Marathon Man

by Bill Rodgers

  I can recall one day going out for a run, getting a few blocks in the near darkness, and freaking out. I rushed back home and started to jog in place in the living room. I felt every bit of positive feeling draining from my body and mind. I pictured Frank Shorter running mile after mile in the high-altitude splendor of Colorado while here I was, preparing for the Olympic marathon trials by jogging in place in my tiny apartment in the city.

  I decided that I was going to ask the school committee for permission to run during my lunch break and if they turned down my request, I would quit. I would feel bad about giving up a job that I liked, but I was driven to strive for the next level, to go forward, to achieve the very best in me as a runner, no matter the personal cost or private sacrifices along the way.

  Thankfully, there was a new superintendent at our school, Frederick Foresteire, who’s now the superintendent of all the schools in Everett. He gave me the chance. He said, “Yeah, you can go out on your lunch hour, just be back here at a certain time.” So as soon as the lunch bell rang, I would fly downstairs to a small room in the basement, change into my running gear, wave to the kids, vanish out the door, and start cranking five-minute miles on the road. On most days, I’d run between six to seven miles, but if I was lucky I might get in as many as nine. I’d then slip back inside, jump into the shower in the basement, wash in record time, and rush upstairs to teach the next period.

  Once I got home from school, I changed back into my running gear and went on a ten- to twelve-mile run. By the time my day was done I was wiped out. At the same time, I never lacked the motivation to wake up and start anew. I believed in what I was aiming for and did what I did—teaching, running—not out of an obligation to others, but because of a passion from within.

  All the kids would be scampering down the stairs and grabbing their lunch and milk, and here comes Mr. Rodgers, exhausted and sweating from his run. I don’t know what they thought of my whole Superman in a telephone booth routine. While the female teachers were friendly to me, I doubt any of them were runners. These were the days when there were only thirty thousand runners in the country. Now there’s over half a million. So they probably didn’t understand the marathon or the goal I was trying to fulfill. They probably thought of the marathon in the usual mythological terms, not worth taking seriously.

  It was probably hard for the teachers to relate to me. Most of them couldn’t appreciate the fact that I was trying to push myself to reach levels in the sport that were previously thought unattainable. In those days, the concept of training to be a marathon runner was not understood. I would come back from running eight miles at a five-minute-mile pace during my lunch break and a handful of female teachers would be standing around the entrance, smoking cigarettes in their buttoned-up blouses and drab skirts. They probably thought I was crazy. Now, you see people across the country incorporating physical activity into their schedule like biking to work, or hitting the gym at lunch, or taking breaks for a walk. You see this everywhere. But in 1975, the idea of daily fitness bordered on the ludicrous.

  My principal was not happy that the school committee agreed to let me run on my lunch break. She watched me like a hawk, trying to catch me coming in late from my run so she could convince the school committee to revoke my privilege. She would even direct kids—her own personal Stasi police agents—to wait by my classroom door to make sure I returned on time for my next class. As fast as I ran the Boston Marathon in 1975, it paled in comparison to the record speed in which I climbed the stairs from the basement, where I changed back into my work clothes after a run, to my classroom. There were many times when I made it back just under the wire.

  I wanted to make the Olympic team more than anything in this world and so I was willing to put up with the harassment at work, but it didn’t make it right. The truth was, many amateur U.S. athletes had to contend with uncooperative employers. Tom Fleming had to go up against his school committee in Bloomfield, New Jersey, who were unsympathetic to his need to prepare for the Olympic trials. He, too, kept trying to get up at five in the morning in the winter, when it was dark and slippery outside. He came in fifth at the trial and didn’t make the team. He was an alternate. But he did great under those circumstances. Circumstances he should have never had to face as a serious contender to make the American squad.

  While athletes from countries like Sweden and the USSR received tremendous support from their country, this wasn’t the case for American amateurs. Simply put, you were on your own. When I traveled to a race to run for the United States, I had to pay my own way to get there. As a member of the United States team you were lucky if you received an American team uniform in which to compete for your country. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it was.

  I was so fearful of asking for time off work to race that I arrived late to the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon. I missed more than a few major races because I knew that my emotionally challenged kids would bring the substitute teacher to their knees. That happened a few times; I came back to discover some incident had occurred in the classroom. While the principal didn’t need more justification for her persecution, I could see from the look on her face that she was pleased to present more evidence of why I should quit running to focus entirely on teaching. Believe me, if I was going to quit anything, it would be the job.

  I remember the whole weekend was very intense, almost more intense than the Olympics itself. I came there as the American record holder, but I still didn’t put myself in the same class as the man who I had watched become a legend in Munich four years earlier while sitting on a couch, broke and unemployed. As far as I was concerned, there was Frank Shorter and then there were the rest of us.

  Once I arrived in Eugene, Oregon, late on Thursday, I had a hard time falling asleep and generally felt light-headed and queasy. At the time, I blamed it on jet lag from my long flight, but in hindsight I think it was nerves. I bought junk food from the vending machine and dumped the trans-fat bounty on my bed. After devouring all the snacks, I felt better.

  An hour before the race start, I jogged the mile from the hotel to the starting line. Once I got there, I realized I was the only runner warming up without a racing number attached to his singlet. I immediately raced back to my hotel, searched for my bib amid the ruins of junk food, found it, clumsily affixed it to my shirt, dashed out of the hotel, and ran a mile back to the starting line. Thanks to my principal I was accustomed to nail-biting, high-pressure dashes to get to my destination on time. Of course, in this case it wasn’t my next period I was trying to get to in time, but the start of the Olympic trials.

  With no time to spare—and my heart pounding like a racehorse—I made it to the starting line. Before I could catch my breath, I was off.

  At the eight-mile mark, Frank tried to run away with it like he did in the Olympics. A runner by the name of Barry Brown and I went with him. I was going along with Frank and Barry when I was suddenly hit with a painful side ache. This is like a nightmare, I said to myself. It’s like a bad dream. Why is it happening to me?

  I fell back a few strides behind Frank and Barry. I could feel my Olympic dreams slowly slipping away. But I knew that if I panicked then I would be sunk. I knew if I tried to stay up with them I would be ruined. I needed to run at my own pace and wait calmly for the pain to pass. And if it didn’t? I guess that’s the meaning of faith; doing what you know needs to be done and trusting it will work out in the end. I think earlier in my career I would have tried to stay up with Frank, I would have lost control of my emotions, I would have let my emotions control me. By not losing my head, I was able to save myself from a perilous situation. By doing less, not more, the issue was resolved, the trouble was overcome, the side ache passed.

  I began to breathe and relax, more or less. I took a quick physical inventory. I was okay. As a matter of fact, I was better than okay. I felt amazing. Twelve miles into the race I picked up the pace. Confidence surged through me as I closed the gap on Frank and Barry. Running down th
e road with newfound resolve, I finally chased down the two leaders and, from there, matched them stride for stride. I felt so fearless that when Barry started to slip behind I considered for a moment saying to Frank, “Why don’t we wait for him?”

  Frank and I were cranking through the middle section of the course, knocking off ten miles in forty-nine minutes. The early part of the race had been nerve-racking, especially with my rushed start, but once we got out there—well, it was still nerve-racking because we were running at a sub-five-minute pace, but it was also exhilarating. They didn’t run much faster at this year’s Olympic trials—and we had tough weather. Much tougher weather. To command your destiny under the power of your own legs was a tremendous feeling. Something you can’t really describe.

  For well over an hour, I ran elbow to elbow with Frank and we even talked a bit. I think in a way I kind of helped him because I forced the pace and we were able to put the rest of the field away early. Around mile 13, I said to Frank, “We’ve got this.” It was my way of telling him, let’s just run smart and steady now. It was clear we were the two top Americans. There was no reason to turn this into a showdown between us. There’d be plenty of opportunities in the future for us to take each other on.

  It was a sunny day, mid-to-high sixties—by no means overbearing, but warm enough to elicit a healthy sweat early in the race. Unlike me, Frank ran well in the heat. Also, he had made sure to have his own special water bottles, probably filled with Gatorade, waiting for him at each water station. I didn’t.

  Frank would run along and pick up his own plastic bottles, which had a long, curved straw, allowing him to take a sip without disrupting his perfect running posture. I, on the other hand, was trying to swipe cups off the tables as we flew down the road—most of the time, missing my mark. On the occasion that I managed to secure a cup, most of the water splashed out before it ever reached my lips. I was tilting my head back, breaking my stride, and trying to throw the contents into my mouth, coughing out the water I had taken in too fast.

  The weather in Eugene had been cool in the days prior to the race so I made no arrangements to station plastic bottles, with or without perfectly cupped straws, along the course. Looking back, I should have been filling up bottles with hydrating sports drink instead of emptying the hotel vending machines of Ring Dings. As a result of my serious (water) drinking problem—I barely consumed any fluids after the first few miles—my calves and legs stiffened up about five miles from the finish line.

  We came into the stadium with two miles to go. Frank started pulling away. I could have tried to stay with him, but what was the point? A second-place finish would earn me a spot on the team; I knew we had a two-minute lead over everybody else and I was concerned about my calves. I eased up and watched Frank widen the gap between us.

  I remember seeing the finish line up ahead and feeling a rush of euphoria. I started to count down the steps to the finish line. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.… I had never felt such elation and relief as I did crossing that line. I had fulfilled more than a goal; I had realized a dream. I had refused to let anything, not snow-clogged streets or brain-clogged principals, take away my dream of representing my country at the Olympics.

  I thought back on the long road I had traveled to get here. After not running for three years, after being in such poor shape I could only run a mile around the dinky YMCA track, after losing my job, losing my bike, going on food stamps, after all the days and nights spent running alone around Jamaica Pond, after sneaking out on my lunch break to get in an eight-mile run, coming home and running ten more miles, after all the pavement I had covered on foot, all the training, all the early marathon failures and heat-related collapses, I was on my way to Montréal. Unbelievable.

  In the end, Frank beat me by seven seconds with a time of 2:11:51. At the stadium, we shook hands. Frank and I were both running for Asics at the time and I remember the Asics shoe rep coming up to me and giving me a big athletic bag, which I thought was cool. That night, back in my hotel room, I was already thinking about what I needed to do to win gold. “In the next few weeks,” I wrote down in my running log, “1. Need two or three 25–30 mile runs at good pace; 2. Need to take ERG or Coke during race; 3. Need little more speed; 4. Need lots of rest.”

  That last thing—get rest—was the toughest to follow. The next day I was running five miles at the San Francisco Airport during a layover. I got two hours of sleep that night. I was so wired, thinking how I was going to be running in the Olympics. The word “Olympian” has always struck a deep chord within me. I felt that I was running for more than personal glory; I was running for my wife Ellen, for my coach, my teammates, my family, my friends, for my brother Charlie and my best friend Jason. Most of all, I was running for my country. If all this comes off sounding romantic, that’s because for me it was.

  As soon as I got home, I leaped right back into my training. Two days later on Monday I ran sixteen miles. The day after that nineteen miles. Today top runners wouldn’t do that. They would rest more. But I was one of those people who had no time to rest, only time to train.

  I think my mentality was typical of runners during this, the running boom. After Frank Shorter’s gold medal victory, there was a no-limits attitude in our sport, a feeling that you’ve got to aim high. Because the Finns and the Russians and the Spanish were training harder than ever before and reaching new levels. It was an intense time when you had runners who were hungrier, who were willing to sacrifice more, who were willing to drive themselves to the limit, maybe over the limit.

  The old approach was to do a moderate level of training because there were more important things to do. The prevailing attitude was, “Your job was all-important and don’t take this running thing too seriously. After all, it’s not a realistic pursuit.” But this was a different approach. The approach of professionalism was that this was a very worthy and high-level goal in itself, and that’s why the training mileage started increasing and the records started falling.

  It was this no-limit attitude that convinced me to return to Eugene in June for the ten-thousand-meter trials; also, I felt that training for the ten thousand meter—which would require lots of speed work on the BC track—would actually help me bring down my time in the marathon, and so did Coach Squires.

  At the Penn Relays in April, I shocked myself by scoring the fastest American qualifying time in the ten thousand meter; how could I not try to make the Olympic team now? In Eugene, I made it to the ten-thousand-meter finals. Before the race, Squires and I talked it over and decided not to try and make the team. Our reasoning was that the two ten-thousand-meter races I would have to run in Montréal would take a lot out of me and it would be better to conserve all my energy for the marathon, an event I had a real shot at winning. Meanwhile, I was a serious long shot to medal in the ten thousand meter.

  Just because I had decided I wasn’t going for the Olympic team didn’t mean I didn’t want to set a personal record. On a cool day, I hung with the leaders—Frank Shorter, Garry Bjorklund, and Craig Virgin—until half a mile from the finish line. That’s when I fell off the pace. I was still in third place, good enough to earn a spot on the Olympic team. Bjorklund, who had lost a shoe earlier in the race, saw me slip back and began sprinting to catch me. He passed me with ten yards to go to make the Olympic squad. I was happy for him and for the fact that I had set a new PR—28:04:04. But my cheerfulness would be short-lived.

  One day, shortly after returning home from the trials, I went over to Boston College and tried to run the track. I felt a stinging pain on the ball of my foot. Not good. Not when you run on the balls of your feet, like I did. Turns out I had aggravated an injury in my right foot while running in the Olympic ten-thousand-meter finals. The foot had given me trouble over the previous winter; my guess is that the culprit was overuse. The shoes I was wearing were too narrow for my foot, the metatarsal bone in the bottom of my foot became inflamed, and scar tissue formed, which led to a pinch
ed nerve between the toes. Simply put, the ball of my foot hurt like you wouldn’t believe.

  I knew that the speed work Squires had insisted I do on the track had played an important role in achieving my American record time in the 1975 Boston Marathon, but I felt I had no choice but to forgo that part of my training regimen; my foot couldn’t withstand the heavy pounding. I feared that if I made my injury any worse I might not even be able compete in Montréal and there was no way I was going to let that happen.

  Because I relegated my training to long, easy runs, I saw less and less of my GBTC teammates. Most of the time I would run alone through the streets of Melrose, waging my own personal war with the blistering summer sun. While I was training at a slower pace of 6:30 a mile, I told myself that I wouldn’t need to run as fast as I did at Boston to take home the gold. Even without my normal speed work on the track, I knew I’d be among the top conditioned athletes at the starting line. The Olympic marathon would be run in August, likely on a hot day, when nobody would be thinking about breaking any records.

  I figured that if I ran around a 2:13, I would have a great chance of winning.

  EIGHTEEN

  Feet, Don’t Fail Me Now

  The only real difference between the first Olympic marathon and the one I was preparing to race in 1976 was the distance. At the 1908 Olympic games in London, the original twenty-four-mile distance was extended another two miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City Stadium, with 385 yards added on so the race could finish in front of King Edward VII’s viewing box. The American Johnny Hayes won it in a time of 2:55:18. Other than that, they’re both simple footraces. And yet running a great marathon is dictated by any number of variables, some of which, like weather or illness, are beyond our control.