Chapter 1

What Is It About Running?

What is it about running, anyway? We go out for a little jog, a little exercise, and the habit grows. Each day we go a little farther. Our sights lengthen. One mile begins to feel paltry, and we extend ourselves. Before long, we are training, preparing for a race. The training gets more focused. The number of minutes it takes to run each mile shrinks as our speed and power grow. The habit has caught on. We circle a track, chasing seconds now, cleaving the quarter-mile time or the half-mile time as precisely as a diamond.

We pile up the intervals and the training sessions and then find ourselves in a 5K or a 10K, straining to hold our pace. The middle miles of the 10K become a test of character, the final mile a test of will, grit, and courage. Our sights lengthen again, and we take on longer distances. Each week we pile up the miles; each weekend we extend our long runs. Eventually we line up in the big cities with thousands of others, with the goal far away-26 miles away. A gun goes off, and we launch into a rite of passage, a bucket list quest, a journey that will take us far along the road and deep within ourselves.

The agony near the marathon's end is like fire, burning fiercely but cleansing. At the final moment, we burst out of the flames, cross the finish line, and are reborn into our lives, returned from a deep inner journey. But having returned, we are not the same.

Really, we had only thought to go for a little jog, but one thing led to another, one run led to another, and now running has insinuated itself into our very being, and we are runners, as, it seems upon reflection, we were meant to be.

In the United States, mass participation in running exploded onto the scene in the early 70s, inspired by American Frank Shorter's victory in the marathon at the 1972 Munich Olympics. And what remarkable Olympic Games those were! It was Germany's first stint as host of the Summer Games since the infamous Games in Berlin of 1936. By 1972, television coverage had improved and expanded, so people could indulge their passion for the Games. People in the United States had always loved the Olympic ideals of peaceful competition, pursuit of excellence, and supreme victory of the individual athlete over competitors from around the world. And here were the Games right in our living rooms.

But in the second week of the Games, Palestinian terrorists upended everything using the enormous stage of the Olympics to proclaim their grievances and murder Israeli athletes. A photo of one of the masked terrorists on the balcony in the Olympic Village fixed the horror in everyone's minds for all time. Then came the courageous decision by the Olympic Committee, the German officials, the Israeli government, and the athletes to continue the competitions, and thus the stage for running the marathon was set.

Americans were watching by way of a live satellite feed from Munich as the runners circled the track in the stadium, which really looked at first like a common track and field ho-hum affair, but then suddenly all the runners followed a line of barricades off the track into a large tunnel that whisked them right out of the stadium and onto the streets of Munich. We were used to seeing Olympic competitions staged inside stadiums or in field houses, in giant swimming halls or in gymnasiums. It was stunning to see the marathon runners out on the streets and sidewalks, people walking, cars driving by, life going on as if a major Olympic event weren't happening right under their noses.

Shorter hung back from the leaders in the first stages of the race in about tenth place. Nobody expected anything special of him that day, but at mile nine, he made a bold move, a breakaway right off the front, opening up a significant lead. When no one came to chase him down, he remembers saying to himself, "They're making a big mistake."

Shorter never faltered. In a white racing singlet, blue shorts, wearing number 1014 just below the "USA" emblazoned on his singlet, the mustachioed Shorter ran solo the rest of the way. The runners behind him were tying up, bending sideways trying to relieve awful cramps, collapsing to the ground, but Shorter ran along unfazed. He maintained a strong, upright, almost relaxed-looking stride. His face was impassive. At home, Americans could hardly believe what they were seeing. This was the marathon, the province of only true fanatics and Olympic gods, a distance really quite unimaginable for most of the viewers, who would have considered five miles an extremely long run. Here was an American winning, looking relaxed, and making mincemeat out of the competition. How incomparably, unutterably cool was that?

At the end of the race, some joker in a track outfit snuck through the barriers and cruised around the track in the stadium just as Shorter arrived. The crowd was jeering, realizing the hoax, which made Shorter wonder what was going on. Jim McKay and the other American announcers were beside themselves. McKay claimed Shorter was confused. "He doesn't know what to do," he said. The other announcer, Erich Segal, spoke as if directly to Shorter, "Frank, you won it.Frank, it's a fake, Frank." But Shorter said later he never even saw the other runner. He was not confused about winning, just about why the crowd seemed to be jeering instead of cheering.

Meanwhile, back home in the United States, people were fired up. The seeds of the running boom had been flung far and wide across the land. Running was suddenly a very "in" thing to do at a time when being "in" was really very "in."

People took to the streets in droves. You didn't need a track team. You didn't need smelly liniment oil. You didn't have to do laps on a track. You could just go outside and run on the roads. The fusty old running federations and local committees that held running competitions and focused mainly on the most competitive runners gave way to organizations that were more inclusive. Running clubs formed. Races sprang up everywhere. Women were allowed into the Boston Marathon. Shoe and apparel companies got on board. Frank Shorter became one hero among many, including Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar, Steve Prefontaine, Jim Ryun, Mary Decker, and Grete Waitz. In 1984, in Los Angeles, Joan Benoit matched Shorter's feat with a going-away win at the first ever Olympic Marathon held for women.

The incredible interest and thirst for information about running became apparent in 1977 with the publication of Jim Fixx's, The Complete Book of Running. At the time, it was the leading best-selling non-fiction hardcover book on the market. The jacket cover of the book, a striking deep-red, featured a close-up of Fixx's own legs with every muscle, tendon, and sinew sharply defined. The legs sprouted out of red running shorts and were punctuated with classic red and white-striped Onitsuka Tiger racing flats.

Fixx jumped into his topic on page 1. He was not out to help you drop a few pounds or introduce you to a neat fitness technique. No, Jim Fixx was going to change your life, and dramatically, if you would only run on a regular basis. Fixx proselytized for running. He saw running as a magic elixir, a fountain of youth, a key to physical and mental health. This message was pretty much news to people back in 1977. Of course, running had always been considered good exercise. It was something US Marines supposedly did for five miles every day. But people didn't imagine it was going to change their lives. What exactly was Fixx smoking?

From today, looking back some forty years to when running became widespread, we can see that Fixx wasn't smoking anything. On the contrary, he was on to something. Running has persisted. The running boom had legs!

Running or jogging became the go-to exercise routine for millions, and the increase in the number of structured running events has reflected the growing demand. In addition to the proliferation of shorter distance races, we've seen the establishment of a vast circuit of marathons, most of them big city affairs that draw participation in the tens of thousands and constitute a whole lifestyle subculture for many. Clubs form just to facilitate their membership, entering marquee marathons all over the world. In addition to the popularity of the marathon, you have millions stepping off road to sample trail running with the result that trail races have become commonplace, and there is no shortage of runners who are stepping up to the more extreme distances of ultrarunning. Even one hundred-mile races are getting so many entrants that lotteries must be held to determine the starting field. In short, not only has the running boom not faded with time, but it has grown and spawned new formats to meet an insatiable demand for the sport.

Generally speaking, other sports can't make similar claims about their lasting popularity. At the same 1972 Summer Games where Shorter prevailed in the marathon, American swimmer Mark Spitz totally dominated in the pool, winning seven gold medals over an impressive mix of events. But where was a lasting wide spread swimming boom? Greg Limond won cycling's Tour de France three times, an unparalleled feat for an American, but though interest in road cycling went up, there was no lasting cycling boom. Nadia Comaneci and her perfect ten at the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 inspired enormous interest and participation in gymnastics, but the movement only went so far. The same can be said of soccer in America, mountain biking, skiing, hiking, golf, and surfing. Interest in these activities grows and wans. Lots of people enjoy these sports and get a lot out of them, but all pale in comparison to what has happened with...