The Nearly Forgotten Coach

As fans of track and field, fans of sport, are looking back at what happened 50 years ago tonight, when Jim Ryun became the first high school runner to run a sub-4 minute miler.  You'll read nothing from the man who guided him to this astounding feat.  In a couple of weeks Bob Timmons will turn 90.  He is almost invisible, largely due to his diminished mental state.

My relationship with Timmie is complicated.  39 years ago I was busting my ass trying to keep up with the tough regine required to run at the University of Kansas.  I lasted about six weeks before getting kicked off the KU cross country team by Timmie. I cried like a baby when he told me, "Come back when you get in shape." I had quit the last part of a tough workout the day before, after battling a case of diarreha all day. It was one of the toughest things I've ever experienced in my life, certainly the toughest at that point at age 18.

I wasn't in the kind of shape that I should have been to try and run for KU. What's sad is that now at that same ability level if I was to walk on at Kansas, I would be a member of their varsity. My how the program has fallen.

During the Timmons era at Kansas, the program for most of the time was top notch. His predecessor, Bill Easton, had turned Kansas into a national power. Easton lost his job, due in part to Bob Timmons and a high school phenom he had coached, Jim Ryun.

Timmon's former athlete had decided to attend Oregon State. Timmons, who had become Easton's assistant during Ryun's senior year in high school, was handed KU's head job after Easton was fired for some minor transgression. Suddenly Ryun was Kansas bound, and the rest is history.

Ryun had a wonderful career at Kansas. The program continued to flourish for the next 15 years with the Jayhawks winning a handful national titles in track and field. They were unbeatable in the old Big 8. But Timmons reign had one glaring weakness. There were no more Jim Ryun's.

By and large distance runners from Kansas never lived up to the potential they had shown in high school. A few did, Kent McDonald, one of my old training partners, was an All-American and finished second at the old AAU nationals one year. Bill Lundberg was another standout who went on to coach.  George Mason, a high school nobody, flourished under Timmons.   I could name three or four others but the point is, none of his distance runners at Kansas, ever won a national title, or made an Olympic team, except for Ryun.

Timmons had made his name as a great high school swim coach and later on as a track and field coach. He put his swim coach philosophy to use in track and created two legendary high school milers, Ryun and Archie San Romani, Junior. But his workout regiment was brutal. I experienced it first hand. A few runners, like McDonald, learned to coast through some of the workouts, in order to stay fresh and competitive. But very few did and some simply burned out.

For a long time I despised Bob Timmons. I blamed him harshly for KU's fading fortunes in track and field at the start of the 1980's. He had faults, but at heart he was and is a good and caring man. And as I grew older, more sober, I began to realize that my bad feelings were a waste of time. I began to value the experience that I had with Coach Timmons and became thankful for that eventful day when he kicked me off the team.

I became so grateful in fact that I produced a documentary about Timmons and his prized prodigy Jim Ryun in 1996. Most people probably assumed I did it as a tribute to Ryun, a world record holder in the mile and an Olympic silver medalist. But the real reason I did it was to give Timmons the credit he deserved for putting Jim on the path to greatness. It was my way of making amends to the man, even though he never knew (at least I don't think he knew) that I had harbored such ill will for him.

Five years ago Runner's World magazine published a hit piece about Bob Timmons. Coach was very old and had terrible lapses of memory. I saw him two years before the article and he didn't even recognize me. You could literally see the fog in his eyes. I don't know what the point of the article was. All it did was dredge up a lot of bad memories for athletes who had suffered at the hands of Timmons more than 20 years ago. Ben Paynter, the author, did his homework. But in the end, the work is meanspirited. 

I later learned the impetus for the article came from a hatefilled, self-pitying former Kansas runner.  Timmons is really defenseless at this point in his life. His triumphs far outweigh whatever failures Paynter tried to foist the readers of Runner's World.  You can click here to read it if you care.

Aunt Betty

Death comes to us all.  It's the harshest reality of life.  When those we love and admire leave this earth, it becomes incumbent upon us to remember, to carry their spirit, to cherish it and nourish it and when possible, share it with the ones you love.

I met Betty Longhofer about 53 years ago.  Aunt Betty was married to Kenneth Longhofer, a hard scrabble, hard working, farmer who worked the rocky wheat fields on the edge of the Flint Hills in North Central Kansas.  Kenneth died too soon, a victim of the cigarettes, the harsh farm chemicals and the circumstances that come with the farm life.  He's been gone more than 25 years.  Betty left us this Monday.

Kenneth always seemed hard and uncompromising to me, but there was something to that hard edge to forced you to admire his tenacity.  Betty was soft around the edges and gave him balance.  She had an unvarnished charm and Midwestern sensibility that was the essence of the wisdom that you find in farm families across the great plains.

Together they raised three amazing children, Kenny, a farmer, Rita, who tried her hand at a singing career, and Keith, my running buddy out of the farm, now a veterinarian.  They are all whip smart, with a strong sense of family and a sense of humor that sneaks up on you in like a Greg Maddox fastball.  Being with anyone of my cousins is always a first rate exercise in the lost art of conversation.

As for my Aunt Betty, I remember her non-judgemental acceptance of a very odd and very picky eating little boy.  She never made me feel bad about the way I was.  Betty had a heart that accepted people at for who they were, as long as their hearts were in the right place.  And it would go without saying that nothing will ever replace Aunt Betty's ice tea.  It must have been the well water.  A well that couldn't have possibly been as deep as her heart.

I will carry her with me forever. 

50 Years from Glory

I wasn't very aware of the world of sport in 1964.  I don't remember watching the Olympics or paying much attention to any athletic competition.  That awareness wouldn't take flight until 1965 when Sandy Koufax became my hero and not long after my mother got me a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

I wasn't aware of a Kansas kid by the name of Jim Ryun.  It's remarkable that so much history was happening less than 100 miles from where I was living at the time.  Once I discovered Jim Ryun, my quest for all things Ryun was pretty much unstoppable.  I was glued to the television in 1966 when one of the Wichita stations aired a documentary on him. 

I can remember watching him race Kip Keino in 1967 on ABC's Wide World of Sports, the announcers warning that Ryun would have his hands full with the veteran runner from Kenya.  You could imagine my delight when Ryun took flight and raced his way to a world record.  It is a memory stamped on my mind just as watching him compete in person for the first time at the Kansas Relays in 1969.  I remember the agony of watching Keino defeat him in 1968 for Olympic gold and the infamous fall at the 72 Munich Games.

Yet sadly, I have no memories of his perhaps, most stunning achievement.  A copy of it sits on a beta tape in our spare bedroom closet.  It is an old film that shows most of Jim Ryun's first sub-4 minute mile, the first ever run by a high school boy.  It happened 50 years ago this week.

Ryun went to the Compton Relays in June 1964 having just missed a sub-4 clocking about 2 weeks earlier at the Modesto Relays.  During the making of my documentary about his great running career Jim related to me the story of how Coach Bob Timmons had to grind down his spikes so they would grip the hard clay track.  I remember Jim wistfully wondering what had happened to those historic shoes.

He wore them on June 6 to be exact.  On that date he ran 3:59.0.  He split the half in 2:01.5 which means he ran the last half in 1:57.5, about what Galen Rupp ran last Friday for 800 meters when he broke the American Record for 10000 meters. 

Later that summer Jim Ryun would sprint to a stunning 3rd place finish at the Olympic Trials to earn a trip to Tokyo and the 1964 Olympic Games.  While his trip to Japan was less than memorable, it was a notable chapter in the career of the greatest high school miler in American history.  Alan Webb may have taken down Ryun's record of 3:55.8 36 years later, but his achievement pales to what the kid from Wichita East accomplished.

Ryun was an Olympian as a high schooler.  When Ryun set his long standing high school record of 3:55.8 in 1965, he beat Olympic 1500 meter champion Peter Snell and won a national championship in the process.  The time was an American record, which would stand for one year until a 19-year-old Ryun would break it by setting a world record of 3:51.3.

Jim Ryun can still be proclaimed America's Greatest Miler 50 years after having broken the magical threshold.  It's an astounding claim considering the great runners that would follow, Rick Wohlhutter, Dave Wottle, Steve Scott and Alan Webb.  Ryun's accomplishments, especially his run in Compton, will long endure.

Editor's note:  I put the date of this historic race as June 6, 1964.  I took the date from Bob Timmon's split log which covers most of Jim's races.  Track and Field News says the race took place June 5, 1965.  Who am I to argue with the self-proclaimed Bible of the Sport!

Jayhawk Hall of Fame

The Czarina made the trek with me to Allen Field House during our recent visit to Lawrence to check out the Booth Family Hall of Athletics.  It was my second stop at the wonderful showcase of Jayhawk athletic history and the first for the Czarina.  She didn't seem too impressed by all the memorabilia, all she wanted to see was Jim Ryun.  The great miler is right there along with dozens of other Jayhawks in the Jayhawk Hall of Fame.

Kent McDonald, Henry Marsh, and Doug Brown 1976 Olympic Trials

The great majority of athletes in the hall are members of K.U.'s once great track and field program.  I looked about for Kent McDonald, figuring he surely would merit inclusion.  Much to my surprise I could only find Kent in a team photo of one of the great Jayhawk teams that placed at NCAA's.  When I got back to my sister's house I hit her laptop to check out the criteria for the hall.  Kent's omission surely must be a mistake.

I went through the list and much to my dismay, Kent didn't meet any of the standards.  He wasn't an Olympian, a world record holder or a national champion.  Kent McDonald is simply the greatest steeplechaser in Kansas history.  The only track records at Kansas older than the one Kent set in the steeplechase, are records set by the great Jim Ryun. 

Kent won four straight Big 8 titles in the steeplechase.  Kent was an All-American his senior year in the steeplechase.  He went to the AAU National Championship meet where he chased rival Randy Smith to a 2nd place finish, a school record 8:28.54, and the 8th fastest time in U.S. history at the time in 1975.  Kent went to the 1976 Olympic Trials but never made it out of the qualifying round.  An injury had been his undoing.  Smith also crashed and burned at those trials and as far as I know, never ran seriously again.

I would argue that Kent deserves a place of his own in the Jayhawk Hall of Fame.  He won four conference championships.  He was just a half second away from winning a national championship.  Kent also helped lead a Jayhawk cross country team to nationals. 

Kent got the most out of his training.  He somehow found a way to survive coach Bob Timmons gruelling workouts.  He realized early on that his slight frame couldn't handle 100 mile weeks.  Kent never bought in to Timmons' demand that his distance runners run twice a day.  McDonald was a fierce competitor with a surprisingly lethal kick.  His biggest misfortune was to come along as the same time as Randy Smith.

The two had battled in high school.  Smith went to Ryun's high school, Wichita East.  He set the state record for 2 miles and broke 4:10 in the mile.  That same year, 1971, McDonald would run 9:08.9 for 2 miles, one of the fastest times in the nation that year and that time still stands as the Lawrence High school record.  Kent finished 2nd to Smith in both the mile and 2 mile at state that year.

Smith went on to have a stellar career at Wichita State.  He finished 2nd to a foreigner in the steeple his senior year at the NCAA's, the same race where McDonald finished 6th.  The two then battled a couple of weeks later at Eugene, Oregon in the 3000 meter steeplechase, both landing on the all time steeple charts for the United States.  Both men went on to represent the U.S. overseas with Smith beating the Soviets in the USA/USSR dual in Kiev.

Kent went on to become a top flight road racer in the south after college.  He moved to New Orleans where he was a fixture on the local racing scene.  As he got older he became a first rate triathlete.  Kent even survived a harrowing head-on crash with a van while out on his bike on a training ride.

I was lucky enough to train with Kent McDonald for a couple of summers when I was in high school. Kent taught me what he could about serious running.  Kent tried his best to dissuade me of any notions of running at K.U.  I had to learn that lesson the hard way.  How he survived four years and kept his love of running is beyond me 

Yes,Kent McDonald still runs.   He coaches high school swimming.  I think he's a Hall of Famer.  Holding a school record for 40 years should count for something. 

Missing the Real Outrage

The big stories that came out of this year's running of the Boston Marathon, Meb Keflezighi's remarkable win, 2 women under 2:20, Shalane Flanaghan's gutsy run and the healing for a city traumatized by last year's tragedy, are getting slightly overshadowed by a scandal.

People have discovered that runner's like to "bandit" the Boston Marathon.  For those of you not familiar with the term "bandit," it refers to someone who runs a race that they haven't paid entry for or otherwise qualified to run in.  The uproar began when a woman who was entered in this year's race, discovered four other people with her bib number as she checked the post-race photos.  The woman made the mistake of posting a photo of her bib online.  The ingenious assholes took advantage of that and created counterfeit bibs in order to get to the starting line. 

The revelation shouldn't surprise anyone because being a "bandit" at Boston is something of a tradition.  It goes back decades.  Running Boston used to carry with it some panache, prestige for the distance running community.  The first time I broke 3 hours in a marathon was in 1977.  I ran 2:57:14.  I missed qualifying for Boston by 7:14.  That was in 1977.  More people than ever run now and yet the qualifying standard for a 21-year-old male now stands at 3:05. 

Running a marathon under 2:50 isn't easy.  I didn't do it until 1985 when I was age 30, but by then Boston had bumped up the qualifying standard to a sub-3 hour effort.  That kept the fields for the race relatively small, usually just a thousand by the late 70's but slowly those numbers grew as more and more people took up marathon running.

By the time I actually decided to go and run Boston I did it on a whim, qualifying in 1994.  I qualified by running in an extremely difficult marathon in St. Louis just two months before Boston, running just 45 seconds under the 3:15 qualifying standard for a my age group at the time.  I joined about 12,000 or so runners for that race, ironically that was the same year they started allowing charity runners into the race.  It was the largest field ever, at the time.

The following year, Boston's centennial, the numbers skyrocketed.  They let just about anyone in who wanted to, run it.  I think they had close to 20,000 runners.  I think at that point the organizers realized something, they could make a lot of money with a lot more runners.  The cows were out of the barn, so to speak.

I didn't go back to Boston until 2003 and the change in field size was stunning.  I didn't run due to an injury, but the Czarina did.  They still did a mass start for the race.  It would take the slower runners as much as 15 minutes if not more to cross the start line.  I think it took the Czarina a good 10 minutes to get there.  By comparison, in 1994 it had taken me about 3 minutes to make it to the starting line.

Now the race is so bloated they start it in waves.  And in light of last year's tragedy, the organizers decided to expand the field to a whopping 36,000.  Boston organizers won't say exactly how many but  several thousand of those runners didn't meet the qualifying standard.  They get in because they are running for a charity.  Therein lies the rub.  Thousands of Boston qualifiers don't get in because organizers feel obligated to make room for these charity runners.  That in turn creates a situation ripe for people who feel the need to "bandit" the race.

People used to "bandit" because they simply couldn't reach the tough qualifying times.  Now they do it because the field fills up in just a few hours.  So screw the phony baloney outrage over these "bandits."  Don't get me wrong, I hate "bandits," but Boston created this mess because of the way it handles entries.  I don't feel sorry for the BAA.  The race makes a ton of dough.  It's not taxing any resources.  I guess I'm just missing the point from the outraged purists.





Primed?!?

The Lawrence Journal-World wrote an editorial as the Kansas Relays got underway this week in its brand new facilities called Rock Chalk Park.  The LJW was wishing that these world class facilities would mean the Kansas Relays is "primed" to return as one of the nation's best track and field competitions.  It pains me to report that it's not and I  doubt whether it will ever be again.

I blogged a few weeks back about K.U.'s decision to pull its budget to bring elite professional track stars to the meet.  It took a herculean effort to salvage the downtown shot put competition and that was the only one with nary a pro in sight.  The meet has become a sensational high school meet.  The college competition is tepid at best.

The university portion of the meet began to fall about nearly 40 years ago when Arkansas stopped coming.  The bleeding of top collegiate teams never ended.  I only saw one other top tier Division 1 school with athletes at the meet, Nebraska.  There were a handful of athletes from other lesser D1 lights like Rice, but consider this.  The two other D1 schools in the Sunflower State, Wichita State and Kansas State were nowhere to be found.

The university portion will never recover.  Mt. Sac now falls on the same weekend as the Relays and if you're a decent distance runner, you're going out to California to run fast.  Heck, even K.U. has sent its best runners in the past out to this meet, much to my consternation.  And there are a handful of other meets spread across the country that now compete against the Relays including one that Oklahoma hosts and one at Ohio State. 

K.U. will have to put some serious manpower and money behind the Relays if it ever expects it to land on a par with Drake.  Don't even think that it can share the same spotlight as the Penn Relays.  No, unless The University of Kansas decides that the Relays deserves first class treatment it is destined to be nothing more than a great high school track and field meet.  And maybe that's okay. 

Those of us who love the Relays will always have memories of such great athletes as Jim Ryun,  Stacy Dragila, Mike Boit and Maurice Greene.  But I feel gypped that the city to build these facilities only to have K.U. pull the rug out from underneath the meet by cutting a big chunk of its budget. 

One Size Doesn't Fit All

The wreck of a track and field meet that USATF held in Albuquerque six weeks ago has created a sideshow that could very well change the sport in some very dramatic ways.  When I last blogged about this meet we had two controversial disqualifications that left athletes pissed off to the max and fans shaking their heads.  USATF stepped up last week and said it would form a committee to examine the disqualifications, more than a full month after the meet happened.

What's become all too clear is that USATF is for amateurs.  It has no business running the professional side of track and field.  An organization that handles youth track to masters track simply should not be dealing with a professional sport where potentially large sums of money hang in the balance.

Professional track and field athletes should expect and demand a professionally run organization.  The athletes and their coaches should have a clear understanding of the sports rules and regulations.  The shoe companies cannot impose their will on how the sport is run.  Favored shoe company status (Yes, I'm talking about NIKE) is unfair. 

There is rumbling that a boycott of this summer's outdoor national championship meet could come about should the Albuquerque committee's findings be less than satisfactory.  Given the fact there are no World Championship slots up for grabs a boycott by non-NIKE athletes wouldn't surprise me in the least.  I think it would be a good thing. 

A better thing would be for Max Siegel to sit down with the athletes, seriously, the top 20 in each event, and figure out a way to divorce the professional side of the sport from the amateur side.  Siegel needs to bring all the shoe companies to the table and figure out how to make it possible.

The biggest hurdle is money.  I'm guessing that a lot of USATF relies heavily from all those membership fees it sucks in from youth and masters athletes.  Although, I'm sure this is chump change when compared to the sponsorship money that is at stake.  The devil will be in the details.

Now I'm not saying USATF should go away altogether.  The athletes need the officials and judges that USATF has trained to run their meets.  The bulk of those folks work for free.  And therein lies the crux.  A professional sport in the hands of unpaid part-timers. 

It's easy to see why Albuquerque turned into such a cluster fuck.  That's why in the end, at the very biggest meets, where money and prestige is on the line, there has to be an unbiased panel making decisions on how gets in and who doesn't, who gets disqualified and how moves on.  But that won't happen until a house cleaning takes place at the highest reaches of USATF.  Too many coaches and too many officials have allegiances and enemies that have led to mess.  I'll be honest, I don't see an easy fix to this can of worms.