Two runners share lifetime of stories

I had lunch earlier this week with an old friend from the running community. We both ran track in college and got into long distance running in the early 1980s.

I started the San Marcos Running Club and he started the New Braunfels Running Club and we both were very active in organizing races.

It was enjoyable going over the “old days” of seeing running grow in Central Texas. We ran a few marathons together and many 5K and 10K races in our younger days.

The conversation varied from remembering runners, training days, and the different races that we either ran in or organized.

Neither one of us charged a fee for organizing a race for a group. We just wanted the group to have a successful race.

Recalling runners from those early days it seemed we both knew stories of the same runners.

Both of us had stories of trying to talk to a non-running group that wanted to put on a 5K race to raise some funds for their organization. sWe had most of the necessary equipment needed to put on a race and in the early races there were not the automatic timing systems that are available today.

It was a hand held stop watch calling out the times as the runner crossed the finish line.

The awards were determined by a finish card with the runners name on it that they put into a “bucket” (usually a black plastic flower pot) with their finish number on it. One hard part was explaining the terms used in putting on a race that a non-runner had no knowledge of. Terms like “chute”, “master runners’ ‘, and “age-graded awards’ ‘ needed to be explained in simple detail. The organization’s main focus was on making money for their charity and it was hard to convince them that to make the race successful you needed to make it worth a runner’s time. That meant making sure the race shirt was a good quality and the awards were nice.

The awards were the most difficult to try and tell them that a nice award that is more expensive and original will bring the runner back next year.

A cheap award and an inexpensive poor quality race tee shirt will almost guarantee the race will fail the next year.

We tried to explain that the reason you had to get sponsors for the race was to cover the cost of the shirts and awards. Without sponsors the organization would be lucky to break even with the cost of the race and the money made from the runner’s entry fee.

Another topic was recalling some of the runners that were active and usually successful in the award ceremony after the race. We recalled examples of runners in the 90+ age group still running marathons and a few runners in their 50’s running outstanding times in a race. We started comparing notes on where they were now.

It came down to how many are still active in the races and how many were forced to quit for one reason or another.

One of the common reasons was a minor injury that required rest to heal but the person kept running. The minor injury soon became an injury that forced the runner to stop running all together. Being a successful runner is an addiction and it is tough to stop and listen to the body telling you to back off on training a bit. Both of us had similar experiences in having a small injury and not listening to the advice to rest.

Since there was not a lot of information on running injuries available to us at this time we learned from experience that trying to run with a minor injury often resulted in a longer recovery time.

Trying to tell another runner that was winning awards and giving them our advice from experience from a similar injury that they needed to rest for a few races was usually not taken. Then at the next race we would see them standing in the crowd unable to run.

We often rode bikes together and I remembered him as the reason I bought a new bike. We were on a ride and we stopped to rest a minute. He said, “It is a little embarrassing to ride with you on that bike.” I said, “It’s the same as yours.”

He told me to pick my bike up. I picked it up and he then told me to pick up his bike. It was about half the weight of mine.

I had a new bike for our next ride.

Both of us are semi-retired from race organizing and long distance running but still stay active helping other organizations or runners if they ask for advice.

Experience is a great teacher when it comes to training and staying fit and healthy and injury free.

One area he is very active in is training the senior age person that is now trying to get in better condition after being inactive most of their life.

With an older body they now realize that proper training makes for a better quality of life for them.