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Time of the End of the Season Part IX
Time of the End of the Season Part IX
By Bob Hodge
Bob Hodge grew up in Lowell and went on to graduate from Lowell High (1973) and University of Lowell (1990). He was (and still is) one the greatest runners to come out of this region. He’s also a writer whose 2020 memoir, Tale of the Times: A Runner’s Story, is available at lala books in downtown Lowell and in Kindle format from Amazon. The following is an excerpt from his novel-in-progress.
Already published:
Time episode 1
Time episode 2
Time episode 3
Time episode 5
Time episode 7
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Side Trip to Galway
I could see that it would be fun and interesting living with these two knuckleheads who were as obsessed as I was with our Athletics aspirations. On the weekend we would be adding another of our persuasion a college drop out said to be taking a sabbatical. Bobby would be sleeping on a cot in the hallway.
He would be running with the Bombers while on his break from college and working at the shoe factory with Donnie and me. Bobby was also a guitar player so I could see us all making some noise when I got back from Galway with my guitar.
I spent the rest of the week getting in a routine which included working 25 hours a week doing odd jobs at the shoe factory and working in the factory store on odd Saturdays.
The first job I was given was hanging insulation way up in the ceiling of the factory, which required climbing a ladder a very uncomfortable distance up over the factory floor where the racks of shoe last and shoes being made in progress and the noise and the spills and the smells.
On Friday I took the train up to Galway and walked to my parent’s house through those same streets I had left behind nearly a year ago. So much had changed in that short time and Galway looked smaller cheaper and meaner as immediately I started to walk and some delinquent peckerheads started harassing me, “hey hippie dippie what’s with the pack, you going camping?”
No—don’t look back, you can never look back.
I had dinner with my dad at home and got caught up with my mail. Later my old friend Richelieu picked me up in his Thunderbird and we drove around Galway stopping in at some old stomping grounds.
My friends were bemused by my travels and I was equallypuzzled that they had no desire to ever leave Galway or explore other possibilities.
“Willy, you got that running thing going good for you—but it’s different for us.” A few friends and family commented that I now had a “Boston” accent. “I only been in Boston for a week.”
“Well Willy, you just talk different—you ain’t the same.”
Summer was rolling now and in Galway that meant trips to Salisbury or Hampton Beaches. Early Sunday morning we piled into the Thuderbird for a day at the beach. Lee Ann and Sue in their little “Elly Mae” cut off jean shorts and bikini tops.
The minute we got to the beach and got our blankets down and carried the cooler the frisbees the footballs and all with us I headed out for a ten miler in just my shoes and shorts and cheap sunglasses.
When I returned, I did some barefoot strides on the beach and everyone joined in throwing the football around with frequent dives and swims in the surf.
I had a beer and chatted with Sue who was a few years younger than me a senior in high school. She had been dating a guy on the football team but I sensed she was getting bored with him.
“Willy, my boyfriend is kind of jealous of your notoriety as a runner and if he took up running, he would kick your ass—but football is a real sport and running is for sissies.’
I lay back and tried not to stare at Sue and her beautiful boobs. Like looking into the Sun.
After a time, I fell asleep and dreamed I was far away running in the clouds of snowcapped mountains.
Richelieu dropped me at the train station.
“Willy, you know Sue just a girlie only 17 man she don’t know nothing about nothing.” “Oh ya, I get that, but she pretty sweet just the same.”
“Keep in touch with yourself peckerwood.”
After a few weeks getting in a routine Coach told us he could take a few of us with him to the USOC Training Center in Colorado Springs. He chose me to go mainly because most others could not get away from school and work duties.
We would stay for a week and be tested by the science community and attend classes, one taught by our coach. There were fifteen athletes total from 800-meter specialist to marathoners. It was one of the few times that I felt like the governing bodies in our sport were actually doing something positive to affect our sport.
There wasn’t much to do in the Springs and one night as I sat reading, some homework really a book called the “Marathon Footrace” a complete history of the event, Coach walked in and said “Hey Willy, Neil and I are headed over to the bar around the corner if you want to join us.” “What the hell are you reading? Geez, didn’t I explain the marathon to you already?”
The establishment was a dive bar with about a dozen chopper motorcycles parked in front. The coach showed no hesitation just marched right in. It looked like dozens of bars in Galway where I grew up with pool tables and such. The coach immediately struck up a conversation with a biker who he referred to as Miss even though it was pretty obvious Miss was a Mister with long hair.
Neil and I played pool with a couple of women who were with the bikers and Neil started flirting with them so much that I thought for sure we was going to get stomped. The bikers wanted to know what was up with the coach. “Man. That dude is funny. Is he alright in the head?” “Well, he is one of the greatest marathon distance running coaches in the world.” “World class marathon coach, wow. I guess that would explain it.”
The bikers explained that they never knew what the hell was going on at the training center and we were the first athletes to ever venture over to their neck of the woods.
Midnight came and we did not have to go home but we couldn’t stay there. The last Neil and I saw of our coach he was waving to us from the back of a Harley. “Juanita’s taking me for a little joy ride.” For good or ill I will forever have that image in my mind somewhere.
Dream, dream, dream…. of the early day’s ascendant tripping off to London with my newly minted B-Town singlet. The dialectic with Coach Gerry and the ultimate learning experience.
As I make the coffee and breakfast morsel my back aches low and I drag myself around the kitchen and try to get comfortable in my seat with my notes and reading materials. Another day around the Sun.”
I spent a few days back in Galway visiting with my family and friends and packing up what I needed for the apartment in Boston. My brother gave me a ride with my stuff and helped me move it in the apartment. Donnie let me put some stuff in his closet.
I worked at the local shoe factory job for a week and then left for Europe where the plan was to run the mile in London and a five k in Finland four days later.
I travelled to London alone but met up with some other athletes at Heathrow and we were taken to a Hostel at the Crystal Palace where the meet would be held. We had a few days before racing to rest up and get acclimated.
I was approached by one of the meet directors and asked to rabbit the race for the first half mile in 1:55. I just hoped I could pull that off, but also, I wanted to stay in the race and finish respectably.
Desmond Wally from New Zealand might be attempting to run a sub 3:50 mile so I had an important part to play in it.
I was very nervous in the lead up to the race. The grand venue with 20,000 spectators and all of the foreign athletes, many of the best in the world. Once the spikes were on and the sweats came off the nervousness was gone.
I was meant to be here destined and I would be myself just unwind that coil spring out there no need for shrewdness or over analyzing I be the rabbit the rabbit be me.
The pistol shot and I was the bullet breaking out to thunderous applause. I both floated and steamrolled down the back straight and into the curve I felt light as a feather and I hit 56 seconds for the first quarter.
The next 300 yards went the same way but, in the home straight I began to lose my easy stride and the weight hit my shoulders and I felt I was falling, the second lap was 59 seconds.
I stayed on the rail as Desmond cruised past and then the majority of the rest of the field my next lap taking 68 secs and then I managed a 63-last lap for a 4:06 finishing dead fucking last.
I suited up and left quickly feeling like I was going to cry and I jogged around the athletic fields in a daze.
Other groups of runners were milling around doing their warm ups and downs when Wally passed by and slapped me on the back, “Thank you mate, you did a good job.”
Well, I made $200. I guess I will take it and maybe I can salvage a good race over in Finland in a few days. Desmond Wally got beat by the local top British miler Colin Davey, an arrogant jerk cocky and in your face.
I went out to the Pub that night with some fellow competitors and I began to put the race in perspective and I realized how fortunate I was to be here and how unlikely it was that I would rabbit and run well. I did not consider myself a miler in any case.
As I sipped my warmish beer and eyeballed the local talent a man sat beside me and chatted me up.
He was the director of a local road race and he asked if I was interested in competing in this race the same night that I was supposed to be in Finland.
“What are they paying you to run over there?” “Nothing, it is going to cost me some money for expenses just getting over there.”
The road race was a five miler and he mentioned that Colin Davey was running and he also said he would pay me $250 to run. “I’m in.”
Coach Gerry would probably be pissed as he went through some trouble to get me the race in Finland but $250 was three weeks’ pay in the shoe shop. I could not afford to turn that down and I wanted a shot at Colin Davey.
I was thinking about how that great American Miler was quoted to say “Road Racing is Rock n’ Roll and Track & Field is Carnegie Hall.”
I managed to get the word back to Coach Gerry and to the meet organizers in Finland neither of whom seemed distressed.
That is when I knew Coach Gerry was someone I could work with, someone who understood me and who understood the sport.
I had been trying out some new racing flats that the local company that I worked for gave me as prototypes.
They were awesome, very light and cushioned perfectly to my liking. I did a two-mile time trial on the track in the new flats two days before the race in 8:50 feeling good.
Colin would be a tough nut to crack, a 800/1500m specialist and UK Record Holder he was also a very solid cross country and road racer though he did not run the roads often.
The race was sponsored by a big department store and had some nice merchandise prizes for the top finishers guaranteeing a good field.
Race day dawned clear and beautiful. I packed all my things the night before as I would need to go directly to the airport immediately after the race, my ride was all arranged.
The crowds at the start/finish area were large and enthusiastic. As I was warming up Colin came up behind me and said, “hey mate, how much “bob” you getting.”
It took me a minute to understand. “Not enough, but after I win my stock will be rising.”
He laughed and sprinted away.
The start was a bit of mayhem but I put my foot on the gas and doubled the clutch and I was away. Colin spent the first few hundred yards waving and slapping hands with people so it was easy for me to get a lead I did not plan to relinquish.
I was 4:20 at the mile and never looked back. I could hear people saying “B-Town?” and “Boston” and “Who is this guy?”
I was tempted to look back but I never liked to do that and also, I could tell I had a sizable lead from the crowd noise behind me which had grown faint.
The crowd in the last half mile had closed in and I barely had room to run through this deafening gauntlet.
I finished in 22:10 breaking the course record by 45 seconds. I jogged straight to my awaiting car where my driver took me to the airport, changing into some jeans and a t shirt on the way. I won a color television which I had them ship to Annie the fire plug in Atlanta.
I felt like a rock star temporarily but once I was on the plane and on my way back to Boston I realized I would be back at the factory gluing shoes the next day.
I did not exactly return home the conquering hero as everyone seemed to know about my dead last in the mile but no one seemed to know about my road race win over Colin Davey.
I settled into a routine with my roomies and teammates and was given another job temporarily in the shoe factory hanging insulation in the ceiling. This work was almost as back breaking and dangerous as gluing the shoes.
At some point Coach Gerry talked to the company owner and they managed to find me a desk job in the offices working with Donnie.
When that happened, I took to running three times a day, usually five miles before work, then eight miles at lunch and then ten miles at night.
I did not have any big races planned until the fall as the team would be gearing up for the National Cross-Country Championships. I did run some all-comers track meets and road races almost every weekend.
I talked with Alby Thomas, my teammate who held the American Record in the marathon, about working in his running store which he had just opened. I ended up just working there on Saturdays and when I told friends and family I worked in a store dedicated to runners they were skeptical and thought that it was just a front for some illicit business.
Eventually though this running thing became legit and overnight it seemed everyone became a runner and the Boston Marathon went from a few hundred runners to ten thousand.
And I was right in the middle of it all.
Coach Gerry thought I should go back to college. “Listen Willy, I love this running game more than anyone and it cost me a lot but I don’t regret any of it that is true.”
“Coach, most of us don’t want to admit that all we really want to do is run, it’s like we’re ashamed of it or something, but not me. I am going to do this thing while I can and find out what I got and college can wait.
College running does nothing for me. Those in the NCAA, corrupt, hypocritical bastards are even worse than the AAU.”
Coach laughed and I felt that he knew I sincerely meant what I was saying and that as someone just about to turn twenty-one I already knew the realities of this athletics game and I was all in as long as it lasted.
Alby preached professional running and more opportunities for “amateurs” to make a living and nearly every run with him turned into a diatribe against the AAU. In one interview he was asked what could be done with the powers that be if they didn’t provide better conditions for athletes.
Alby said, “We’ll have to snip, snip, cut their balls off.”
Alby took a lot of heat for his comments in this interview in which he also revealed his disdain for the muscle sports pro sports like football and baseball that they were a fraud and that athletics had superior athletes.
I loved it but he really toned it down after this interview because the media were about to crush him if he kept it up. There were some who were sympathetic but when you began threatening to cut off body parts, well, you lose some support maybe.
Yes, folks, running has its share of drama too.
In August I was planning to run a newly minted race in Falmouth on Cape Cod that was created by our bartender friend Francis who was also a runner ex-Marine and all around the most enthusiastic proponent of running on the entire planet.
He certainly did more for our sport than the stinking AAU ever did.
The B-Town Bombers helped support the first few years as the race became established and then just took off.
This year there will be eight hundred runners, holy cow!
After that it was on to a glorious fall and another shot at a cross country USA Champion Title.
This was about the time that I was hitting the peak of my enthusiasm, my wonderous awe of just being alive unaware of the waves about to break all around my head.
I received some media acknowledgement for my recent exploits, especially my triumph in the road race in London, including a photo of me in the B-Town singlet and local shoe company shoes, getting into the waiting car that would take me to the airport only minutes after my victory.
I am surrounded by spectators cheering and laughing and it is a shot of adrenaline every time I look at this photo.
I was reading many books about athletic heroes back through history and currently reading a little gem by seven-time Boston Marathon Champion Clarence DeMar who also made two Olympic teams winning a bronze medal in 1924 in Paris.
I had this idealism, I believed in the Olympic Oath and I would swear on the statue of Zeus, king of the gods of Mt Olympus. At the same time amateurism will never work, never could work and so many athletes’ careers have been destroyed because of this nonsensical edict.
I wanted to win the Boston Marathon and run in the Olympic Games, and a lot of smaller steps along the way to those goals are what motivated me to continue with almost maniacal devotion.
What I am trying to say is that I was conflicted but I determined that there is no way to reach any type of fulfillment until and unless you work at something until you are defeated and/or satisfied.
Only you will know whether it was a worthy cause.
In the Middle of It
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X2oWAoUq-7g&ra=m