Chapter 20 "Running Life" - Experience of 19 Champions

19 Run with the Champions An Olympic Marathon Runner Talks About His Experience Bill Rogers of Melrose, Massachusetts, is an Olympic marathon runner.He ranks among the best marathon runners in the world who have participated in a total distance of 26.2 miles.Today, Rogers and I are running on a road a few miles north of Boston.My feet habitually hissed, hissed on the pavement, but he made no sound in motion.He slid forward along the left edge of the road, as light as a cat.He has won the marathon twice in the past three weeks.First in New York City, he defeated another 2,001 runners (including Frank Short) and ten days later he flew to Japan to defeat a five-member Japanese relay team.He told me that he still hadn't gotten over the bad feeling he had when he was flying, and that he was also upset with his stomach.

But he didn't look uncomfortable.His feet rose and fell rhythmically, he was high spirited and talkative.A baggy green-and-orange sweatshirt he wore in warm-up over his lean body.It was evening and the weather was getting colder, but that was just how he liked it.On such a day in April 1975, he ran the full length of the Boston Marathon with a decisive pace so fast that he not only won the race—it was A terrific achievement— — and set a record: he ran the whole course in two hours, nine minutes and fifty-five seconds. (He later said: "It can't be true, I can't run that fast.")

Rodgers is not yet thirty years old, which is the mature age of a marathon runner, but people will regard him as five or six years younger than his actual age.As mentioned in Chapter 6 of this book, he was five feet eight and a half inches tall and weighed 125 pounds, exactly the same weight as he had been in junior high school.His hair is yellow and red, and his teeth are small, but they are very regular.As he ran, he had an uncanny mechanical harmony, every part of his body trying to work in unison with the rest.His arms swung back and forth like pendulums, and his feet landed very lightly, first on the heels, then on the soles of the feet, until his body was connected to the ground only at the tip of his toes.Then he floated lightly in the air until the other heel finally touched the road lightly.He spends an unbelievably long time in the air at a time.As he moved forward, his head neither lifted nor drooped, it was as steady as a gyroscope.

He said: "If I stop running, I will feel very uncomfortable, as if my bone frame is slowly unraveling. I feel that the body is strong, and there is a feeling that there is no need to ask for help. .If I have a flat tire on my car and I'm ten miles away from a gas station, I can run there instead of sitting there waiting three hours and freezing." Rogers grew up in Newington, a small town in central Connecticut. I ran with Rodgers because I wanted to know what a world-class runner thinks about his sport and what he thinks during a race.But I was also interested in Rodgers because he was an extraordinary man.I think he's a particularly intriguing runner because of his extraordinary ability to push himself forward without an opponent competing with him. (His best marathon runs were achieved with the fewest number of opponents.) Most distance runners run best when they can see the pained faces and hear the wheezing of their opponents. strain.I don't get it, what makes Rogers different?

We started the run in the company of Rogers' wife, Ellen.It was Ellen, before they were married, who encouraged Rogers to train hard for the 1975 Boston Marathon. (She later recalled that when he ran to the Wellesley half-mark, he looked listless and "I wanted to kill him.") Ellen had wavy brown hair, a beautiful smile, and a gentle demeanor.She ran and talked with us for about a mile or so, and then she explained that she didn't run more than two miles at a time, and then she turned and ran back. Rogers started to pick up speed after saying goodbye to her. At this point we ran to a small patch of muddy grass.The trees were bare, and a horse stared at us as we ran past it, and Rogers said: "These poor horses don't have much room to play around here."

I asked him how he felt after winning the Boston Marathon. He replied: "I was nervous before the race. The year before, in the first eighteen or twenty miles, I ran fourth. Then I lost my spirits and was fourteenth by the finish. This time I knew , I might pull further when I get to the finish line, so my spirits pick up. I know there are some of the best players in the race, but I feel like I have a lot of fighting spirit. As soon as the gun goes off, we're on the fast track. Start. I was a little behind at the beginning, but after a mile or two, I caught up with the front runners. Everyone was running at about the same speed. But after eight miles, the Mexican athlete Mario Covas ran to the front. Jerem Drayton followed. That's when I made up my mind that I was going to bite them anyway. Drayton and I ran abreast for about three miles, and then he defeated.

I asked Rogers if he knew who Drayton was before this.He smiled a little uneasily and said, "Oh, I know who he is, and I know he ran a marathon in two hours and eleven minutes. What happened that day was that people were applauding him. Pisses me off. Why do they applaud the Canadian from Boston more than I do from Boston? I'm so pissed that I run like hell and he falls behind. Then That’s how it was in this match.” Rodgers set the record in that marathon, though he stopped once to tie his shoes and drink water four times.He said, "I can't run and drink water." He smiled again, and went on to say, "I guess the act of tying my shoes confuses a lot of people. My shoelaces came loose and I remember I was like, maybe I'll step on it.

That was a good chance to stop and relax, so I stopped, laced it up, took a deep breath, and started running again.It's not really a secret, but it confuses a lot of people.I suspect even some long-distance runners can't figure it out. " Rogers and I were running along a road parallel to Interstate 93.Route 93 is a north-south highway, just west of where Rogers lives.Two runners, a teenage boy and a man, came running towards us.We waved to each other.The boy looked up at Rogers, recognized him, and called, "Hi, Bill."Rogers replied: "Hi, kid".For a few seconds, we could hear the sound of our running shoes on the pavement behind us.Then the silence fell again.

Rogers told me about his childhood: "I was good at most sports, but not baseball. I was terrible at baseball. First of all, my eyesight was bad. I remember trying out for the little league A guy hit a fly ball, and I was wearing glasses, facing the sun, and the ball just slipped through my hands and hit the ground. That's it! But, even in elementary school, I Just faster than most boys. I used to love to run. They used to make me run along the infield of a baseball and time me, and I was fast. I can't remember how much time I ran, Anyway, good results. I ran a mile for the first time when I was sixteen years old, which was a very long distance for me at the time. I ran good results, but not earth-shattering. In my When I was a sophomore in high school, I used to go out on the track and run a mile and run as fast as I could. I wanted to try to run a mile in under five minutes, but I never did."

It was also in this year that Rogers began to suspect that he had some unusual ability.He said to me: "We have a long-distance running program, and all the classes at Newington High School do long-distance running during PE class. I think it may be a mile and a tenth of a mile long. I was the fastest runner in the school. One. During my last two years at Newington, we had a pretty good coach who probably had the loudest voice in the state of Connecticut. Under his tutelage, I improved very quickly." Rodgers feels better now and runs harder.I had to work hard to keep up with him.He turned left and ran into an underpass and followed it from the west side of Ninety-three to the east side of the road.In the underground passage, my footsteps echoed on the walls, but Rogers' footsteps could not be heard, as if he were running on cotton wadding.A few minutes later, we ran to the edge of a reservoir, only to see the setting sun reflected on the water surface, with streaks of golden light."If we do a lap around the reservoir, that's exactly nine miles," Rogers said.

As we ran along the edge of the reservoir, Rogers said: "Four years ago, I would never have thought of running a marathon. I worked in the post office for a few months after college. Then I got a conscientious objector for my faith." Eligibility, got a job at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. For two or three years, I watched the Boston Marathon. I smoked a pack a day at the time—not good news! Later, I Joined a club run by the YMCA and started running again. I was running indoors, in the dark, on small fields, and I don’t even remember what it was like to run outside. One day, I finally got outside to a park, I started to feel the power coming back to me. I remember saying: This is great. I have to do this a few more times. So I ran the Boston Marathon in 1973. But this time I was Eliminated. It was a hot day and I had another cold and I remember lying on the side of the road with muscle cramps. After that, I didn’t run for two months. I was like, I’m never going to be really top-notch Runners. I was convinced there was no way I could force myself to run hard in the heat." Although Rogers hadn't stopped talking to him since we started running, he showed no sign of being out of breath, not even on the uphills.In addition, he was constantly concerned about my safety. At any time, he will remind him like this: "This road is not easy to run.. Here we better run in a single file, one behind the other.. Don't go through it now, wait for these cars.. There is a good run in front of us Sidewalks .. watch out for those rocks." He began to talk about racing skills.He said: "In the New York City Marathon in 1976, Chris Stewart caught up to me. I had been ahead for a while, and all of a sudden, he showed up. I just said to myself, okay , I don't try to distance him right away, I want to run with him for a while and see what kind of person he is. I try to put a value on each player. Are they really strong? I watch them The way they run; I listen to their breath. I might even talk to them so I know what they have to say. That's what I did with Stewart. I didn't know who he was at the time, so I asked his The name, he told me. Then I knew what he was like, and how fast he was running marathons. So after a while, I said to myself, well, I'm going to work harder now and see what happens.Fortunately, he started to feel a bit of a struggle and finally fell behind. " We've now pretty much run around the reservoir.The sun had just set, and streaks of sunset glow reddened the western sky.Rogers looked at Sunset and said, "Hey, look!" He was still running silently, but I was exhausted. A track and field commentator once said to me that Rodgers never reached his full potential because he wasn't mentally strong enough.The commentator claimed that when Rodgers looked around before the race and saw so many world-class runners, he panicked.I asked Rogers how he felt about the criticism.He replied thoughtfully: "I've heard that. I know, people think that way about me. But I don't think I'm like that anymore. Once I get myself up to the game, I'm ready to fight anyone. Let's compete. There might be some of the best players in the world, but I'm not scared at all. I'm looking forward to it. My concern is the heat. At the Montreal Olympics, I had this feeling of being fucked because of the weather. It was so sweltering. As a result, I overreacted. Whenever someone sprinted forward, I sprinted forward because I wanted to have a world record speed. Then I felt my weakness. Bumped up, but I knew then that there was nothing I could do about it. This time 'Fucked'.—He used the word 'Fucked' again with emotion. By the end of the race, Rodgers was well behind a large crowd. He went on to say that normally he feels good when he runs a marathon.He said to me, "If I didn't use up a lot of energy from sweating, I wouldn't have cramps and the race wouldn't be too hard. I try to run with less energy. I have some way of controlling my arms." , I try not to jump up and down too much, but concentrate on running forward. If my legs are a little cramped, I change the position of my feet, maybe so that the feet land in a slightly different position. Maybe It's about leaning forward a little bit, or stretching your lower back if you feel a little tightness in your back. Marathon running is all about hard work—trying to stay balanced, smooth, and efficient all the way to the finish line. Run to the last few miles It's extremely tough, and that's what makes marathon running different from other sports. If you train well, you can make it through the last few miles, but if you don't..." As we ran, Rogers made several references to the state of mind during the run.It was a question he was interested in.He is now back on the subject again.He said: "When I'm running a marathon, I never allow myself to think that I have twenty-six miles ahead of me. You have to think that you're running a race. At the same time, you have to think about what happens next.If someone is 300 yards ahead of you, you'd better know who he is and how he's running. If he's running at the same speed as you, you can rest assured and try to keep calm. You can say, I will catch up with him.But you can't say to yourself, I've got fifteen miles to go, don't do that!I divide it into several small sections, and for a period of time I only consider how to complete a section of distance.In a marathon, I like to start off a little easier, run hard halfway through to shake off the others, and then use the momentum to run the distance.I was able to run pretty hard in the middle because I wasn't too worried about the rest of the way. " Now, all of a sudden, I understand how Rodgers races.It turns out he doesn't run best when he's alone, but when he's stressed.But because he ran so well under pressure, there was often no one left to run with him after a while.His ability to run solo in the final part of the race was a reward for running so well in the previous period. Rogers began to talk about his personal future plans.He said: "I want to get myself really ready to run a marathon in possibly ideal conditions and maybe get it down to under two hours and nine minutes*. And then, one day, I want to get it down to two hours and zero minutes." Seven points. I hope to improve the record." Note: *In 1969, the record set by Australian Derek Clayton was 2 hours, 8 minutes and 34 seconds. We were running along a country road not far from Rogers' house.It was almost dark.It occurred to me that I asked him if he could show me how he ran the marathon.I wonder what it's like to run at world record speed.He said, "Okay. By the time we get to the next pole, we'll run faster. Once we get to that pole, Rogers is on tiptoe and starts to accelerate softly and steadily until we reach a run." The speed of the mile was less than five minutes. At that time, he seemed to be flying. This is the speed he is most familiar with. I made a lot of fools, and after a lot of effort, I was finally not pulled down by him. The road was flat enough that I could turn my head and watch him run. His arms swung back and forth with ease, and his gloved hands hung down like they were hanging on a clothesline. His stride was wide Big, his two steps equals my three steps. At this moment, for the first time, his shoes made a slight whoosh sound on the road.He said: "I guess, that's how I run during the races. It's hard to be very accurate." At this time, I felt a sharp pain, as if there was a pimple in my chest. He said, "Maybe I'm going to slow down a little bit, although I can go faster. It depends who I'm running with." I noticed that his breathing wasn't panting.Then it dawned on me that I was running within a foot or so of a man with the most perfect circulatory system in the world.If you were to ask a particularly clever engineer to invent a running two-legged machine, he would undoubtedly come up with something very Rogers-like. Thankfully, Rogers slowed down, and once again we moved at a tolerable pace until we reached Rockland Street, where Rogers lived. Rogers and his wife are both school teachers.They rented the top floor of an old house.The house is located at the end of this horseshoe-shaped street.To get to their apartment, one had to climb up wooden stairs built outside the house.Their house consisted of four or five rooms, and it was a very comfortable dwelling.There are green flowers and plants in front of the window.In the kitchen, Ellen was stirring macaroni and cheese and baking chocolate chip cookies.Rogers opened the refrigerator. There were three bottles of Michelob beer in it. He didn't touch them.He got out a quart of ginger beer, poured some into a glass, and drank it.On the kitchen table, there were little bottles of gamma vitamins, strength tablets, and something called Fitness Two. I took a shower.Later, while Rogers was in the shower, Ellen and I talked and looked around.On a table next to a medium-sized television sits a silver platter, his prize for first place in the New York City Marathon.On the wall of a room, there are various souvenirs.Among them, a proclamation from Mayor Melrose announcing "Bill Rogers Day," an honor bestowed upon him after his victory in the Boston Marathon; A big badge won in a marathon, a poster for the Montreal Olympics. Rogers came out of the shower, his hair still wet.I asked him if his training technique would work for someone new to running.He said: "Sure. Whenever you feel like running, you run. If you want to run, you start running. I always do that. I always feel uncomfortable when I walk. I walk very It's awkward, so I don't feel comfortable walking. One leg is an inch longer than the other, a podiatrist told me. So. I'd rather run. Honestly, I hate walking."