15 Years On

One of the things I regret is the fact that I didn't routinely keep a running log until 1985.  That's when the late, great Tom Dowling insisted that keeping one was an important part of a training program.  Tom started coaching me in December of 1985 and would routinely check my log and write observations and words of encouragement in it. 

Through high school and college I never kept track of my mileage or workouts.  I kept a list of my in season high school races and much to my regret, did not keep a list of the dozens of summer races I ran which included road races and track meets.  I only remember a handful of those summer races.  Remarkably, I can remember something about every race I ever ran for Lawrence High.  I guess they had more meaning than the out of season races.

Over the last month or so I started digging through all of my logs that I've kept over the last 30 years to create a database of all the races I ran.  I don't know why I'm doing it, except it's interesting to come across races that I have absolutely no memories of running.  I'm not sure I was a prolific racer.  Tom Dowling was not a big believer of racing a lot.  Over the 30 years I ran as many as 17 races in a year and as few as zero, which happened in 2005, a year in which I was dealing with a serious health issue which left me wondering if I would ever race again.

The one thing that stood out to me was the fact that the last time I broke 40 minutes for a 10000 meter road race was in 2000.  The 15th anniversary of that race is coming up in a couple of weeks.  It was in Fargo, North Dakota at a hospital charity race named for baseball great Roger Maris.  I wasn't in very good shape and was pleased that I ran 39:34, but if you would have told me that this would be the last time under 40 I would have laughed.

The following year I was training for a marathon and couldn't get below that 40 minute barrier.  I was 45 years old and still running 5K's in the low 19's which would translate to being able to break 40 but alas, it wasn't to be.  It was downhill from there.

I can remember a couple of years later it was a struggle to try and break 20 minutes.  A number of leg injuries, the illness I suffered and age was taking its toll.  But I think the biggest problem was my training.  I no longer had the desire to do long runs.  In my 30's the long run was a 21 mile Sunday ritual.  By my 40's it was a 16 mile ritual.  After my illness, concerns about dehydration made runs of more than two hours a dicey proposition.

Even if I were to somehow reinvigorate my training regiment, lose 20 pounds and devote myself to breaking 40 as a goal, I know that ship has sailed.  I think I could still run 5 kilometers under 7 minute pace but I have to ask myself, is it worth the work?  I'm still reasonably competitive in my age group.  Yet being a 60 year old cock of the block holds to luster for me. 

I train now because I still enjoy running.  I race because I love the feeling of effort that racing brings.  Times mean little anymore.  The test of self means much more.  And I'm thankful that I have those logs that Tom Dowling insisted that I keep to remind me of those tests.

Run Florida

I'm a little late to my own anniversary.  Technically, I purchased a run specialty shop on September 1, 2014.  I didn't start working there full time until the third week of September.  So somewhere in the midst of this small business madness I'm celebrating one year as owner of Run Florida On McGregor.

While it may have been a long, strange trip for the Grateful Dead, for me it's been a short, educational one.  I had wanted to get into the run shop business for the better part of the last 20 years.  Mike and Candy Pemberton decided I was the one they could trust to not mess it up.  They had created a homey, old school, slice of running nirvana that they really didn't want to see turned inside out.  Outside of a picture of me running the St. George Marathon in 1990 behind the counter and a poster of this year's Prefontaine Classic overlooking the showroom, little has changed.

Oh sure, we carry a few more shoes, maybe too many more shoes, but I hate it when a customer comes in and we don't have the size they're looking for.  And that's probably the biggest lesson I've learned, inventory control.  The shoe companies don't make it easy.  They create too many shoes in too  many awful colors, a few of which are way over-priced and they obviously have a pack mentality.

The minimalist movement reared its ugly head about a half dozen when Born to Run hit book shelves.  Now thanks in large part to Hoka One One, the pendulum has swung 180 degrees.  Maximal cushioning with a minimal heel drop is the hot new trend.  And then there are the tried and true shoes that fall in between, but that's really not what this blog is all about.

It's about people.  95 percent of the people that walk into my store are incredible.  They are looking for guidance and direction and we bust our hump trying to find the perfect shoe from them.  There are the four percent that come in and try out shoes, never to return because you know they're going online to order them and save all of five dollars.  I'm okay with that because at least they know we exist and a time will come when they're in a pinch and they'll come back.

And then there's the one percent, unhappy, confused and just awful people in general.  They hate all the colorful styles.  You show them every conceivable style and color in every catalog and they're outraged that the shoe companies don't make old-fashioned black or white shoes.  They order shoes and never come in to pick them up.  Or they come six months later after you've called them three times and become angry when you've sold them after waiting for three months.  Then they have the nerve to ask you to order more shoes for them.  I asked them if I have a sign hanging around my neck that says I'm stupid.  Needless to say they aren't my customer anymore.

Yet it's really about the new runner who walks into the door looking to enter a world that you've lived for the last 40 years.  They want to run.  Maybe they want to lose a few pounds, challenge themselves with a 5K or a half marathon.  What they find, rather quickly, is a huge community that is ready to open their arms up to them.  Southwest Florida has some many running groups that support every type of runner imaginable that it's easy to find a place that fits for you.

So here's to another year of Run Florida On McGregor, where we celebrate good shoes, a good run and the good men and women, who grace our store, all in search of the best run experience possible.

Beijing Bust

Anyway you slice it, the 2015 World Championships was an unmitigated disaster for United States track and field.  We took six gold medals, the same number that we won in Moscow in 2013, but the overall medal count fell by seven.

What made this so cringe worthy were the lack of medals in events the U.S.A. usually dominates.  No medals in the men's 400 meter hurdles, no medals in the women's 100 meter hurdles, no medals in the men's and women's 200 meters, oh and yes, another botched men's 4 X 100 relay.  Sunday's men's 1500 final summed up the American effort.  Leo Manzano, Robbie Andrews and Matt Centrowitz all made the finals, an amazing feat.  Yet none of them finished anywhere near the top three.  Centrowitz was perfectly position with 300 to go but lacked his usual giddy-up fading to 8th.

Kenya and Jamaica dominated these championships.  The other obvious headline was doping.  Some of the performances screamed performance enhancement.  I'll offer two examples.  In the women's 1500 Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba ran the final 800 meters in the race under 1:57.  That was more than a full second faster than the winning time in the open 800.  Then in the women's 5000 another Ethiopian Almaz Anaya cranked the final 3000 meters in a near world record 8:19.

The lone American bright spot was Allyson Felix, who won the women's 400 and ran a stunning 47.7 in the 4 X 400 relay which should have resulted in another gold medal but only ended with silver.  Felix picked up another silver medal in the women's 4 X 100 relay to boot.

My favorite moment came in the women's marathon.  American Serena Burla, a cancer survivor, had allowed herself to be gapped by some 300 meters very early in the race.  Burla worked from about 5K to 15K to close that staggering distance to reunite with the lead pack.  She hung in with the group until the real racing began at 30K and still managed a respectable 10th place finish.

Track and field is in a world of hurt.  The rampant drug abuse is on a scale seen during Lance Armstrong's hey day on the Tour de France.  The IAAF appears as corrupt and ignorant as their soccer counterparts at FIFA.

As for U.S.A. track and field, one can only hope for better days in Rio at next year's 2016 Olympics.  Oh to be in Eugene next summer for the second best track meet in the world, the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials.

Close But No Cigar

It was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.  Molly Huddle seemed to have a bronze medal just for the taking.  A final sprint in over the last 50 meters and she would join an illustrious group of American distance runners to medal at 10000 meters at a major championship.  Behind Huddle, Emily Enfield was charging hard, but surely it was too little too late.  And then it happened, something I had seen countless high school runners and even adult runners doing in races and workouts, Huddle eased up and failed to race to the finish line. 

The Notre Dame grad threw her hands up a step to the finish assuming the bronze was hers as Enfield slipped by.  It was a jaw dropping experience.  Enfield was the third wheel of an amazing duo of Huddle and Olympic bronze medalist Shalane Flanaghan.  Even the pros can screw it up.  And unfortunately, that's the story the media is focusing on.

The bigger story is the fact that three American women, took three of the top six places at the 2015 World Championships.  For those of you keeping track, our American trio kicked some major Ethiopian and Kenyan butt.  If you were scoring this like a cross country meet, the USA came out on top.

Think about this long and hard.  20 years ago American distance running was in disarray.  Bob Kennedy was the lone beacon in a desert of distance running disaster.  The United States is now competitive from the 800 to the 10000, both men and women.  Let me repeat, the USA can deal with the East Africans from the 800 to the 10000. 

Odds are in the remaining distance races, the United States will be fortunate to pick up a couple of more medals.  It should happen in the women's 800, possibly in Tuesday's women's 1500 final and a sliver of hope exists for a medal in the men's 1500 as well.  Emma Coburn could medal in the women's steeplechase and leaves both the men's and women's 5000 where chances for a medal are fairly remote and downright impossible in the women's marathon.

The big story is that American distance running is back.  Enfield, Huddle, Galen Rupp, Evan Jager, Jenny Simpson, Shannon Rowburry, Matt Centrowitz, Brenda Martinez and Leo Manzano are the real deal.  The USA is in the mix and isn't it grand.

No Justice

I've written about this time and again.  Doping is rampant in track and field.  The latest champion to lose Olympic gold is Turkey's Asli Cakir Alpekin.  She won the 1,500 in London in 2012.  It makes me angry.  Everyone knew that Alpekin wasn't legit.  But what really makes my blood boil is silver medalist Gamze Bulut, also from Turkey, hasn't been caught yet.  Bulut was a complete unknown before the Games and hasn't run close what she did in London since.  Did I mention that 4th place finisher Tatyana Tomashova of Russia was just stripped her World Championship medals last week?

In my scorebook that puts Maryam Jamal of Bahrain atop the medal stand along with Ethiopia's Abeba Aregawi and Shannon Rowbury of the United States.  And as an added bonus, the 6th and 8th place finishers in that race have been disqualified already for doping.

It's increasingly clear that the IAAF, track and field's ruling body, is protecting drug taking athletes.  I believe the IOC is just as culpable.  They fear the whole Olympic movement would fall apart if the truth came out.  Doping is rampant in endurance sports and that includes swimming and cycling.  Yet the most doped game in the world, American professional football, gets a free pass. 

Drug testing doesn't work.  The athletes with the best doctors win.  If men and women want to risk their future health by using steroids, EPO and human growth hormones, let them.  The charade has to end. 

Timmie

It's Not Dark Yet

"I was born here and I'll die here, against my will."
Bob Dylan

Bob Timmons died Tuesday.  He was one of four men that coached me as a runner.  Everyone that ever knew him or competed for him knew him as "Timmie."  I never got around to having the privilege of competing for him because he never gave me a chance.  For a long time I carried that fact around like a cancer.  I disliked him for it and for some other petty reasons.

I was a better than average high school distance runner.  My senior year in high school was a disaster thanks to a lingering illness.  I decided I would walk on at the University of Kansas in the summer of 1974 and promptly did little of the work required to be part of a top flight college cross country team.

I remember the first time I crawled into the back of his pickup truck with a dozen or so other runners, some of them destined by to All-Americans, including Olympic silver medalist Jim Ryun.  He drove us northwest of Lawrence about 10 miles, unloaded us and told us to run back to Memorial Stadium.  Every workout was a humbling experience.  Many were downright torturous.

The day came about a couple of months into the season when we did repeat 2 miles.  I had been warned by the other runners, never crawl back into the pickup during a workout.  That particular day I had been suffering from stomach problems.  I quit halfway and sought refuge in the truck.

The next day in the bowels of Memorial Stadium Timmie pulled me aside and bluntly told me I wasn't cutting it.  I pleaded with him.  I had been beating half of his scholarship freshmen in time trials.  I was technically the 10th or 11th man on a 20 plus man squad. I cried like a baby when he told me, "Come back when you get in shape."

It was one of the toughest things I've ever experienced in my life, certainly the toughest at that point at age 18. Looking back now, it was probably even tougher for Coach Timmons.  It's sad to look at the state of KU's distance program because my sorry self of 1974 would be good enough to be a member of their varsity cross country team now.  

During the Timmons era at Kansas, the program prospered until the last few years of his tenure. 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 at Wichita East, 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 who ran for 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. 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 many 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 hatred was 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 for the better part of a decade.

So I was crestfallen when Timmie passed.  He was a great man.  He had was a man with few faults.  He was a man who simply wanted to give those around him the passion and strength to succeed.

They All Cheat

I read the mind-numbing response by Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar to the scathing series of stories from the BBC and Pro-Publica which questions whether his group of elite distance runners use performance enhancing drugs.  Salazar mounts a decent defense, but it is full of holes and out right lies.  For me, as a fan of the sport, for the last 25 years I've operated under the assumption that they all cheat.  I firmly believe that in one way or another, the vast majority of elite track and field athletes cheat.

Salazar's reputation was pretty hazy even back in the 1980's.  My private coach, Tom Dowling, worked with elite athletes during that era.  Tom told of how Salazar was known for experimenting with a lotion horse trainers used to reduce inflammation in their thoroughbreds.  He was always looking for ways to gain an edge.

Still by and large I believe distance running was relatively clean through the 1980's but by 1988... the Olympics had become a showcase for doping.  Ben Johnson got caught.  Florence Griffith-Joyner did not, but anyone who had truly followed the sport knew that something about Flo-Jo was amiss.  Then came Ma's Army and the string of stunning world records set by Chinese women in 1993.  These ladies were doped to the gills.

Looking across the 1990's my suspicions only grew with the record setting by Morceli, El Guerrouj and Gebresallasie made me question everything.  The world records at 5000 and 10000 meters were further taken down to ridiculous times by Bekele and all I could do is shake my head.

What we really need to take away from the BBC/Pro-Publica stories isn't what may or may not be happening with NOP.  It's the fact that the BBC reporter showed how easy it is to micro-dose banned substance, reap the benefits of those drugs and still beat the drug tests.  That's the real story and that's the real dilemma.

WADA is helpless to stop doping.  The various governing bodies of the so-called Olympic sports that include track and field, cycling and swimming, need to take a very hard look at their drug rules.  My takeaway is that doping is here to stay and the cheats will always be a step ahead of the tests.  I hate to say drop the rules against doping but I see no reason to continue the charade.