One of the reasons adults like to run is that running makes them feel more like children. People who have abused themselves with decades of overeating and under-exercising often find that just a few months of long-distance running will strip away their fat, slow their pulse, lower their blood pressure and restore their bodies to a condition they had once mourned as lost forever.
The restoration of a more youthful physique is usually accompanied by a rediscovery of youthful feelings. Running often rekindles the spontaneity and exuberance of childhood in a way that more structured, rule-bound sports do not. For adults who perform highly complex tasks for a living, the simplicity of running may provide a welcome form of daily relief. For those whose jobs involve long hours of frustrating mental work, it often feels good just to "turn off" the brain and let the body take over for a while.
For people whose professions involve heavy interpersonal conflict, running seems to have the added attraction of being inherently non-political. Unlike the "game" sports (such as football, hockey, tennic, etc.), in which conflict seems to be exascerbated by the rule that one of the competitors must LOSE, competitive running provides a satisfying outlet for aggressive urges wihtout necessarily leaving the non-winners feeling that they have been defeated. In the aftermath of a marathon, there may be hundreds of finishers who feel elated with their performances, while few -- if any -- feel the kind of humiliation and shame so often displayed by the second-place finishers in a football game.
Over the years, the non-political nature of running -- along with its physical simplicity -- has given it a kind of innocence which is particularly appealing to adults whose work exposes them to the uglier aspects of human nature daily. In a country where manipulation, evasion , and violation of the law is a cause for continuing national anguish, and where the inexplicably high incidence of cancer, obesity, alcoholism, heart disease, and mental illness are a national embarrassment, it may be significant that huge numbers of lawyers and doctors are being attracted to the sanctuary of running.
It is ironic, therefore -- and for many runners, sadly disillusioning -- that our sport has itself begun to show signs of internal corruption which would have been inconceivable ten or fifteen years ago. This "purest" of activities has become the innocent eye in a hurricane of trouble. The weather signs are everywhere, but they are epitomized by several incidents connected with the 1977 Boston Marathon.
The first incident was reported by Jim Kinsellagh, a graduate student at Columbia University. Kinsellagh, who has 20-400 eyesight (which classifies him as legally blind, although he can see well enough to run by himself), had completed a 3:01:51 marathon -- barely missing the qualifying time of three hours. He wrote a letter to the Boston Athletic Association requesting special permission to run, and was turned down. According to the New York Times, the B.A.A. told him "the Boston Marathon is no place for a person with your handicap to be." Jock Semple, the B.A.A. official who tried to physically remove a woman from the race ten years ago at a time when women were banned from the competition, elaborated on the official policy with the comment, "I don't want to be cruel, but this is a marathon rae for runners. It's not a three-ring circus."
The second incident occurred about a week later, when Dave Theall of Virginia was informed by the Boston officials that he had been disqualified for having falsified his AAU number. The story behind Theall's action is too complicated to be repeated here; but the gist of it is that Theall believes the AAU has no right to "sanction" the participation of runners in a sport which is largely organized and financed by the runners themselves, so he has refused to pay the AAU for a numbered card giving him "permission" to compete in long distance races during the year 1977. Yet Dave had met the qualifying standard set by the B.A.A. and did not wish to be rejected because of a technicality. So he simply wrote his previous year's AAU number on the entry -- and probably would have run happily ever after had it not been for the vigilance of an AAU official who is one of Dave's own neighbors.
These incidents are not unusual. They are, in fact, symptomatic of a change which is taking place wherever runners are to be found. For years, long distance running was an almost invisible sport. Road running was a neglected stepchild of track and field, and those who were attracted to long distances felt a mutual affinity that was based on the sharing of an experience most other people never even knew existed. To the general public, a "distance runner" was a miler. Those of us who ran distances of ten miles or longer were just nuts. Nobody paid any attention to us, and we accepted our oblivion as a fact of life. We traveled the country in search of races, like prospectors looking for gold. Everyone knew everyone else. We always knew who would win: Pete McArdle in New York, John Kelly in New England, Fred Best in New Jersey, Herb Lorenz in Philadelphia, Bob Scharf in Washington, and a few others. The life of a road runner was simple. There were no choices to make. There was never more than one race within a thousand mile radius on a given weekend, and if you wanted to run, you traveled to it. There was only one shoe manufacturer (adidas) which paid much attention to the needs of road runners. There was only one kind of sweatsuit -- baggy gray.
In the 1960s, things began to change fast. The running population exploded. With popularity came money. A sport which had been peaceful in its poverty began to feel unaccustomed tensions, as interested groups which had treated it with benign neglect now became jealously possessive. The AAU, whose authority had never been questions during the days when it bestowed occasional races on the runners like pieces of bread to the hungry, began to grow testy as the runners formed a new organization -- the Road Runners Club of America -- and began putting on their own races.
