The Golden Age Of Marathons

A lot of my post are silly and full of fluff and I try not to take myself to seriously.... But I want to write about the past and what it meant to be a marathoner in the early days.... This may be too long of a post for some of you to read. It also may bore you.... So if your not up to reading about things that happened long ago, I understand..... You may want to comeback later.... I'm writing this for the men who ran before me....

Clarence DeMar... Ever heard of him... He only won the Boston Marathon seven times. The first one in 1911. The doctors found out that he had a heart murmur and told him he should not run marathons. He only ran one marathon from the age of 23 to 32, he finished 3rd. In 1922 he started running Boston again and won 6 times over the next 9 races. (1922, 1923, 1924, 1927, 1928, 1930)
Think of what he would have done in his prime. If that were to happen today, he would be his own corporation. Like Lance Armstrong.

Tarzan Brown... He ran the last 5 miles of the Boston Marathon barefoot. His sneakers fell apart on mile 21... I bet he would have loved Nike.
He also sold the two medals he won (Boston 1936, 1939) for $75.00 each. He said "you can't eat medals".

Walter Young.... He was promised a job with the Verdon Police Dept. if he won the Boston Marathon. He won and had a job for 41 years.

Mr. Boston, Johnny Kelley worked for Edison Power Company. He had to take vacation time to run in the Olympics and if he needed an extra week, it was without pay.

There are so many stories of the past. Men who ran for food or jobs, some ran for their country or bring attention to the hardship their homeland faced during wartime.
They were men of character and the were characters. They came from all walks of life, having one common bond.... Passion.

We do not give enough credit to those who blazed the trail before us. In reality they had more in common with you and me then the elites of today.
For starters they had Joe jobs if they had jobs at all. Times were tough, most of them trained a night after working all day.

Equipment... What equipment?.... Imagine a world without state of the art running shoes, the research of speed work, the science V02 max, sport drinks, energy gels, tested training plans, and who could run without the IPOD.

I know you can't miss something you never had, but to run the times that these men ran, in the era they ran in, is a truly remarkable feat.

I don't want to forget about the woman.
Not only did they have to fight a 26.2 mile battle, they had to win a war of sexism.
In 1966 Roberta Gibb had to hide in the bushes until the Boston Marathon started. She was not allowed to run officially and was not recognized as the woman's winner until 1996.

Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to get an official race bib in the Boston Marathon. She entered as K.V. Switzer and when race officials realized K.V. was a woman they tried to forcibly remove her from the race.
Woman like Ms. Gibb and Switzer may not have been running for food or jobs, but they were running for our daughters and granddaughters. And like the men that ran before them... They ran with passion...

The next time you go out for a run, spend a little time thinking about the runners who ran before you.

I know this post is not as articulate as I would like for it to be. Many writers with more skill then your humble blogger (runron) have written about these great runners.
I just wanted to give a little space to those that ran before me.

Information for this post came from the book. Young At Heart, by Fredrick Lewis.
With the help of Wikipedia

See ya on the road, runron....
And if Clarence DeMar saw me, he probably would push me out of the way.... That's the type of guy Clarence was... I think I would have liked old Clarence.
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