Jock: A Memoir of the Counterculture, by Robert Coe - Book Review

I'll bump this once.

I just finished this book as well. A few more thoughts:

Jock: A Memoir of the Counterculture Robert Coe

This book is a coming of age, loss of innocence, hard look back by Bob Coe a Stanford University student athlete at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius or 1968.

Being a bit younger than Bob I was entering high school when he began at Stanford and so I have a different context to the turbulent era of the 60’s. I began a strong interest in running in 1969 and had many of the same reference points as Bob. Ron Clarke, Jim Ryun, Pre, and the 1968 Olympic Games where Payton Jordan legendary Stanford Head Coach was the Olympic Team Head Coach. In addition his legendary teammates were Duncan McDonald and Don Kardong with whom I would compete later in my own post collegiate running career.

Also being younger I was isolated somewhat from the intensity of the anti war revolt happening on college campuses and in society at large. Coe expresses his anti-war feelings throughout in the context of campus life and authoritarian figures like Payton Jordan who is exposed in this book for good or ill.

I had an eight year older brother who was drafted into the Army shortly after marrying at age 21 and was killed in Vietnam in February 1970. Still I was more confused by the events of the day and just tried to make sense of what was happening.

Coe obviously loved running and being a Stanford student and he connects all of the events in the narrative to his passion. His descriptions of daily runs and particularly his competitions are the highlights of his story. He shows tremendous promise as a runner but feels the heartbreak when this is largely unfulfilled, due to untimely injuries and illnesses.

Bob Coe might have achieved more as an athlete particularly post collegiately and he attempts to parse all the events and choices he makes along the way.

Coe struggles with the same dilemma that most athletes on the cusp of achieving great things have struggled with; is running a worthwhile endeavor? Bob Coe was from a family of Stanford Alumni and his grandparents financially supported his education.

The letters Bob regularly sends to them throughout his college years help form the narrative and focus the events. You can sense the need to somehow justify the support he is given by doing well academically and making steps toward a productive life and career.

Bob Coe is left wondering as the years have gone by, what if? And the memoir seems to be a making peace with his choices.

A memoir of the counterculture perhaps but better read as a love affair we share with the simple act of the run.

A good part of the story involves other Stanford athletes who participate in swimming and football and there are some good observations on the development of college athletics into the huge enterprise that it is today. Also covered are the fortunes of Stanford athletics teams after a heyday in the late 60’s and 70’s.

I would recommend this one for the youth of letsrunemdowndotcom. John Mellencamp says it well:

"Longest Days"

Seems like once upon a time ago

I was where I was supposed to be

My vision was true and my heart was too

There was no end to what I could dream

I walked like a hero into the setting sun

Everyone called out my name

Death to me was just a mystery

I was too busy raising up Cain

But nothing lasts forever

Your best efforts don't always pay

Sometimes you get sick

And don't get better

That's when life is short

Even in its longest days

So you pretend not to notice

That everything has changed

The way that you look

And the friends you once had

So you keep on acting the same

But deep down in your soul

You know you, you got no flame

And who knows then which way to go

Life is short even in its longest days

All I got here

Is a rear view mirror

Reflections of where I've been

So you tell yourself I'll be back up on top some day

But you know there's nothing waiting up there for you anyway

Nothing lasts forever

And your best efforts don't always pay

Sometimes you get sick

And you don't get better

That's when life is short

Even in its longest days

Life is short

Even in its longest days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8tXKfZssms

I thought it was poignant when he watched his brother Seb win the Moscow 1500 in a TV shop in Bangalore. I teared up a little, gotta admit.

I bought it the day it was released and just read it during the last 2 weeks.

A fine read. Loved it. At times it reminded me of my college team mates and their experiences with the 60s/70s drug culture. Interesting times.

Thanks Bob!

I read a good deal of it a while back and found it a gripping read. I loved the training and especially the racing descriptions, which get your heart racing along even in his initial freshman xc race. Also, I loved that description of his role in an indoor record attempt by the late Ron Clarke.

Damn! I can't believe I only just found this thread! Thank you all for your kind words about my book.

Just a week ago or so I received an email from Kenny Moore, who read my book. He is permitting me to quote what he wrote, and here's some of it: "What magnificent, important work... I can clearly imagine you and me continuing our talk about the meanings and paradoxes of sporting effort, community and service, and me inviting you to train in Eugene after the '72 trials. Where I would have tried to shake you out of the provably erroneous assumption that four college years were all you were allowed for a career..."

*Kenny Moore, two-time Olympic Marathoner, thirty-year veteran journalist with Sports Illustrated, screenwriter of "Without Limits," and author of "Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder" (2007).

1967-1970 were the best three years of my life. The counterculture was absorbed into the culture eventually, but maybe not in some states in the U.S.

A bump for a worthy book . . .

Those looking for a 'pure' running book will find it in Jock: a memoir of the counterculture. With Robert Coe's careful eye, you get a stunningly detailed look into the life of a competitive collegiate runner during one of them most tumultuous phases that the United States endured. However, those looking for only a running book are in for a surprise as Coe takes us on a journey through the late-sixties and into the seventies.

Most running books focus on the how-to of running, and a few comment on the history, but Jock seeks the totality of the experience. Set at Stanford from Coe's first days entering the campus to his final year, the narrative winds through the cross country season to the classroom, out onto the track, and eventually as far away as Stanford-in-Britain.

Coe's journey is neither smooth nor straight, as befit the period in which he compete. His recollections of the protests on campus and the reactions both the rank and file students and the student-athletes. He's honest to a fault, showing that there was no unified front – some athletes were supportive of the administration of both the university and the country, even as he and many others were not. Coe does not pull punches. If he felt a particular individual deserved approbation, he delivered it, often in spades, as his descriptions of head coach Payton Jordan make abundantly clear.

Yet that is balanced by the clear pleasure he derived from his teammates. A storied cast that included luminaries such as Don Kardong and the immortal Ron Clarke populate the book, lending it an indefinable air of groundedness. Running at the leading edge of the boom to come, he recounts competing against Pre and the other Ducks, the icy crap that he ran in at WSU for the PAC-8 championship, and the records that seemingly fall with every page. Coe's tales of the training runs, the effort that went into training, are worthy of a book of their own.

Yet, side-by-side to that, are the stories of drug experimentation, the nascent hook-up scene, and a culture that was in a state of upheaval in which every rule could be, and often was, called into question. Coe gives an honest accounting of that, too, both of his own activities – yes, he experimented - and that of the late sixties. He joined some of the protest marches, investigated the claims and counter-claims, and grew into an adult seasoned by the experience at Stanford and in Europe during a pivotal sophomore year.

Where all the other legends get pared down to the feats on the athletic course and sanitized to make them orthodox, Jock looks at the life of the athlete from an intimate perspective. Unlike the tightly controlled legend of Prefontaine, Coe ranges far and wide in an authentic effort to provide sense to running as it related to the age. In this lies the meat of Coe memoir, a blatant openness that peels back the veneers to expose the vicissitudes of the protest generation.

For a person interested in more than a running book, Jock: a memoir of the counterculture delves into the running even as it touches, in first-person detail, history.

Great review, as usual, Paul.

hodgie-san - thanks for a fantastic post. I was so touched by the mention of your brother it took my breath away.

Mr. Coe, I will buy your book and read it. My father, a well known high school track coach, sent a number of runners to Stanford in the mid-60's. From the perspective of my then youth (I finished college on a track scholarship in 1982), the 60's in Palo Alto appeared to me to be the Golden Age in California, sun-kissed, still swollen with the economics of Pax Americana (and before the oil embargo). I could see why it would be so difficult to disentangle from the memories of youth, in that Golden Age, in Palo Alto, when we all started to question assumptions about country and traditional notions of morality. I have run in my middle age on Russian Ridge, looking down on Stanford to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, and dearly wished I had run there in college, before, like most adults, I lost most of my capacity for wonder.

I went to a school remarkably similar to Stanford, except I didn't experience any need to justify support from my family as there was none. The track coach father was abusive, and abandoned the family, and mom was soon without a home. An athletic scholarship was a means of survival, which, of course, i terrifically regret today, and the memories are generally dark But there are those few sun-kissed moments, when five minutes a mile pace didn't seem very hard, and even in my most negative frame of mind it is difficult to deny that running didn't answer some fundamental physical purpose, especially, as hodgie-san relates, on our longest days.

I was at Stanford a few years before Coe was, but although the intervening years were full of change, I totally recognized the Stanford he wrote about.

There's a part where Coe and a football player are in the ice bath (or was it the whirlpool?) and instead of talking stereotypical jock talk, they're talking about 18th century English literature. That was Stanford.

I wasn't a jock, but I did know a few of the people he wrote about -- to me, that's always pleasant.

Also, I learned some things about Payton Jordan that I hadn't known -- first, his political views (John Birch Society right wing) but second, that he supported Tommie Smith and John Carlos and they were punished over his objections (1968, Mexico City). He didn't support their cause, but he supported their right to protest as they saw fit.

Give this book a read. It's well-written. Sure, it could be a little tighter but that's not a serious flaw. The Kindle's not expensive and you can download it and start reading immediately.

I ran at Stanford a few years after Coe and knew many of the people mentioned in the book. I'd like to add my perspective about Coach Jordan. Given his views and the politics of the time, it's no surprise that many, myself included, chafed under his regime, yet he mellowed considerably with the passage of time and toward the end of his life became a kindly, benevolent presence to many of us as well as a tireless advocate and supporter of the program under Lananna.

I just read this book. It was pretty good, though I was saddened to learn of the wasted potential of Bob's senior year. At first I was jealous of the crazy improvements he made over the summer before college, but I quickly grew to like Bob, wanting him to string together one good, healthy season. I was disappointed by the wasted potential of his senior year, but I understand we're only young once and Bob felt he was doingthe best thing, especially after the injuries he suffered.

I'm quoting HRE because I wanted to talk about the letter Bob sent home to his grandparents as well. To me, it seemed the purpose of the letters were to seek his families approval of his running, not find meaning in it. He wanted acceptance as a student athlete, not as a future lawyer, or whatever career career he chose to pursue. I think the fact that he never got that acceptance played a big role in his quitting Stanford's team.

This was a very good book; Robert Coe can really write about running, putting you right there in the race with him.

I like that its not just about running and Robert discusses frat life, drug use, and the counterculture as well. I'm surprised that the thead starter got through the book, labelling himself almost the political opposite of Coe. I myself am very liberal and found a lot to relate to in the anti war movement and events Coe describes. Coe has to not only cope with being a student athlete at an elite university, with an underfunded athletic department, but also seeks to make a meaningful impact on the world around him, without risking his student athlete status. I don't share Coe's love of football though. At times the descriptions of Stanford football seasons seem to go on and on. Thank god Coe wasn't big into watching a spring sport or basketball too.

This book can be viewed as a cautionary tale about the perils of overtraining as well. Coe describes doing repeats, intervals, a longish run, and more repeats weekly in a 4 day period and rarely running above 630. I know he was a low 4s miler, but god he was beating the hell out of himself and then would go even harder between seasons. It should have been a red flag when he was sleeping 10+ hours a night, thats not normal. No wonder he was injured every single season. I wish he'd been able to put it together for one season and show us what he could do.