“THE GHOST RUNNER: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn’t Stop” by Bill Jones (352 paperback.) FLASH REVIEW: 
I think non-runners will appreciate the tragic life story of John Tarrant, who had a boardinghouse childhood more grim than Dickens would dream up and made all the worse in his teens by the death of his mother shortly after WWII. I KNOW that runners, especially marathoners, will have a hard time putting this book down (though reading while simultaneously shaking one’s head in sympathetic anger can be a challenge). This is the journey of a steel-legged and iron-willed English runner sentenced to fight amateur athletic brass for decades. As a result he must illegally race in the shadows without a bib number all because he earned a few pounds in his hardscrabble youth as a boxer and thus was deemed a “professional” in running. Denied any chance at his Olympic dreams, The Ghost Runner, as he becomes famously known in the newspapers and sporting world, wears disguises before jumping into marathons and 24-hour ultras at the last second last at the starting lines. In the process he becomes an inspiring legend through victory and heartbreaking defeat, the latter often due to his stubbornness and refusal to pace himself rather than always bolting to the lead from the start. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the entire tale is that it has taken so long to be told. RATING: 4 Stars out of 5 for marathoners; 3 Stars for non-runners.
Tag Archives: Running
Running Essay: Golden Role Model
Jackie Joyner-Kersee Gives Back
Jackie Joyner-Kersee remembers.
“We’d stop to eat after a track meet and everyone else would buy something but I wouldn’t,” the Olympic multi-champion recalls of those long-ago days on the East St. Louis Railer Youth Track Team.
“I’d have to wait until I got home because I didn’t have any money. My mom always taught us, ‘If you don’t have, don’t ask.’ I’d run six events and still say I wasn’t hungry.”
She remembers her coach finally figuring it out. Since Jackie didn’t have, and wouldn’t ask, he started insisting she share some of his food.
Fast forward four decades. When youths at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Boys & Girls Club in East St. Louis kept showing up hungry, Jackie didn’t wait for them to ask for food. Don’t have, don’t ask. She started a meal program.
*
Jackie remembers. Which is why there even is a JJK Boys & Girls Club in her hometown. Because of the huge role a youth recreation center played in her young life, she purchased thirty-seven acres of land and built a facility bearing her own name outside – and her time inside.
“We all need encouragement, so it’s important that they can come in and see my smiling face instead of just my name on the building,” Jackie told me a few years ago. “I take being a role model very seriously. It’s a responsibility that comes with being in the limelight. Someone out there likes you or your style, so you have an influence on them whether you like it or not.
“An athlete shouldn’t take the place of a parent, but some kids don’t have a parent as a role model so then that does fall on you.”
*
Jackie remembers.
Mary Joyner was more interested in her children receiving an education than in them starring in sports.
“When I was 10,” Jackie says, “I told my mom I’d go to the Olympics and do you know what she told me? She told me she’d rather I go to college. That’s the same thing I tell kids at the center.”
It is not lip service. Jackie, who graduated from UCLA in 1985, gives educational scholarships through her foundation.
Still, sports are important at the $6-million JJK Boys & Girls Club facility that annually sees 2,400 youths ages 6 to 18 come through its doors.
“We try to use sports, and also drama and music and computers, to get them interested in school,” Joyner-Kersee explains.
*
Jackie remembers.
“We didn’t always have things, but we always had love,” Jackie recalls of her own childhood, her smile sparkling like her diamond earrings.
The letters she receives from children at the JJK Boys & Girls Club touch her heart, and sometimes break it.
“They’ll write me, ‘I love coming here because I feel so much love here,’ ” Jackie shares. “Most of us take being loved for granted, but some of these kids don’t get love at home.”
“I see courage come through the youth center’s doors every day,” she continues. “Courage to me is believing and never giving up – in anything, not just athletics. If you have that flame within you, and you get some encouragement along the way, you can accomplish your dreams.”
Jackie is a profile in courage. To give you an idea, she won six Olympic medals (three of them gold) over four consecutive Olympics; set world records; and won every sports award imaginable while fighting asthma her entire career.
Now, the heptahlon is grueling enough if you lungs work properly. But to do the 200 meters, 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump, javelin and 800 meters in two days when it feels like you are breathing through a cocktail straw, that takes courage.
*
Jackie remembers.
And so she started a unique program, “Daughters Without Mothers.”
Jackie, you see, became a daughter without a mother during her freshman year at UCLA when Mary died from spinal meningitis
“Not sharing the Olympics with her was the biggest downer in my life,” says Jackie, who turns 51 in 2013 – thirteen years older than her mother was when she died. “I want other girls who lose their mothers to know they aren’t alone.”
Jackie remembers where she came from.
“I’ve been blessed so I want to give back,” she allows. “When I leave this earth, I want to leave behind something that will help others.”
Because she remembers, Jackie Joyner-Kersee is unforgettable.
Running Essay: Shoe-in Inspiration
This Ultra-Man is a Shoe-in to Inspire Kids
* * *
“Momma always says there’s an awful lot you could tell about a person by their shoes. Where they’re going. Where they’ve been. I’ve worn lots of shoes.”
— Forrest Gump
*
You can tell an awful lot about Ed Wehan by the pile of running shoes on his front doorstep. The ones caked with dirt tell you he has been on muddy trails. The cleaner ones with worn treads tell you he has traveled countless sidewalks and roads. The newer ones tell you he has more miles to go.
Ed has worn lots of running shoes. He has worn them to complete 115 marathons and 40 ultra-marathons of 50 to 100 miles. While the fictional Forrest Gump went on a running journey that lasted three years, two months, fourteen days, and sixteen hours, Ed has been running for a full four decades.
His odyssey began in 1973 when, at age 29, he didn’t recognize the reflection in the mirror. After earning an MBA at the University of Southern California and joining the working world, Ed fell out of shape. Understand, as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, he had been a supreme athlete. A four-year varsity tennis star, he once made UCLA’s Arthur Ashe – then the nation’s No. 1-ranked collegiate player – work to earn a 6-3, 6-3 victory.
Ed treated running like an opponent’s weak lob – he attacked it. In less than three years he went from jogging a few laps on a track to running a full marathon in 3 hours, 30 minutes.
“My compulsive personality took over,” recalls Ed, who broke 3 hours in his third marathon and ultimately lowered his PR to a blazing 2 hours, 36 minutes. (Ed, who turns 69 this Thursday going on 47, still regularly breaks 4 hours; last month he ran a 1:52 half-marathon.)
Looking for a new runner’s high, in 1979 Ed entered The Western States 100 – an insanely tortuous 100-mile race up, down and across California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. He finished seventh overall in 18 hours, 48 minutes to become only the 15th person to earn a coveted silver belt buckle for breaking the 24-hour barrier.
While Ed was tireless as a mule at 100 miles, in 50-mile ultras he had the speed of the Pony Express. In fact, in both 1984 and 1985 he clocked the fastest Masters (age 40-and-over) times in the nation at the distance with a best of 5 hours, 39 minutes – an average pace of 6 minutes, 46 seconds per mile!
The running accomplishments of this longtime resident of Ventura, California are all the more remarkable when you learn Ed is a cancer survivor of more than two decades and a dozen years ago he had open-heart surgery to correct atrial fibrillation. He had actually completed a couple 100-mile races with his heart functioning at about 60 percent capacity. Not surprisingly, Ed ran six miles the day before heart surgery. Six months later, he finished third in a 50-mile ultra.
Seven years ago, Ed took on a new challenge – fighting childhood obesity by promoting physical activity and nutritional education. Specifically, he helped create “SummerFest” for local school kids that was named the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness “Event of the Year” for the State of California three years ago.
“It takes a community to fight childhood obesity,” Ed says. “Parents can’t do it alone, teachers can’t do it alone. It takes all of us advocating for, and being role models for, healthy eating and physical activity.”
“I don’t expect every kid to want to run a marathon or climb Mount Whitney,” says Ed, who of course has reached that summit – the highest peak in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet – with his teenage daughter. “But hopefully we can encourage kids, teachers and parents to make physical activity a part of their lives.”
And start building their own pile of running shoes on their front porch.– You can contact Woody at WoodyWriter@gmail.com
Writing Essay: Emulate Marathoners
Writing Essays
(2012)
Write Like a Runner Training For a Marathon
Few feelings of personal satisfaction rival the accomplishment of completing a marathon. While the race distance measures an imposing 26.2 miles, in truth having a finisher’s medal placed around your neck requires hundreds and hundreds of training miles over many months, even on days you feel too tired to lace on your running shoes and head out the door. Perhaps especially on such days. As renown track coach Bill Dellinger once observed, “Good things come slow, especially in distance running.”
Good things also come slow in writing. Like training for a marathon, it requires day-in, day-out discipline sweating at the keyboard, even on days when writer’s block strikes. Perhaps especially on such days.
As an award-winning newspaper columnist for more than two decades, deadlines in the press box kept me in tip-top writing shape. However, I lost this welcomed discipline and had to leave the daily grind after I was rear-ended by a speeding drunk driver; the collision caused permanent nerve damage and required disc-fusion surgery in my neck. Following the life-changing event, I have found that the approach used in marathon training is equally effective for freelance writing. I have completed more than a dozen marathons, including the prestigious 2009 Boston Marathon, and by applying these long-distance training methods to my writing I recently completed a non-fiction manuscript I am now shopping to agents.
Just as a marathon training schedule aims to improve a runner’s speed as well as his or her stamina, I am confident you can improve both the quantity and quality of your writing by following these key distance running doctrines.
BUILD YOUR BASE. In order to run 26.2 miles on race day without cramping up or breaking down, a person has to build a solid “base” of 500 miles or more over the preceding months. This entails slowly and consistently increasing your mileage as you grow stronger until you are running 30, 40 or even 60-plus miles each week. Consistency is the key; running 20 miles one week and 40 the next will only lead to injury or burnout.
So, too, must a writer build a base – rather than miles on the road, hours at the keyboard are crucial. Set a weekly goal to begin with, perhaps as moderate as two hours (six days of 20 minutes), and then build on it. A simple way to do so would be to add five minutes on average to each writing session. In just over three months from such a humble start you will have built up to writing 10 hours a week! (If you prefer, your goals could be in words or pages written.) Once you achieve your goal base, be it four hours a week or 40, try to maintain it.
Training for a marathon requires running nearly every day. As the late, great University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman exhorted his runners: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.”
Similarly, writers must avoid daily excuses; there can be no such thing as writer’s block.
LOG YOUR MILEAGE. To stay on track to reach your goal it is important for a runner to keep a training log or journal. Ditto for a writer. If your goal this week is to write for three hours, that does not necessarily mean you must write 30 minutes a day for six days. If you only manage 20 minutes one day, you can pick up the pace with two days of 35 minutes or perhaps one day of 40 minutes. However, unless by design (see Long Runs below) it is best to not to skip days or stray too high from the average daily quota required to meet the weekly goal. Inconsistency will turn a pleasant writing or running routine into a daunting chore as you try to make up for lost time. Again, to do so is to flirt with injury and burnout.
Writers, like runners, are often pleasantly surprised by how quickly the words and miles pile up when the “workout” becomes a habit. For me these habits have become a daily obsession: I have a consecutive streak of running at least three miles daily for more than six years. Two years ago, this inspired me to start a writing streak of at least 20 minutes daily. I find these streaks to be great cures for the occasional running and writing blahs. In fact, most often three miles turns into a run of five or eight miles and 20 minutes writing becomes 45 minutes or an hour.
HARD DAYS, EASY DAYS. After building a solid base, a distance runner turns to focusing on getting faster and running farther in a single workout. This is accomplished with a “hard day” followed by one or two “easy days.” A hard day may consist of “speed work” in the form of a shorter run than usual with much of it at a faster pace; or a longer run than usual; or even a combination of the two.
“Easy days” – also called “recovery days” – are generally shorter and at an easier intensity, or may even be a complete day off. Don’t underestimate the importance of recovery days because the rest allows you to recharge your spirit and also makes it possible to give your best on the hard days.
At the writer’s desk, a hard day of “speed work” might entail completing a magazine piece on deadline; crafting a number of quality queries; or perhaps putting your nose to the grindstone and working though a section of your manuscript that has been giving you great difficulty.
For both the runner and the writer, it is important to follow up each hard day with at least one easy day. For some writers, this might mean editing their raw work; for others it might consist of writing freely without worrying about spelling or grammar. You can get away with a consecutive string of hard days over the short term, but break the rule often and you are dancing with injury or burnout down the road. In this same vein, with running and writing it is important to mix in an occasional easy week (perhaps during a vacation) now and then as well.
LONG RUNS. Finishing a marathon requires not only stamina of the body, but also of the mind; long runs build both, making the legs and lungs stronger as well as one’s confidence and power of concentration. Indeed, a successful marathon training schedule features a few long runs of 20 miles. Of course, a runner slowly builds up to this by adding a mile or two at a time to their weekly long run.
Not only does a 16-or-20-mile run provide an instant boost in morale (Maybe I can run a marathon after all!) it also makes the workouts to follow that much easier. Compared to an 18-mile run, four miles of speed work is much less daunting. Similarly, putting in an extra-long session at the writing desk every week or two provides a dose of confidence and accomplishment while also making it much easier to wrestle with the keyboard for your normal writing “workouts.”
TUNE-UP RACES. Most runners enter a 5K or 10K race, and probably a half-marathon too, while training for a marathon. These shorter races offer a sense of one’s growing fitness level, and also provide confidence and motivation towards the bigger task ahead. The same is true for a writer working on novel or other manuscript; taking a break to write a short fiction story or magazine piece can sharpen your skills and provide a welcome break from your grander challenge.
GET A TRAING PARTNER. Having a training partner, or weekend running group, can keep you from experiencing the “loneliness of the long-distance runner” while providing valuable motivation, support and feedback. Similarly, a writing partner or group can be invaluable in helping keep you on track and growing as you pursue your writing milestones.
BE PROUD OF YOUR MEDAL (AND METTLE). “Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it,” talk-show host – and marathon finisher – Oprah Winfrey has said. To finish a marathon requires putting in the endless training miles; to finish a manuscript requires putting one’s butt in the chair day after week after month. As renown author Norman Vincent Peale put it: “Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater than we realize.”
To be sure, writing a book is a marathon of an endeavor; one you might feel is beyond you. Think again. By following in marathoners’ footsteps, you can – and will! – reach the finish line.
Running Essay: Little Fellow Passes Me
(2011)
Being Passed by The Little Fellow Who Follows Me
Twenty-two Decembers ago, upon the birth of my son, legendary basketball coach John Wooden sent me a copy of a poem he had been presented in 1936 when his own son was born.
My “Little Fellow” many years ago during a youth cross-country race.
It is titled, “A Little Fellow Follows Me,” and begins:
A careful man I want to be,
A little fellow follows me;
I dare not to go astray,
For fear he’ll go the self-same way.
I re-read the poem often, and especially each Father’s Day, and think of that littler fellow every day – even as my own not-so-little fellow has grown six-feet-three-inches tall. I especially was reminded of the poem recently when he and I went on a run together.
Like most father’s and sons, we play basketball in the driveway and catch in the park, but The Little Fellow Who Follows Me especially likes to run.
No. Loves to run. Always has. He even wrote a poem in the second grade that said so, titled: “I Am A Boy Who Loves To Run.”
I am not sure where this pedestrian passion comes from. Track and cross country were never my sports. Or my two older brothers’ sports. Or my dad’s.
But they are my son’s. Instead of posters and pictures of Peyton manning and Shaquille O’Neal, his boyhood bedroom wall is plastered with ones of U.S. Olympic distance running legends Steve Prefontaine and Billy Mills and Deena Kastor.
* * *
I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whatever he sees me do, he tries;
Like me he says he’s going to be,
The little chap who follows me.
Greg representing USC on the track with true “Fight On!” spirit.
My son is much too fast for me these days – he was a four-year walk-on for the University of Southern California Track & Field team and Distance Captain last season as a senior. His event was the 5,000 meters with some 1,500s. Now we only run together occasionally when he is home on a break from running his nonprofit organization Give Running www.giverunning.org and has an “easy” day training for road races. Indeed, even though I am fast enough to have qualified for the Boston Marathon, his “easy” runs are my speed workouts just trying to keep up with him!
But we used to run together a lot. In fact, The Little Chap Who Follows Me actually would run next to me. We talked a lot. Actually, he did. Me, I mostly listened.
He would tell me about his friends, about school, about video games, about what moves he would make if he coached the Lakers.
Our running conversations also included a lot of questions. Usually his. Often they made me laugh out loud. Like, “Was Gramps really a kid once?”
And, “Is Mom growing shorter?”
“What?”
“Dad, I really think she’s shrinking!”
“No, I think you’re just growing taller.”
“Oh yeah, I guess so.”
You can see why I always savored running with The Little Fellow Who Follows Me, even when the pace was slower than I’d like to keep him from actually following me. Admittedly, I knew this wouldn’t last long. Indeed, like his shrinking mother, his dad is growing slower.
More than that, The Little Fellow also simply became a faster fellow who at age 11 ran a 5:37 mile, broke 20 minutes in the 5K and competed in the cross country nationals in his age group.
* * *
He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine;
The base in me he must not see,
The little chap who follows me.
I specifically, and fondly, remember one magical day 11 years ago – I know the year because it’s in my running diary, the memory preserved like a pressed rose in a scrapbook. The Little Chap Who Follows Me wanted to go on a 3-mile run. When we reached the turnaround point, I was struggling not to be The Old Man Who Follows Him.
Slowly, but methodically, The Little Chap Who Follows Me took the lead and widened it.
When he finally sensed that I was no longer with him, he turned around and came back for me. I told him to go ahead and I’d meet him at the park, but he would have none of that and ran alongside me at my pace the rest of the way.
I had envisioned this watershed day coming, the day when I couldn’t keep up – but not for a few more years I thought.
I thought wrong. Indeed, it was no fluke.
A couple days later, we went for a run in the hills and again I struggled to keep pace. Midway up “The Long Monster Hill That Makes Your Legs Burn,” as he has nicknamed this stretch of heartbreak road, I breathlessly insisted that The Little Fellow Who Follows Me go on ahead and wait for me at the top.
* * *
I must remember as I go,
My not-so-little “Little Fellow” and me.
Through summer’s sun and winter’s snow;
I am building for the years to be
That little chap who follows me.
With the summer’s-like sun setting behind the mountains, I finally crested the Monster Hill long after The Little Chap Who Follows Me did.
When I at last came into his view, he waved at me and smiled a big smile that seemed equal parts I-missed-you-Dad and pride. My pride was even greater. It is a mental snapshot I will remember as I go through the rest of my summer suns and winter snows.
Running, of course, is just a metaphor. My 11-year-old son’s flying Nikes as he effortlessly sailed up The Long Monster Hill That Makes Your Legs Burn and left me behind were a reminder of time’s winged flight, that The Little Fellow Who Follows Me wouldn’t be little for long.
Yes, figuratively I had glimpsed the future, and it is as it should be. Sons should grow taller and faster and stronger and more talented than their dads. And handsomer and funnier and wiser, too.
In short, become better.
Become, also, careful men with their own little fellows who follow them.
Until then, The Little Fellow Who Follows Me, now 22, gets to lead me. And I could not be happier.