Once There Was A Young Runner - Now There Is Not

Once I was a young and could run with the wind.

When I was wee sprite it was very easy for me to get where I was going. Very little planning was needed. Everywhere that I went, I ran. There was no jogging, no trotting, no easy loping stride. I ran and I ran hard, as fast as I could. Winter or Spring, Summer or Fall it did not matter at all.

Running was always easy and natural for me. A bicycle was always an option, but given my druthers running was always the first choice.

My first foray into organized racing was the original Salem Heritage Days Race in 1973 which was a classic 10K, a distance which is now beginning to come back onto the road racing scene. I ran that race every year until 1978.

In high school, discretion being the better part of valor I decided not to play freshman football. I had played organized football for a few years in a kids league and had some talent, but soaking wet I may have weighed in the vicinity of 115 pounds. Somehow I heard of this thing called Cross-Country Racing which seemed more suited to me.

The next four years found me running hither and yon with one of the finest groups of young schoolboy runners ever gathered in New England. That is no exaggeration. J. Hogan, Thompson, Lockard, Cooney, T. Hogan, Swiniuch, Dionne, Michaud, Nunn, and yes Legault are all names that echo in Salem distance running history.

Undefeated in dual meets for four consecutive years, 4 conference titles, 4 Division titles, A State Championship, a Mass-Conn Title, two State runners-up the second of which was a hairs breadth away from a first place finish. That was the us.

On a personal level I captained the 1978 Cross-Country team and the 1978-79 Winter Track Team. I ran a sub 4:40 mile, a sub 10:00 two mile,  2:35  for the 1,000 yards, and once clocked a 57 second quarter mile as a last minute substitution as the anchor leg in the 1-Mile Relay.

In the Air Force I continued to run on my own. In Japan I developed a rivalry with  a guy by the name of Guttierrez who was of Mexican and Apache heritage. He could fly and no matter how much I trained I could never beat him. He would seemingly be there for me beat no matter the distance, and then in end he would crush me over the final quarter mile. Never did I acknowledge his superior ability and I ended up losing a lot of beer and Jack Daniels bets.

Later on when I was in the Army, yes I switched from one to the other my casual running continued. When I got to Fort Carson In Colorado however I made a minor mistake in approach that resulted n my racing again in a more formal setting.

My arrival at Fort Carson coincided with the annual PT Test for my new unit. There was a young medic there that was considered the big dog of the 2-mile run, Ben Johnson. He was whippet thin and quite confident. I was in good condition but out-weighed the little bastard by 30 pounds and at 26 years to his 19 was considered an old man. The night before I may have talked a little shite and before I knew it we ended up betting a keg of beer on who would beat who on the following morning.

Well, I beat him by half a nose as we both clocked 9:49. The victory was pyrrhic. The Sergeant-Major, the real big dog of the battalion decided that I was going to run on the post track team. My objection to and argument against this plan meant nothing to him. What a Sergeant-Major wants, a Sergeant-Major gets. I was again a distance running track star.

For the next two years I trained for and ran in both cross-country and track races. This was when I ran some of he best times of my life.  One day, on the indoor track at the U. S. Air Force Academy I ran a 4:32 mile. Another day on an outdoor high school track I clocked a 9:39 two-mile.

This is also when I began to incur painful lower leg issues that I would just "run through".

Later on my return to civilian life I continued to do road work and to run various races. One day in Salem N. H. I ran a five-miler that Doug Flutie also ran. I ran a good time that day but he beat me.

I continued to run into my late 30's and into my early 40's but it became more difficult and then it became painful.

My last race was the was the 2010 Wild Turkey 5-Miler on Thanksgiving morning which I hobbled through in 56:11 with bone on bone arthritis in both of my knees. That was no fun, I shuffled more than I ran.

Once I was young and could run with the wind.