February 23, 2020 by Philip Lewenstein
Reflections on Running
In early afternoon, on Sunday, October 6, a bright, glorious autumn day, my youngest daughter jogged down John Ireland Boulevard toward the State Capitol in St. Paul, approaching the finish of her first marathon—about three hours longer than Eliud Kipchoge would run six days later, but a special achievement for her nonetheless.
On October 12, in Vienna, Kipchoge became the first man to run 26.2 miles in less than two hours. The 34-year-old Kenyan completed the course in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40.2 seconds, at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, a specially set-up event. Although the event was the full marathon distance, the record won’t stand because conditions were tightly controlled to maximize Kipchoge’s success.
A day later, Brigid Kosgei of Kenya broke the women’s world record by over a minute in 2:14:04 while winning the 42nd Chicago Marathon. Kosgei eclipsed the old record of 2:15:25 set by Paula Radcliffe 16 years earlier. Some observers attributed the Kenyans’ success to the fact that they both wore souped-up, controversial shoes: Nike Zoom X Vaporfly Next %.
On November 3, at St. Olaf College in Northfield, the Mounds View cross- country team under Coach Ross Fleming won its first state championship. The second-ranked Mustangs edged top-ranked Eden Prairie by one point in the Class AA division. Mounds View placed second in 2018, 1999, 1984, and 1983 under Fleming.
These four events illustrate significant achievements in separate levels of running accomplished by intensive training and preparation, focus, and perseverance: the completion of a personal goal (a first-time marathon), the subhuman performances by elite athletes testing limits of physiology, and the shared team success facilitated by a special coach.
The four events have caused me to reflect on the running years of my life, the physical and mental benefits of the daily run for ten years, and the memories of completing 16 marathons in the 1980s. Although my exercise routine has switched to walking, I still enthusiastically follow running. Positive memories of running were stirred in January when, for my 72nd birthday, my wife presented me with, now mounted on the wall, a framed montage of pictures from four of my marathons.
My introduction to running occurred at the University of Minnesota. I learned much about cross- country running as a sports writer for the Minnesota Daily in the 1960s. As a freshman reporter at the university in 1966, I was assigned to cover cross country; I had much to learn, and I did from Coach Roy Griak—particularly the hard training necessary for success. Griak was always accessible and patient with the rookie reporter who, like the coach, grew up in Duluth. There were some great runners at the university, but they ran in obscurity for the most part.
Two of the great runners I interviewed were Steve Hoag and Garry Bjorklund. Hoag passed away September 15, 2017, at age 70. He was captain of the university cross-country team in 1968 and ran track; he was named to the all-American track team in 1968 and was a Big Ten track champion in 1969. After college, Hoag set Minnesota records for 10 miles and 25 kilometers; and he ran many marathons. Hoag’s greatest achievement was finishing second in the 1975 Boston Marathon in 2:11:54, fourth fastest in the world that year.
In fall 1969, as the Daily sports editor, I was in Iowa City covering the Gopher-Hawkeye football game. I got up early Saturday morning and went to the Iowa golf course to see my first cross- country meet. It was one of the most inspiring sports events I had seen. A Gopher freshman, Bjorklund, from Proctor, near my home town of Duluth, ran away from the field. I had never seen anyone run with such grace and skill, galloping effortlessly like a deer across the plain.
Led by Bjorklund, the Gophers won the Big Ten cross-country title in 1969, and Bjorklund finished sixth nationally; two years later, he finished second to the late, great Steve Prefontaine of Oregon. In 1971, Bjorklund was the national champion for the six-mile distance, and he competed in the 1976 Olympics at 10,000 meters. Bjorklund held the state high-school mile record for almost 40 years. By 1977, Bjorklund became a marathon runner. His fastest time was 2:10:20 in the 1980 Grandma’s Marathon.
And it was an honor to interview Griak many times. He was the university cross-country coach for 33 years, from 1963 to 1996, winning two Big Ten cross country titles (1964 and 1969) and one track and field championship (1968). In all, Griak served the university for 51 years, remaining on staff as an administrative assistant after his coaching tenure. He died in 2015.
In 1997, the Minnesota Invitational, one of the nation’s largest cross-country meets, was named the Roy Griak Invitational in honor of the coach. Run at the university’s Les Bolstad Golf Course in Falcon Heights, it includes several separate races for collegiate and high-school men and women from throughout the country.
Little did I realize that ten years later after graduating from the university, I would become an avid marathoner, that 39 years later my son would be captain of the Mounds View cross-country team (and run in the Roy Griak Invitational), and 49 years later my youngest daughter, who had despised running, would run her first Twin Cities Marathon.
For me, the running began in the late 1970s when I met a neighbor, Ralph, in my Little Canada townhome complex. I noticed that Ralph, close to my parents’ age, ran every day. He invited me to join him. First, he persuaded me to run a 5K in Minneapolis; I finished and was ecstatic. Then, he persuaded me to enter the 1980 Grandma’s Marathon even though I had never exceeded 17 miles in a training run.
I became addicted to running—every day for ten years in all types of weather, 16 marathons—the all-time mental and physical high. Often, Ralph and I were the only runners on the road during our daily 6.2-mile runs. Ralph inspired, encouraged, and mentored me. I envied his calm, smooth, relaxed running style and his faster times than mine in most marathons. Ralph died in 2014 at age 93. His obituary noted his service in World War II but did not mention his success in running marathons, including the Boston Marathon.
I collected books about running and gained much information that, at least for a short time, helped translate into improved times. My library starts with The Complete Book of Running (1977) by James F. Fixx. It is billed as virtually an encyclopedia covering every aspect of running. Next, is Jim Fixx’s Second Book of Running (1978), the companion volume to the first book.
My library also includes The Complete Marathoner (1978) from the editors of Runner’s World Magazine; Running Without Pain, Avoiding and Treating Injury (1980) by Raymond Bridge; Improving Your Running (1982) by Bill Squires and Raymond Krise; The Complete Runner’s Handbook by Bob Glover and Pete Schuder (1983), the complete training program for all distance running; and Run Farther Faster (1984) by Joe Henderson.
A few years ago, I enjoyed Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. The 2009 best seller, which tracks an indigenous group of ultramarathoners from the remote canyons of northern Mexico, is described by Sean Gregory of TIME as “this century’s seminal book on running” (November 4, 2019). The book, which helped spark the barefoot-running craze, has sold more than three million copies. McDougall’s new book, Running with Sherman, touts the benefits of burro racing.
Last summer, I was inspired by reading Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and The Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed by Matthew Futterman, deputy sports editor of the New York Times. It is the inspiring story of Bob Larsen who fell in love with running as a young farm boy in central Minnesota before moving to southern California. There, he became a high-school and college runner and then college coach focused on discovering how to run farther faster—to the edge. He coached a club of motley runners—the Jamul Toads—to become national AAU champions and then won several national track-and-field championships as coach at UCLA from 1979 to 1993. Further, he coached and mentored Olympic runners, most notably Meb Keflezigi, to Olympic medals and a Boston Marathon title.
For my birthday in January, my daughters gave me two more books: PRE: The Story of America’s Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine by Tom Jordan and First Ladies of Running: 22 Inspiring Profiles of the Rebels, Rule Breakers, and Visionaries Who Changed the Sport Forever by Amby Burfoot.
Inspired by Ralph, I ran Grandma’s Marathon nine straight times; the Twin Cities Marathon five times; its predecessor, the City of Lakes Marathon, once; and the Chicago Marathon once. I enjoyed many other races including several 10Ks and collected an abundance of T-shirts, most of which I recently discarded in a meek effort at decluttering.
My debut was the fourth Grandma’s Marathon in 1980 The scenic race, named after the sponsoring Grandma’s Restaurant, starts about 20 miles north of Duluth near Two Harbors and runs along Lake Superior into the eastern section of Duluth on London Road, finishing at Canal Park near the Aerial Lift Bridge.
Held the third Saturday of June, the marathon was first run in 1977 with 177 participants; Bjorklund won the race in 2:21:54. By 1979, 1,682 runners registered.
In 1991, the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon was established; it has proven equally popular to the full marathon. The 30th anniversary of the race will be held June 20, 2020, and the 7,500 spaces are filled.
One of the greatest Grandma’s Marathon races occurred in 1981 on an overcast, foggy day with temperatures in the 50s as Minnesota native Dick Beardsley outdueled Bjorklund. Beardsley won in a record time of 2:09.37, a mark that stood for 33 years before being broken in 2014 by Dominic Ondoro of Kenya in 2:09:06. Beardsley became famous for his close second-place finish to the great Alberto Salazar in the 1982 Boston Marathon in 2:08:53.
I ran the 1980 Grandma’s in 3:50:23, then improved to 3:15:43 in 1981. My personal record for Grandma’s was 3:06:10 in 1983 followed by 3:06:19 in 1984. My times slowed the next four years; I finished at 3:41:35 in 1988, my final Grandma’s race.
The Twin Cities Marathon was first run in 1982. The name was changed to Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in 2006 when the race agreed to its first corporate sponsorship with Medtronic. The marathon has grown to a full weekend of events, including the Medtronic TC 10 Mile race, started in 1999 as a Sunday companion to the marathon.
The marathon course begins near U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis and winds around several of the city’s well-known lakes, then turns north along the banks of the Mississippi River. The race follows the river for several miles before crossing into St. Paul, and then proceeds up Summit Avenue past the St. Paul Cathedral, down John Ireland Boulevard, ending at the State Capitol.
In 1983, before the second Twin Cities Marathon, a poster contest was held. Charles Spencer Anderson, who was contracted to do graphic-design projects for my office, expressed interest in entering the contest but needed background information on running. I gave him several magazines on running. Anderson, who had graduated from college two years earlier, won the contest with his design of runners blending into leaves, evoking the fall marathon season. The poster is entitled “Twin Cities Marathon, The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in the Country, October 2, 1983.”
Anderson gave me a signed copy, number 14 of 500 originals, and it continues to proudly hang on my wall. Five thousand copies of the poster were sold in three months. The poster is considered a classic, and it helped launch Anderson’s career as a widely-recognized, prominent designer.
My best Twin Cities Marathon time, and best time of sixteen marathons, was 3:02:05 in the inaugural 1982 race. In 1983, I wanted to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which required a sub- three-hour time. I was in my best shape but started the race too fast for the humid conditions and ended well short of my goal with a time of 3:21:46. Starting too fast is a painful error, a mistake I committed several times.
It was thrilling to run in five Twin Cities Marathons and was thrilling to watch my daughter complete the 38th annual race on October 6 among the 6,747 finishers: 3,845 men and 2,899 women. I had watched her training runs including the Urban Wildland Half Marathon in Richfield on July 27 in 80-degree temperatures (one must run cautiously in this heat) and the 20-mile Bear Water Run presented by the White Bear Lake Lions Club on September 14.
The Twin Cities Marathon was preceded by the Land of Lakes Marathon in 1975, renamed City of Lakes Marathon in 1976. It was a four-lap course around Lakes Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska) and Harriet in Minneapolis. By 1981, the race reached its 1,700-runner limit in a month. That year, the St. Paul Marathon was created, and it drew 2,000 runners, including Ralph, in its first and only running.
In 1982, organizers from the City of Lakes Marathon and St. Paul Marathon combined to establish the Twin Cities Marathon. The first race attracted 5,563 entrants, an entry record for a first-time race in the United States.
Later, the City of Lakes race became a 25K event, entered by runners preparing for the Twin Cities Marathon. In 2014, it became a half marathon.
After the 1988 Twin Cities Marathon, running took a back seat in my life to marriage and parenthood. Then, in fall 2005, my interest in running returned 17 years after my final marathon.
About to start his freshman year at Mounds View High School, my son considered signing up for a fall sport—football, soccer, or cross country. He chose cross country, and it was a great decision. Even though my oldest daughter knew some of the athletes on his championship track teams, we didn’t know much about Coach Fleming.
Fleming has coached Mounds View track and cross country for 34 years.
His teams have won numerous True Team and Minnesota High School League track-and-field championships. His cross-country teams have been to the state meet 15 times since 1999 and finished second four times but had never won the championship.
Thus, it was fitting and gratifying to see Fleming’s team win the 2019 title. Like Fleming, the runners model dedication and persistence. In October 2017, Fleming underwent triple heart bypass but made it to the state meet a few weeks later to see his runners finish fifth in a race they dedicated to him.
As always, Fleming credits his runners, parents, and assistant coaches. Yet the constant since 1986 has been Fleming’s leadership and approach, establishing a tradition of respect. He treats all his runners—fastest or slowest, seniors or freshmen—equally and with respect for all.
Mounds View cross country illustrates virtues of a team sport with an individual dimension, easy to measure improvement and development. (“Hall-of-Fame Coach Models Respect, Earns Respect,” September 2, 2017, www.philsfocus.com).
The boys are dedicated, smart, well mannered, and respectful. A bond among athletes is established, and the culture is passed on year to year, a tradition of excellence. Within this framework, my son grew from a slow freshman to a senior captain and varsity runner, greatly improving his times and earning top team awards for his leadership and dedication.
The Minnesota Cross Country Coaches Association named Fleming the 2018 Class AA Coach of the Year after the runner-up finish. Fleming was named Minnesota High School Coach of the Year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association after the 2019 championship.
From weekend joggers to goal-driven marathoners to elite Olympians, interest in running has grown despite some fluctuations over the decades.
The marathon at the heart of the running boom started with Frank Shorter’s gold medal in the 1972 Olympics for the United States and was fed by Bill Rodgers’s dominance in the late 1970s.
Phillip Trobaugh, of St. Paul, running director of the BFM (Barely F**king Minimum) Running Club, says that Fixx and his book kicked off a running craze in America at the time that can still be seen today (“Jim Fixx would want us to keep running,” July 22, 2019, Star Tribune).
“It’s hard to imagine , given how prevalent running is now, that before Fixx’s book, running for fitness was not widely known or practiced,” Trobaugh writes. “In the 1970s, such running was often seen as eccentric. What few runners there were mainly ran competitively, and recreational runners were known then as ‘health nuts.’
“At the time, exercise for its own sake was not widely understood. Fixx and his book changed all that because it was geared for people who were not particularly athletic or physically active, but showed them how they could change through running.”
Meanwhile, marathoners Kathrine Switzer, Jackie Hansen, and Miki Gorman inspired women to tackle the distance (“State of the marathon: Fewer Runners Everywhere—including the Twin Cities—are taking on the marathon. While still popular, has the defining distance of the running boom hit the wall?” by Sarah Barker, Star Tribune, October 4, 2019).
“You couldn’t call yourself a runner unless you’d run a marathon,” said Barker. “And you didn’t run just to finish—you tried to run well, to master the challenge.”
Over the next four decades, the number of people running road races across all distances worldwide grew until 2016 but has declined 13 percent since, according to a 2019 study by the Danish research organization RunRepeat in collaboration with the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Marathons in Boston, New York, and Chicago remain popular, but other races are seeing participation dip. The Twin Cities Marathon bucked the national trends until 2017 when race numbers dipped slightly. Meanwhile, the TC 10 mile grew rapidly and was capped.
Most of the rise and recent decline in road racing from 1986 to 2018 came from 5K and half marathons; the marathon trajectory over four decades was less volatile, reaching a peak of 25 percent of all road races in 2,000, gradually declining, and holding steady the past three years with about 12 percent of the road runner pie, a pie that is shrinking.
Running gained in the 1990s and early 2000s, then boomed during the great recession, according to Running USA, an industry group that tracks running participation (“Is the running boom over?” by Greta Kaul, MINNPOST, April 16, 2018). The more recent boom has been fueled by women; the number of men finishing events roughly doubled between 1990 and 2016 while the number of women increased by eightfold, according to Running USA.
The slowdown after 2013 is attributed to people’s interest in other activities; some attribute falling participation in road racing to rising costs as events become more elaborate, up to $130 for a marathon.
Jonathan Beverly, editor-in-chief of PodiumRunner magazine, told Barker that he sees the popularity of the marathon as a generational thing starting in the 1970s and 80s with serious runners trying to run fast.
“It was a sport,”Beverly said. “Some of the top marathoners in the world were Americans so it felt local. And marathoning was the opposite of football or baseball; it was counterculture. We were the weird people running around in our underwear.
“A generation later, there were masses of people running marathons, just to finish and say they’d done one. Around 2000, there was a whole generation who thought of marathons as what my mother does. It was marginalized as a fitness activity, not a competitive sport. Once you made it about finishing, that’s it. The passion is lost. Once bucket-listers had checked off the marathon box, they moved to a different amusement park.”
Beverly said he sees a reversal of the trend on the cusp of another generation. “There are a number of signals,” he said. “Average marathon times are still getting slower, but at a slower rate, if that makes sense. There’s a growing cohort of people who are taking the marathon seriously, who are seeking the challenge of all the marathon can be…there are people trying to master the marathon instead of just surviving it, and finding it’s still a grand challenge.”
Sarah Barker (“On roads well-traveled,” May 11, 2018, Star Tribune) summarized changes in road races since the 1960s:
“Back in the day, one registered on race day; entry fees were well under $5; a good-sized race drew 50 runners; water stations were infrequent or nonexistent; T-shirts were not a feature until the mid-1970s and they were only awarded to winners; races were competitions, not fundraisers; timing involved a person with a stopwatch and another with a clipboard; and there was no post-race buffet or prize money. Analog, as they were, these races served as the training ground for Olympians, then and now.”
Yet despite peaks and valleys in participation, there are an estimated 56 million Americans who do some form of running, Trobaugh says. “Every year, there are about 30,000 running events including 570 marathons. In 2017, people spent $115 million on running shoes alone.”
Why do all these people run? I enjoyed the opportunity to clear my head each night after an often stressful day, I appreciated achieving my best level of fitness ever, and I enjoyed the process of setting and attaining personal goals. I discovered a special, implicit camaraderie among runners. An initial challenge was finding well-fitting, comfortable shoes at a reasonable price, but options increased as participation grew. One could purchase expensive apparel, but doing so was not necessary. Race fees were modest. Today, one can splurge on technologically-designed shoes, fancy apparel, and many accessories; yet the sport remains affordable. And it is fun!
In the late 1970s, Fixx, while exploring the physical benefits of running, discovered and articulated the psychological benefits.
“But what I found even more interesting were the changes that had begun to take place in my mind,” Fixx writes in The Complete Book of Running. “I was calmer and less anxious. I could concentrate more easily and for longer periods. I felt more in control of my life. I was less easily rattled by unexpected frustrations. I had a sense of quiet power, and if at any time I felt this power slipping away, I could instantly call it back by going out and running.
“Each runner is familiar with these changes. Though they have been compared with those that occur in transcendental meditation, they are something more than that, perhaps because they are magnified by an unusual degree of physical fitness.”
In Running to the Edge, Futterman explores why we run. He says that Bob Larsen sensed from his first days in the sport that the answers are equal parts science and existential philosophy. Larsen, says Futterman, knows that running can be many things—a form of medicine, a means of escape, a mission, a destiny—all at once.
After discussing how running can make us think and make us feel better, he refers to another answer that has to do with battle, the philosophy.
“We relish those fights against time and decay and death, even if we know they are ultimately unwinnable,” Futterman writes. “With each step, each stressed breath, every elevation of the heart rate that restarts the process of improved oxygen circulation and capillary production of metabolic efficiency, each extra second we save on a clock that measures how we are, or are not, letting time slip away, we can better fool ourselves into thinking that aging and expiration are optional. Or that they have been delayed for another day.”
Futterman continues by discussing running as a form of escapism, as Frank Shorter running away from domestic abuse, and as running away from trauma.
“And here is one more possibility,” Futterman writes. “Maybe running is a way of re-imagining the life-death duality…
“The run can be a meditation-in-motion, a cleansing of all the sensory realities we encounter. The run is white noise, a way to simply experience time as a body, a piston that exists away from the mind and only in the body as a live reactive presence.
“Running is escapism, but it is also the opposite. It can be the ultimate expression of being awake and alive only as a body that occupies space and time. A painter doesn’t merely create a painting. When he is painting and creating at his best, he is part of that work of art. This is how it can work for the runner and the run.”
The physical benefits are highlighted in a fall 2019 TIME article (“Running can help you live longer. And more isn’t always better,” by Mandy Oaklander).
Oaklander refers to a new analysis of 14 studies in which researchers tracked deaths among more than 232,000 people from the United States, Denmark, the U.K., and China over at least five years. The analysis compared the findings with individuals’ self-reports about how much they ran.
Individuals who said they ran any amount were less likely to die during the follow-up than those who didn’t run at all, Oaklander notes. Runners were 27 percent less likely to die for any reason, compared with nonrunners, and had a 30 percent and 23 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and cancer, respectively. This was true even for those who didn’t log much time.
Noting that the analysis is the most recent to illustrate the benefits of running on the human body, Oaklander quotes Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
“It’s what we evolved to do,” Lieberman says. “People may no longer chase down prey for their next meal, but running is still helping us survive: as a leisure-time exercise it keeps us healthy,” Oaklander explains. “One of the best ways to avoid having to see a doctor is to stay physically active,” Lieberman says. “The physical demands of running affect just about every system of the body in a beneficial way.”
Oaklander says that people run for life-giving reasons, not just death-defying ones.
“Mortality is an important variable to think about, but there’s also illness, and happiness, and vitality,” Lieberman says. “Some people are running in order to stave off Alzheimer’s, and other people because it makes them feel better and others for depression.”
Yet, Oaklander concludes, no piece of research “can define a truly optimal number after which all health perks wane. But one finding is clear: anything greater than zero m.p.h. is where you’ll reap the biggest benefits.”
The benefits of running are thus manifest in many ways for many types of runners: whether one is enduring to reach the finish line of a first marathon, striving to run the first sub-two-hour marathon, persisting to help a team win its first championship, or taking a leisurely jog around the neighborhood.
Some runners extol the benefits of short races while others prefer longer distances like the marathon. Runner’s World magazine (November/December 2018) offered 26.2 reasons the marathon is “awe-inspiring, crazy exhausting beautiful, fun. humbling, empowering, unifying, painful, thrilling, and the greatest race of all time.”
Going forward, I will continue to admire all runners at all distances and speeds and plan to especially enjoy both the men’s and women’s marathons in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
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