Mark Nenow

I do not have a lot of info, but I do know he went to Anoka High School in Minnesota. Anoka is northwest of Minneapolis, but still considered part of the metro area. When he went there I\'m assuming the high school was not as large as it now. It is one of the larger high schools in the area. Try the USATF Minnesota website, it is a poor website, but he was inducted into the Minnesota Track and field hall of fame a few years ago so there is a short writeup.

Nenow was a wrestler in his couple 1st yrs in HS. Didn't start running until late in hs, jr yr in track or so and had immediate success.

I loved his simple formula for getting in great shape. Am 10 Pm 10 (6 days a week) Sunday 20. A couple weeks of intervals and he rocked. Similar to Brendan Foster in his day, I believe.

Happy running! & Keep it Simple Stu---!

tony

Nenow also got a lot of pub. for doing one of his runs late at night. He said miles are miles and work is work, the time of day means nothing.

UPDATE: Freshman: nothing Sophomore: xc skiing/wrestling Junior: xc running Senior: xc running won MN state champs.

I believe he was self-coached throughout his career. Only at the end, the summer he broke the American record did he work with a coach. I believe the coach was Stanton(sp) of Great Britain. The summer he broke the American record he set the record in Brussels(winning the race), and earlier in the summer he was second to Bruce Bickford at Oslo.

He did win Minnesota state XC as a senior, in what I thought was his first year of running for Anoka HS. The stories that I heard said that he came out for XC to help his wrestling. At the time Anoka HS was a very large school and one of the best distance running programs in Minnesota, so he got good coaching there.

I did get to see him win MN state XC that year (I may still have the program). It was a foregone conclusion that Ian Keith of Rochester Mayo would win easily, though he had a horrible race and finished around 29th. Nobody had really heard of Nenow, so we were all checking our programs trying to figure out who that guy was in front. Minnesota HS running was very strong in that time frame. Good memories. I know little of his post HS days, so others will have to fill that in.

P

Coach in UK was Alan Storey. Nenow didnt really need coaching, he just used Storey to help fine tune the enourmous aerobic base his normal training provided.

You're right, didn't Storey give him some basic intervals just to sharpen his edge. Always thought Nenow would have been great in the marathon, just didn't work out for him.

So would he that good in spite of his training, or because of it?

Minnesota Nice wrote:

So would he that good in spite of his training, or because of it?

Silly question. On this board, everyone would do better if they trained some way other than the one they're doing.

Seriously, you don't expect any good answer to that question, do you? You might as well be asking if there are alternate Earths in other dimensions. The guy ran the way he liked, got a national record out of it. "What if?" questions are pointless.

I do know that Paul Cummings, winner of 84 Oly trials, feared him much more than any of the other runners in the race. In fact he was the only one Paul thought could beat him. Not sure what happened to Mark but he did not finish in top 3.

9:17 2miler only running his senior year of cross and track. State champion in cross. 28:30 for 10K as a soph but never improved on that while at Kentucky. He certainly did later with Todd's Road Stumblers. Was second to Bickford in 85 at Stockholm, a race dominated by the two Americans. Incredibly talented runner. Ran 28:30 at a road race in California after having been retired for some time. I think he was 36 or 37 (maybe older) His post race interview said he was shocked and couldn't believe he ran that time. He had run 32something a few weeks early and said something along the lines of "i never would have seen this time coming."

27:22 in 84 (i think) at Crescent City. Existed on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pizza. Had legs up to his armpits. Puma athlete and still wore his Todd Road Stumblers logo on his racing kit.

and broke 28minutes seven consecutive years which at the time was some kind of record...may be still.

Zinguazzi, do you remember Zinkwazi poly-pro running gear in the 70s and 80s?

I owned some zinkwazi apparel...shorts were awful but the singlets were okay...

zinquazzi wrote:

Had legs up to his armpits.

LOL, best discription of him ever!!

I remember him showing up at a 199? Twin City Marathon 5k (Saturday warm-up). Salazar and another big name were there doing a Nike promo and got there names called out over the intercom. I told my buddies that those guys were OK but pointing to Nenow I said "There's the American Record Holder!"

Salazar was a bit cold to Nenow as I recall.