My mind has always been oriented in terms of numbers. The education given to me at university was in that direction: an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, graduate work in Electrical Engineering and a professional license as a Chemical Engineer, followed by an MBA. I did all of that in night school on the GI Bill a long, long time ago, and it took me 13 years. For most people that might sound like a whole lot of time in school. But those who read UltraRunning will be able look at it this way: you start moving in the direction of a distant goal and you do not stop until you are done. The lovely Sylvia Nelson became my teenage bride 53 years ago. Marriage, like education, is a project that you enter for the long haul. The same personal attributes that keep your nose to the grindstone in school, at work and in marriage also translate beautifully to endurance running. Let me lay a few thoughts on you. You are entitled to disagree, to grumble, to turn the page to the results of your last race, or maybe even say, “Okay, let’s see what the old boy has to say.” I hope that it is the latter.
Observation #1 There are times when life may issue what looks like lemons that will turn into a jackpot. The beginning: Put yourself in the Bronx in September of 1948. As a high school freshman I have failed to make the football team (too small at 135 pounds) and in the previous summer had my budding career as a Golden Gloves boxer ended rather abruptly in my third (and last) fight with a guy whose arms almost reached his knees: I couldn’t get near him. Coach Howie Borck is looking for runners for his cross-country team. Feeling that running is somewhat below a man of my talents, I take it on anyway, hoping that running will help me to get into better condition for something better. Here is the kicker: I found out that I liked running and was fairly good at it.
Observation #2 Developing discipline is a prerequisite to hard work, without which you will never get anywhere. Running was also hard work, and took a lot of discipline. But the work and discipline got results. Coach Borck took a bunch of inexperienced city kids and in four years he shaped us into New York City champions. I can still close my eyes and marvel at the big meadow in front of me at the starting line in Van Cortlandt Park, 1,000 cross-country runners lined up to sprint that first quarter-mile to the narrow opening into the hills where the real race would begin. There were three seasons for runners: crosscountry in the fall, indoor track in the winter, and outdoor track in the spring and summer. I competed in all three for four years in high school. Coach Borck helped me to get a track scholarship to Manhattan College, one of the nation’s top running schools. But life didn’t work out that way. There was a war going on in Korea and I did not want to miss it, so I opted to wear a military uniform instead of a track suit, for which I have no regrets.
Observation #3 The lemons will keep coming, so learn to love lemonade. When I returned to school I had to work full time while carrying an almost-full academic program. It was then that I met the woman who was to be my life’s companion. Before long a bundle of joy joined us. Family-school-work. (Isn’t that exactly the dilemma that confronts ultrarunners, juggling training, work and family life?) Did I stop running? Not on your life. Good fortune intervened in the form of an oddball runner named Irving Rattner. Irv’s question was “Why shouldn’t there be an Evening Division track team at CCNY?” Why not, indeed? I believe that we were the only night school track team in the U.S., so it is not presumptuous to say that we were national champions of our division. Understand, dear reader, that in the 1950s nobody ran, except for members of track teams. If you were seen running along the road in your shorts you were considered a pervert.
Observation #4 What is considered unacceptable today might very well be the norm tomorrow. Go with what you think is right, not what other people think.
Observation #5 Keep your eyes open and you will find a way to live life the way you want to. Doors are there. School finally came to an end and I was only able to sneak in my secretive running by going to a high school track in the late evening, sometimes having to climb the fence to get in. Again fate intervened in my favor. In 1974, my company (before they fired me) moved me from the conservative East Coast to the San Francisco peninsula, where attitudes about running around in your skivvies were very different. At that time there were only two running publications in the U.S.; Track and Field News and a new magazine dedicated to distance running called Runners World, and both of them were published in Mountain View, California, the town next to mine. This is how my salvation came about: One Sunday morning I took my three children for a stroll on the trails at nearby Foothill College. A band of about 20 sweaty runners came over the hill and my heart leaped. They were finishing their weekly six-mile run right where we were standing. A guy named Joe Henderson said that they ran every Sunday morning and why didn’t I join them next week? That was an invitation that I could not refuse. It was a struggle keeping up at first, but I ran with them every weekend and eventually got to the point where I could run a 10-km race in under 40 minutes.
Observation #5 Good things happen if you let them. Watch for opportunities and jump on them: you might not get a second chance. In the 70s we were in the midst of what would later be called “the first running boom,” a time when everything about running was new. We were experimenting with shoes, technique and training: not unlike today, but a bit more primitive. I did not know anyone who had run a marathon. Running that far seemed super-human. But the temptation to enter the ranks of those who had run a marathon was too great, and in late 1974 I ran my first at the magnificent Avenue of the Giants Marathon in the redwood forests of northern California. I was instantly hooked on marathon running. We entered every one we could find, and there were few in those days.
Observation #6 If I may paraphrase George Orwell, “Running good; Marathoning better.” Then my friend Ron Kovacs told me that he was training for a really long run, the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run. You mean that there is something longer than a marathon? Heck, if Ron could do it, why couldn’t I? But first I had to qualify by running in a 50-mile race, and there were no 50-milers available. I solved that problem by entering a 50-mile, six-person relay as a solo runner, the birth of what later came to be called the Fat Ass Fifties (see UltraRunning – April 2010)
Observation #6A Orwell again rephrased, “Marathons good; Ultras better.” In 1978, Kovacs, my training partner John Lehrer and I toed the starting line of Western States at Squaw Valley. John and I were terrified, so we donned alter egos: we told ourselves that we were Andy Gonzales and Frank Bozanich, two of the best ultrarunners of the day. Conditions were perfect that day and we got silver belt buckles for finishing about an hour under 24. The transition had been made from runner to marathoner to ultrarunner. There could be no higher calling in the field of pedestrian activity.
Observation #7 There are worlds to conquer: seek and conquer them. Throw your chest out, grab your sword and have at it! My time on this planet has passed the three quarters of a century mark and I am still running as best I can. I no longer run marathons or ultras, although I would dearly love to again be physically and psychologically able to run the 50 beautiful kilometers of the Wildwood Trail here in Portland, or maybe the Avenue of the Giants Marathon. Still, I have nothing to complain about: my big bag full of memories is more than I could ask for at this age.
Observation #8 Do it while you can. Tomorrow may be too late. Last September marked 62 years of running for me since Coach Borck gave me religion. In that time I have run well over 100,000 miles, enough to go around the earth almost five times, including 130 marathons (at least one on every continent), 51 ultras, a handful of super-marathons (where you run a full marathon every day, many days) and countless shorter events. I have paid back to the sport that has given me so much pleasure by serving as an officer of my running club, the San Francisco DSE Runners, and on the national level of the sport, and as an event organizer. My cup, as they say, runneth over. (And that includes many a beer mug downed with the Hash House Harriers.)
Observation # 9 Running has given you a lot. It took the combined efforts of a lot of people to make all those events happen for you. Now it is your turn to shoulder your share of the load: give back in whatever way you can. There is no room in this sport for freeloaders.
Observation # 10 Make sure that running is still fun for you. If not, back off.
Observation # 11 Finally, keep things in perspective. Running may fill an important place in our lives, but there are other aspects to your life that are much more important. (Did I mention that I swim a bit?)
Joe Oakes is a sneaky devil. He defected from the purity of ultrarunning when, at the awards ceremony for Western States, he followed a dare by Cowman to try the Ironman Triathlon if he was a “real man.” He became addicted to that silly sport to the point where he put together his own triathlon in San Francisco, the Escape From Alcatraz, now 30 years running. Blame him for the Fat Ass Fifties and for the most ludicrous ultra event ever held in the U.S., The Tour of the Golden West, a super-marathon run in the Nevada desert, the Sierra Nevada and the San Francisco suburbs (It was run only once, thank God.). He and the ever-tolerant Sylvia have been married for 53 years and live in Portland, Oregon, near their grandchildren.
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