Marathon Man (20 page)

While all this was going on, I stood staring in awe at the framed photographs of famous runners hanging on the walls. Suddenly, I heard Jock's booming voice: “Hey, you over there. What do you want?”

“I met you at the Silver Lake Dodge race a couple of weeks ago,” I said sheepishly. “I got third, right behind Amby. You said that I could join your team, that I should come by and see you. You said—”

“I said ‘come right over,' didn't I?” Jock said, a glaring smile now stretched across his face.

“What?”

“I said ‘come right over,' not ‘wait three weeks.' Get on a table here. I'll move one of my men. Mickey, get up there, willya? This fella here ran third at Silver Lake Dodge. Climb on, lad. Let's see what legs you have attached to ya. I've been bettin' people you'll be the next Johnny Kelley.”

From that day on, I would occasionally stop by the Garden after a long run, at which time Jock would tell me to hop on the table and give me a rubdown, all the while regaling me with these amazing stories of the Boston Marathon. My appreciation of the race and the men who ran it over the years would grow with each visit.

As for the Silver Lake Dodge, my first real introduction to competitive road racing had taught me much. Whereas I was winging it the whole way, Amby had run a smart, deliberate race. He had been patient and methodical, mile after mile, quietly judging his strength against my strength. He had been careful not to strike too early. He was content to match me stride for stride for over an hour before making his move. I couldn't fathom ever being that patient—I was too impulsive, too reactive, too fiery.

Incredibly, Amby picked the perfect moment to test my resolve. He sensed it. If you think about it, that depth of awareness is amazing. But if you want to be a truly great road racer, you need to possess this talent. Incredible fitness is not enough. You need to be attuned to your surroundings. That means simultaneously mindful of the weather conditions, tapped into the emotional and physical state of your competition, and still hypertuned into your own body. It's hard to be that “in the moment” for more than a few seconds. Seeing up close how an experienced road racer like Amby could lock in to that mind-set for twenty miles was exhilarating.

On that cold winter day, running through small town after small town, I had unlocked another huge secret: I was a threat at long distances. After all, if I could run with Amby—the 1968 Boston Marathon winner—then I could run with anybody. I was excited to show everybody what I could do on the biggest stage in long-distance running. I wasn't thinking about winning the Boston Marathon. That was too much to dream. But what about a top-fifteen finish? Or even top-ten? Of course, to pull that off, I'd have to run a 2:20. Difficult, but not impossible. Not if I ran like I did here at Silver Lake. I was running close to a 2:20 pace, and Boston was practically the same course, only 6.2 miles longer.

The next day couldn't come quickly enough. And when it finally did, I knew exactly where I'd be. Blasting my way around Jamaica Pond. Gunning for the race of my life.

 

NINE

Nothing but Heartbreak

A
PRIL 21, 1975

L
OWER
N
EWTON
F
ALLS,
M
ASSACHUSETTS

Coming out of Wellesley, I encountered a great downhill that continued for almost half a mile. There's no descent like this in any major marathon. Not in Stockholm or Amsterdam or Berlin or London or Tokyo. Ask me why Boston is the most exhilarating long-distance road race, I would point to spots like this—a half-mile, hundred-foot drop into Newton Lower Falls! I looked at the steep descent as a gift. With little exertion, I let gravity pull me down the steep stretch of road. I flowed like a river.

I've always thought of this as the perfect place to attack. Here's where you can throw in a hard surge and see how the competition responds. Test their will, their determination, their endurance against yours. But I had nobody to test myself against. I was alone. Just me and the lead vehicle. On this day, I had already thrown in my surge—when I broke away from Drayton around mile 11. Surging is an emotional thing. There's someone next to you and you're feeling very competitive. One runner will surge and the other will surge back. It's like when boxers slug it out for a bit, but this is noncontact. Frank Shorter was great at throwing in surges to break his opponents. He could sense if a guy was struggling and throw in a 4:30 mile and that would destroy him. Surging can be a nasty business. Necessary but nasty.

I don't know if other runners attacked this downhill section before me. I don't know about how Clarence DeMar or Johnny Kelley ran this part, but I made a point of running hard here a number of times, probably because I trained on the course. I knew I could really move down the hills. For some people, flying down a sharp, hundred-foot descent meant potential disaster, but for me it meant I could push the envelope. This was a chance to chew up some miles before hitting the infamous Newton Hills. It was easier running, it cost me fewer calories, and required less work. Of course, the descent could be a real problem for the legs and the arms, almost similar to body shots in boxing, especially on a warm day when the muscles were working extrahard. That's why I disagree with people who say Boston isn't a legitimate record course—the constant stream of uphills and downhills put tremendous fatigue on your legs. I think the extreme elevation changes, not to mention the variety of weather conditions, make Boston the most difficult marathon course in the world. This marathon demands the most of top runners—physically
and
mentally. No question about it. Nowhere else is race
strategy
such a critical matter.

After reaching the bottom of the half-mile drop into Newton Lower Falls, I ran over a patch of flat road before starting up the first hill of Newton, a tough half-mile ascent that takes you along a long overpass that crosses Route 128. The climb over the highway is gradual, but its length, almost three quarters of a mile, causes some runners to consume more energy than their bodies can afford, especially with the really big hills straight ahead. But running in the lead was exhilarating. I had a feeling like, Nothing can stop me. This is it. I'm doing it right now. I'm going for it. It was very intense. The lead vehicle, a hundred yards ahead of me, gave me something to aim for. I was getting closer and closer. And no one was coming up on my heels.

The whole way I was keeping tabs on my effort level. I felt I was running at the right pace. I was extending myself, but it wasn't killing me to maintain my speed. Once I crested the hill, I let the wind push me down a nice downhill past the hospital. It was a great place to catch my breath. I was coming up on eighteen miles and felt the sense of “this is all that's left. I've already run a lot of the Boston marathon. I'm close to home.” The more you have that sense, the easier it is to race.

In 1909, a
Boston Globe
scribe wrote, “The long hard slopes in the distance have proved to be the undoing of many ambitious lads.” And it's true. Nobody gets to go through the Newton Hills without their body paying the toll fee. It's the classic line, “Anyone can run twenty miles. But can you go twenty-six?” Those hills make it especially true at Boston.

As I passed through Newton Hills, Jock Semple popped his head out of the back of the moving lead vehicle. He was wearing a fedora. He was very fired up. On marathon day, Jock went wild! The old competitive marathon blood heated up in him.

For years, Jock would come up alongside runners, wired as can be, hang out of the press bus, and scream out words of encouragement in his thick Scottish accent. In 1957, he leaped from the still-moving press bus at the Newton Lowers Falls to give Johnny Kelley a water-soaked sponge and oranges on his way to victory. In 1968, he caught up to Amby Burfoot as he was cresting Heartbreak Hill in the heat. “Give it hell down the hills!” he yelled to Amby, who was desperately trying to hold his lead. Amby later wrote, “Semple's blustery words renewed me.”

“Do you want me to take your gloves?” Jock shouted to me from the bus.

I shook my head no.

During all those miles I had run alone that winter, I ran with my mittens and would take them off and put them in my pockets, and then put them back on when my hands got cold. I suppose I was used to wearing something on my hands. Also, my brother Charlie had bought them for me, and I wasn't about to give them away to Jock.

Focusing on the lead vehicle kept me running steady and determined mile after mile. I was charging from the front. The crowd was on my side. They were cheering so loud for me. Everyone gets cheered at Boston, but the cheers aren't like that for eight hundredth place. People are looking for the winners. So it was a very powerful feeling, just a surge of energy.

I would be uninterested in a little race, way out in the country with no spectators. I may as well have been on a training run. It meant nothing to me. I needed to hear the crowd and be slugging it out with a rival as we matched each other footstep for footstep down the course. The more cheers, the better. I always responded to that. To some people it means nothing. Not me. It got me even more hyped up. I felt unbeatable.

As I run, I'm hyperattuned to my body so that I can hear what my powerful reptilian brain—which thinks in terms of physical survival—is telling me. The marathon race is a grueling test. I don't have the luxury to listen to my normal brain, scattered with thoughts and memories and wishes and perceptions. I need to be free of the clutter and chaos of my ADHD mind, but I also can't shut off my brain. How else will I know if I'm running too fast or too slow, if my muscles are exerting too much effort or not enough, if I'm breathing too deep or too shallow, if my arms are in the right position, if my gait is efficient?

I was running five-minute miles, pushing my body to the limit. It would be easy to check out for a mile or two, lose track of the essential real-time information being transmitted to me about my physical condition, to momentarily forget about strategy or the whereabouts of my competitors. But I know I'd be putting myself in danger the moment I crossed that line. I might miss warnings of impending trouble. I might make a critical error that could cost me the race. I might run at less than full capacity. That's unacceptable. If you have any chance of winning the Boston Marathon, you need to maximize your potential, not just some of the time, but all of the time. Not just every mile, but every stride.

I blasted down the road, I wasn't checking out the smiling, exhilarated faces in the crowds. I wasn't marveling at the raucous sideshow. No mantras. No metaphysical states. Just me running down the road in a state of calm, intense focus, my feet striking the ground at a steady tempo, my mind cleared of distracting chatter, where everything comes down to the race and dealing with the race.

I was acutely aware of how far I had come and how far I had to go. I didn't have a watch, but I had been so tapped into my pace, mile after mile, that I had a good idea of my current time. Not that I cared. At that moment, my mind was plunged deep into its mission—going for the win. It would have taken a Kenyan runner to beat me. I was fired up. Pure fun.

T
WO
Y
EARS
E
ARLIER

B
OSTON,
M
ASSACHUSETTS

The day after my twenty-mile assault on the Boston Marathon course in the Silver Lake race, I ran thirteen miles around Jamaica Pond. Actually, “ran” isn't the right word. “Very slowly trotted” is more like it. My legs ached. My muscles felt like steel cables. But nothing, not even electrified fences, was going to keep me from working out in the park. When you feel your soul starting to take flight, you don't trample on it. No. You see where it's going to take you.

The Silver Lake road race had revealed unexpected pleasures: the thrill of running in the lead, the excitement of being in contention, the exhilaration of dueling at high speed. I loved all of it. The pure rush of excitement I felt racing took me back to my childhood days chasing butterflies in the fields with big brother Charlie and Jason. Back before the war, the draft, the government obligations, the physical deterioration, the smoking in bars, the empty and lost and trapped feelings. Being in contention for the win, after three long years away from running, encouraged me to set my sights even higher. I hungered to explore the reaches of my potential. I committed myself to a single pursuit: the Boston Marathon. It was a chance to embark on a new adventure. I couldn't wait.

My first long-distance road race did more than spark a new passion, it also taught me some important lessons. I learned that while it was good to be an ambitious runner, acting on emotion alone spelled ruin on the roads. That quick bursts of adrenaline at the start might carry you for a few miles, but it zapped precious energy, opening you up to fatigue, the archenemy of all distance runners. Sooner or later, you will wilt. I observed firsthand that the methodical runner who uses every tool in his bag of tricks to lure his opponents into error wins the race. His body performs as efficiently at the end of the race as it did at the beginning. With his calm demeanor, his steady pace, and his relentless obedience to his plan, he can dismantle the more disorganized and impulsive runners. Like me.

I knew that if I wanted to compete against the world's best runners at the Boston Marathon, I needed to intensify my training over the next two months. For most runners, “intensify” means running harder and faster in workouts. I had a different definition. For me, it meant running twice a day, about twenty miles total, but at a slow and easy pace, around seven minutes per mile. I didn't do speed work, which at the time was considered an essential part of any elite marathon runner's training routine.