At last, results of the 2008 "Blast From The Past" Boston Marathon

Despite my many pre-Boston Marathon concerns, the race was a relative breeze. I'm sure the good weather was a major contributing factor. And I felt well-recovered two days later. Then, boom! The dreaded post-marathon cold. I've been in the dumps for the last week, and am only slowly emerging now. Hence, this delayed report on the desperately-difficult-to-enter, highly-competitive, and richly-unremunerative "2008 Blast From The Past Marathon." (Open only to runners who had finished a Boston Marathon in the 1960s and also ran this year.)

1. Amby Burfoot, 62, 3:21:04*
2. Paul Thompson, 60, 3:24:01
3. Paul Hoffman, 67, 4:19:30
4. Neil Weygandt, 61 (42nd straight Boston) 4:34:55
5. Keizo Yamada, 80 (1953 Boston winner) 5:18:23
6. Ben Beach, 58 (41st straight Boston), 5:40:28
* Kidding, just kidding. My actual time was 3:51:04, but as the, uh, Paula Abdul of this competition, I decided to make us some silly new rule, and give myself 30 minutes for hooking up with a Wellesley coed en route (photo). Besides, it was the only way I could beat Thompson.

Seriously, while the rest of us lagged, Thompson ran up to his ability. A runner can't do more than that. Congrats to Paul.

I was able to gather a couple of comments from the afflicted.

Paul Thompson: "I kept trying to slow myself down early, but was uncomfortable running slower.  I sure came apart near the end, but am satisfied with 3:24 because that's all I could do."

Paul Hoffman: "Never too old to learn! I got to the top of Heartbreak under 4 hr pace and in good shape, but just I was set to enjoy the downhill swoop past BC, both my calves cramped up. That deliciously cool breeze was far more desiccating than I imagined. Consequently I didn't drink nearly enough during the race.

Ben Beach: My legs had nothing, and I had to walk a good bit of the last ten miles.

For myself, I have a whole lot of thanks to hand out. After a miserable January and February, due to a crippling back spasm, I was never positive that I was going to get it together in time for a decent Boston. I managed, thanks in no small part to

*** my wife, Cristina, my sister, Natalie, my brother, Gary, and an extended family support crew at Boston that included Bill, Jeff, Christy, Phyllis, and Jonathan
*** John Valentine, Megan Valentine, and Ian Chillag, who paced me. Ian, from NPR, even managed to use his iPhone to Twitter and Flickr as we ran, how I don't know. John, a Vermont-based oncologist, was my first training partner way back in the mid-1960s. Megan is his daughter. They're both training for the Vermont City Marathon.
*** chiropractors Tim Maggs and Kurt Schichtl, and massage therapists Laura Pedloski and Freedom Platia
*** a newfound and runner-friend family doc, Mark Wendling (who just PR'd by 80 seconds in the Lehigh Valley Half Marathon)
*** the entire Runner's World staff, especially the Emmaus-based editorial and marketing staffs, and our fitness director, Budd Coates
*** lots and lots and lots of other friends, associates, and email pen-pals

I'm already thinking about 2013, and 2018, a day I'd truly love to see. Here's the plan: Taper off, run slow, keep moving forward.

Photo by Ian Chillag

Apr. 19: It was 40 years ago today...

[Oops, got so busy in Boston the last few days that I forgot to post this on Saturday. So now it's 40 years plus two days.]

FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY, ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON in 1968, I won the Boston Marathon. Some days it seems much longer ago than that; some days, closer. On Monday I'll toe the starting line in Hopkinton again. I'm scared. That's probably a good thing.

I was just 21 when I won Boston, not yet a college grad. It couldn't have been a bigger thrill. My coach and running inspiration John J. Kelley had been the last American victor in 1957, 11 years before me. Of course, there's a down side to everything. When you succeed at something unimaginable when you're just 21, there's only one way to go afterwards. I've been following that trajectory for a long time.

I often tell people that I was "lucky" to win the Boston Marathon. I don't actually mean that. Nobody wins a big marathon with the kind of luck that alights on lottery winners. I had trained my butt off for several years before Boston '68, always dreaming of one day achieving what Kelley had accomplished. Of course, among the top runners, everyone trains hard.

So you DO need some luck to win. You need weather that suits you; Boston was warm that April, and I'm a good heat runner. You need a pace that's right; I always liked even-paced races of attrition. At Boston, you need to be a good hill runner; check. It helps a lot to have raced the course before; check again. You need people lined up to help you: Both Kelleys, John J. and John A. in my case, and most importantly of all, Jock Semple, who knew me from my several summers of New England road racing. You need many helpful training partners like Bill Rodgers and Jeff Galloway and John Valentine and my teammates at tiny Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

In 1968, we still lived and felt "the loneliness of the long distance runner," so having all these friends in my corner was a huge advantage. And my family of course, especially since I was so young then: father, stepmother, brother and sister.

You think a lot about these things when you go back to run Boston again 40 years later. Rather than fading with the years, they become more important. Time and space seem to provide a clarifying perspective. Have I mentioned yet how lucky I feel today? A different and larger and more encompassing luck?

I don't know anyone who's had a better job than me these last 30 years that I've been at Runner's World. Others have come and gone at RW, not always happily, as corporate change is always wrenching. But I feel that I'm doing what I was somehow intended to do, and I still whistle on my way to work each morning. I know that few Americans love their jobs; I wish that everyone could feel as happy and satisfied as I do.

Of course I feel fortunate that my body is still healthy enough to go the distance...I think. Just a few months ago, in the wrenching lower back spasms of January, I had severe doubts. I felt betrayed by my non-responsive body. I was surprised and horrified by how quickly depression followed on the heels of physical pain. Now I am both humbled by the experience, fearful that it might return, and largely recuperated.

No I won't try to run hard on Monday. I haven't done that in a marathon for nearly 20 years. I'm willing to push to the edge in 5 milers and even half-marathons, but not over the full 26.2. I'm hoping to keep it comfortable for as long as possible and to finish in about 3:59. I'm scared primarily because I haven't gone the marathon distance in two years, not since Napa Valley 2006. So it's looming large in my mind again. And I haven't covered more than 15 miles in a recent training run--good reason to find a sustainable pace.

I'll have a small flotilla of pacers with me. You're welcome to join in if you see us. The most important of these runners is my first training partner, John Valentine. John's three years younger than me and was dumb enough in the mid-1960s--when I was beginning to rack up impressive training mileages, and he was just 15--to agree to do many workouts with me. You never forget your first training partner, and it's even better when you can continue to mark important running occasions with him 40+ years later.

Today John is an oncologist in mid Vermont, and faster than me. I haven't forgiven him for that, but I'm still eternally grateful for his presence at my side. We'll be joined, the miracle of the generations, by his energetic and faster-than-either-of-us daughter Megan. She's using Boston as a long run for her big spring effort--the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington at the end of May.

My own kids are spread around the globe, attending to important matters in their own lives. That's the way it should be, I think. Even my wife Cristina has nearly abandoned me this spring. She was chosen to share a stage with Toni Morrison at an Barack Obama rally last night in Allentown, PA. Since she's just completed her first book, she figured she could use the shoulder time with Morrison. Like I said, everyone has to follow their own path. But Cristina will show up in Boston later today, and I don't have a bigger or better cheerleader anywhere.

I always wonder what I'll be thinking about during a-return-to-Boston marathon. I should have deep, philosophical, the meaning-of-life thoughts, right? It rarely turns out that way. I usually think about splits, the sore spot on my foot, the crick in my neck, how to find shade (if it's sunny), how to find drinks (if it's hot), changing my stride on the uphills and downs, when to take my peppermint candies, whether to use a run-walk strategy or just to maintain a continuous, slow run, where the hell's Heartbreak Hill, and dozens of other running-related things.  By the time I finish I haven't done much in the way of deep thinking.

But that is never the point. I just want to finish. And after I finish, I want to start looking for the next starting line. I don't know if there's more to life than this. I only know that I'm immensely grateful for the road I've followed... the road I'm still on.

Bottom photo, taken in 2003: Keizo Yamada, the author, John A. Kelley

Apr. 15: Bill Clark, once a winner, always a winner

WHEN I THINK ABOUT HOW LUCKY I WAS TO WIN the Boston Marathon in 1968, I often wonder what it would have been like to finish second. At those moments, I only have to reflect on Bill Clark's life. He was second at Boston in 1968 and had a few other near-miss races during that period. But he won big races, too, ran well around the globe, ran strong for many years, and has led a rich, fulfillling (and quiet; it's his nature) life. Recently, I've talked to him a little more, and picked up more of the details.

Four months before Boston 68, Clark ran a course record 2:24:23 in the Philadelphia Marathon, Philly being the city of his teenage years. Eleven months after Boston, he was the first American finisher and 11th place overall in the International Cross-Country Championships in Scotland, then as now essentially the deepest, most-elite distance race in the world.

Clark spent much of 1968, the Olympic year, trying to resolve whether the 10,000 meters or marathon was his best distance. He could run 400 meters in 50 seconds and a mile in 4:06, but the marathon also beckoned, with its history of Pheidippides and the recent brilliant Olympic wins of Abebe Bikila in both the Rome and Tokyo. Unable to decide, he went for both. "In retrospect, I probably should have focused on just one, the 10,000," he says now. "I read later that that was the approach Bill Bowerman drummed into his runners. I could never train as much as the other marathoners. I broke down when I went over 100 a week. So, with my track speed,the 10,000 probably would have been better."

Two weeks after Boston--"I thought, Hey, second is pretty good"--Clark won a 5000/10,000 double at the Quantico Marine Relays. On June 21, he finished a close second in the National Track Championships with a 28:56.6. Nine days later he entered the fateful First Olympic Trials of 1968, and this time he won the 10,000, kicking past Van Nelson and Tom Laris in the final straightaway. Some thought that the winners of these first Trials were guaranteed a spot on the 1968 Olympic Team, where the Trials system also included a later, altitude Trials at Lake Tahoe in September (the 1968 Games were in Mexico City in October). Clark, as honest as he is humble, says he never believed this about the First Trials, only that they qualified him for the Second.

But now came the big decision. The Marathon Trials were scheduled for August 18 in Alamosa, CO, three weeks before the Second Trials. Should he run Alamosa? "It seemed like a wide open event, because the track guys hadn't started moving up to the marathon yet," Clark says. He went for it. And then two track guys showed up, both having done a fair amount of altitude training: George Young and Kenny Moore easily grabbed the first two spots.

Clark had a different plan: Start slow, move up. His training diary recounts that he was in 20-something place at the end of the first of five loops around Alamosa. But after 4 laps, he was in fifth place and closing fast. "I was feeling great," he says. "I had better speed than the next two guys ahead of me, and I thought I was going to catch them. I thought I was going to make the team."

That feeling lasted for another 2 miles, then dehydration apparently got the better of Clark. When he weighed himself after the race, he found that he had lost 13 pounds. He hit some kind of wall and faded to ninth place. Ron Daws grabbed the third spot on the team.

Alamosa has its happy memories though. Clark met a cute, energetic coed worked at the campus ice cream store that he visited frequently for refueling. She was one of the first female joggers being helped along by the young Alamosa coach, Joe Vigil. Six months later, he and Ellen were married, and they'll celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary next February.

Three weeks after the dehydrating Alamosa Olympic Marathon Trials, Clark toed the line for another 10,000--at least his fifth of the season, including three in June. This was the Second and more significant Olympic Trials, at altitude, and he and Kenny Moore were the only top marathoners attempting the double. Moore finished seventh, Clark ninth. He had lost his last chance at the trip to Mexico City.

In the following years, Clark had many strong races on the northern California scene, and also nationally and internationally. He particularly remembers a One-Hour Race on the track at Mount Tamalpais High School where he covered 12 miles, 535 yards. He spent 22 years as a financial manager at General Electric, and then shorter stints doing similar work for companies in the San Jose area. At just beyond 64, he retired two weeks ago from his last position at an electric power research group that's looking for solutions to the global warming problem.

His knees went south about 8 years ago, so Clark spends more time bicycling than running these days, regularly logging 50 milers and longer. But there's a Notre Dame get-together coming up soon--Clark was class of 1965--and some of the old runners are talking about racing each other. So of course he's wondering if retirement might allow him to rehabilitate the knees a little and...well, you never know. For a number of years, Clark has also been coaching a group of Palo Alto area runners who meet on the wood chip trails at Stanford, not far from his and Ellen's home in Los Altos.

About a decade ago, Bill, Ellen and their two adult children formed a nonprofit, The Sustainable Living Foundation, to raise funds for an orphanage in Zimbabwe and an urban garden project in Paraguay. Their 9th annual "Run For Zimbabwe Orphans"--also called "XC for a Cause"--took place on April 6. Ellen Clark ran last year's San Francisco Marathon for the same cause, finishing in 4:23:06, third in her age group.

"Ellen likes to call these things 'two-way philanthropies,' says Bill. "Of course, it's good that we're teaching people, especially young people, that life in other parts of the world isn't the same as it is here. And we can raise some funds for African kids who need it. But we're also having a lot of fun ourselves, making new friends and keeping in touch with old, and also getting that good sense of accomplishment that you get when you do something that helps others."

Against a backdrop like this, a few second-place road and track finishes seem mighty trivial. I dropped by Bill and Ellen's home about 15 months for their annual Christmas cookie party. The house was full of scrambling kids, hardcore runners and cyclists, more casual athletic types, rooms full of warm, friendly, chitchatty people. It was a good day, in other words, and I sensed that the Clarks have many like this.

Top Photo: Zimbabwe orphanage. Courtesy The Sustainable Living Foundation

Second Photo: Family and friends, after 2007 San Francisco Marathon. Ellen Clark with race number, and son Will to her right. Bill Clark, second from right, and daughter Teresa to his right. Courtesy the Clark family.