My first long-distance run was one of my worst. Maybe THE worst ever. It came as a form of punishment. Too many runners get their start this way. It’s all wrong. Indeed, it’s no doubt the main reason so many stop running: an initial, painful introduction to the sport.
I hope you’ll find a different way. In fact, it’s essential. If you don’t organize your running as a positive part of your days and weeks, you won’t continue it for long. I was lucky, as you’ll learn in a moment. You might not be so fortunate. In that case you’ll need to discover ways to create your own luck—to surround your running with many positive reinforcements.
I grew up the son of a YMCA director. He introduced me to all the popular sports—primarily football, basketball, and baseball—and I played them all with a wide-eyed energy and enthusiasm. I like to think I was pretty good too. I grew nearly a foot in junior high school, reaching the six-foot mark. That helped me choose my first high school sport. I decided to take a shot at basketball. It seemed a good fit. I had a burning desire to be a star athlete. I would do whatever it took.
I tried out for the basketball team as a tenth grader. More scrappy than talented, I somehow managed to make the cut and was placed on the JV squad. At the very bottom of the squad. I was the worst player on the team. Even I could see that. Before this, in my inexperienced youth, I hadn’t realized how many basketball players were stronger than me, not to mention better jumpers, better dribblers, better shooters…the whole works.
The coach saw fit to put me in only one game. As I recall, we were behind by about thirty-seven points with 2 minutes remaining. Coach figured it was safe to let me play at that point—there was nothing to lose. Not for the team, not for his personal reputation. Both were already scraping the bottom of the barrel. His assessment proved accurate. In my 2 minutes of play, I performed no miracles.
That first season of JV basketball shocked me to my senses. I realized I hadn’t reached the brink of athletic stardom, but didn’t know where to turn next. At one practice Coach grew particularly exasperated by our efforts. He threw up his hands in despair and ordered us off the court. As punishment, he told us to run the school’s 3-mile cross-country course. “You guys aren’t tough enough,” he said. “Maybe cross-country can teach you a lesson or two.”
None of us were excited by the prospect, but what were we to do? I was the quiet, obedient type, so I set off at a dutiful pace behind my peers, the better basketball players. To my surprise, most of them were walking after a quarter mile. I kept going.
It turned out that, while I was the worst player on the basketball team, I was better than the others at running 3 miles. I’m not saying I enjoyed the run. Hardly. It was absolute torture, especially the two big hills on our high school’s cross-country course. I struggled to keep running on the hills. My teammates walked.
If our basketball coach intended to punish us with this workout, he succeeded. By the end my face was caked with salt, and my thighs felt heavy as tree trunks. Worst of all, my feet were raw and blistered. To wear high-top basketball shoes on a cross-country run is a little like using a wooden matchstick to brush your teeth. You can get the job done, but you know that better equipment would make things much more pleasant.
At any rate, I finished minutes before anyone else. And soon found myself calculating my sports skills. Did I want to be last in basketball, or take a chance at a new sport where I seemed to have some natural talent?
I chose the latter. It made all the difference.
I didn’t meet my cross-country coach, John J. Kelley, until the first day of practice the following September. Still, everyone in my high school knew about Kelley. He was a Boston Marathon winner (1957), 1959 Pan American Games marathon champ, two-time US Olympic marathoner, and still among the half-dozen best marathoners in the country.
I soon learned that these were the least of Kelley’s accomplishments. More important, he was a brilliant, iconoclastic, unique individual—way ahead of his time. Kelley was a vegetarian, organic gardener, Bob Dylan fan, peacenik, ardent environmentalist, raconteur, student of great literature and philosophy, and believer in the essential goodness of all people, especially artists, freethinkers, and the downtrodden.
I understood little about running at the time, but of course it had a terrible reputation. Cross-country was for skinny, weak, uncoordinated kids who couldn’t catch or throw. Worse, it was tough, sweaty, boring, bone wearying, soul sapping, and completely unrecognized by newspapers and the sports-loving public. My school’s cheerleading squad got more respect than we runners.
I didn’t care. I only wanted to be good at something. I was even willing to endure the endless tedium of interval training on a track, if that’s what it took. In the early 1960s, when I joined Kelley’s cross-country team, everyone did interval training. Almost every day.
Kelley wasn’t “everyone,” however. He followed a different drummer. We never ran endless loops around the cinder track that circled the football field. Instead he led us on romps through apple orchards, nearby parklands, and marshy trails at the edge of Long Island Sound.
Kelley never spoke a word about how to run. I have no list of commandments that he proffered us. There were no quizzes. He just showed us how he ran, and we followed along as if he were the Pied Piper, amazed by the wonders of almost every workout. For more on Kelley running, see the essay introducing section five, “Getting Faster.”
For Kelley there was just running and being—living for the moment. We youngsters didn’t realize that we would win state championships based on this training. We just had fun scrambling over walls, sweating up long hills, scampering along narrow, rocky paths, and exploring the world around us.
It is the way I have run ever since, and I highly recommend it to you. Gadgets and gizmos can be nice, but you don’t need them. Running partners are fantastic, some of the time. Training plans can establish good guidelines, but be careful that you don’t fall into the perfectionism trap. Don’t let running rule your life; it doesn’t have to.
Instead, use running to enhance your life. Think big. Run free.