Born to Run
Spring + a new pair of running shoes = Heaven!
I awake on a beautiful morning in Rochester, Minnesota, and head out for my forty-minute jog. The sun’s warmth feels like spring may be here to stay. I have likely run 40,000 miles in my seventy-six years, and my first few steps remind of my distant youth. In the morning stillness I hear the slap-slap of my Nikes on the pavement and the cardinals’ songs. How fortunate I am to jog another day.
In Ray Bradbury’s book Dandelion Wine, Douglas Spaulding is twelve in the summer of 1928 and lives in Green Town, Illinois. He, his brother, and their dad spend a day picking dandelions, and at the end, when their pails were full and they were dead tired, Douglas realizes for the first time in his life that he is alive. He says, “I want to feel all there is to feel, I mustn’t forget I’m alive. I know I’m alive. I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.”
Running has done the same for me. Whether the core of my brain aches from the gale-force wintry wind or my shirt is sweat soaked from heat and humidity, running is a welcome reminder that I am alive.
I don’t remember when I first broke into a run, but it must have been not too long after I walked. Speed came naturally to me. It served me well in high school track, and it was a key ingredient in my doing well in other sports. I was quick, too. I not only had straight-ahead speed, but I could zig and zag with the best of them.
A highlight each spring would be my getting a new pair of Keds tennis shoes. Even today, there is something about a new pair of running shoes that makes me feel younger than I am.
New shoes were a highlight for Douglas Spaulding, too.
When he asked for a new pair, his dad replied, “Suppose you tell me why you need a new pair of sneakers. Can you do that?”
“Dad,” said Douglas, “it's hard to explain.” Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles, and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness.
Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes, the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer.
And this was a new year, and he felt that with this new pair of shoes, he could do anything, anything at all.
Dave Long was our Clear Lake, Iowa, high-school track coach my junior and senior years. (He went on to become Secretary of Education for the State of California.) Race distances were measured then in yards rather than meters. My best events were the 440 relay, 880 relay, and mile medley relay. In my junior year, I ran on a team that set the school mile medley relay record of 3:48.3 and I was on three teams that qualified for the state meet. The next year, I ran on a team that broke the medley record again.
During my college years and through the 1970s, I ran to help keep me in shape for other sports I loved: tennis, volleyball, racquetball, bicycling, softball, and more. On most business trips, I would pack my running shoes and sweats for jogging before or after the workdays. Rarely would you see anyone going out for—or coming back from—a run. I would sneak in hotel back doors and ride in empty elevators to avoid drawing attention.
My running intensity picked up when several friends became caught up in the marathon craze. We would run over the lunch hour during the week and on many weekend mornings. For me, running became – and still is - a form of meditation, a way to find yourself and get to know the real you. I call it “cheap therapy.” I remember a runner saying that it feels as if his head has become detached from his body and is just gliding along, enjoying the ride. I know when I am deep in thought while running, the time and miles just melt away, as if I no longer sense the passing of time but am just aware of being.
I probably ran more miles with Greg Caucutt than any of my running friends, and I set my personal bests in races we ran together: 37:47 in a Rochester 10K run, 51:55 in a hilly, winter 8-mile run in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (average 6 ½ minutes per mile), and a 1:27:16 half marathon in Winona, Minnesota. The latter gave me great appreciation for what it would take to run a sub-three-hour marathon.
Greg and several other friends ran multiple marathons. They put in hours and hours of training that began months before a race. A marathon took much out of a person. One could expect to hit the wall at the twenty-mile mark no matter how good of shape you were in, and you just toughed out the 6.2 miles from there. Given how grueling I found 10Ks and half marathons to be, my goal in life has been to never run a marathon. I am pleased that I have continued to meet that goal.
Ron Fess and I often ran together. To mark his fortieth birthday, he entered the 1985 Twin Cities Marathon. It would be his first ever. He asked if I would consider joining him at the twenty-mile mark, run with him for three or four miles to offer encouragement, and then slip into the crowd a mile or so before the finish line. I, of course, said I would love to run with him.
Early that crisp fall morning, my wife, Jeanine, and I began our drive from Rochester to Minneapolis about the time that Ron started running. We were nearing the designated spot where I would join him when Jeanine pointed and said, “Look, there’s Ron!” I saw his head bobbing along in a sea of runners. We pulled over, I hopped out and stripped off my sweats, and without a single stretch or warm-up began sprinting down the road to catch up with him. In short order I was by his side. He was glad to see me and was doing fine, setting a steady pace.
Because of my lack of a warm-up and the rush to catch him, in three or four blocks I developed an excruciating side ache; it felt like someone had stuck a knife in me. It has been said that we all should have at least one person in our lives we don’t want to disappoint. Well, at that point, the one person I did not want to disappoint was running beside me at a much faster clip than I would have liked.
“Ron,” I gasped. “I think I’m going to have to stop.” Mind you, I had been running a few blocks; he had been running twenty miles.
“Ransom,” he said … (he always called me—and most of his other friends—by their last names; I took it as a term of endearment). “Ransom, suck it up, and let’s keep moving.” Well, suck it up I did; the pain miraculously subsided so that I could run my four miles with him; and Ron completed his first of multiple marathons. For years, Ron and I joked about my “helping him” accomplish such a significant milestone in his running life.
Jogging with Lamar Hunt, Sr.
How often does one get to jog with the owner of an NFL football team in his team’s stadium?
The Kansas City Chiefs were playing the Denver Broncos, quarterbacked by John Elway, in the early 1980s. Dan Harris (my sister Sue’s husband at the time) was best friends with Lamar Hunt, Jr., whose father, Lamar, owned the Chiefs. Jeanine, Ben (our son, age eleven), and I met Sue and Dan in Kansas City. The night before the game, we were invited to join the Hunts at an elegant Italian restaurant. During our over-dinner conversation, I mentioned to Lamar Sr. that I was a jogger. “Are you?” he replied. “I love jogging, too. How would you like to join me on my run in the morning before the game?” How could I say no?
Lamar and Norma stayed that night at their in-stadium apartment that was connected to the owner’s box. When I knocked on their door in the morning, Lamar appeared sporting his Kansas City Chiefs red jogging suit. It was drizzling rain, so we decided to run the covered loop around the stadium and past the concession stands. I do not recall much about the run other than (1) Lamar jogged pretty slowly (he was fifty-nine, which seemed old to me at the time) and (2) every few minutes we would pass a stadium worker who said, “Good morning, Mr. Hunt.” I bet each one of them wondered who the heck the guy jogging with him was.
Tearful Jogs
On March 21, 1985, our younger son, Tyler, died unexpectedly. I drove to work thinking he had a slight cold. I was called by a nurse at St. Marys hospital at 9:00 a.m. who told me I should come to the hospital immediately. When I arrived, Jeanine was there with Tyler; he was on life support and late that afternoon he died. The days after his death are a blur, but what I remember so clearly still today is hearing a knock on our front door and opening it to see many of my running friend including Ron Fess, Greg Caucutt, and Bob Waite. Fess said, “Ransom, get your “stuff” on, we’re taking you for a run.” I felt their love and support every step of the way.
Years later, in early September 1997, I remember another emotional run. My mother had died in late August and soon after my dad was hospitalized in Rochester with severe depression. I was running my regular route, on a path along the Zumbro river, when I was overcome with sadness and worry. I cried and ran, cried and ran, and could barely see the path through my tears. I had not cried like that since Tyler’s death. But crying (and running) were exactly what I needed on that day at that time.
The Running Ransoms
It means much to me that my family shares my love for running. In 2014, Jeanine and I cheered our daughter-in-law, Lindsey, on as she ran Grandma’s Marathon from Two Harbors to Duluth, MN. Our son, Ben, was her encourager and ran countless training miles with her. Last year, Ben started the Summit Avenue Run Club (Summit Ave Run Club) in St. Paul, MN. The club’s goal is to donate $1M to area non-profit organizations that support the community. Our oldest granddaughter, in the spring last year, was one of more than a thousand grade-school girls who completed a 5K “fun run” held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Her two younger sisters (ages seven and three) run like the wind, too.
I realize that I am fortunate to be able to jog. I approach each run with a goal to enjoy it rather than to just get it over with. I savor the feelings of putting one foot in front of the other and moving on down the road, and I love the days when nothing (knees, hips, ankles) hurts. Though I am running slower each year, when I hang up my running shoes, I want to be sure I never took a mile I jogged for granted.
I saved the following column that Donald Kaul wrote in the 1970s for the Des Moines Register newspaper:
I met a remarkable man the other day; I think he changed my life. It was on the bike path near my house, during my morning run. I’d just started when I passed this old man going in the opposite direction. I mean he was old—76, 103—somewhere in there. He walked with a cane, at a pace so slow as to be almost imperceptible. I smiled and said hello as I whooshed by, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Poor old fellow’s in bad shape,” I said to myself. “I hope I never get that way.” I didn’t give him another thought.
It’s a funny thing. You’d think that when you run every day, you’d run pretty much the same every day. Not true. Some days you can run; some days you can’t. This was one of the days I couldn’t. My mind kept saying, “Glide! Glide!” but my legs kept saying, “Stomp, stomp.” I just couldn’t get the old machine up to speed.
I ran to the end of the bike path, turned around, and started back; the harder I tried the worse I seemed to run.
“I’m going to give this up,” I remember thinking. “I get up and punish myself every morning and what do I get? I couldn’t make the mile relay team of the DAR.”
I trudged on—and I mean that literally—to the end of the path. I got there just as the old man whom I’d passed a half-hour earlier arrived. He’d been about 300 yards up the path when I first saw him. He got to the end of the path, reached into his pocket, pulled out a stopwatch, and hit the stop button. Then he looked at his time and nodded.
Nodded!
It was beautiful. If God hates quitters, He must love that old man. I know I do. I want to be like him when I grow up.
And I’m not quitting running. If a 10-minute mile is the best you can do, it’s a damn good time.
I look at the Kaul column much differently today than when I first read it. I am now the age of the “old guy” that he writes about. And like that old guy, I am going to keep going as long as I can.
Yes I do remember you like to run. Ron was such a good person to know on this earth and has joined your son in heavene
I have forwarded this to my son, Dave (60) and my grandson, Jake (25) who are doing a Memorial Day Run in St Louis. Running has been important to both of them. I found this piece to be very moving and a good reminder to keep doing the things you love and let it help you feel Life in a deeper way.