Marathon Man (5 page)

Every afternoon in high school, Coach O'Rourke put us through vigorous calisthenics—push-ups, sit-ups, jumping rope—followed by interval training, a mix of high-intensity speed work and light jogging. We were expected to run as fast as the sprinters. He didn't make us chase chickens like Rocky's pugnacious coach Mickey Goldmill, but he did have a similar loud, gravelly voice that cut through our boyhood chatter faster than a blade. Also like Mickey, he never ran with us. Instead, he'd yell out splits in his gruff but encouraging way.

Coach worked us hard, at least harder than any track coach thought of training his team of runners in 1963. But he also infected us with his passion for running. He managed to get more out of me than anybody else had my entire life. I was the type of kid who was always making excuses not to run—too cold, too rainy, not feeling well, stomach issues. But I liked Coach O'Rourke and was willing to work hard for him. He showed interest in me. When you're young, you're looking for somebody who believes in you.

Our views did occasionally clash, however. I remember Charlie, Jason, and I started wearing our hair longer in high school. This drove Coach crazy. As Charlie would say, “It was a little too long for a good Spartan organization like the Newington track team.” One day, O'Rourke decided to set us straight. He gathered us in his office and ordered us to cut our mangy mops. Jason pointed out to him that Tom O'Hara, an American kid, had broken the world indoor record in the mile in 1964 in Chicago. And he had long hair. “Long red hair!” I interjected. After that, Coach O'Rourke never bothered us again about our locks.

When I arrived on the Wesleyan campus, I carried with me Coach O'Rourke's views on running. Workouts should be tightly scripted. They should leave you exhausted and drenched in sweat. Beating people on the track over a distance of one or two miles is what mattered. But then something happened. Amby took me under his wing.

As I copied his easy and relaxed strides on our long runs, I began to discover what he already knew. Training need not be an all-or-nothing battle, involving punishing track practice, grueling calisthenics, and wrenching interval sessions every afternoon. It could be a fun and easy cruise through the gorgeous New England countryside. It could be an act of freedom by which I could step outside myself and my racing mind. A long run in nature could even be a way to connect my physical body with the unseen spirit of the universe. As much as I enjoyed my German literature class, that's not something that ever happened during a lecture.

Amby and Jeff never crushed us during our team's daily training runs, which they could easily have done. Instead, we always moved together through campus as a cohesive unit. Many of the top runners on the teams we faced had an aggressive, macho, cutthroat attitude. Which isn't to say that Amby and Jeff were not tough competitors, because they would go out there and annihilate you in a race. But generally speaking, Amby and Jeff had a far different perspective on running than most people in those days. They saw it as a fun thing to do. It was relaxing. It was social. It was a lifestyle.

From months of following Amby on his training run, I had slowly built up my mileage. He worked me up to the stage where I was running seventy-five miles a week. I was dedicated to a point, but nothing like him. I did the required workouts with the team, but I would sleep in on the weekends and miss runs, unless Amby woke me up and pulled me out of bed. I was a freshman in college in 1967—I was interested in exploring the social aspects of college life. I'd go out on the weekends and party. I started drinking alcohol for the first time as a freshman. I wasn't a big drinker in college. I only remember getting drunk once—as a freshman. I threw up.

I was enjoying all these new experiences (well, maybe not that last one). On the weekends, I would go with my friends to dances, maybe drink a few gin and tonics, smoke a few cigarettes. Nothing crazy. Normal college stuff. I liked my new social life and had no intention of curtailing the fun in an effort to excel as a runner. Why would I?

The rest of the week I focused on my academics, which I found to be much more demanding than they were in high school. I was never in danger of flunking, but I was at the bottom of my class. Jeff was the kind of generous person who would help me with my homework when I got behind, which was often. As I grappled with the demands of working part-time in the cafeteria and my tough coursework, my attitude toward running changed. While I was still motivated to do well in my dual meets, the main reason I ran was because it was a fun thing to do, and it relieved the stress that came from balancing a strenuous academic workload with a part-time job.

Running mile after mile along the tree-lined roads near campus with Amby was great. I knew I couldn't beat him—I never thought I could—but I'd try and stay with him. By just looking at Amby, you might not think he was a strong person, but I knew from running, side by side with him, just how incredibly fit he'd become. Sure, he looked like he was running on stilts, but he had developed terrific strength in his upper body and core. There was not a single imbalance in Amby's movements. His posture bordered on robotic. He was a machine.

The thing about Amby, he didn't have a lot of genetic inborn speed, meaning that at a hundred meters he was nothing special, but he had built up great cardiovascular strength from all the training he did. Amby didn't get tired. At least, I don't remember ever seeing him get tired. Most importantly, he had built up a psychological strength. The marathon is in the mind. Just because you can run eight or ten or even twenty miles at high speed doesn't mean you can do it over a full marathon. What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. Maybe not in all cases—you need some natural talent to run a four-minute mile. But the marathon has a lot to do with willpower. You might not have thought it, looking at his Tin Man frame and nerdy glasses, but inside, Amby was tough as hell.

He reminded me of a modern-day Abebe Bikila, who'd begun running as a sheepherder's son in the remote mountainous village of Jato, Ethiopia. Years later, he stunned the world when he won the 1960 Rome Olympic marathon running barefoot, becoming the first black African to win a gold medal. He then broke the world record at the Mexican games before a car accident left him in a wheelchair. Both of us completely idolized this foreign athlete who we didn't even know. We always called him by his nickname, Abebe the Lionhearted.

Amby had the same tall, rail-thin frame as Bikila. But it was his solitary running life on campus that echoed the qualities of the Ethiopian champion—the stoic detachment, the fierce pride. Bikila's running coach once said, “Abebe was made by Abebe, not by me or anyone else.” Over many New England seasons, I had watched as Amby had made Amby. Herein lies the true power of running: With every mile you run, with every stride you take, you do more than reshape your body—you reshape your destiny. It would be a long time before I came to understand that myself.

Amby thought I showed real promise as a runner, which is why he was a little disappointed with my lackadaisical, half-assed approach to the sport. In Amby's world, I was a party boy. He would never chastise me, or pressure me to put forth more effort than I was willing, but he would always say things like, “You'd be a good runner if you ever became serious about it,” or “Hey, Rodgers, you still drinking a bottle of gin tonight?” I didn't think there was anything wrong with my carefree lifestyle, or my lax attitude toward running. I was in college!

Amby was always trying to get me to go out with him on ten-to-fifteen-mile runs on the weekend. Once, during my freshman year, Amby managed to convince me to go with him on a fifteen-miler. It was my first long run (unless you count that fluky twelve-miler that made the local news). Here's what I recall: We ran at a nice, easy pace. Amby always set a moderate pace for himself, between six and a half and seven-minute miles, and I stayed with him for over an hour, but then my legs locked up on the fifteenth and I had to walk the final mile. So this is what it felt like to go beyond myself. Interesting.

As I mentioned, Amby would wake up every Sunday morning and run twenty-five miles as part of his preparation for the Boston Marathon. Amby knew there was zero chance of dragging me out of bed early on a Sunday morning, especially not after I'd been out partying late the night before. I needed some time to recover from my hangover before even beginning to consider lacing up my running shoes. So we struck a compromise. Amby would wake up before me and run the first ten miles on his own and then I would join him for the final ten miles. Call it the Burfoot–Rodgers Running Accord.

Amby would say to me, “Bill, I'm going to be on campus at ten, so why don't you meet me out in the middle of the football field or on the track around the football field.” I would be waiting there and, sure enough, at ten o'clock to the minute, I'd see a tall, angular figure striding stiffly toward me. Amby was like clockwork. Blew my mind.

Amby had mapped out our course just as precisely as he had mapped out everything else in his life, from the moment he woke up at 6:30 a.m. to the time his head hit the pillow at exactly 9:30 p.m. Amby's actions were never without purpose. Even inviting me to join him on his training runs was about more than giving me a gentle nudge to grow up. Running with a partner helps you run faster and maintain focus. It also kicks boredom. In that way, I was a big help to Amby. Also, since I hadn't already run ten miles, I was fresh and could push Amby a little bit on the last half. If he had been out there by himself, he might have started sagging.

After leaving campus, we ran three or four miles uphill along Route 66, a country road without much car traffic. We ran at a good clip, tackling some serious hills, hilly enough that there was a small ski slope nearby. On the way back we would sneak off the road and run along wooded trails for a couple of miles. I loved following Amby through the winding and rugged dirt path, the sound of our footsteps trampling leaves and small branches. I loved the challenge. I would think:
Can I do this? Can I stay with him?
I wasn't afraid of pushing myself too far. It was fun.

Of course, our heads couldn't have been in more different places. The lanky figure running next to me was focused on being the first American in a decade to win the Boston Marathon. He was aiming to compete against the world's best marathon runners. I was aiming for my next college dual meet. His competition would be the mighty Finns, the fanatical Japanese, the world-class Mexicans; mine would be a kid named John Vitale from the University of Connecticut.

We would talk the whole way on our runs.

“How was your trip home?” I asked.

“Great. I went on some long runs through the countryside with Johnny. We ran hours through these amazing Indian trails near Mystic. After that, we went back to his place. We sat in the living room and chatted over tea and cookies. Well, actually, he talked; I listened. He's a wild guy to listen to … one of these great old Irish storytellers. He talks about Thoreau and Vonnegut and quotes Dylan lyrics. He talks about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He talks about finding one's own place in the universe, even if it puts you at odds with the rest of society. He's just the best guy ever.”

As fate would have it, Amby attended the Fitch High School in Groton, Connecticut, where his track coach was Young Johnny J. Kelley, who in 1957 became the first American to win the Boston Marathon since John A. “the Elder” Kelley, no relation, in 1945. The younger Kelley was a Running God in the fifties and not just in Boston, which was his home for a while, but around the world. He ran on two American Olympic teams and won eight consecutive national marathon titles at Yonkers, New York. Many consider him the first modern American road runner.

As the years passed, however, Kelley's great accomplishments faded in people's memory. Meanwhile, the one-mile race had become a national obsession, thanks to running sensation Jim Ryun, who in 1964 became the first high school runner to break the four-minute mile. As for the great American marathoners of yesteryear—seven-time Boston Marathon champion Clarence DeMar, John “the Elder” Kelley, Young Johnny Kelley—by 1968 they were all but forgotten. When no American came along to duplicate their success, the marathon went from having little visibility around the country to practically none. For the next decade, the Europeans and the Japanese would dominate the Boston Marathon. It looked like an American might never win there again.

Amby's father had died in a car accident early in his life, and in high school, Johnny Kelley became something of a second father to him. And just as John “the Elder” Kelley had taken a sixteen-year-old Johnny Kelley to his first local road race, Johnny Kelley introduced young Amby into the secret and sacred world of New England long-distance running. In Amby, he found an eager pupil to lead on long runs through the countryside. Together, the tiny, gregarious Irish teacher and his tall, shy, Germanic student would traverse hilly pastures, splash through streams, and bound over rough old Indian trails, the locations of which were known by Kelley alone. Through his mentor, Amby became part of a tradition of rebellious New England road warriors who went back to that original long-distance racer, Paul Revere. And now he was taking the wisdom he had learned from the older runners who lived around the area—Johnny Kelley; Norm Higgins was another—and passing it down to me.

“How was your weekend?” Amby asked, the conversation moving as leisurely as our strides.

“Jason and some other friends came up to visit. We played some poker.”

“Drank some beers,” Amby added.

“Yeah, we might have had a couple,” I said with a shrug.

“Sure. Just a couple,” Amby replied with a dead-pan grin. “So, you thought about this summer?”

“What do you mean?”

“You should run five miles a day. If you do that, you'll come back in the fall, guns blazing in cross-country.”