Memoir 14: Road racing

Not me, but I have felt this way from time to time

I spent a good part of my fifth decade training for and running road races.  Elsewhere I have written that the only athletic activities that I could have hoped to excel in were those that took lots of effort and training; no actual talent required.  Where distance racing is concerned, it is possible to become fairly proficient by prolonged, herculean effort – even if you have short legs and thick bones.  You will note that all the men winning important marathon races these days are about six feet tall weigh about 85 pounds – and hail from the oxygen-deprived highlands of East Africa.  I was 5 ft. 8, weighed about 150 pounds, had short legs, heavy bones, and did my training at sea level in the misty  climate of NW Washington.   This is not offered as an excuse, merely a fact.  I am rather proud of my running career, considering my lack of hereditary advantages.

I stumbled into road racing through Bob Keller (he of my mountain adventures).  Up to the mid-1970s I got my exercise playing tennis.  I really loved that game – but I had to stop playing, owing to a chronically painful back.  To keep from getting fat, I took up jogging on the track at Western Washington University.  Bob sometimes ran there as well.  After a month or so I got so I could run a few miles without stopping to rest.  Somehow, Bob had learned of a short road race to be held on nearby Lummi Island – a fund-raiser for their library, I believe.  He suggested we both enter (I think he wanted me to drive.)  We did, paid our ten dollars (and got a T-shirt!), and did our best.  I was happy just to finish (I think it was about four miles), and it seemed like half the island’s population beat me.  But, wonder of wonders!, it turned out that there were age divisions, and that I had somehow finished second in the 40 to 49 group.  And I won a little trophy!  I was hooked.  From then on, for about 12 years, road racing was by far my main outdoor pleasure, and collecting ribbons and trophies became a compulsion.  To this day there is a box somewhere in my basement, absolutely stuffed with ribbons.  Alas, not many are blue – but some are.

So, from then on I trained perhaps 20-25 miles per week.  I would run six days/week, mostly on country roads.  Between important races I would drop down to ten or fifteen miles, and then build gradually toward as many as 50.  I estimate that, between 1974 and 1985 I ran about 12,000 miles*.  I was never bored, and I felt great.  I could eat as much as I liked, of anything, and drink all the beer I could lay my hands on.  So what if I fell asleep a few times while giving Geology 101 lectures; the students were mostly asleep themselves, anyway! 

*This may help account for the fact that I now (2019) have two artificial hips and one artificial knee – and that my “good” knee is hurting more every day.

Seriously, I believe it is true that only college professors and other unemployed people can properly train for long road races.  Some people get up before dawn and hit the streets, rain, fog, wind – or all three at once.  I could fit in my training around a few lectures and a weekly faculty meeting. And if it were raining I could run on the track, rather than sloshing through mud puddles.  Big advantage!

For more than a decade, then, I ran every road race I could find within commuting distance of Bellingham.  Mostly they were 10K’s (ten kilometers), with a few 5Ks or ten-milers thrown in.  Some of them were well known – the Chuckanut Footrace, for instance.  Such well-known events pulled in good runners from Seattle and Vancouver and points nearby.  These guys would take home all the more desirable  ribbons (blue, red, etc.) and leave people like me with ribbons with green stripes and pink polka dots for, say, seventh  place.  But when they didn’t come, I usually could pull down at least third in my division (it was called the Masters Division, but sometimes felt like the Geriatric Division).   It quickly became apparent that, the longer the race, the better I scored. 

So, I ran perhaps ten half-marathons, including a huge one on Mercer Island where I finished second (in my age division, of course).  I started twelve full marathons, and finished ten.  The first I had to abandon was the Birch Bay Marathon, where I went out too fast and found, at about mile 20, that whenever I stopped for a drink I would start to pass out.  Virginia made me quit.  My worst actual full-marathon time also occurred at Birch Bay: realizing that I was going embarrassingly slow, I stopped in a road-side grocery store, bought a can of beer, and walked across the finish line, drinking it – in exactly four hours.  I caught hell for that smart-aleck performance.  The organizer, who was a friend, threatened to bar me for life.  The second bail-out was forgivable; I had eaten nothing but refried beans the night before, and you can guess the consequences.

My best time was a little under three hours; 2:57.17, I think it was.  That is pretty slow for a real marathon runner, but a noteworthy accomplishment for the likes of me.  I am tempted to bring up the short legs and heavy bones again but for the fact that my friend Tom Read, a WWU math professor, who was shorter than me, had shorter legs, and bones at least as heavy – once ran about 2:35!  People have taken videos of him running, and nobody has ever seen his feet touch the ground. 

I guess my proudest accomplishment in road racing would have to be the Skagit Flats 50 miler, run in the summer of 1981, when I was 48.  I had no idea how to run such a race.  Bellingham happened to have in its citizenry an authentic elite ultra-marathoner, in the person of my friend Jim Pearson.    Jim did not register for the race, but his brother Don did, and Jim ran along to pace him.  Also accompanying Don was his beautiful wife, on a bicycle, wearing very tight shorts.  Well, hell – what to do.  I decided to follow the Pearsons: Jim would set the proper pace, and Don’s wife would give me a way to get my mind off my misery.  This worked great for about 35 miles, at which point Don abruptly quit – and I was on my own.  Heck, now what?  I figured that I would poop out and die pretty soon myself (although I felt good), so I started walking every so often and otherwise dogging it.  Finally, I found myself at 47 miles with plenty of energy still in the tank.  I happened on a young fellow out for a jog, and challenged him to a race for the last few miles.  He beat me, but I took perhaps a full minute off my time.  The upshot was that I finished third overall, first in my division – and was even ranked in Runner’s World for a few months!  However, from that point forward my running career went steadily downhill.

When I finished that 50 miler I felt fine.  I sat around, shooting the breeze, and drinking Gator Aide – and then got in my car, eased onto Interstate 5, heading for Linda’s place on Lake Samish.  About half way there, at 65 miles/hr., I started to pass out!  I managed to get to the side of the road and sit there, head buzzing, until it was safe to drive again.  Maybe this was nature, telling me that 50 miles is a bit far.

So, in retrospect, running was good for me.  It kept me thin and healthy and gave me something to aim for nearly every week-end.  I know that many people say that they run because it makes them feel better, cleanses the soul, relaxes them, etc., etc.  I ran to win ribbons!  (And to collect T-shirts.)  When I reached 50 it seems that my joints began to rebel, my lungs shrunk, and I became more attuned to pain.  As a result, I wasn’t winning ribbons any more.  So I quit – and turned to mountain hiking instead.  Ignoble, yes, but honest. We are what we are, and I’m competitive.