My path and Goodloe Byron’s never crossed - they coincided. I never knew him, but I shared some special experiences with him, and his passing affected me in a way I would not expect to be affected by the death of a stranger.
The first time I heard about Goodloe Byron was on the morning of the JFK 50-mile run, four years ago. Somebody said there was a congressman entered. That surprised me a little, since I always thought congressmen were people who went everywhere in chauffeured limousines-people who probably wouldn’t deign to go 50 yards on foot if they didn’t have to, say nothing of 50 miles. Then I thought maybe the guy was doing it as a political stunt - until I remembered that people who do stunts for publicity need crowds, and in the JFK there are no crowds. The only spectators are little clusters of friends and families who appear at infrequent checkpoints with their thermos bottles of coffee and hot soup. The only possible reason for running this thing is that you are … a runner.
As I learned later. U.S. Representative Goodloe Byron was a runner - and a good one. Not fast, but enduring. He had run the JFK before, and it was no stunt. There were no PR people with him in this quiet Maryland countryside - just members of his family. His wife, Beverely, always manned the Weverton Cliffs checkpoint, where the runners come tumbling down a steep, wooded mountainside at 16 miles. His son, Kim, usually ran in the race with his father (Kim has completed more JFKs-10- than anyone else in the 16-year history of the event.)
The first 16 miles of the JFK climbs over some of Maryland’s most rugged terrain, following the Appalachian Trail from South Mountain near Boonsboro to the Potomac River below Weverton Cliffs. The last 8 miles follows a rolling country road past corn fields and orchards to its final stopping point at St. James School. But it’s the 26 miles in between, on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Towpath-the “Middle Marathon”-which is the true heart of the JFK.
The towpath was originally built to accommodate mules, but it looks as thought it was made just for runners. A 20-foot wide turf dike between the Potomac River and the C&O Canal, it has a smooth, springy surface that provides welcome relief to the sore shins and tendons of two-legged non-barge pullers that have been trained on city concrete and pavement. Giant sycamore trees stand beside the path, providing cool shade in the summer, then dropping their leaves to reveal a shimmering view of the river in the winter. In the early spring, the path is filled with the aroma of honeysuckle, and small frogs hop off the grass into the canal as you approach.
But the best time for running on the towpath is in the fall. It is not just the fiery colors of the October foliage that make this a profoundly seductive place. Seduction is by nature a crossing of the border from the familiar to the strange; and the essential nature of this towpath is that it is always such a border- between the wild river and the manmade canal; between the open space over the river to the west and the dark woods just across the canal to the east. The seduction is greatest in the fall, when the path becomes a border in time between the seasons.
I have run in hundreds of strange and beautiful places, but I know of no place I would rather run in the last months of the year than the C&O Canal Towpath west of Harper’s Ferry. On October 11, in the last hours of my 37th birthday, I went for an 11-mile run on the towpath with Phil Stewart and Tom Sturak. Later that night we heard the news. Goodloe Byron, too, had chosen the Towpath for his run that evening. He had been there-on another part of the path-the same time we had, and he too had gone about 11 miles. He had started running the middle marathon of the JFK in reverse direction, from Dam #4 east toward Weverton Cliffs; and it was in the middle of that beautiful place that he died.
He had known all along that it might happen. There was a history of early deaths among the males of his family. Two cardiologists had warned him that the risk of heart attack was too high for him to be running the way he did. But Goodloe Byron knew exactly what he was doing. He had weighed the risks against the benefits, and the result of his calculations was a paradox: running could kill him, but it could also keep him alive. A weak circulatory system can be ruptured by the violence of sport - but it can also be strengthened. As any experienced athlete knows, there is a fine line between the exertion that tears a body down and that which builds it up. There are times when that line becomes a border between life and death.
A few days after her husband’s final run, Beverly Byron told a gathering of family friends that Goodloe’s running had probably extended, rather than shortened, his life. This comment was received with great relief by members of the running community who were worried that Byron’s death would stimulate a backlash of anti-running sentiment (Indeed, a few days later the Washington Post carried a big article under the headline “Hard Exercise Can Be Hazardous To Your Health.”) But in a sense, the question of longevity is moot. I have enough in common with Goodloe Byron to suggest that he would have continued to run anyway - whether it provided him with any cardiovascular benefit or not. It was not just his body which was kept alive by running, but his spirit. The job of a Congressman generates terrible pressures, and this was his way of staying vital. He did not die feeble, as will most of his colleagues, but in full stride at the peak of his powers. As his running companion on that evening said later, “He suddenly ran from this life into the other life.”
