According to old-timers on LetsRun, here's what the road race scene of the 1970s was like

old owl wrote:

As far as guys running under 23:00 at Franklin Park, happened only two times, John Treacy and Gerry Deegan from Providence, think it was 1977(22:47-22:49), I was in that race, just not in their race, they ended up 2,3 at NCAA XC.

I was a spectator at that race. It was amazing. Treacy and Deegan were flying over the course, neck and neck the whole way. As they approached the finish line at the end of that long final straightaway, Deegan ratcheted it up one more gear, and Treacy couldn't stay with him. I remember thinking, "Poor John Treacy. He pushes so hard, but he looks so awkward, and he just doesn't have the raw speed to ever run with the very best." A few months later, Treacy won the world cross-country championship. And did it again the next year.

According to Bill Rodgers, the winners of the Boston Marathon got nothing more than a bowl of beef stew when they finished.

Early 80s

PE shorts and cotton T-shirt

5 miles / 10ks ruled. (1 mile / 2 mile fun run - was for the kids while dad drank beer)

Coors Light Silver Bullets were probably laced with PEDs. ;-)

Beer at every race.

Entry fees were usually $5 - $10.

If there were prizes ... maybe a trophy, maybe more beer, maybe a toaster.

I once got a trophy with pillars made from Budweiser cans - my most prized trophy!

Courses weren't really "certified" ... usually measured with race director's car.

I dont ever recall seeing anyone walking, unless they were injured or broken/defeated.

Starting lines smelled like BenGay, Tiger Balm and Atomic Balm.

Results sometimes posted at THE running store, maybe in the newspaper.

Results from big track meets came in T&F News about 2 month after the meet.

Big marathons were broadcast live, start to finish and no sappy human interest stories.

Ahh ... the good old days.

218er wrote:

Yea, pretty sure it was the Snowball series. I always liked the National Capital 20 miler in the fall in Alexandria -up to Mt. Vernon and back and accompanying 35 miler that wend down to the Washington Monument and back. In the summer, the National Postaal 24 hour relay at Fort Meade - teams of 10 running alternate miles for 24 hours on the track. Great races and great competition.

When I started reading this thread my first thought was “DCRRC races are still like that!”

In 2007 I entered a 4 miler as part of the Bunion Series for $5. I won, and my prize was a DCRRC beer mug and a coffee table book on North American Trains. (Running home from the race I must’ve looked pretty special.)

The National Capital 20 miler is still going and is a great tuneup for a fall marathon, although they moved it to the C&O a few years ago. The Gar Williams is marketed as the “lowest-priced half-marathon in America.”

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Jack Leydig’s Nor Cal Running Review from 1975. Jack is one of the sport’s greats.

https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll2/id/5702/rec/13

This mention of Jack Leydig reminds me of my best '70s era running stories.

In Feb. '73 I ran the West Valley Marathon in San Mateo that Jack L. organized. Flew out from Miami. Finished 8th. A few weeks later I got a message from Jack that he and three other guys were passing through Miami, en route to Bogotá for a race, with a layover. Could I put them up. I said sure and asked who else was coming. Reply: Frank Shorter, who had won in Munich 6 months earlier; Jon Anderson, who had made the team in the 10,000; and Jim Johnson, the #2 Steeplechaser in the country at the time. Those were the "amateur" days. Even Olympians had to cut corners on expenses and use the runners grapevine. Well, they arrived in late April. Two weeks earlier Anderson had won Boston.

On the masthead of the NorCal Running Review that is linked above is the name Roy Kissin. I met him in July of 1975 at Jeff Galloway's first summer running camp, Tahoe Trails, at the Mt. Rose ski resort down the lake from his later Squaw Valley site. Cost was $10/day which included breakfast and dinner, cooked by Jeff. The afternoon I arrived Jeff was en route back from the Peachtree road race in Atlanta, so he slept in. There were only three other guys there (the camp was open-ended: come when you want and stay as long as you want). In the morning I went downstairs to run and heard footsteps behind me, so I waited outside. It was Roy Kissin who had just graduated from high school and in the Spring had finished 8th in the World Junior Cross Country in Morocco. Plus he had been working somewhere for a few weeks, at altitude, while I was coming up from Miami sea level to Mt. Rose's 8,300'. We ran the only"trail" available from the lodge - the old road up to the pass at 9,100'. Yes, I got dropped. In the afternoons Jeff would drive us down to Incline Village, by the lake. "Only" 6,200'. Felt good! We could ride back to the lodge with him in his 300,000 miles on it Volvo, Mobley, which needed extra radiator water half way up, or we could hitchhike back if we wanted to delay returning. I stayed a week. Loved it.

Yes, those were the good oldcdays.

Lirunrr wrote:

As people mentioned, the shortest distance was 5 miles. A 5k was rare.

Also, I recall the AG were 10 year groups, not the 5 we have now. Do I have revisionist history? When did the 5-yr AG become popular?

Except the Fourth of July was always a four mile race

oldmanstillrunning wrote:

According to Bill Rodgers, the winners of the Boston Marathon got nothing more than a bowl of beef stew when they finished.

Everyone got a bowl of beef stew. Today you get a 4-pack of King's Hawaiian.

makscooter wrote:

The course was not marked very well; you couldn't lose sight of the runner in front of you.

Yeah, I seem to remember a lot about that at various runs, the emphasise was very strong by the organisers on it being up to the runner to familiarise themselves with the course.

I won a pewter beer tankard for 3rd in the Natural Lite 6 in I think '79. 30:11.

Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days when our momma sang us to sleep but now we're stressed out.

I lived in Indiana in the early 80s, and they had a Governor's Cup series at each of the State Parks. Each race was a 10K. That was the most common race distance. I also ran an 8K once and there was always a 4 mile Firecracker Four on the 4th of July. I don't remember running a 5K outside of high school competition until somewhere in the 90s.

Gramps wrote:

runn wrote:

My first road race was a "5 miler" around the grounds of the local state hospital. The spectators were the patients looking out windows!

It was the early 70's- my high school cross country coach took us in his station wagon. I was one of the younguns so I had to sit in the "way back".

One mental patient to another: "and they call us crazy."

This should get a smiley face emoji!

= )!!!!

Lirunrr wrote:

As people mentioned, the shortest distance was 5 miles. A 5k was rare.

Also, I recall the AG were 10 year groups, not the 5 we have now. Do I have revisionist history? When did the 5-yr AG become popular?

I always remember 5 year age groups. Back in the early mid 80's I remember the Syracuse Chargers wouldn't support a race if it didn't have 5 year AG's.

But things were different from place to place.

Messi!!! Come to the Binghamton, NY area- the big thing now is to get a local brewery to sponsor your race- the beer flows!!!!

And of course, 2 hours away is the Utica Boilermaker- which is basically a hot, hilly, 15K followed by a free, unlimited beer party!!!

I really started to run road races in 1979, and in the Midwest, nearly everything was a 10K with a 2 mile Fun Run accompanying.

Other common race distances were 5 miles, 15K, and 20K. There were one or two halves, and one or two marathons.

A lot of the non-10K courses were short, or long, GPS tells me that today. Some of the bigger 10K events were on legit courses, still in use now. A big race would have 3-500 people. More common, though, were smallish community races with 75 or so.

We'd pay $3 or $5 with a T-shirt.

The courses were right in the middle of town, using major roadways. I recall one that was point-to-point, on basically a highway. No trails, no business park loops, very rarely out-and-back.

In 1976 I won a small road race in Olympia (WA). Entry was either $1 or $2. I won a certificate for $8 of gas at a local gas station. Had to give it to my parents. If my 76 Honda Civic was totally empty I couldn't put $8 of gas in it (parents had a Plymouth Fury).

General Tso wrote:

Gramps wrote:

Key point: everyone competed, none of this fatties raising funds for charity nonsense.

It's so awful that running has actually become mainstream, and ordinary folks are participating in local races for funsies.

On the one hand, I can appreciate your distaste for this arguable running "snobbery."

On the other hand, big picture, what do we have: So many races no longer feel like races, and.....is American really any notably fitter? Seems like one new negative NOT counter-balanced by a clear new positive. And even if there is SOME counter-balance in average American fitness resulting from non-runners Joe and Susie running the occasional road race, it still makes sense that "serious" runners still might not love their events kinda hijacked for that cause.

Oh, and one other thing about the word "mainstream." Remember that the "Running Boom" was in the 1970s and early 1980s. But back then, roughly speaking, people came into running and adopted the idea that one trains a fair amount and runs hard during races. Sure, not EVERYONE did this, and many didn't last long. But by and large, they didn't bend the sport to them.

That's what seems to have changed sometime no later than the 90s. So many new runners were proudly "non-serious" and fine with utterly not treating races as races, and kind of bending the nature of road races to THEIR liking. That's a fundamental change to the sport, and it is quite understandable and I think defensible that many serious runners wouldn't love it.

That was roughly when John "The Penguin" Bingham became the poster boy for "Runner's World" magazine and the Komen Foundation Race for The Cure rose to prominence. Both attracted a lot of unfit newbs to events, make it acceptable to be unfit and unserious about the sport, and helped popularize just finishing as noble. As a result, people would come out to walk the route and declare themselves "marathoner" or morally superior because they were supporting a cause instead of personal glory.

If you were a runner in the 1970s you were pretty serious. I've compared some local races from the late 1970s to today from the area where I grew up in Northern California and the average times were quite a bit faster than today. As an example, the Clam Beach Run which has taken place in Trinidad, CA for about the last 50 years. My time as a HS junior which earned me 20th place and 5th HS runner in 1976 would have earned me 2nd place overall in 2019. There probably weren't as many people running and racing but those that were raced faster than today. I'm curious whether others have noticed the same thing