Ed being Ed, he somehow missed the memo that Oregon’s Willamette Valley is home to some of the most hazardous pollen counts in the country. This is not unusual for Ed, who seems to float through life in a way that is unique among elite runners. As a group, they are decidedly Type A personalities, obsessed with achievement, anal about routines, and splits and preparations. Ed showed up to the 25-kilometer national championship race in San Diego in December of 1974 thinking it was a half marathon, rather than 15.5 miles. He ran a 4:48 opening mile and averaged 4:59s the rest of the way. At the 13-mile mark, with no finish in sight, he realized he still had another two and a half miles to go. No matter, he finished in 1:17.30, setting a new American record in the process. After, Larsen told him if he kept up that pace he would run a 2:11 marathon.
“I want to go fast, not far,” Ed said that day.
“Ed,” Larsen told him, “you’re going to be a great marathoner whether you like it or not.”
A month later, Ed is leading the Mission Bay Marathon after 24 miles. It’s his first marathon. He ran the first 20 miles on pace to finish at 2:12. Over the last six though he develops blisters on his feet the size of egg yolks. Near what he hopes is the end, he sees Coach Bob at the side of the road. “How much farther?” he asks his coach. Another mile and a half, Coach Bob tells him, pick it up a little. Ed does as he is told and crosses the line in 2:16. Is that good? he asks Coach Bob. He has no idea that in 1972, Kenny Moore and Frank Shorter won the U.S. marathon trials in 2:15:57. Jack Bacheler was third in 2:20:29.
“It’s pretty good, Ed,” Larsen tells him. “You run that time in an Olympic year you qualify.”
One month after that, Ed comes back from Arizona to San Diego and cruises to a win in the 2-mile race at the San Diego Indoor Games. He runs an 8:33 and is so excited to see his fellow Toads that he can’t resist accepting an invitation to hammer 10 miles with them the next morning. This is a terrible idea the morning after an intense, 2-mile race. They head out doing their usual 5:30s. Six miles in, Ed feels like a knife is slicing through his Achilles tendon. The Achilles tendinitis that develops that morning will cost him the spring track season.
So it is not all that surprising that Ed had done little research on the pollen situation in the Willamette Valley. All that rain combined with all that damp cool air and the varied vegetation can make life a wheezing mess for allergy sufferers like Ed. Cedar and pine pollinate in December, then in January, hazelnut, juniper, and cypress take their turn. February, it’s alder, birch, and elm. Then spring rolls around, bringing out pollen from oak, sweetgum, sycamore, cottonwood, maple, ash, hickory-pecan, beech, locust, and walnut. Now it’s June, which means the peak of grass season, an especially dangerous witches’ brew because the valley has more than a half-million acres used for the commercial production of grass seed. A pollen count of 200 parts per cubic meter is considered high. In June in Eugene, pollen counts can run as high as 750.
Ed has been in Eugene a little more than twenty-four hours. He went for a six-mile run through the woods the day he arrived. He took it easy for most of his second one. As night falls his bronchial tubes begin to seize up. Now it feels like he’s breathing through a tiny straw. He drags himself out of bed to find a phone. He needs a ride to the emergency room.
At the hospital he gets shots of adrenaline and cortisone, an inhaler and the necessary paperwork to show that he’s not taking the drugs to gain a competitive advantage. A doctor gives him a paper surgical mask and tells him to wear it until the start of the race. Ed asks him if this is really going to work. The doctor shrugs. Try not to think about it, the doctor tells him. Nerves and obsession can exacerbate asthma symptoms. Fortunately, Ed is very good at not thinking.
The problem is, as Ed gets to Hayward Field the next day, he realizes this version of the U.S. trials in the 10,000 meters demands more thought than perhaps any race of its kind that has taken place. The ghost of Prefontaine hangs over the competition. This was supposed to be Pre’s race, or one of them anyway, since he is the American record holder in both the 5,000 and the 10,000 (and the 2,000, and the 3,000, and at 2 miles and 3 miles and 6 miles). This is his home track, the oval where his legend formed the spiritual template for every American distance runner.
The year before, Prefontaine organized a professional meet here at Hayward Field for the country’s top runners. The meet was not sanctioned by the Amateur Athletic Union, which oversees track in the U.S. Anyone who participated risked his eligibility for the Olympic Games, which were still supposedly an amateur-only affair. The top runners are taking money under the table and have been for years, much of it from officials at the AAU and their counterparts overseas, who own and organize and profit from the track meets. Challenging the supremacy of the AAU, tearing down this exploitative and hypocritical system, was the whole point of this meet. It was Pre’s mission. That spirit of rebellion that drove him to run like a warrior now had him declaring war on the kingdom. He knew that being the best was basically a full-time job. Prefontaine couldn’t understand why after college, athletes in Olympic sports are essentially put out to pasture. No sports medicine, no camps, nothing. He didn’t want to be subsidized. He just wanted to earn his keep. “To hell with love of country,” he declared. “I compete for myself. People say I should be running for a gold medal for the old red, white and blue and all that bull, but it’s not going to be that way. I’m the one who has made all the sacrifices. Those are my American records, not the country’s.”
In that meet a year earlier, the Finnish star Lasse Virén was supposed to come for a 3.1-mile race against Pre, the competition’s featured event. But Virén pulled out with an injury, so Pre flew in his friend Frank Shorter to substitute. With Shorter pushing him, Pre came within 1.5 seconds of breaking his American record.
The night after the race, they attended a mellow party in the hills above Eugene for the athletes. When it got late, Shorter climbed into Pre’s MG convertible for a ride to Kenny Moore’s house, where he was spending the night. When they arrived, they spent a few extra minutes in the car, plotting the coming battle with the AAU. They were underdogs, and they knew that an underdog’s only viable strategy was to attack. They said good night and Pre drove off. Minutes later, he lost control of the MG and flipped it into the side of the mountain on Skyline Drive. He died instantly. The spot, which became hallowed ground in running circles, would forever be known as “Pre’s Rock.”
Now, a year later, Shorter is here again to run this U.S. trial 10,000, partly in honor of Pre. The reigning Olympic champion in the marathon won the U.S. trials at that distance the month before. Ed dropped out of that race after 21 miles, when he realized the leaders were too far ahead of him. It was his first marathon against world-class competition, and his lack of experience—and having a day that wasn’t quite right—doomed him. In dropping out before the end Ed was trying to save his energy for the 10,000.
Bill Rodgers—“Boston Billy” is how everyone knows him—is here, too. He has the face of a regal bird and runs like a deer. He came in second in the marathon trials to Shorter. A bronze medalist at the international cross country championships the previous year, he’s a proven beast at this distance. He juggles a running career while teaching special education at a suburban Boston middle school. Then there is Craig Virgin of Illinois, last year’s NCAA cross country champion, a nine-time All-American. And everyone knows Garry Bjorklund, the former Minnesota star who likely would have qualified in 1972 if not for an injured foot. He has come with something to prove.
On the start line, no longer wheezing, Ed reminds himself of what Larsen has always told him. Push the pace. Trust your training. Know you are the guy who wears out the field and wins races long before the home stretch. It’s a good plan, the only plan, only it doesn’t quite work when those four beasts run 4:30s for the first four miles. Ed stays with them into the fifth mile, but then he fades, not far but far enough. He watches with a
we as Bjorklund loses a shoe in the 14th lap, then, with one unshod foot, somehow musters the strength to make up a 30-meter gap between him and Rodgers and finishes third behind Shorter and Virgin. Ed plows home in fifth at 28:25, 20 seconds behind Rodgers.
He’s still heaving on the infield, feeling dizzy and sad, when Rodgers approaches. Keep yourself in shape Ed, Rodgers says, you’re going to Montreal. Ed has no idea what Boston Billy is talking about, but Rodgers keeps at it. Shorter is going to pull out of the 10,000 and focus on defending the marathon gold. Rodgers, the fourth-place finisher, says he’s going to turn down the alternate spot and concentrate on the marathon, too. That’s his best distance and best shot at a medal. That moves Ed to third. Stay in shape, Rodgers says. Stay in shape.
Ed takes it all in and returns to Arizona despondent. Focused on that fifth-place finish, he can’t believe anyone would ever drop out of an Olympic race. Each morning he thinks about taking a run, and then doesn’t. He’s not sure when he will run again, or at what distance, or if there is a point to it. He spent all spring tailing his Arizona teammate Terry Cotton on those runs at the edge through the Arizona desert and still came up short. Allergies, pollen, the emotions of Pre, and Hayward Field. The planets just weren’t aligned for him. Maybe they never will be.
And then, ten days after the Olympic Trials, the phone rings in his Tucson apartment. On the other end is Sam Bell, distance coach for the U.S. track team. Shorter is out. Rodgers doesn’t want the alternate spot. Ed is next on the list, just as Boston Billy told him he would be. The spot is his if he wants it. Bell has a question though. Have you been training, because if you have let yourself slip there are some other guys who finished behind you that have a little more experience at the international level.
Then it’s Ed’s turn to ask a question. “If they had so much experience, why didn’t they beat me?”
Point taken, Bell says. Now get your ass to the Olympic training camp in Plattsburgh, New York.
Ed hangs up the phone. Then he picks it up again. He wants to call Coach Bob to tell him the news. He puts the phone down again. He knows Larsen will ask him what he has been doing since the trials. It’s a question he doesn’t want to answer. Ten days without running is enough to let your fitness slip critically, especially if being prepared for the biggest track meet in the world is the goal.
Ed decides his fitness will not be an issue. Putting on a pair of sweats and a singlet that says “USA” will provide enough adrenaline to make up for any deficits in lung capacity. He will put in ten days of hard work at the camp. That should get him back to speed.
When he arrives at the track in Plattsburgh, he sees a familiar face. It’s Mihály Iglói, the Hungarian who was mentor to Coach Tábori at Los Angeles Valley College (the old Grossmont nemesis). Iglói is overseeing the distance team through its workouts. Ed knows that Larsen had studied Iglói and decided long ago that his methods were missing something crucial. Yet Iglói is the man in charge. Larsen is currently back in California, getting ready to watch the Olympics on television.
What would Coach Bob do with a week to go before the race of his life? Coach Bob would have him and the rest of the Toads hammering quarter-mile intervals at 65 seconds and lower, adding in leg speed to the base of endurance. Iglói is telling them to run laps at “60 percent,” then “70 percent,” then, every once in a while, “80 percent.” What does that mean anyway, Ed wonders? He’s just happy to be here though. And this guy is an Olympic coach, so he must know what he is doing. By the end of the week, Ed’s legs feel fresh. He loads onto a bus to head over the border to Montreal.
Ed marches in the Opening Ceremony, not quite believing he has really come as far as he has since those days roughly a decade ago when he believed he was slow. In the Olympic Village, at the dining hall, he gazes at the other athletes. The best of the best, all with one goal in mind. The same one he has. It’s the craziest thing. Yet he believes this is meant to be.
Halfway through his preliminary heat, he realizes it isn’t. Ed’s best time in a 5,000 is 13:55. When he passes the midpoint of this 10,000-meter race to get into the final he hears the race official yell “13:56.” These guys mean business, Ed thinks. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math. They’re going to run a little over 28 flat in a prelim, which is supposed to be slow and tactical. At the four-mile mark, Ed’s lungs seize up and he can’t hold the pace anymore. It isn’t about leg speed. It’s about oxygen debt. His cardio fitness just isn’t there. He finishes 10th in 29:02, 40 seconds out of a spot in the final. Always though, he is an Olympian.
A few nights later, Ed is at a party thrown by Nike for the track athletes. A young Nike executive named Geoff Hollister approaches him. Nike, the company formed by former Oregon runner Phil Knight and his old Oregon coach, Bill Bowerman, wants to embody the rebel spirit of Prefontaine. They are starting a running group called Athletics West. We’ll sponsor you, you won’t have to worry about making ends meet, Hollister says. Come to Oregon and run. Thanks, Ed tells him, but there is a problem. I can’t breathe in Oregon. Plus, there’s a job as a physical education teacher at a local elementary school waiting for him in Arizona. He’s going to squeeze some running in with that, kind of like Boston Billy.
Montreal wasn’t what he thought it would be. But the rest of his life awaits.
* * *
—
Watching Ed trudge through his heat in Montreal, Bob Larsen knew midway through the race it just wasn’t Ed’s day. He was laboring too hard to keep up. That smooth, easy, effortless stride wasn’t there. Disappointing, yes, but Larsen is a coach whose mind is always tuned to what’s next. It would have been nice to make the final, but he knew Ed was probably a few years away from contending for a medal, a medal that is most likely to come from the marathon. Also, he will always have the thrill of watching a kid he first coached when he was a seventeen-year-old boy, a boy who struggled with stress fractures from his toes to his knees, line up for a race in the Olympic Games. So many coaches out there. Only a precious few can say they developed an Olympian.
Larsen has one other thought after Ed runs in Montreal. Maybe this is the year.
Ed may not have been able to crack 29 minutes for 10,000 meters today, but three weeks ago he was flirting with the low 28s. Those times translate very nicely to a cross country race, where the thoroughbreds have to battle tree roots and divots and winding trails and hills and descents. Ed is also a little more than two months removed from all that training for the U.S. marathon trials. During the winter, just a few months before the trials, Ed dropped his marathon time to 2:14 at the Fiesta Bowl race. In Montreal, everyone else sees Ed struggling over the finish line in 10th place. Coach Bob sees a base of endurance that will set Ed up very nicely for races in the fall.
* * *
—
Now it’s time to take inventory of the rest of the Toads. Bob watches Dave Harper and Tom Lux finish 1-2 in the Balboa 8 in mid-August. Harper, even though he’s holding down a full-time job doing maintenance for the San Diego schools, has become one of Larsen’s most devout disciples. He’s at his house each weekend morning for those long runs. There are 10–15 of them hammering together now in a fast-moving clump, ready for what has become the favored route of the moment, Bob’s house to Mission Beach Bird Rock—about eighteen miles from the dry hills to the sea. Drivers on San Diego’s roadways wonder what the hell is going on. When the Toads arrive on the jagged coast of Bird Rock, named for a pelican-covered rock formation in the shape of a bird, just off the coast, Sue Larsen is always there, waiting with the van and that lemonade that keeps them coming back and wanting to get to the coast as quick as they can.
What is going on is America is catching the running bug. Regular folks with potbellies are buying shoes and taking to the roads. But the sight of twenty-five incredibly fast humans cruising west on San Diego’s big boulevards like they own the road makes drivers slam on the brakes and t
hink, who the hell are these dudes and what are they doing? It also makes many of them want to run. There’s been word of a coming running boom ever since Shorter won that gold medal in the marathon in Munich in 1972, then a silver* in Montreal this year. Maybe this is it.
Dave Harper has also been showing up in the afternoons to do workouts on the track with the Grossmont crew. He tries not to wonder what might have been had he found a way to work with Bob before heading out to Washington State. Tom Lux, meanwhile, is back from Oregon, back into the fold of the Toads, back doing whatever Coach Bob tells him to do. He’s as committed now as he was when he was at Grossmont, and so are the rest of the Toads. One weekend morning, leading the Toads through the final miles of a threshold run Lux sees a wallet lying on the ground. He doesn’t dare stop to pick it up. No one else does either—this training run isn’t a race but sure feels like it.
As the college season begins, Bob makes a mental note to keep an eye on what Terry Cotton is up to in Arizona. Terry is the wild card, always either masterful or hobbled, chatty or silent. Injuries sidelined him for much of the 1976 spring season. After doing his time with the Toads on some summer weekend jaunts, he’s been back at Arizona since August, and it’s anyone’s guess what kind of form he might be in. He’s not the sort that really keeps in touch.
Larsen’s first clue about Terry comes in late September, when he notices that he took second in a multi-team meet up at UCLA. Larsen knows the 6.2-mile course. It’s not the hardest, but also not the easiest, and Terry bangs it out in 31:04. Then in mid-October, Terry returns to San Diego with the rest of the Arizona team for the Aztec Invitational in Balboa Park. Coach Bob is there with his Toads. It’s a six-mile race, but Terry being Terry, he flies from the start and the race is basically over midway through. Terry breaks the tape in 29:02, crushing the course record, a half minute ahead of his Arizona teammate, another San Diegan, the freshman phenom Thom Hunt. Lux and Harper are fifth and sixth, some 45 seconds and a good 300 yards back of their training partner.
Running to the Edge Page 16