Month: July 2016

One post, 4 months ago, 0 comments 0 views. Starting slow.

I started slow as a runner, and it took me a few years to get my feet and a few more to do it with any consistency. And one of the things that helped me get there was learning to start out slowly and to work into a pace, not like a rabbit.

I’m not sure where to take this blog.

Being 2016 and an Olympic year, I thought it would be fun start blogging again, and to relive some things, while also thinking about the present and future of the sport (larger scale, and small scale how I relate). Been running for a long, long time, since the 1970s, still at it and I still enjoy racing although at lesser capacity compared to 30 years ago.

Let’s Jog! The 1960s

It has been well documented by other far more articulate sources on the obscure beginnings of the running movement. In my family our dad was the first runner, he took the Dr. Kenneth Cooper aerobics recommendations seriously, and in the 1960s he started to take the dog(s) out for a couple miles about three times a week. Dad was pretty athletic, loved to move and push himself, but he wasn’t built like your classic runner. More like a high school or JV college linebacker or small lineman. He wasn’t super quick, but he kept fit throughout his life, and he was very strong. Every run for Dad was a progression or tempo run. He’d start out at mid-7 min pace and do about 2 miles at that effort, and on his return, when he got a half mile from the house, he’d pick it up, so by the end he was running close to a sprint, head back and rolling bit, sweating profusely and breathing like a choo-choo train.

I tried running with him once, when I was about 8 or 9. I had no idea about pacing and took off at a dead sprint on the downhill street near our house. Dad sped up as well, and maybe he was even surprised. He didn’t say much. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, a quarter mile from the house I was gassed. But kept jogging with him for a couple hundred yards, and he might have said something about not going so fast at first before he continued ahead. I was familiar with the route and walked more than jogged the dirt roads and a little bit of prairie trail over a broken down bridge made of railroad ties. One of my first bouts of exercise-induced-asthma.

In elementary school I dabbled with running in gym class, and had a knack for stealing bases in Little League for a couple of years. And about 5th grade I made some new friends who liked to sprint and jump at the all schools city track meet held every spring, so I worked hard to run the 50 yard dash and make a relay team. That spring I clocked a 7.2 for the 50 yard dash during gym (but that was a flyer because my next best time was 7.4 or 7.5), but I think my gym teacher might have given me a couple tenths, because no one ran more reps than me. But anyway, that went on the record for my Presidential Fitness test, and it was in the to 10% for my age and weight. I didn’t fare so well in the 600 yard run walk, and my time was well over 2 minutes. Maybe high 2:20s. So I wasn’t a distance runner.

After the school year we’d watch AAU meets on TV. And we’d see the likes of Jim Ryan, Jim Hines, or Wyomia Tyus run against the best in the USA and world and then we’d go to the track and try to emulate them.

Sixth grade all my track friends had moved on, I grew a bit, and got a little faster. Fast enough to make the “Baton Relay” the school’s A team. I was 4th man and the other guys were all faster (all three went on to be starting football players and track athletes in high school). I ran about 6.9, again on a flyer in gym, but was consistently 7.0 or 7.1 for the 50, and my 600 time improved a little to about 2:00 or 2:10.

Hello Darkness, The Early 1970s

By junior high we were into the 1970s, and track kind of fell off the radar.I stopped watching the summer meets on TV and my friends weren’t around to go to the track. The issues to follow more about Kent State and Vietnam, and Woodstock and Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. There were no track or running programs for kids in those days, and no distance running mentors that I knew of. You’d see high school and college runners from time to time, and the infrequent middle aged jogger like my dad.

I did give track a try as a 7th grader, but I hadn’t grown much taller from the previous year, under an inch. Still under 5 feet at 13, but I’d put on an extra 8 or 10 lbs. We didn’t do the 50 yard for the track team (but I did run about 6.8 for the 50 in the Presidential Test, and right around 2:00 for the 600 yard dash). As bigger kids, we did 100 yard dash, 220, and 440. I ran the 100, 220, and 4X100 relay, and pole vaulted. I avoided running workouts, like repeat 220s, and the longest I’d run would be about a half mile for the team warm up. Our team was very weak. We’d go against farm kids from outlying towns and they’d run circles around us.  I did score a couple points here and there in the field events and maybe a on relay or two.

By 8th grade we found out that our school was closing, and they cut out all sports except basketball. I played on the B team. By the end of the year, I’d grown an inch more but was still at 5 feet or a hair under. But I’d put on another 5 or 10 pounds after basketball. Maybe 5 foot and 100 to 105 pounds. My 50 time was about 6.7 or 6.8 again and I might have cracked 2:00 for the 600. I did continue pole vaulting a little. We nabbed a couple poles from our school, and did some backyard Olympics. That was until my friend Chris, a really good athlete, slipped out on his pole plant and shattered his arm.

I went to Europe that summer, and grew and inch, finally over 5 feet at the start of freshman year! But didn’t exercise much and put another few pounds. This would be the fattest year of my life. I was at a new school and hated it. It was much bigger than our old school, the students were just different–some very prim and proper, some pretty rough–and the administrators as well as a good portion of the teachers were mean. It was my year of hell, when I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a rock musician, nor cool enough to be friends with the up and coming Hendrix’s and Edgar Winter’s.

Nevertheless, I was inspired by the 1972 Olympics. The American breakout races by Frank Shorter and Dave Wottle, the fantastic 5K and 10K performances by Lasse Viren and the agonizing defeat of Jim Ryun in the 1500, but triumph by another Finn Pekka Vasala, and Kip Keino’s last appearance in the Olympics.

I did no organized sports that year, but a few times did get into some things that I shouldn’t have. Most of school was not interesting, but I did put in an effort in Spanish and science so I at least got Bs in those classes. In the spring we did the Presidential Fitness test again, and I ran about 6.6 for the 50 and somewhere 1:50 for the 600. By the time we finished the year, I so hated that place and my young life. My track friends were long gone, and I had parted ways with the rock and rollers.

But we did a little more pole vaulting, and I chipped in with a neighbor friend to buy an entry-level fiberglass vaulting pole from a sports supply catalog, and then built our own pit with a van load of foam rubber that was stuffed it all into oversized burlap bags.

I even jogged a few miles a few times that spring to improve my conditioning, and recall openly saying that I might even go out for cross country the next fall at my new high school. “Ha! You’re too fat!” blurted out my friend’s older brother. Shamed. I dropped the idea. I was 15 and 5’3″ and 115 pounds. And for the rest of the summer I was the short, undeveloped, fat kid.  Butt of more than a few jokes every week from friends who, looking back, weren’t much of friends at all.

At our first high school assembly, at yet even a larger school, the coaches tried to recruit more kids onto the cross country team, “Hey if you are going to compete in The Valley Conference [for other spots], you are going to have to be in shape!” My 600 times were pretty weak, I felt chunky, and I’d had asthma since the age of 5, so no.

The discomfort of the of the previous year’s schooling had worn off some by mid year. The new high school was much better than the one across town. But I wasn’t really mixing in with the students. Some had been friends in year’s past–even a couple old track friends from elementary who were a year older–but we no longer seemed to have much in common. Sophomore year was a stint in social purgatory.

Meanwhile, I was starting to deal with anxiety, something I had not experienced much of before.  Issues that resulted from some experiences on the European trip, combined with the bad decisions I had made freshman year, bubbled into bouts of tension and confusion and fear. I was afraid of new things and decided that I didn’t like to travel more than an hour or so away from home anymore. The thought of an overnighter out of state, or a cross country road trip sent me into days of panic. And I wouldn’t go. I skipped Christmas and spring break ski trips and stayed home.

In school, however, I turned the corner. That year I started studying more and doing better in all of my classes. All of my friends and acquaintances were planning college (none of the rock and rollers were headed that way), and while my parents had expected that of our family, my sibs were languishing and staying at home with no direction. I also started to grow a bit more, and lose a little bit of weight.

Winter of my sophomore year, I was 5’4″ and 108-110 pounds. I decided to go out for track. Being the smallest guy on the team I was pretty tentative and didn’t have much confidence in my running ability (not fast enough for sprints and not enough natural endurance to be a distance runner), so I stuck to field events and focused on the pole vault and long jump. The vault coach also coached middle distances and he encouraged me to try the 880 or mile. But my friends, or the ones I tried to hang with, were cool and they didn’t like the coach nor his son who vaulted and ran the 880. That, and I just didn’t like to run much. I did a few extra runs during spring break, but other than the team warm up half mile before practice  and short cool  down afterwards, I skipped out of interval or sprint sessions. Blatantly hiding out in the pole vault pit or skipping over to long jumping when the coaches asked the vaulters to do some repeat 220s.

I cleared about 9′ 6″ in practice and did 16′ 3″ in the long jump that year. But about mid-season, on the day that I’d had my best vault in practice, I hyperventilated or something and landed in the pit feeling like I’d guzzled a few beers or been doped with some drug. I was light headed, dizzy, numb feeling. And it didn’t go away in a few minutes, it lingered for hours. Basically, I didn’t know how to handle the adrenalin rush. So that odd experienced added to my anxiety. I made it through the season, but skipped a few meets, including the opportunity to jump in the conference meet for the sophomore squad. I just couldn’t bring myself to go to that meet and face the lightheadedness and internally induced disorientation.

I ended the season on a rainy Saturday hidden in my room, and not doing a much for the rest of the day, while my team traveled to a city a couple hours away and competed. The coach was nice, said nice things about all of us at the end of year awards, and while I didn’t earn a letter, I did get a set of “sophomore numerals” that could be put on a letter jacket or a bulletin board. They were pined to my wall with thumb tacks for years.

 Next: Young America, The Mid 1970s

 Photo, all these years later running a 10 miler in the 2010s!