Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  “Doc, what in your estimation will be the qualities required of the Trans-America winner?”

  Doc paused for a moment. “The Trans-America winner,” he said, “should be a pair of legs with a head on top. The man must have a tough heart to pump enough blood to let him average ten-minute miles, day in day out. That heart will knock along at a hundred beats a minute over road, over country, on rough track, in flat plains and high sierras.”

  He sat on the edge of the table, his legs dangling.

  “The winner will have tough, hard feet, feet that won’t cut up and blister. In the end a Trans-America runner is only as good as his contact point. Six million contacts from here to the Big Apple; remember that.”

  “But what about the mind, Doc?” said Ferris.

  Doc stood down and tapped his forehead. “That’s where the real battles will be won and lost,” he said. “The winner has to keep going every one of the thousand times his body will beg him to stop between here and New York. The winner mustn’t think of three thousand miles, only of the next one. He must live in his own mind, defeating only one man every day. Always. The same man – himself.”

  “Martin Howard, Chicago Star. Are there any other factors?”

  “Health,” said Doc. “If he feels ill or has tendon and muscle pains he must be brave enough to ease off and walk. Otherwise a pain becomes an injury, and an injury soon becomes crippling. In a race of this distance there is time for injuries to heal up – but only if you give your body a chance.”

  “Will you wear any special clothing?” asked Howard. Doc grinned. “You’ll make me give away my secrets,” he said. “The main thing is to let the body breathe. That’s why I run in this string vest kinda shirt.” He lifted from the table a vest punctured with holes. “This lets the body get rid of heat. That apart, you must avoid chafing – and that means wide-legged shorts, six pairs of well-worn shoes – and protection from the sun. These are the essentials. Sunburn can make you raw meat in a few hours.”

  “Doc, Mr Flanagan tells us that Paavo Nurmi might be a competitor. What are your thoughts on that?” said Pollard.

  Doc wrinkled his nose. “Heck,” he said. “I’m surprised Paavo can even afford to turn professional.” There was more laughter. “Seriously, Nurmi is the greatest runner of all time, and if he enters, then he must be a strong contender. My philosophy is this. You don’t win races by worrying about other competitors. You respect them, yes. You keep an eye on them, yes. But worry, hell no. So if Nurmi throws his hat in the ring, so be it.”

  “What about sex, Doc?” shouted a sweating reporter towards the back of the hall.

  “Well,” said Doc. “What about it?”

  There was laughter.

  “I get your drift,” he continued as the laughter subsided. “Sex is like food – you shouldn’t change your habits even during competition. I don’t propose to change mine – but I’m sure as hell not telling you fellas what they are!”

  “Pop Warner won’t let any of his players near women close to a game and Dempsey stays away from his wife for three months before fights,” observed Ferris.

  “Hell, Mr Ferris, we won’t be playing much football or doing much fist-fighting in the Trans-America,” said Doc, his eyes twinkling.

  “Do you know much about the form of the other runners?” Ferris countered.

  Doc shook his head. “Not really. Kohlemainen I know something about – I ran against him a heap after the I908 marathon – even beat him once in Mexico. The Englishman, Charles Fox, he’s one of the all-time greats, but Charles is now close on seventy.”

  “Campbell, Glasgow Herald. Do you know anything about the Scot, Hugh McPhail?”

  Doc’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ve been told he was a sprinter! Well, the Trans-America sure ain’t no sprint.”

  “Maguire, Irish Times. What do you know of Lord Thurleigh?”

  “Heard tell he ran in the five thousand metres in the Amsterdam Games.” Doc smiled. “I don’t have to tell you that there’s one helluva difference between three miles and three thousand.”

  “Ferris again. What about the organized teams, like the Germans and the All-Americans? Won’t they have a big advantage over lone individuals like yourself?”

  “Yep,” said Doc, nodding. “They’ll have coaches and managers with them every step of the way, thinking ahead all the time. The rest of us will have to think for ourselves. Sure, they’ll have an advantage, all things being equal.”

  “Liebnitz. Doc, don’t you think that there’s something wrong when there are men on the bread-line all over the States and here we have a thousand guys foot-racing across America for a total of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  Doc shook his head. “I’m with you on the first point. It’s bad that there are working men on the bread-line all over the States, all over the world. But there’s no way I see anything wrong with a couple of thousand men running their balls off for a money prize, any more than it’s wrong for Doug Fairbanks to get paid for showing off his muscles on the movies. Sure, I’m sorry for the poor stiffs who’re only running for the three meals a day. I’m sorry for the ones who’ll run themselves into the side of the road for stage prizes when they haven’t a hope in hell of winning them. Still, at least they’ll go down trying, which is more than they can do in soup kitchens.”

  “How many miles do you reckon you’ve run in training, Doc?” asked Rae.

  “About a hundred thousand,” said Doc. “About a mile for every dollar I hope to win. Still, let’s get things clear. Training’s physical, racing is emotional. Tomorrow there’ll be a couple of thousand guys out there, ready to run their hearts out. Some of those men will discover themselves between here and New York. They’ll find that they have physical and mental qualities they never even dreamt of when they started out. Those guys will get fit on the run – and they’re men to fear.”

  Carl Liebnitz rose again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doc. You ran in the 1904 and 1908 Olympics without getting into the medals. Then, as I recall, you ran pro until the war, but you never won any really big money. Is this your last chance? The big one?”

  Doc bit his upper lip. “I think you put your finger right on it, Carl. This is the big one for me.”

  5

  The Start

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Charles C. Flanagan cleared his throat and boomed into the microphone. The sound set a flock of pigeons fluttering above the Roman pillars of the Los Angeles Coliseum. He was standing on a wooden dais in the centre of the stand in the home straight. Beneath him, in the bright spring sun, were over two thousand runners circling the track and stretching far out into the stadium car park. The Coliseum, which for the past hour had been entertained by an endless succession of acrobats, clowns, and brass bands, was full to the brim.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Flanagan roared again. “This is indeed an historic moment.” He looked across at the stadium clock. “In ten minutes there will be set in motion the greatest professional long-distance race in the history of mankind, a race in which the cream of the world’s athletes will set out to cross the great continent of America. Each man is a Columbus, for he steps into the unknown, attempting to achieve a conquest that has never before been attempted by any athlete. I wish all of you, each man and woman among you, good fortune. My task is to ensure a fair and honest race. This I will endeavour to do.”

  Flanagan half-turned towards the celebrities seated behind him on the dais. “Some of you will already have recognized the distinguished celebrities who have consented to grace this occasion . . .

  “Mr Buster Keaton!” All eyes focused on a glum little man on Flanagan’s right.

  “Miss Mary Pickford!” There was a ripple of applause as Flanagan moved to his side to reveal America’s darling.

  “That great athlete, the fastest man in the world, Charley Paddock!” Paddock, now a plump, moon-faced man, stood up and nodded to the runners.

  “The world’s heavyweight boxing champion, Mr Ja
ck Dempsey!” Dempsey, lean and bronzed, stood up and clasped both hands above his head, boxing-style, turning to left and right.

  “And finally, a man I am privileged to count as a friend, a man who is both great actor and great athlete, the man who is today going to set you all on your way across America . . . Mr Douglas Fairbanks!”

  Waves of applause broke out on all sides. Fairbanks was well-known as a fitness fanatic, an actor who insisted on performing his own stunts. Though the advent of the talkies had caused his star to wane he was still immensely popular: the world’s Mr America.

  Looking up, Hugh McPhail thought Fairbanks much smaller than he had expected. Plumper too; Fairbanks was already showing a second chin, and his double-breasted suit strained at its pearl buttons. However, as he stood with both arms out, his teeth flashing in a wide smile, Fairbanks exuded glowing animal fitness.

  “My friends,” he said, stilling the applause with raised hands. “When I first heard about Mr Flanagan’s race my first thought was to enter myself.” There was laughter. Fairbanks waited until the stadium was again silent. “Happily, wiser counsels prevailed. Sure, I’m an athlete, I love athletics, but long-distance running was never my strong suit. Jumping, vaulting, capturing pirate ships, rescuing maidens in distress” – he gave a sidelong glance at Mary Pickford – “that’s my bag. Even now I’m just off the set of Around the World in Eighty Minutes. I guess you fellas will take just a little longer to reach New York!” Again there was laughter, and again Fairbanks raised his hands and shook his head. “Seriously, I feel deeply honoured to be here. I suppose in some way this race represents the Great American Dream. Sure, many of you guys and gals have seen hard times. But now, with one throw of the dice, you can change it all, here in the Trans-America.

  “As Mr Flanagan has just said, this is the greatest foot-race of all time and it is both my pleasure and my privilege to start the competition.” He lifted from a table a massive double-barrelled shot gun. “So: ladies and gentlemen, get to your marks . . .”

  Every muscle in the throng before him was tense, the Coliseum quiet but for the shrill cries of wheeling pacific gulls skimming through its Roman pillars. Fairbanks looked down at the cinder track below him, at the runners coiled in row upon row round the green infield. They reminded him of some still, vital creature waiting to be unleashed.

  On the track below, Doc Cole likewise looked around him. Two thousand men and women waiting, poised, to rush across a continent . . . Just behind him were the swarthy Scot, McPhail, the strange limey, Lord Thurleigh, and the lean, impassive Finn, Eskola. A few rows further back stood four of Williams’ All-Americans, dressed in white silk stars-and-stripes vests, and in front of them four crew-cut, sun-blackened young Germans. In the same row crouched the British veteran, Charles Fox, wrinkled and white, eyes almost closed, awaiting the off.

  Standing beside him was a slim, attractive young woman, wearing a white vest with the words NEW YORK printed in black front and back. The girl looked poised and confident, and Doc wondered how many other women were sprinkled throughout the field. Whatever the number, he could not see any of them making it as far as Las Vegas, let alone New York.

  “Get set . . .” Fairbanks played the moment to the hilt, sensing the tension. His finger tightened on the trigger of the Winchester.

  “. . . Go!” The explosion of the gun, the roar of the crowd and the din of the massed infield bands seemed to come as one. Immediately the runners started to move, like lava pouring down a mountainside. Some runners, excited by the dramatic preliminaries, sprinted through the crowds, skidding, stumbling and falling as they bumped into slower, more cautious runners ahead of them. Others simply stood still waiting for space to open up in front of them. Yet others set off in a jaunty, hip-wobbling walk which drew raucous jeers from the crowd. For thirty minutes the mob streamed round the stadium waving and shouting to spectators as they covered two miles of the track before leaving for the open road. Then they moved out into the car park, through the noisy jangle of Flanagan’s carnival, out into the crowded car-lined streets of Los Angeles.

  Doc waited till the group ahead of him had departed, then launched into a bandy-legged jog-trot. He looked at his watch. Twenty-nine miles to go: that meant about five hours of running. He wore no socks and his shorts were brief and wide. On his head he wore a sweat band and a peaked white cap. In his right hand he carried a white handkerchief, which he had knotted round his wrist. Hooked to his waist was a small water bottle. It was a long, long way to New York, and it would be a long time before he would give any thought to racing. For the present it was a matter of getting out of L.A., and of running a steady ten-minute miles today and every day. If he could keep doing that he would be around somewhere at the finish.

  Ahead and around him Finns, Scots, Americans and English mingled and jostled with Turks, Africans, Chinese and Samoans. Bearded, long-legged Sikhs strode beside tiny, pattering Japanese, slim, brown Californian women beside men from the industrial towns of northern England. On their vests were advertised the wares of Hull, Calcutta, San Francisco, Budapest and Edinburgh. Some ran in modern shorts and vests, others in equipment that had not seen the light of day since the turn of the century. Others ran in tracksuits, walked in ordinary daytime clothes, or even carried sticks. Doc saw at least one blind man and two men without arms.

  The variation in speed was remarkable, ranging from fully-dressed walkers striding out at a sedate 4 mph. through to trained athletes running over twice as fast. There was no way that could be kept up, thought Doc; not for sixteen miles, let alone twenty-nine.

  He hardly seemed to be moving, pegging along at a steady chugging gait, heel first, his nut-brown bandy legs gobbling up the rutted, dusty road. Yet all around him runners were already falling back, some dropping to a jog-trot, others to a walk. Some, having completed less than five miles, stopped and simply sat by the roadside, sobbing with fatigue, gaping at the stream of runners that poured through the crowded sidewalks east out of the city.

  Doc had anticipated neither the dense traffic nor the crowds. For the first ten miles cars were parked two or three deep, and thousands of clapping, cheering spectators lined the route, leaving only a narrow channel for the runners. Ahead, forging a path for them, were Flanagan’s Trans-America bus, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot – a grotesque jug-shaped refreshment van – and a train of press buses.

  Hugh McPhail had been sucked in by the early pace, and had gone eight miles through the channel of cheering crowds, also running in the wake of the Coffee Pot, before he realized that he was running much too fast. He dropped back and joined a lean, tanned runner, attired in silk vest and shorts.

  “How goes it?” he asked.

  There was no reply.

  “Suit yourself,” said Hugh, continuing to run at the same even pace, and the two men pressed on in silent tandem. Behind him the four young German runners flowed on like so many smoothly-oiled pieces of machinery. None was much older than twenty-one. All were burnt black with the sun. At their side, on a motor-cycle, cruised their team coach, a bull-necked German with a stopwatch looped on a cord round his neck. “Langsam,” he shouted. “Langsam!” and the young Germans obediently slowed.

  Not far behind were the Williams’ All-Americans. Like the Germans, they ran as a team, their fat coach behind them in the back of an open Ford, shouting out instructions on a megaphone. “Relax,” he bellowed, as they made their way up a slight incline. “Stay loose.”

  Close on the heels of the All-Americans was little Martinez, clad in close – cut shorts and white vest, flowing along with light, springy strides. He was hardly breathing. Just ahead of him was the Pennsylvanian, Mike Morgan.

  At a hundred and fifty-five pounds, Morgan was heavy for a distance-runner. He had a dark, copper-coloured body, with clearly defined musculature. Martinez watched the muscles of Morgan’s back flutter and ripple as he ran, flexing and relaxing on each stride: the Pennsylvanian ran impassively, no sign of effort on his face, its only
hint showing in the tiny streams of sweat which ran in rivulets down the muscles of his chest and back. Morgan checked his wrist-watch. Twenty miles to go. No problems.

  They were out in the country now, between Montebello and La Puente. The crowds had thinned and the only immediate problem was the exhaust-fumes of the surrounding cars. Doc wiped his handkerchief across his face. All around him men were fading. On the side of the road a man sat whimpering, his bare feet ripped and bloody.

  The race had already divided into four identifiable groups. First, there were the trained athletes, men with thousands of miles in their legs, running to their trainers’ orders or to the metronome of past experience, steadily making their way through the twenty-nine miles to Pomona. Behind and amongst them ran fit, hard men who had little experience of competitive racing, men who hoped to flower into athletes in the weeks to come. At the back of the field two other groups emerged. Both were novices, but the members of the first, driven by desperation and strength of will, somehow dragged themselves through the long miles of the first stage. Those in the second group, mind and body shocked even by the efforts of the first five miles, were broken before the field had even pierced the suburbs of Los Angeles.

  The Trans-America was thus already spreadeagled along the road east from Los Angeles. From above, in the buzzing Pathé and March of Time newsplanes, the field could be seen, even after only fifteen miles, to stretch over a distance of six miles, snake-like, hardly seeming to move.

  For Doc it was an easy run. Twenty-nine miles, no big hills, no real problems. Ten miles from home he cruised past the Germans and the All-Americans, dragging with him Morgan, the broad-shouldered, flat-nosed man he had noted the day before in the hotel. With a mile to go, Doc had passed all but a runner in tartan shorts and his companion, Lord Peter Thurleigh. Together Doc and Morgan pressed on towards the finish of the first stage.