Marathon Man (43 page)

Back when I broke through in 1975, race directors were offering me a ticket, a hotel room, and a small per diem fee. By 1979, I was getting as much as $20,000 for a marathon, and $3,000 to $10,000 to show up for a road race. I had done what I had set out to do—become the first professional road racer. I hoped my efforts would benefit the next wave of runners to come after me—that promising American talents like Alberto Salazar would finally have the necessary resources to compete with the top foreign runners from around the world, and to fulfill their true potential.

Perhaps when Steve Prefontaine handed off to me those racing shoes a week before the Boston Marathon, and a month before his fatal car accident at the age of twenty-four, he was really handing off to me his fight for amateur athletes everywhere to be treated fairly. I hope he would be happy looking down from heaven, knowing that his spirit of rebellion against the tyrants of our sport lived on with me, and that today American runners have the freedom to earn a living through the kind of tireless, passionate effort on the track that made Prefontaine the most electrifying runner of his age.

I used the success of my clothing line to sponsor other athletes. After getting a grant from the AAU, I split it up into smaller pieces, paying emerging U.S. track stars like Benji Durden to wear our athletic gear. Throughout my life, I was lucky to encounter a host of teachers—Frank O'Rourke, Amby Burfoot, Jock Semple, Coach Billy Squires—who trained and inspired me in the craft of distance running. Now that I was an older, more experienced runner, I felt it was my duty to help the up-and-comers as much as possible, whether it was on or off the track. I would take young runners out on the Boston course and run with them, pointing out critical areas, answering questions, and offering strategic advice.

In the early eighties, I was committing myself to run thirty to thirty-five road races a year, which was too much, especially with the draining demands on my time in the public eye. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would start to lose my edge. A group of hungry young lions, including Alberto Salazar, Craig Virgin, Herb Lindsay, and even my own employee Greg Meyer, stormed the gates.

I did my best to hold off the youngsters. Eventually, it was impossible to keep them at bay. They were training harder. They were in better shape. They had that intense devotion and willpower that the marathon demanded. Five years earlier, Shorter had opened a crack in the door for me to take over the top spot. Now it was my turn to do the same.

It was frustrating to feel like my career was on the downside. But, at the same time, my life was changing. My first child, Elise, was born in 1985. She was more important to me than racing.

As Shorter and I aged, we both started to mellow. Winning marathons was no longer the be-all, end-all. We both had kids. Our kids became the be-all and end-all. We both got married and divorced. We both went through tough times with our businesses. We both dealt with the health issues that come with aging. So, we both thought, Okay, I can understand where he's coming from. We realized that we were alike in a lot of ways. These days, we get along very well; we have for years. I'm a big supporter of Frank's. I saw him at the Olympic trials; it was great to see him be recognized for his golden performance in 1972, which set me on the road to my destiny.

Shorter and I have more hard-racing miles on our bodies than anyone in American history. I'm pretty sure of that. So, we both can relate to each other on that level, too. I estimate that I have around 165,000 miles of wear and tear on my body. I'm sure that Shorter has a similar number of miles on him. For people to expect us to race hard now is absurd to us. But some people do. People who do not understand—new runners—will come up to us and say, “Frank, you won a gold and silver.” Or “Billy, you won Boston and New York four times each. Why aren't you winning races in your age group now?” They have no idea.

Only he and I know the physical and mental toll of running that many hard races over several years. At some point, I'd run sixty competitive marathons. Frank has run fewer, but he's still done a lot of hard races. He started his marathon career when he was around twenty-two years old; I started at twenty-five. We both competed into our forties. We both have marathon wins on four continents. That's a lot of hard racing, just the marathon alone. That doesn't count the road racing—twenty-five races a year—or the track races, or the cross-country races. We had been going a long time.

Shorter and I know we are lucky to have come of age as marathoners during the running boom of the 1970s. While I know running is going to be a huge sport for a long time to come, there's never going to be a period quite like the one we lived through. We were at the birth of something extraordinary, when the first flowers came up through the spring soil.

For five or six years, a small group of us shared a crazy excitement for the sport. Watching the rest of the world suddenly catch on to the wonder of distance running was an overwhelming experience. The best part is that the Boston Marathon goes on and on. The New York City Marathon goes on and on. And all the people who were part of the circle of my life during that golden time, they are a part of the circle of my life now.

Back in college, when I followed Amby along the trails around campus, I never imagined in my wildest dreams I would race marathons on five continents or that there would be a Bill Rodgers Running Center or that I would get invited to the White House. But that's life. That's the marathon. At first, it's this unimaginable thing. Like climbing Everest. The journey is hard, and riddled with setbacks, but it can be conquered. The unimaginable becomes the imaginable. The impossible dream becomes just the dream. The important thing to remember is that the quest to win a marathon, or even to finish a marathon, starts where all great quests are born—within the heart. That's where it started for me.

The heart is always the true starting line.

 

EPILOGUE

Still Chasing Butterflies

Patriots' Day. April 21, 1980. As I broke the tape to cross the finish line, I held up four fingers, signifying the fact that I had matched Gérard Coté's four laurel wreaths, leaving only the great Clarence DeMar with his seven victories. I also joined DeMar as the only other man to win Boston three straight times—he did it from 1922 to '24 and I did it from 1978 to '80. Kenyans Cosmas Ndeti and Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot would match this feat many years later. I was delirious with exhaustion and joy. My ears were ringing. I couldn't hear a thing. I felt like I was in a dream. I awoke from this dream to suddenly find my marriage crumbling.

Ellen and I had been best friends for seven years, married for five. Our divorce was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me. Maybe it still is.

Gail and I married in 1983. Two years later, we had our first daughter, Elise. In 1990, we had our second daughter, Erika. Those first weeks as a new parent are exhausting, bewildering, and the most exciting, happiest time of your life. I loved being a dad; I still do. I absolutely love it. I adore my daughters. They are the best part of life. Winning a major marathon or building a thriving business—none of those things meant anything, relatively speaking, compared to my children. They are my world.

Going through my two divorces was much tougher than all the marathons I raced put together. The pain of a marathon lasts no more than two hours, the pain of a divorce lasts for years. It's part of your life forever, and that's hard. But you deal with it. Ellen and I had a lot of good times. We were a young couple trying to make our way in the world, and I wouldn't trade the wild, exciting times we had together for anything. I loved Gail, too. We had a long, beautiful relationship. We brought up two bright, lovely, amazing daughters. For this, I'm eternally grateful.

One of the reasons I was able to win road races and marathons for a long while was that, unlike many other long-distance runners, I had a knack for avoiding injuries. For fifteen years, when I was training for marathons at my peak, I never missed more than two consecutive days of running. But in 2003, the day after competing in the Falmouth Road Race, I was on an eight-mile training run when I heard my right tibia snap. I instantly collapsed on the side of the road. I sat on the ground, drenched in sweat, wincing in pain, my thumb in the air. Finally, a teenager came by in his Jeep and gave me a lift.

I didn't sit around too many days asking myself, What if this is it? What if I can't run anymore? My personality is just to keep going—it's that marathoner's personality; no matter what, just try to keep going. Almost immediately, I started to rehab the leg. I always liked the comeback period—it was a quest.

Eventually, I recovered to the point where I was able to attempt my first long run—a fifteen-miler. A friend of mine went with me. We planned to run 8:15 minute miles but once I got out there I started pushing harder. That's just what runners like us do. We can't help it. Suddenly, I was flying along at a sub-eight-minute-mile pace and enjoying that feeling of movement that had been with me since I was a kid. The beautiful part is that there is no age limit on running. The beautiful part of life is there is no age limit on fun.

Four years later, in 2007, I was in Barbados to promote a local race series and run in the 10K. I was down by the pool with a couple of friends, drinking rum and Cokes and having a blast. When I got back to my hotel room, the phone rang. A doctor from Massachusetts General was on the other end. He told me my blood test results were in. I had prostate cancer.

The doctor recommended surgery for the following month. It was a bolt out of the blue. I was in a state of shock. I said, “What? I haven't been in a hospital for surgery since I was ten years old and I had my appendix removed.” The doctor told me I needed surgery for the following month. First things first, and I ran the 10K.

Now my thought was, Well, do I have bone cancer? Am I going to be dead in three years? And what does prostate cancer mean? And how serious is this cancer? Cancer is cancer. I was nervous as hell. I wanted to know, after surgery, how quickly I could get back to running. That was the biggest question I had. What was the comeback procedure? If I absolutely could not run anymore, I think I'd be like Clarence DeMar, who, when he was in the hospital, dying with cancer, was running around in the hospital. Or I would be like my uncle, the one who had a heart attack and was literally running around the hospital, yelling, “Get me out of here!” I have a lot of energy. I need to use it up. It's in my DNA.

I had the surgery a month later. A blood test in early June showed no signs of cancer. After that, I set my sights on raising awareness and money for prostate cancer research the only way I knew how—through running. I announced that for the first time in ten years, at the age of sixty-one, I would be running the Boston Marathon to promote prostate cancer awareness.

The last time I had run Boston, back in 1999, I was shooting for my age-group record. It was a hot day. I ended up hitting the wall. I felt light-headed and dizzy. I dropped out at Heartbreak Hill. A replay of my first Boston—only twenty-six years later. It wasn't how I wanted to go out.

The year I ran for cancer I was shot after fourteen miles. I knew I couldn't drop out. There were too many people cheering me on. Too many friends. Too much family. The people running next to me kept me going. If you run with friends, you can always make it. My brother, Charlie, and friend Jason, until his passing this year, have been running alongside me my whole life. I know that's what carried me through to the finish line.

I crossed the finish line in a time of a 4:06:49. Only two hours off my American record time in 1975. But time had never mattered to me before, and it didn't matter to me now. I'd run for something larger than myself. That's what mattered. In a way, it was the most fantastic marathon I'd ever run.

I had discovered that I could come back from a broken bone. I could come back from prostate cancer. Maybe I wasn't the same runner I was before those two incidents, but I still loved the sport as much as ever. When I was younger, I hated to lose any race, particularly a marathon. I don't think like that anymore. Life changes and you get older. Running changes as you get older. You have to adapt. The competitive part fades, but the camaraderie side of the sport grows, and that's a wonderful thing. I love how running for charity has fueled a boom in marathoning. My girlfriend, Karen, participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure the other day. I run races for prostate cancer awareness. When runners come together as a group, it's amazing the great things that get accomplished.

I've always believed running can be one of the most powerful ways to promote goodwill and tolerance throughout the world. Maybe it's because no man can stand above another when they run. We are all equals on the roads. We are all one people. We are all just kids chasing butterflies.

I'm happy these days going on runs with Karen. She's a good runner; she keeps me on my toes. We run together on the trails in the woods behind our house. Sometimes we'll circle around Walden Pond. We're always looking for wildlife. My mind grows peaceful as I pass by the dew-soaked trees shimmering in the morning sun under a sky of blue.

The other day we were running by this beautiful river and came upon some wild swans gliding together across the water. I moved right along with them. Or as Amby used to say, I was flowing. It was a good run.

 

Further Reading

C
ONNELLY,
M
ICHAEL.
26 Miles to Boston: The Boston Marathon Experience from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2003.

D
ERDERIAN,
T
OM.
Boston Marathon: The History of the World's Premier Running Event.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1994.

M
URAKAMI,
H
ARUKI.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
New York, NY: Knopf, 2008.