What impressed me most about the 70's boom was the way a relative "nobody" could rise to elite status on the roads. Bill Rodgers and Patty Lyons exemplified this. Joan Benoit Samuelson -- who played field hockey -- did too. And at the Masters level we marveled at John Campbell and Priscilla Welch.
They taught the Average Joe and Jane that by putting in the effort, you could become pretty damn fast. To his credit, the UK's Steve Way is a throwback to that great running era -
Nienke Brinkman is also a former field hockey player like Joan Benoit and came out of nowhere.
When I ran in college, we raced tons, especially in xc. We'd have somewhere on the order of 12-17 meets a year. Usually we had one, or even two, in the middle of the week and one on Saturday. We loved the mid-week meets, not just because they got us out of a couple days of getting hammered with intervals at practice, but because they were often away meets and gave us a legitimate reason not to be in class. One of the highlights of every early September was cross referencing our meet schedule with our class schedules to see what classes we'd get to miss.
Not all thst many years later, after graduating, I went to watch one of my old school's xc meets. I'd noticed that they'd been running maybe 7-8 meets a year, roughly half of what we'd done. I asked the coach why the big reduction and he told me that one of the main reasons was that "these kids just don't like missing classes."
There was once a great article in the old "Runner" magazine about "running bums," people whose running ability was anywhere from somewhat above average to considerably less than average who had chucked careers and scraped to get by so that they could concentrate completely on their running.
All of that said, it's worth noting that there were also many, many, runners from that era who held down full time jobs and even supported families and who still trained seriously. My best running came when I worked full time as a high school teacher.
This and Spider sum it up well.
I started running in 1971, age 12, I was literally told by my PE teacher that I was no longer on soccer starting today I was on cross-country.
.That day changed my life, for the better, forever.
I had older friends who were the running bums mentioned above.
The average guy (mostly men ran only a few women) wasn't afraid to run every day. No one took walking breaks. You aspired to RUN a marathon, you didn't "finish" 6 months after starting your running program.
Pre, Shorter, Rodgers, Ryun, Decker, Benoit, Sheehan. No American now comes close to the charisma, the talent, the ability to communicate the sheer love of running of these folks.
It was just a fun thing that a lot of us fell in love with. We did have a good many successful role models in our fairly recent history (Shorter, Ryun, Schul, Mills, Lindgren, Young, Batcheler, etc) and that's different than now. But you can't recreate a spontaneous movement. I'd love to bottle the feeling we had for the sport then and give it to everyone today, but everyone has to find their own way to wherever they want to go.
Mid-60s things were already moving Beatty, Schul, Lindgren, Ryun, etc. Coaching influence of Igloi, Cerutty, and Lydiard. I see the 1970s as more of the beneficiaries of the earlier period. And as noted the demographics supported it. Soviet versus USA, indoor and outdoor meets with fans in the tens of thousands. People weren’t whip socks sitting on their ass all the time.
Pre, Shorter, Rodgers, Ryun, Decker, Benoit, Sheehan. No American now comes close to the charisma, the talent, the ability to communicate the sheer love of running of these folks.
"No one comes close to their talent" after listing off a bunch of 13:20/27:40/2:10 guys.
"No one comes close to their charisma" when Cooper Teare has the max rizz to literally pull RMcA, who could be a freaking movie star.
"No one comes close to their ability to communicate the sheer love of running" when Seth exists.
craze of the 70's ; what caused it? can it be redone?
depends what you mean by this. a good argument could be made that right now we are in the biggest running boom ever. more people will complete marathons this year than ever before. in 1976 about 25,000 people completed a marathon. this year there will be 5 or 6 marathons that will have that many finishers all by themselves. more people will run road races of other lengths as well.
the more interesting question is what has caused the disappearance of the sub 2:30 marathoner, as well as corresponding times for 5ks etc.
it seems to me, as far as people running for health we are in the biggest boom ever.
it just has not translated to a desire on many of the runners parts to be highly competitive. not sure why.
I wanted to reply to this thread but then I read your post. You nailed it perfectly.
More people run than ever before but very few people care about running hard-to-achieve-but-useless-times between 2:20-2:55.
Being a sub-2:20 guy gets you an OTC. Breaking 3:00 was a doable "running goal" for normal marathoners like me. But everything in-between is a lot of work without a lot of social payoff.
So I think the boom is here, it just looks different this time.
p.s. Does anyone know if we have won more (or fewer) middle and long distance running medals in the last three Olympics or in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics? Do you know? I don't have time to look that up. Someone could do the math for Shorter, Rupp, Centro, etc...
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In '72 running shoes were very limited and hard if not impossible to find (at least in the USA). I trained in Converse All-Stars until Nike hit the market '72-'73. It was fun and cool to the first to have access to that technology. In the Seattle area I bought first generation waffle trainers out out the Super Jock 'n Jill van. Those early shoes were so much more comfortable than anything else at the time, something we take for granted now. Revolutionary. The general public picked up on it and influenced the athletic shoe market we see today.
In '72 running shoes were very limited and hard if not impossible to find (at least in the USA). I trained in Converse All-Stars until Nike hit the market '72-'73. It was fun and cool to the first to have access to that technology. In the Seattle area I bought first generation waffle trainers out out the Super Jock 'n Jill van. Those early shoes were so much more comfortable than anything else at the time, something we take for granted now. Revolutionary. The general public picked up on it and influenced the athletic shoe market we see today.
And even better shoes today is one of the reasons everyone at my work goes jogging now and then. Hokas and Invincible Run 2 and similar cushioned shoes make it possible to run a bit even if you aren't a "real runner" at heart. Everybody has a pair of Hokas these days precisely for that reason.
This post was edited 19 seconds after it was posted.
Since I was there when it happened, THIS is what happened.
1981 was the first time a marathon was shown live. ABC broadcast the NYC marathon, and they did an admirable job. Barely any stupid human interest stories, just the lead pack as Salazar pulled away.
I recall various running group all got together on that Sunday morning to watch. That afternoon you could see folks out jogging, some for the first time. soon thereafter local running clubs started to pop up and road races took off. Seems like every town, even the small towns, were having their Fart Festival 5 and 10K. The best part about it was that most were 10K races and even the slower runners that entered, actually raced.
Since I was there when it happened, THIS is what happened.
1981 was the first time a marathon was shown live. ABC broadcast the NYC marathon, and they did an admirable job. Barely any stupid human interest stories, just the lead pack as Salazar pulled away.
Dude, the question was about the 70's and you're talking about a marathon in the 80's. You're a little late to the party. How is a marathon in 1981 going to influence the running craze in the 1970's??
In the 1970's in the United States it was definitely Frank Shorter and his victory in the 1972 Olympic Marathon. It was televised and a lot of people were watching, especially since it was just a few days after the 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. The Olympics were heavily covered due to this terrible incident. That put Frank in the spotlight and spurned the running boom in the US more than any other single event.
depends what you mean by this. a good argument could be made that right now we are in the biggest running boom ever. more people will complete marathons this year than ever before. in 1976 about 25,000 people completed a marathon. this year there will be 5 or 6 marathons that will have that many finishers all by themselves. more people will run road races of other lengths as well.
the more interesting question is what has caused the disappearance of the sub 2:30 marathoner, as well as corresponding times for 5ks etc.
it seems to me, as far as people running for health we are in the biggest boom ever.
it just has not translated to a desire on many of the runners parts to be highly competitive. not sure why.
I wanted to reply to this thread but then I read your post. You nailed it perfectly.
More people run than ever before but very few people care about running hard-to-achieve-but-useless-times between 2:20-2:55.
Being a sub-2:20 guy gets you an OTC. Breaking 3:00 was a doable "running goal" for normal marathoners like me. But everything in-between is a lot of work without a lot of social payoff.
So I think the boom is here, it just looks different this time.
p.s. Does anyone know if we have won more (or fewer) middle and long distance running medals in the last three Olympics or in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics? Do you know? I don't have time to look that up. Someone could do the math for Shorter, Rupp, Centro, etc...
Running for your health probably wasn’t that obvious until the 1990’s.
There were still stories about women who shouldn’t run longer distances for all kinds of reasons.