Another thing that has changed. In the olden days the officials would write out the results by hand and maybe have a carbon copy that would be taped to the wall. If you wanted results you would have to copy your own by hand or wait a month for the next issue of a running magazine. (of course 100 names would be a big race)
Now, you get home after the race and there's a copy in your computer with thousands of names.
It's great.
Tom
Three other things that have changed that I can think of.
One is the disappearance of "long" races that are short of the marathon. Another is that starting times for marathons are much earlier in the day than they used to be. I can recall when a 10 AM start for a marathon was early. Now it's almost impossible to find one that starts that late. And when fields were smaller a lot of races, most of them actually as I recall, finished at a location where you could get a shower afterwards. I can't recall the last race I ran where you caan do that.
At least these days you don't have to remember to take a towel to races.
(I am trying not to romanticize the olden days.)
Tom,
In 1985 -- which seems like yesterday to you guys -- I ran the Plymouth Rock to Provincetown Relay. One of my NYC teammates had run for the Cambridge Sports Union so the two of us, coming from NYC, got the final two legs with the Boston-area folks doing the first 8. We were sixth.
I just looked up something on the race, and it said that the race faded away in the early 1990s. To link it to the prior comment, it was raining and we had rented a couple (men and women) of motel rooms to take post-race showers. Don't remember about towels. As we drove south down the Cape we saw team after team still heading to the finish.
Do you have anything on that race? Road relays now, of course, are everywhere (I've done New Hampshire's Reach-the-Beach twice).
And Tom, were you ever peering over the recorder's shoulder trying to get results as they were getting compiled? Also, age groups were rarer.
bump
While you were doing your Palo Verdes Breakfast group I was running on Saturdays with Joe Henderson's Stanford (later Foothill College) group. Sunday was normally the Runners World fun run also held at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA.
Every now and then someone well known in the running community would show up and run one or both runs with us. Generally they were in town to be interviewed or do some work for the magazine (RW).
Like you Orville, I miss racing but I would not trade the era in which we ran to be a young competitive runner now. There is nothing wrong with the present. I was just better suited for the 1970's and 80's.
Plymouth to Provincetown ran into problems getting permission and police protection from each town. The cost of that is what killed the relay.
Now races have to be gigantic to garner the economies of scale to pay for the police details.
Tom
Kicker, I was best suited for the 1960s and before. I did not have the talent to race in front for long after I got into shape.
We had some good ones show up too. I remember that Bill Baillie was at one of our evening parties. Our group still meets at 7 AM on Sunday mornings. We have breakfast at 8:30 or whenever you finish your workout. We have as many as 25 show up on any one Sunday. Many of our guys are in their 80s. More walk than jog and the pace keeps slowing.
I also continue to say that I would not change a thing. I did not run year round until I was 22 but I still would not change a thing. I was very lucky to run where and when I did. And I have the friends to prove it.
Tom,
The Jersey Shore half-Marathon was the successor race to the Jersey Shore marathon. In the old days (70's and early 80's), the race was run Asbury Park north to Sandy Hook and back. For the first year or 2 of the half, it was run as a point to point from Sandy Hook to Asbury Park, but the logistics and costs killed it in that form. The race continues, but as a two-loop race all within Sandy Hook.
Wayne
He sounds like Orville freakin' Wright.
I have been wondering for some time if they still have cross country races in Griffith Park with nudes holding the mile markers.
An article in today's NY Times about the new Macombs Dam Park: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/nyregion/10macombs.html?scp=1&sq=macombs&st=cse
Thank you for kicking this thread to the front Joe.
Two things have been playinng on my mind all week.
The first is sadness for the coal miners families in West Virginia. One of the reasons that I did not run during the summer until I was 22 was due to the summer jobs I had to earn University tuition. In 1956, I worked underground in a gold mine. Even though gold mine air is not anywhere nearly as volatile as the air in a coal mine I know what it is like to work underground in a mine. I did not find it pleasant. The dust bothered me 24 hours a day. My heart goes out to the families and townspeople involved.
In my last post above I said that I was best suited for running in the 1960s and before. Runners today have become too caught up in times run and in details. There are a couple of threads going like "Run Boston Smart" that talk about preparing to run a marathon. No one talked about racing. In the early 60s I raced to win and often did not run smartly. Even in Boston I was able to go out with the leaders at 5:20 to 5:30 a mile for as long as I could and then just hang on. I did that in most of my races and I guess the pace and the fact that we had no liguids, gels of splits affected my final times some but I often placed pretty well. And it was fun! I still feel I was in the race to race and not to run a time trial but I know that one must have a lot of talent to gamble that way today.
I never worked in a coal mine but grew up in a place where loads of people did. It seemed a pretty miserable way to make a living and a lot of them were barely able to breathe by their 50s or 60s thanks to black lung disease. And cave ins and explosions were perhaps not common but they weren't all that uncommon either. Being buried alive seems an awful way to die. I only hope the blast killed them and they went quickly.
It's much harder for today's runners to think about racing, I believe, because of the size of today's fields. I had good years when I might place in the top five or ten in a race with a few hundred people and even managed a small number of wins. That mattered to me.
But finishing, say 2,677th in a field of 8,000 doesn't seem to mean as much. I think that explains the focus on times rather than places. I remember there was a thread here a few years back from someone wondering if he should run Boston because the forecast was for a warm day and he didn't think he had a chance at a PR. I suggeste setting a goal of beating a certain percentage of the field as everyone else would also haveto deal with the poor conditions. I can't recall hs exact reply but it was pretty clear thathe didn't think much of the idea.
Times are slower at the local races now compared to the 70's
and 80's, and the non-college runners don't train as hard.
No one in my city is running over 100 miles a week, let alone
140 mile weeks.
What a bunch of boring narcissists.
Loved your mention in Anne Audain's book, Pat!
patti wrote:
Hi Orville,
youare a true running legend treasure.
I enjoy reading your posts and reading about our sport.
When does your book come out?
We need it!
Love you!!
-.
u bitch wrote:
Loved your mention in Anne Audain's book, Pat!
...and that was?
Derderian wrote:
Another thing that has changed. In the olden days the officials would write out the results by hand and maybe have a carbon copy that would be taped to the wall. If you wanted results you would have to copy your own by hand or wait a month for the next issue of a running magazine. (of course 100 names would be a big race)
Now, you get home after the race and there's a copy in your computer with thousands of names.
It's great.
Tom
Write them out? Heck, hand you a popcycle stick with your finish place on it and you looked up your own time on a tape stapled to a corkboard. Writing them out was for them there high-falutin' races.