had no plan to run the real race, not that night, not ever.

  God, we laughed hard that night.

  Winter arrived. As those who’ve ever spent a winter in Boston know, the cold can be rough. Heavy snow is also pervasive. Like most locals, I was cooped up inside all day, either stuck in the crummy confines of the hospital or the cramped rooms of my tiny apartment. If I didn’t find a way to burn off some of my nervous energy, I was going to explode.

  For weeks I had walked right past the YMCA on Huntington Avenue, near where I lived. One day, I decided to go inside and get a membership. I had never been inside a YMCA in my life. There was a weight room and a tiny slanted track.

  I was starting over from scratch. If I had any goal at that point it was to obtain a minimal level of fitness. I wanted to see if I could run a half mile around the track. Most times I wouldn’t even use the track; instead I’d get on a rowing machine. The other guys there would be lifting weights or jumping rope hard in the mirror. But all I wanted was to feel a little strength return to my body. Guess that’s all I could handle at that point.

  When I came into the YMCA to run a few laps, I would see a few guys training for the Boston Marathon. They would blow by me on the track. Most of the time, I slipped in and out of the Y without ever being noticed. It didn’t matter that the other runners saw me as a nobody, if they saw me at all. In the world of running, I was a nobody.

  When any of them asked me if I was also training for the marathon, I would tell them the same thing: “No. I used to be a distance runner. Not anymore.”

  Run the marathon? Were they serious? I was lucky if I could make it five miles around this miserable little track without wheezing to death.

  “I once roomed with a guy who won the Boston Marathon,” I told them.

  I could tell from their reaction they were impressed.

  “What’s he doing now?” they asked.

  “I don’t really know. I think he’s still competing. He might also be a schoolteacher down in Connecticut.”

  I continued running sporadically at the YMCA, running laps around this slanted track that was so small I had to run twelve laps around to equal a mile. It was easy to lose my bearings running around the banked track, lap after lap, like a roulette ball. As I picked up my pace, I wasn’t so much running as I was orbiting the track, twenty-four laps in a row, then thirty-six laps …

  The other runners on the track, all training for the Boston Marathon, sprinted by me. I paid them no attention. Instead, I kept running at my slow, steady pace. I worked up to forty-eight laps. Then I climbed to sixty laps, which translated to five miles. Eventually, I was running close to a hundred laps around the tiny track, three or four times a week. On Saturdays, I’d do an extralong run to prepare me for the extralong night of drinking and smoking in the bars.

  You could call my workouts at the Y an escape from the boredom of winter. But it was more than that. I needed to move. I was meant to move. Even at my lowest point as an athlete, the magnetic pull was still there. The pull was weakened in the presence of life’s overwhelming burdens, but it hadn’t disappeared altogether.

  Even though I had improved my fitness on the track, I was still apprehensive about running outdoors. After all, doing exercise of any kind in public was highly unusual in those days. In the neighborhood where I grew up, I knew of two adults who kept themselves in great shape. Only two. Back then, you almost never saw a person going for a run or peddling a bicycle. The only peo
ple who did these things were kids. It’s almost as if adults weren’t allowed. If you did run in public, you felt uncomfortable. You felt strange. I know women who used to run in the woods out of shame, or fear of verbal attacks. But male or female, it was not a good time to be a runner on the road.

  Month after month of the same routine—hitting the bars, smoking cigarettes, staying out late—started to take on a stale and funky odor. I was keyed up all the time, but it wasn’t a good energy. It was a nervous energy. I used to rid myself of this chronic angst by running ten miles with Amby. Now I did it by smoking cigarettes. I traded one addiction (with side effects like increased physical strength, lower blood pressure, and a natural emotional high) for another addiction (decreased lung function, promotion of fatigue, and harm to every organ in your body). Nice swap.

  In April, Jason and I decided to ride our bikes down to the Cape for some mindless fun in the sun. Jason had worked the summer before at the Chrysler Art Museum in Provincetown and made some friends while hanging out at the bars. These same friends now offered to put us up for the weekend. My reaction was: “Let’s go. Let’s ride as fast and as far as we can.”

  Once we arrived, we met up with Jason’s contacts—a group of scruffy, party-hard, Allman Brothers–listening, Jack and Coke–drinking guys. By then, Jason was getting more into the Grateful Dead and starting to dabble in heavier, mind-expanding drugs, which was a part of this new scene. As much as I shared Jason’s carefree spirit, I could never go that route.

  Jason was an original—definitely a sixties-seventies type of guy. I remember once when we were living together, he came home with some LSD. I didn’t like this. It scared me. I thought it was dangerous. I was working inside the hospital. I saw the hazards of taking drugs on a daily basis. Jason was working out in the parking lot, listening to the Doors. He didn’t see all the sick, beat-up people.

  Jason was always telling me, “Billy, you’ve got to be spontaneous.” I preferred to run through a couple of million scenarios in my head. Also, my parents raised me to always think about the consequences of my action. Of course, in those days, I was thinking more about the consequences of my inaction.

  I followed the wolf pack as they careened from bar to bar in search of babes for whom to buy tequila shots. For Jason and his new pals, chasing after girls was fun. For me, it was stressful. Like trying to catch a giant swallowtail butterfly without a net—in a tsunami.

  I remember sitting in this smoky beach bar when an empty feeling came over me. I tapped my restless leg on the booze-sticky floor as I burned through another smoke, and silently watched girls pass by with their orange-skinned complexions, thick, black mascara’d eyes, and long shiny fingernails. The war had taken my life on a detour. I’d just arrived at the dead end. This can’t be it, I thought to myself. There has to be something more to life than drinking, smoking, and staying out all night with my friends. I was once a pretty good New England runner. Now look at me.

  I was going nowhere. I was tired of going nowhere. I was tired of being squashed down. I still didn’t know where I was headed, but I felt deep in my bones that I wanted to be heading somewhere.

  That Sunday, Jason and I decided to wake up early to get back home in time to see the Boston Marathon, which neither of us had ever been to before.

  After driving a couple hours north on Interstate 93, we reached Boston, and were soon winding our way through the streets. There was nothing that could have prepared us for the scene unfolding before our eyes. It looked like every soul in the city was outdoors, partying and having a good time. It was raucous.

  We parked our bikes in front of our apartment and walked up to the race course, only a few blocks away. The scents of spring mingled with the scents of outdoor vendors cooking hot dogs and pretzels. When we reached the course, we marveled at the scene. Hundreds of thousands of fans lined the road. I was amazed to see there was hardly a policeman in sight. It was a total free-for-all.

  The roar of the crowd was deafening as the cavalcade of press and motorcycles and runners came bursting into view. The moment sent chills down my spine. I watched as the race leaders approached. All of a sudden, I saw Jeff Galloway come into view. He even had on his Wesleyan singlet that I used to race in, too. I heard the announcer say, “Here comes Jeff Galloway of Atlanta, Georgia!”

  Wait a minute, I know that guy! He was my teammate! I almost swallowed my cigarette in a gasp of surprise. Maybe I never ran the two mile as fast as Jeff in college, but I could hang with the guy on our longer training runs. And there he was, battling for a top-ten finish at the Boston Marathon. My mind was spinning.

  I was still recovering from seeing my old Wesleyan teammate run by in seventh place when I heard the announcer say, “Here comes John Vitale of the University of Connecticut.” Vitale? I ran against him! I beat him! What the heck? I felt like the last person to show up at a party. Oh, so this is where everybody has been.

  By today’s standards, the Boston Marathon I witnessed that day was small, but it dwarfed any local New England road race I’d ever seen. I was accustomed to running in tiny college dual meets that had almost no spectators. I found it enthralling to see a road race like this, on the big stage, with the big lights. I was mesmerized by the spectacle of runners battling along the city streets flanked by thousands of spectators. There was nothing like it.

  I had seen the Boston Marathon up close, and while a part of me instantly desired to race in it, I knew the idea was bonkers. I was in lousy shape.

  One night, Jason and I crossed over the Mass. Avenue Bridge into Cambridge and walked over to Jack’s Bar. I can’t remember which band took the stage that night, but I do remember people dancing. As usual, I was drinking my gin and tonics and smoking. Yes, I was still smoking my Winston cigarettes. What did it matter? I was through with racing.

  Jason pointed out a girl he recognized from around town. She was a nice-looking hippie girl in casual attire. She wore a floppy hat over her pin-straight, shoulder-length brown hair.

  I was not an outgoing guy when it came to women. When I imagined walking over to a girl in a bar and striking up a conversation, I was victimized by heart palpitations. As for my dancing skills, they hadn’t improved any since high school, when I’d sit up in the bleachers waiting for some buddy to come by and knock my clip-on tie to the ground.

  But there I was and there she was and somehow I got the nerve to walk over to the girl in the floppy hat and introduced myself. She smiled and let her eyelids flutter open, revealing her striking eyes, one brown and one green. Somebody once described her as having a Liv Ullman look of good, clear sense, whereas I had the Woody Allen look of a wiry, neurotic daydreamer. She told me her name was Ellen and that she was a receptionist at the children’s hospital next door to the Brigham. We hit it off right away.

  Ellen lived in an old Victorian house in Jamaica Plain with a couple of roommates. I started going over to her place to visit her. A lot.

  When I met Ellen, I was barely running. Whatever confidence I’d built up from my runs at the Y was demolished during my run-ins with the hospital administrator in charge of the escort messengers, who he viewed as nothing more than a pool of low-cost labor. He would speak down to me and the other six long-haired young men because we were conscientious objectors. One look at his face, at the contempt in his eyes that shone through his horn-rimmed glasses, and I knew what he thought of my refusal to go to war. But I wouldn’t accept the prevailing mentality—fight at all costs. I preferred that other saying: Make love, not war.

  Now that I had an actual girlfriend, I felt it my duty to put my belief into practice. This meant spending all my free time with Ellen on our distant cloud. I was happy to have a girlfriend and not be alone in the big city. I think Ellen felt the same way. My lack of ambition was not a pressing issue. Between spending all my time with Ellen, rushing around the hospital as an escort messenger, and running around the YMCA track, who had time? Not to mention, I was now helping Howard set up a union.


  Howard was a fellow escort messenger. One day, he pulled me aside and told me serious efforts were under way to start a union at the hospital. “Would you like to participate?” he asked. My first thought was, Why not? The hospital’s supporting staff, like the receptionists and nurses, were paid poorly, worked under miserable conditions, and had no benefits. Who could be against trying to make things a little better?

  As I said, I’d always been more of a follower than a leader, so I let Howard take the reins. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.

  Howard told me that if we got enough people to vote to unionize, the hospital would have no choice but to accept the outcome. It was our job to convince our fellow workers that it was in their interest to unite in struggle, and so for the next couple of months, Howard and I went around to the different groups—the receptionists, the nurses, the aides—and tried to convince them to take a formal vote to join Local 1199. All the while, I was wondering why I was the only one other than Howard to participate in this effort.

  It was a winter day in 1972. I walked out to the hospital parking lot after my shift to get on my bike and ride home. I bent down and picked up the broken chain lying on the snow. Somebody had stolen the one possession I owned in the world. It wasn’t the money I was out that hurt so much, but the freedom that had been taken from me.

  Jason walked over to where I’d parked my bike and saw me standing there like a guy who’d been sucker punched in the gut. He told me he’d help me find my bike, knowing I couldn’t afford to replace it. That’s how we were. We were always in it together.

  The next couple of days we spent going around town, trying to find my bike. Jason and I scoured the city. No luck. Jason said the bike had likely been stripped for parts. I was always looking on the bright side, but it wasn’t easy between no money, my dead-end job, and my lack of wheels. This was bad—not rock bottom, but bad. Finally, I broke down and purchased a ten-speed bicycle. A few days later that got stolen, too.