Bill Rodgers 1976 Journey to the First Five Boroughs New York City Marathon
“Remember Every Valor of Yours”
It is January 1st 1976 and I am running with my Greater Boston Track Club teammates on the streets of Boston from the Eliot Lounge in the Back Bay heading south. The spirit of the group is jovial and I avoid thinking about the ultimate length of the run if I should go the distance and not accept a ride from the traveling caravan accompanying us.
We are heading toward a friends family home in Scituate MA where we will recover from our effort and celebrate New Years Day with the New Black Eagle Jazz Band and the football bowl games to entertain us.
Tommy Leonard a fellow runner and bartender at the Eliot had this great idea and along with another runner friend Sharpless Jones, whose home was our destination made it all happen. It was one of the many events that made Boston such a great running community and with proselytizers like Tommy and Sharpless beating the drum it was going to be fun.
Bill Rodgers was my idol then, seven years older, Boston Marathon Champion in 1975, American Record Holder for the marathon and ranked the number one marathoner in the world. I had met him a year before and had raced him even before that as an 18 year old finishing right behind him in a five mile road race and now this.
Bill had recently married—moved to Melrose MA and started a job teaching special education students at a local high school. The future was so bright he had to wear shades but it wouldn’t be easy. The immediate goal was the United States Olympic Trials to be held in Eugene Oregon on May 22nd.
Bill cruised along in our tight pack of runners but different because he ran so fluid and light with near perfect form, except for his left arm which swished back and forth like a conductor for an orchestra.
At the time I was a college student living at home with my parents and didn’t realize what it must have been like for Bill with the load of training that he was trying to accomplish in New England’s sometimes psycho unpredictable weather.
| Intro: From a book concerning Bill’s eventful 1976 year. Excerpts from Marathoning by Bill Rodgers with Joe Concannon pages 87-89.The MARATHON. It is not one of the ultimate challenges, like going to the moon or climbing Mount Everest. The marathon is something that is readily within reach, and when I reached for it, I won Boston. I set the American Record. That opened doors. It changed my life. It also set me up for some failures. I learned how the marathon can humble you. From the considerable gossip and feedback I had heard and read in the press, it was clear many runners felt my record race at Boston was a fluke. I had the wind at my back, it was a downhill course, and it was point to point. Put simply, I had set it on an easy course on an easy day. The Olympic Trials became my next objective, and I had to cope with the interrelated aspects of climate and occupation. I was getting up at six o’clock to run, and in the freezing cold of January and February, it was starting to drive me crazy out there alone in the dark. Also it was dangerous. I can remember one day going out, running a half mile and flipping out. I ran back to the house and started to jog in place. It was physically and mentally depressing. I started asking myself, “How am I going to make the United States Olympic Marathon Team by jogging in place?”So I went to the school committee and asked for permission to run on my lunch hour. If they vetoed my request I was prepared, like most dedicated amateurs, to quit my job, and as usual, go it alone. But they did grant my request and on most days I did six or seven miles. Nine was a good day. Then I did ten or twelve after school. It made for a long day. The tension in Eugene was incredible. Even though I was the American Record holder, was ranked number one marathoner in the world for 1975, and had two fast times to my credit, I still did not think of myself as being the superior or even the equal to Frank Shorter. I found it difficult to sleep in Eugene and frequently felt dizzy and disoriented. I thought it was jet-lag from my cross country trip, but it was mostly tension. I bought junk food from the vending machine outside my motel room and managed to enjoy it. It was a fantastic feeling making the Olympic Team. It was a downright emotional moment crossing that line. It made all of the runs on the ice and snow clogged streets of Melrose worthwhile. |
Bill worked hard at it and the numbers alone are staggering. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but the totals for the year; 6772 total miles, that is129.5/week, 18.5/day. He ran twenty two races including five marathons. One of these was in Japan a kind of exhibition against a relay team of taiko drummers where he was under 2:09 for the distance.
In those winter months there were weekly workouts at Tufts University indoor track, a flat track without banks that ran through a tunnel. Bill was still working closely with Greater Boston Coach Billy Squires then who along with his teammates in the club, help fine tune his training with interval work and companions to share the load.
A secondary goal of Bill’s was the track trials also in Eugene where he would run the 10,000 meters. Bill much preferred cross country and road running to track and had achieved the highest levels in those disciplines including a third in the 1975 World Cross Country Championship in Morocco, his big time breakthrough race.
Squires thought that Bill would benefit from this competition and Bill agreed it would be a important part of his preparation for the Olympics. In April Bill ran 28:33 at the Penn Relays achieving a personal best and qualifying for the track trials in June. At those trials Bill won his qualifying heat in another personal best 28:32. He then finished fourth in the final in a big personal best time of 28:04.
Coach Squires and Bill had agreed that he would not have run the 10,000 meters at the Games even had he qualified which he would have done as Frank Shorter who won the trial would run only the marathon in Montreal.
The 1976 Olympic Games were a month away, time for fine tuning sharpening with interval work on the track, but unfortunately Bill had developed a foot injury racing in track spikes that were a bit tight. Just when you want to feel at your best things begin to go south putting the athlete in a vulnerable position. It happens to the best of athletes during a long career, but why now before one of the biggest races of your life?
“After the track trials I did not do any more track work before the Olympics. I now know that you simply have to do some form of speed work for the marathon. I was afraid if I went on the track it might aggravate the foot injury and make it worse. I didn’t want to be knocked completely out of the race. When I arrived in the Olympic Village in Montreal, the foot hurt more. I finally went to see the American medical team and they used ultrasound treatment and iced my foot. That helped. It seems amazing to me that I, the athlete with the fastest qualifying time for my event, who was now limping around the Olympic Village, was not given more assistance by the staff at Montreal. It was as if everyone assumed we knew everything there was to know and all of the bases were covered. The after race: I can’t remember much about that night. All I recall is that it was somehow a very significant experience. This was the end of it. It was as if your running career had come to an end on a sour note. I didn’t go out and get drunk. I had no desire to. I ached too much. I had cramps. I just went home had something to eat, and went to bed. To be succinct, it was massively depressing. Just crushing. Words cannot convey the utter feeling of losing that one feels over a poor performance at the Olympics.”
That set the stage for New York, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. At the 1976 Falmouth Road Race, a race founded by aforementioned Tommy Leonard, Frank Shorter competed for the second time.
Fred Lebow President of the New York Road Runner’s Club and Director of the New York City Marathon arrived in town and would persuade both Bill and Frank to race in New York’s first five borough race in October.
From “Inside the World of Big- Time Marathoning” by Fred Lebow with Richard Woodley.
“I called a press conference outdoors near the finish line to announce the spectacular, new, five borough New York City Marathon. Not one member of the press showed up. I was shaken by the lack of interest. We needed names. That is when I decided to go after Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers.”
The Falmouth race in August was only weeks removed from Bill’s disappointing Olympic run but he ran very solid finishing second to Big Frank. Some of us referred to Frank this way as an honorific and still do.
In the ten weeks between Falmouth and the NYC Marathon Bill runs mileage weeks of: 110-143-150-179-165-131-165-159-164-149. This includes a ten mile race victory in 47:48 and a half marathon victory in 1:04:16. The week after the marathon when he might have been resting and celebrating he ran 121 miles.
In addition to Bill and Big Frank two time NYC Marathon victor Tom Fleming would run and a pretty solid international field including Ron Hill and Chris Stewart who would hang with Bill the longest until First Avenue coming off the Queensboro Bridge at 15 miles when Bill hit escape velocity out on his own not a care in the world.
Ahead of Bill Fred Lebow rode along in the lead vehicle putting out fires and avoiding potential disasters. It would have been a real shame if anything major had gone wrong because even more than Bill’s 1975 victory at Boston this was when Bill painted his masterpiece and I know took some revenge over the running gods that denied his Olympic Victory.
The last ten miles were a victory lap and though there were some spectators, for the most part New Yorkers were barely aware what was going on. Bill strode along in a pair of borrowed running shorts and is trademark white gloves. At twenty three miles two of Bill’s Greater Boston teammates awaited him. Vinny Fleming and Brad Hurst had made a rash decision the night before while drinking at the college bar at the University of Lowell MA. “Brad, I wish I could be in New York tomorrow for the marathon.” “I’ll pick you up at five AM. and we can drive down and catch the finish.
They arrived only minutes before Bill did and watched the race leaders go by before jumping in the car and heading back to Lowell.
Big Frank, robbed of a second gold medal in Montreal would finish second three minutes behind Bill, an eternity. Though he still had plenty of running left in him his body had begun taking a toll. It was Bill’s time now and for the immediate future, we now can look back on four NYC wins, four in Boston and one in Fukuoka, nine wins in major races in a five year span. Dominance.
This race established big time big city marathoning and spawned others in Chicago, London, Berlin etc. On the Mt. Rushmore of New York City Marathon would surely be, Ted Corbitt, Olympian and president founder of the New York Road Runners Club, Fred Lebow race director and Billy Rodgers.
Soon this event will be fifty years in the rear view and the running world has changed immeasurably.
New York City Marathontook 1st place with 2:10:09.6 …felt very good except for minor leg tightness the last few miles and minor stomach upset caused by taking magnesium tablets immediately prior to the race. Total miles run today 27. Course was not overly tough but had rough footing – cobblestones, iron gratings on bridges, potholes and several fair hills. |
NYC Marathon 1976