Milestones

Love, Marriage and a running life

This month is stuffed with milestones. I’ll recognize two of them. Most notable has to be a marriage that has reached 59 years and counting. That’s nothing folks. Next year it will be sixty, which is quite impossible since I’m barely 70. When folks hear about that achievement they express amazement and tell us how rare it is. I tell them we know half a dozen couples who marriages have exceeded 60 years so far. True story.

It’s jaw dropping from where I sit to muse on a long life’s achievements. A long marriage to Peggy, the love of life and my best friend, is cause for sympathy, I mean applause. That august moment is followed by a goal I’ve sought and wasn’t sure I’d reach. I’ve been a runner for 50 years this month. This morning at 6:30 I ran for 1:07 minutes which is just over one-hour daily goal. Running is where your feet leave the ground for a beat or two. Mine barely do at this point in the race. You ask why I persevere given the effort involved and how slow I’ve become. It’s because I have to do it. Otherwise, I’m a miserable SOB. Just ask Peggy. The 47 BPM pulse and 98.5 O2 saturation are my badges of honor after two circuits around the world.

And speaking of running, Jeff Galloway, the running guru and Olympian stopped running last month. He died at the age of 80 before finishing the marathon he’d been planning. He’d had a cardiac event in 2022 that slowed him down then a stroke finished the job. His passing was like losing a member of the family somehow. I followed Jeff’s guide to marathon training, Galloway’s Book on Running, back in 1982. His plan dictated ten 50 mile weeks with 20 miler two weeks before the marathon. That was followed by modest taper and my first and only marathon in NYC. The next year I discovered triathlons and marathons fell by the wayside.

The elation I felt crossing the NY Marathon finish line in Central Park in 3:23.47 was one of my life’s great moments. For you statisticians that’s 7:47 miles. That’s far from stellar but deeply satisfying. I owe that result to Jeff Galloway, a sweetheart of a man by all accounts. Jeff wanted to finish one more marathon and would have been ‘happy to finish last’ to quote his words. I would have loved to run it with him though I’m far from sure I could do it. You’d have to time me with a calendar.

Jeff has been called the most important runner of all time not because he was the fastest or most gifted runner but because he was a stellar human being who brought the joy of running to thousands like me. Scores of tributes followed his passing. Among them were these that touched me.

“He’s survived by every person who ever crossed a finish line and thought, ‘I didn’t think I could do this.’

And “Gonna do my run today as I run walk to pay my respects.”

And OriginalOrestrus writes. “I am absolutely gutted.”

So, I am I.

In March 1976 I took my first running step since basic training in the Army Reserve in 1960. From our house in New Canaan, Connecticut I could run a pathetic .8 miles before gasping for air and walking around the intersection three-blocks away. Sometime in June I attempted my first five miler. I was so afraid of the distance that I asked Peggy to follow me on the long, long road to Bedford, New York and back. Apparently, I didn’t expire. Then I ran my first 10K in Wilton, Connecticut on our nation’s bicentennial. I was a runner. Ten years later at 46, I ran 38:51 in Maine. That seemed fast until 51-year-old Bill Riley clocked a 34:17 in the same race. That’s when I learned that there are regular Joes like me who train hard and can be pretty good and gifted humans like Riley who reside on another planet entirely. He, it’s worth noting, was the world record holder in his age group in the triathlon.

As he aged, Jeff Galloway began walking and running marathons. He ran a 2:16 walk run marathon and was faster than his best running marathon. Hmm.

I couldn’t feature reducing myself to that old person’s routine till last Friday. I tried it on my one-hour course and was 6 minutes faster. Oh, baby!

84 isn’t the end. It’s the start.