mcgato wrote:
I think that Slack's only attempts at the marathon were at Grandma's. One time he had a huge lead but dropped out at about the 24 mile mark (old school steve mentions this above). I think the other time he ran with Bjorklund and faded late, I think dropping out. This is all from a very hazy memory of long ago.
Slack did drop at Grandma's (forgot where) with a sizeable lead. The race I remembered, though, was the old City of Lakes Marathon around Harriet and Calhoun. Probably late 70s, and he did basically the same thing: built up a big lead, but totally bonked. He could have "jogged" the last 3 miles around Lake Harriet, but couldn't even pick up his feet. (If the Marathon was 20 miles,instead of 26.2, Slack would have been a world beater. I guess you can't be talented at everything). For a great middle distance runner, Mike liked dabbling in the longer events. We ran some very fast 10 milers on the track, and he always thought he could run a good marathon.
The race I will always remember, though, was a relatively small race that our store sponsored called the Grand Old Days 5 Mile. As the sponsor, we really wanted Mike (a partner) to win. He should have quite easily, but he got really hammered the night before. He showed up at the race quite hung over, but still thought he could win. A pretty good runner took it out quite fast and Mike was down about 200m at the turn around. We were in the lead vehicle laughing our a$$es off, but Slack was getting really pi$$ed off at this guy and the fact that he was going to lose in front of all these people. Probably his hangover got better, and he really picked it up the last 2 miles. He passed the lead runner and won by about 10 seconds. Wish we had a split on his last half mile. Never saw a guy close so fast in a road race!!