Marathon Man, with Bill Rodgers (episode 187)

Transcript

Music

Nikki Intro-Outro:
[0:03] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The hub of the universe.
This is episode 1 87 Marathon Man With Bill Rodgers. I I’m Nikki.
You all know how much we love Boston history, but you may not know that the Boston Marathon is one of my other loves, which makes Patriots Day pretty much my favorite day of the year.
Just a few days before the Boston Athletic Association announced that the 2020 marathon would be cancelled,
we have the opportunity to chat with Bill Rodgers, four time winner of the Boston Marathon, about his historic runs and some of the lore and legend that surrounds the race.
But before we talk with Bill, it’s time for this week’s upcoming historical event.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[0:50] For upcoming event This week we’re featuring a BPL Baxter lecture with Francis J. Bremer titled The Unappreciated Role of Women and The Shaping of Puritanism.
Well, everybody knows about the challenge that Anne Hutchinson posed to the New England Puritan establishment.
The role of ordinary women and congregational ism has been neglected.
This talk will focus on how women helped to shape Puritan ideas, Form Puritan churches, teach fellow believers and vote on various ecclesiastical issues.
On Wednesday, June 10th from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Joined the BPL for an online program that was originally scheduled to happen at the Central Library.
The events free but advanced registrations required to get the zoom details. We’ll include the link you need in this week’s show notes.

[1:41] Before we start the show, I’d like to pause and say Thanks to our latest patreon sponsor, Julia C, we’re grateful to all the listeners who’ve stuck with us through the covert crisis, even though you’re not commuting or going to the gym, and you probably have less time for podcasts.
We’re especially grateful to listeners like Julia, who still sponsors on Patreon.
We know that supporting a podcast won’t be the first priority for a lot of people right now.
And we completely understand that. However if your job is safe and your charitable giving is done, please consider helping us make HUB history for as little as $2 a month.
You can offset our expenses like Web hosting and security podcast, media hosting and online audio processing tools.
If you’re interested, just go to patri on dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the Support us link.
Thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors, and now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Nikki Intro-Outro:
[2:42] We’re excited to have Bill Rodgers on the show because the Boston Marathon is such an important part of Boston’s history.
But not many non runners appreciate the importance of this event. Athletes from around the world.
The Boston Marathon was first run in 18 97 inspired by the success of the first marathon competition in the 18 96 Summer Olympics.
It’s the world’s oldest marathon, and while I am of course biased, in my opinion, it’s the most prestigious.
Bill Rodgers is the four time winner of both the Boston and the New York City Marathons. He was named the number one marathoner in the world three times by track and field news and is an inductee of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame.
Bill is an Olympian and a bronze medal winner for the United States in the 1975 World Cross country championships. He is also the author of Marathon Man, which details his journey to the top of the running world.

Nikki:
[3:40] Bill Rodgers. Welcome to the show.

Bill Rodgers:
[3:43] Thank you, Nikki.

Nikki:
[3:44] Bill. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got interested in running as a child? Like how the interest sparked?

Bill Rodgers:
[3:51] Yeah. You know, I started running in 63 with my brother Charlie and her best friend, Jason Kehoe.
Or were from Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up right outside of Hartford Newington and had a gym class smile.
This President Kennedy, of course. Talking about, um, you know, in 60 the 2nd 1 is a 63 or so. I think so. That yeah, yeah, about you know, the Russians, Sputnik and all that.

Jake:
[4:12] Must have been.

Bill Rodgers:
[4:16] You know, we have to have to do some sit ups and run or walk. And the whole deal.
So So So they had the impasse smile. I was the past skewed in that school in my gym class Smile, e.
I don’t know. It was a real smile, whatever it waas and so I suddenly it was very motivated that, you know, that that I was that was good in this, so to speak, you know, whatever that meant.
No, but I saw the cross country team remember the Charlie and Jason because we we went fishing together.
We rode our bikes together when camping out that sort of thing. We’re in the boy scouts, you know? And all that were Doberman kids on the edge of the woods. You know, riding the bike a lot stronger next, And I think that helped us run across country.
So we had a very small team. There were no girls in 63.
It was the very backward day use of running, you know, distance runny.
And that’s how it became a runner. I had a really good coach.
We had a very good coach, put Frankel Roar, and we didn’t train very real lot.
But today standard it would be considered a new, insignificant, tiny amount of running.

[5:24] But it was just kind of a fun sport. It was just fun for us, you know, and a lot of people don’t think of running a team sport.
But I’ve always thought running is a team sport, and I have always run with my friends or family members, whatever you know, because it gives you strength.
Ecologically. Physically, it’s easier to go out with someone else.
You do it almost none of the top runners that I know what they didn’t succeed on their own. You can’t really.

Nikki:
[5:52] We’ll build a question I have is who are the runners that you looked up to when you were growing up?

Bill Rodgers:
[6:00] That’s an easy one. In 1964 when I was a high school junior, Olympic Games Run TV Tokyo Your pants.
And there was several great American distance runners. Billy Mills.
Now, uh, got a suit from something code. I think you won the 10,000 meters.
Just a is the only American you ever win the Olympic 10,000 meters.
I think I’m pretty sure on that. He was a great champion. He still was doing clinics and so forth.
Also, Bill Bob Show from Dayton, Ohio Hello from the Air Force won the Olympic gold in 5000 meters in Tokyo.
So I’m watching this and I’m seeing these great American runners and, uh, you know, and it’s just motivated.
I also saw Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian marathoner. It was probably the grandfather of modern marathon, as you want to let the gold in 1960 end and go through And 64 Another goal.
Oh, it was just a very motivational, of course, was I couldn’t understand the marathon, you know, what’s the marathon?
You know, And even though I was only living 100 melts in Boston.

[7:12] And even though my Polish ruminate and Be perfect won the Boston Marathon in 1968 and I knew it was 26 miles when I was a college at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, with envy.
And Jeff Galloway at these two super runners, you know, trying to run with them is an experience. But I learned a lot, you know?
And then I learned about Boston when I moved to Boston. I really saw, you know.

Jake:
[7:39] You know, I have to imagine the Boston Marathon wasn’t quite the cultural Touchstone that is now.
It was a much smaller race back then. I talked to some of the old guys at my gym.
I go to the why here in Hyde Park and, you know, some of the guys who are in their seventies and up these days talk about, you know, just walking up in the morning and signing up, and you run the race and get a chicken or fish sandwich at the end, and then you’re done.

Bill Rodgers:
[8:01] Yeah, it was a different deal. And someone who sits It will always be the same, because now it’s a standardized distance.
You know, in the early years, Boston was not the full 26 miles, 385 yards it is today.
The court has changed little tiny bits, but essentially, it’s the same.
But, uh, yeah, it was It was simple When you when you read the book to the history of the early days of marathon E like bricklayer Bill Kennedy on and making 8100 years ago.
So what? His life was like he was a bricklayer or you travel by train, you know, living on his wits. And these guys really, really all the way up to the modern era, which I think you can in the seventies, you know?
And of course, when really became modernizers when Hancock finally stepped in and started working with the B A.
But these old champions with just something else. People like Tarzan Brown or Johnny Kelly, Clarence and Maher.
The greatest marathon throw them all in the history of Boston is a really it’s just unreal.

Jake:
[9:06] Claris. Tomorrow’s somebody I look back on. He was a marathon champion for a 20 year span, and in the meantime, you’re setting type of a printer shop and then training when he could in his spare time, anything hitching a ride back and forth. Getting trains.

Bill Rodgers:
[9:15] Yeah.

[9:21] You know Jake, he was He actually wrote a book. I have a copy of his book. You can find this book about us life, everything about the Olympic Games. For him, about the marathon. He was running, like, 100 miles a week back in those days.

Jake:
[9:25] Huh?

[9:33] Wow, I’m sure that was unheard off.

Bill Rodgers:
[9:37] Yeah, I was unheard of, You know, the 19 twenties thirties, something like that.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[9:41] Hey, listeners. It’s Jake of the future, breaking in with a bit of background on Clarence Tamar.
Born in 18 88 his mother moved the family from Cincinnati to Boston after the death of his father. When Clarence was 10 years old due to their extreme poverty, his mother was forced to surrender him to the state, and he attended the boys school on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.
He hated the school, later calling it Ah hard and somewhat squelched life.
Yet he earned a spot at the University of Vermont, where he started cross country running.
The 1910 Boston Marathon was deMars First. He finished second.
Later, in 1910 he was advised by a doctor that he had a heart murmur and should stop running within a year or two.
The next year at the Boston Marathon, the doctors on the starting line advised him of his heart, murmur again and told him he should drop out if he got fatigued.
They also told him that he shouldn’t run any more races after that.
Nevertheless, he won that race in two hours, 21 minutes and 39 seconds. Of course record.
Damar was one of the 12 members of the U. S Marathon team in the 1912 Summer Olympics, where he ran poorly, finishing 12 complaining that the coaching staffs dictatorial control of the athletes training had harmed the team’s performance.

[11:03] Although Damar ran a few races after the Olympics, he soon took a break from serious competition,
in his autobiography gave us reasons as continuing warnings from doctors that he was endangering his health concern that striving for individual athletic glory was incompatible with the spirit of his religion and demands.
On his time from the university extension courses, he was taking it. Harvard in Boston University in June of 1915 Damar received an associate of arts degree from Harvard.
Well Working is a printer near Boston.
Tomorrow returned to the marathon in 1917 finishing third in Boston despite training very little and then set a course record in the Brockton Fair Marathon.
That same year, he went on to win seven Boston marathons, and it was a bronze medalist in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
He was known by the nickname Mr de Marathon, which he certainly earned.
Tomorrow won his last Boston in 1930 at the age of 41.
His record of seven wins at Boston has never been broken, and he remains the oldest ever winner of the race.

Bill Rodgers:
[12:13] And is the only person or only man that I know of. Two of one Boston beyond the age of 40.
He was 41 when he won his last Boston.

Jake:
[12:23] Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s the age I am now. And I’m I’m pretty sure that I’m done with the marathon.
And to think of him still winning top tier marathons at 41 after putting that money miles on his body over 20 solid years. I think he won Boston at least six or seven times in that time span.

Bill Rodgers:
[12:42] Also, you know, they called those guys from those days until the seventies when really started coming to sport a little bit, or ladies, actually, they called it the Working Man’s Marathon because most of the people who ran the marathon were working class people.
No, but the runners, the modern runners today me. Quite a bit of money.
Don’t make as much as Red Sox players are Patriots, you know, the Celtics. You know how it happened.
But way do get some money today that all came about after the Olympic boycott. Making age.

Jake:
[13:14] Among other things, that just allows somebody to be a specialist you no longer have.
Well, with a few notable exceptions recently, you no longer have somebody who’s laying bricks or setting type or farming or whatever else all that you can. You can run for a living. You can train for a living essentially.

Bill Rodgers:
[13:28] Yeah,
if those guys had it really tough, you know, they were hoping maybe to get a job out of there, busting meth on win or something like that.
Or, you know, a bit of money. You know, they won’t merchandise. I mean, even in mire of date, I lifted the amateur era.
You know, I ran 12 Boston’s no price money, including the four that I won, you know, and, uh, and one of the trophies I wanted Boston disappearance.
Air will hit its 75.
Actually, 12 trophy is another One was named Dr Will Pony that disappeared to and, uh, many wasn’t even on the trophy. I discovered Beachley was at the be a headquarters.
They finally discovered it somewhere in the trash or something at the Prudential Center, something So it took a while for us to earn. There was a kind of respect, I think, which the general public had for marathoners.
But I think in general we, you know, in one of the marathon was better than because, you know, TV hadn’t come along to take the limelight that has been given to football, baseball, basketball. You know what I mean?

Jake:
[14:38] Right.

Bill Rodgers:
[14:39] The worst word, always ambience are being an Olympic sport. And forced to be quote imager was a different thing, you know?

Nikki:
[14:47] Bill. What happened after the 1980 Olympics that changed that?

Bill Rodgers:
[14:51] Yes, it’s a very good and important question. I don’t think a lot of the younger pro runners today even know about this history.
That doesn’t talk about too much. But I always kind of ranch and rave about it because I was hoping to make the team in 1980 There, three guys who didn’t make the team were really good runners. I might not have made it, but I have run in 1976 Montreal.
I had a foot injury there, and so it had a poor raise, you know, and I’m so I wanted to go back.
But in 1980 President Jimmy Carter two political persuasion, other means Ah kind of leaned on the U.
S. Olympic Committee and corporate America were supporters. So the Olympics, including the TV sponsors off the Moscow Olympic Games.
Not to take part because Rebecca had invaded Afghanistan.

[15:42] And so it was a big struggle. There’s a great book about the politics behind the young decision to not allow Americans to take part.
I was shocked that there was actually enforced, you know, and that the U. S. Olympic Committee kind of buckled under the pressure because the United States, along with Greece and Great Britain, had always been the biggest supporters of the Olympic Games.
But no Olympic Games was born in Europe was born in France and Athens.
You know, grease. So it didn’t evolve here. You know what I’m saying?
So other sports have taken the limelight from the Olympic sports. I think that that’s my view of it.
But anyway, that’s what it waas. And so So it is.
After the boycott, we distance runners about 30 of us, including Boston Marathon champion break fire Patti Catalano, who came in second at Boston several times and 100 Lulu Marathon four times.

[16:44] And many other runners, some from other countries, done a prize money road race.
It was the first prize money road rates in America in about the last 80 years.
So we have that we had to fight for that. In our federation, every country has a federation, so they were trying to control us. They told us we couldn’t living, you know, they were making money off of this work, but we couldn’t make any money. That’s what the video watts.
So we put on this road race in Oregon.
It was sponsored by Nike was called the Cascade Run up, and all the top Americans were there.
Frank Shorter are elliptical medalist, two time Olympic gold medalist. One card on came in fourth in the Olympics in Montreal.
Oh, we push forward and finally did come about. And that’s why the roots prize money today at the Boston Marathon. The New York City Marathon struggle marathon, uh, almost road race or anywhere.

Jake:
[17:36] So through that pressure, do that force that it’s what the 80 F USA track and field.

Bill Rodgers:
[17:41] Yeah, it is USA Track and Feel, but in 1981 it was called the Amateur Athletic Union.
You know, they were trying to be so that tried to suspend Greg Meyer, the Boston Marathon champion.
Ah, from the whole sport. You know, you can’t out for the lib a mature, you know, because they were kind of controls.
So we finally broke those chains, but we took a beating for a while, and it was the kind of self as a political hot potato.
You can see how sometimes the American public almost view to support, um, going to the Olympic Games to compete in Moscow after the Olympic hockey team.
You know, like you re Cioni and those guys.
The hockey team defeated the Russians, the American public.

Jake:
[18:28] All right. The miracle on ice. Uh huh.

Bill Rodgers:
[18:30] It doesn’t mean the whole started show. We’ll get you check out of Russia.
It’s kind of a funny side story, but it kind of hurt all those Olympic athletes.
You know, the things from the other sports baseball.
You know it’s in the Olympic Games, but it doesn’t have a long heritage of the Olympic. It’s I can feel swimming, gymnastics, wrestling. The These are the Olympic sports and they were all crushed.

Jake:
[18:54] Yeah.

[18:58] Yeah. It seems like a lot of those took. Some have never come back to their former state and some took a long time. I feel like it’s only in the last sort of the Michael Phelps era that swimming people started getting excited about competitive swimming again.

Bill Rodgers:
[19:08] Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I think Philip destroys look great.
Uh, fervor. But it’s not until the year they have, You know, Donna being of Olympic sports first.
That s where I That’s where I come from, you know? And and I’m a fan of them because for writing reasons when these air global sports and number two is a good health sports, which I think,
we as a country, it makes sense or, you know, we don’t support them as much, but I would love to see that happen.

Jake:
[19:44] I like to back up for a minute. We’ve mentioned just very briefly your college running experience.
So you were at Wesleyan and you must have started at Wesleyan in 66 65 66.

Bill Rodgers:
[19:58] 66 year. Yeah.

Jake:
[20:01] You mentioned that some of your teammates were Jeff Galloway and Amby Burfoot just for our non running nerd friends.
Uh, who are they? What was your event at Wesleyan?

Bill Rodgers:
[20:14] Okay. We all re in the mile in the two mile. That was our longest distance on the track.
You know, there was no. Five K and the sixties on the track today, they would have to five day and even the Pincay distance.
In cross country, you could do five miles, which was quite a leap for me.
You know, when I first went to collegiate cross country, that’s much harder, But,
but a Bieber if it had the dream of winning Boston because his high school English teacher was young Johnny Kelly from the Mystic Massachusetts area Connecticut area.
You know, that’s where Mbia’s from that area from Rotten, you know, nearby.
So he had the dream to win, cause Kelly, don’t China. Kelly won it in 1957 is the only American boom in that entire ticket.
When Andy and I were roommates when India was a senior and he had finally built a strength up was trading really hard. It’s only 21 years old.
One the raised no water on the force, you know, the be a had no no snow Hancock Support and E. And it was still the working man’s marathon, you know, so to speak.
And very, very tough days of running, you know?
And, uh, but he did win. He came back to a room. I never saw him wear his medal.
Today, when people run the Boston Marathon, they’re all wearing the medal.

Jake:
[21:32] I wear mine on the train all the way home.

Bill Rodgers:
[21:35] Yeah. Yeah. And if you win the race that give you the American flag, When? When I won the race, they gave me some dinky more abuse, too. And it’s only profits.

Jake:
[21:45] I’ve got to tell you, on a cold day, though, a beef stew could be the best thing after a race. My first marathon was the base state up in Lowell.

Bill Rodgers:
[21:53] Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Jake:
[21:53] And it was It was a cold fall day and they handed me Ebola beef stew. When that thing was over, it was about the best food I’ve ever eaten.

Bill Rodgers:
[22:01] Well, it is absolutely. I agree. The J Because after your run 26 miles, you have a hearty appetite, just like the best meal you ever ate. You know, you’re really, really hungry.
I mean, you’re very, very tired, but after a while, your body is recovering and said, I think I need some food.
What brings you know and Jeff Galloway?
Jeff Gallery Gate was was one of the number two man doing envy.
Waasland no, to the sixties. But that was the guy who began running in high school and was always a very contemplated person.
Always thinking about, you know, running, you know? What does it mean? You know, how can I improve How can I make it each, that sort of thing.
And that’s where he later created that the run walk phobia.
And he’s running. The first people have a route detail store, which became a learning center, and you bring in a dia trist and cardiologists talked to the to the new runners and encourage them to take part in sports.
You get a good pair of shoes to because your shoes are so key.
You know, you don’t want to just take any parachutes because they look good. You really need to try the mind, gets them up, walk around in them, you know, that sort of thing.

Nikki:
[23:13] It’s tough because you do want him to look good.

Bill Rodgers:
[23:16] What? That’s part of this Kids just a little bit this through. But you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. Some shoes.

Nikki:
[23:21] As a super Nader. It’s a super Nader in a women’s size 11. It’s hard for me to find the right shoe that looks good.

Bill Rodgers:
[23:29] You know, And I hear you neki I That’s where I at one time I could I could run in almost anything, I think. But I really loved choose. I was raised again.
I raised for a six you company for five years, and, uh, but sometimes I ended up wearing shoes for a company.
We didn’t They weren’t too good, you know, I was being paid.
Had to wear and thats I finished Boston Marathon. I couldn’t feel my feet.
They went totally know That was not a good one, Jake.

Jake:
[23:55] Good sign. Hey, so that actually raises an interesting question in the book you mentioned.
Ah, I think it was. Your 19 was the 1st 1 in 74 when you had just basically, almost immediately before the race been handed a set. A pair of prototype early Nike shoes.
How did you come to? First of all, how did you need those shoes then? How did you come to get him in a race, cinematic?

Bill Rodgers:
[24:22] Yeah, this is an interesting craziest story. Because back in the day, all the runners you know, just as I was speaking of earlier, were all very poor.
You know, um, Frank Shorter was Tom Fleming when the York City birth implies Bobby Hodge from Clinton Institutes. It’s Randy Thomas from Pittsburgh. Mask.
All of us were poor because there was no money in the smoke and make a living. Hardly. How can we keep going, you know, So you tried to get a little support, Maybe win a 10 speed bike or a TV, something like that.
But, um, in 75 I ran in the world cross country championships.
I have made the team, then Iran and more up, up, Morocco. And it hasn’t. This is my life actually took the bronze medal in the world. Cross country is only three other American men have ever meddled in the world cross country.
It’s rare to win a medal in the world press countries than it is to win an Olympic medal in the marathon on the missile because worse women have not been at it is long since 1984.
So after that race, Jake, I knew I could run with anybody, you know? So So I talked with Jeff Galloway and it and shorter for my teammates. Morocco.
I said, I’m running Boston and three weeks. You think you could get me to choose because they’re both representing?

[25:38] Yeah. And I didn’t have a shoe deal. I was no name, no nothing, you know.
And so I got a pair of shoes from a fella named Steve Prebon A Who was a great American.
5000 meter, 10,000 meter isn’t stronger.
And those were the shoes. Put him on my feet. No blisters, lattice a feather.
You know, joining us 27 years old and tell one day it lasted cool weather. It was perfect. It was perfect.
And, um, it was my third Boston because my 1st 1 was Boston 73 the heat I got really beat up by the heat.
We knew in the nurse and Midwesterners for people from places like Wyoming, Cold Weather, Interstate, anywhere in the U. S. Or in the world, and then come into Boston every top.
It’s one of the most challenging, refuses to try to win because of our tricky doing the weather.
So It took me three times, but But then I think I’d learned the course in at the good weather and the good shoes and thank you, Steve Prefontaine.

Nikki:
[26:37] I encourage our listeners to come look at our show notes and see the photos of the shoes that they wore back in the twenties and thirties, where sitting on the couch wearing those shoes couldn’t have been too comfortable, let alone running a marathon in them.

Bill Rodgers:
[26:53] Absolutely. And you know Mickey and Jake, You know, when you take a look at the shoes and the B A has kind of a historical museum of all there, you know, paraphernalia. The shoes from had a key.
Uh, Tanaka, who wanted the Boston in 1951 for Chapter 800 Win and choose or Johnny Miles wanted back in.
I think the making 20 sectional is an old man. Her son and all that worked in the mines and shoes were terrible. Terrible.

Jake:
[27:20] If, but they had leather soles, a lot of red leather soles back in the twenties and the thirties.

Bill Rodgers:
[27:25] Yeah. Yeah, and they’re blistering their feet. And and that’s why you know, running couldn’t really boom until the seventies until we started to learn about exercise science.
And what’s his health really mean? What just fitness really mean?
And what are we needed? Companies like Nikki or a sex or Brooks or New Balance it working. And they started working more and more and reaching out to the runners and selling their shoes.
And that’s how the rent move happened that Frank Shorter s Olympic gold medal of Munich, Germany.
We all saw that on TV. American had not won Olympic pole.
We were not considered very good. We Americans, Europeans with Western world.
You know this as distance runners and you know, the flying bends, the Brits, the Italians, Spanish, you know. So you’re comes Frank. Shorter out of Yale, By the way, New Englander, If you know.
And he called on the windshield.
Heck, did he do it and be did it? And that’s just the tone for the future.

Jake:
[28:31] So how did you make the jump from mid distance to marathon in the book, you say that as you’re winding up your Wesley and career, you’re actually retiring. You considered yourself retired from running.

Bill Rodgers:
[28:44] You know, when I was out Wednesday and used the rice ball, Jake, I couldn’t race against a lot of the runners because I didn’t have the genetic fast twitch Muscle fibers were all born, either with fast twitch or slow twists.
Quite a lot. You know, if you’re born with vestments, muscle fibers, you been baseball football, probably tennis.
You know, basketball and jump really high. You know I’m smoke, which I have your buddy two knees, your ability to run long distance, you know.
And so I didn’t know that baseball even in college, because exercise science and not develop until later in seventies, when the exercise physiologist began to study athletes like bring shorter, 40 people came.
You know, we’re gonna hurt people like that some of our best athletes or athletes in other sports, you know, they started pickled look, Science, Cardiology side.
Why? This board is so good for your heart. You know, back when I first ran Boston, they were checking my heart, had a bunch of doctors they told him, Are you should run, You’ve got hurt. Or is it me up?
Real Truth is, of course, we know today that audio sports the best in the world to do for your health.

[29:55] It s so it took me a while to learn This board took me three times to three years to really learn Boston and really become a marathoner, you know? And even after that, I still got beaten up.
It’s not a gentle it’s for it’s a one sport. It’s a friendships for taking the pain.
You know, you make your friends like you guys rip where Yiannis Marathon and you’re feeling a route through it all time, you know?
But I hadn’t eaten marathons. I dropped out of. It was usually because of the heat. Humility.

Jake:
[30:25] In the time between one of the two mile and trying to break nine minutes of the two mile. And.

Nikki:
[30:31] What you did.

Bill Rodgers:
[30:32] Yes, once I finally broke it.

Jake:
[30:33] Uh huh. So between then and 73 when you first ran Boston, what were you doing with yourself in that time?

Bill Rodgers:
[30:39] Yes. You know, I immediately when I graduated from Wesleyan,
and during my years at West and you know more or it’s going full blown and the sadness was building up and building up going up.
It was, you know, and I was very against our government, its involvement in the war. So as a top tough time.
And so I and my brother Charlie and Jason were all against the world. We apply on chance subjected step status.
You know, I really follow people like Martin Luther King.
He’s got great quotes at his memorial down in Washington, D. C. About yet or this is the way I kind of grew up and lived. And we all get to try a point for that.
Thank God things were starting to change and people were starting to take a closer look what this war was really about.
What was happening there, how unfair was to American people. And the Vietnamese people know anyway, I am.

[31:41] I was given the chance to get a job in a non profit annotation, was working at a hospital in Boston, so I followed him up to Boston.
That’s why I came to Boston and I had run their high school. I run in the new wing and cross country championships of Franklin Park when I was in high school.
Really know Boston, but I have my job. I worked as an escort missing here, become hospital patients around no hair, became done for dialysis or took blood samples around the hospital.
Actually, like that job LA later. But it was pop because it’s not a lot of sick people, you know. It is tough, you know.
But it changed me. It changed me. And, um, at that time, Jason, my own, uh, high school teammate and friend. We lived near the Christian Science Church.
And so we said, Let’s go see the Boston Marathon, you know, like my team made wonder.
And so I went over there, you know, we have motorcycles. Then we’ll know that we live in the days of easy writer. You know, Jack, Nicolas internal.

[32:41] Because you go to the finish line and there’s an Bieber gallery and they’re like, seventh place and and they’re doing really well.
And I had become a smoker after Ah, because I was, you know, I’m the happiest time.
Tough stop. You know, in a word.
You know, some of my friends went to Vietnam and everything, So So So, uh so I slowly started changed.
My motorcycle was stolen and gel Jake was stolen.
And after that, I didn’t want to wait around for the subway to get the video.
And so I started running there. I’m gonna go in the Boston. Why eso Once you would you get started, can you?
You got a But it was a life changing moment. Thank God. My motorcycle stolen.
And had I had a chance to get back, and it’s going to be a a I ran. Ah, uh, the Silver Lake Dodge’s 30 climate Just one by my old policy made any Burfoot.

Jake:
[33:36] Yeah. Where was that race?

Bill Rodgers:
[33:39] That was a lot of the Boston Marathon course. It wasn’t a whole course.

Jake:
[33:41] Ah.

Bill Rodgers:
[33:43] We cut off near the bottom of the heart break hill and ran over to this shot. You chip First prize in the race.
These in the old amateur days. What set of tires? Will and perfect.

Jake:
[33:53] Uh huh.

Bill Rodgers:
[33:54] Yeah, says tires. I didn’t have a car. I would. Third place.

Jake:
[33:57] I was gonna say maybe another had a car. Got your tires.

Bill Rodgers:
[34:00] Yeah. First through third place. Said car at your own party. Chicken runners. What do we get involved in the sport?

Jake:
[34:06] Ah, that’s great.

Bill Rodgers:
[34:08] This fun. So, Jake, after I ran that raised jock Simple of the Boston Athletic Association who became infamous or somewhat notorious.
We’re trying to paint Kathy Switzer. It’s number back when she, uh I don’t know, inadvertently or something.
Applied for bus marathon when the Olympic organization controlled the busted breath and all races around the world.
Women are allowed to run the trace, and if you allow them to run, you’re gonna get vetoed as a race to be shut out.
So that’s what happens to Jack recruited me. He was kind of a coach and advisor.
He was a former Boston marathoner. He was really a good guy, but he didn’t know any better any kind of you know he is following the rules of the international under committee.
And if you know, it’s like the struggles we all went through, you know, with the international bottoms there change the sport for the better.
I think. Roberto give First woman ever run Boston and Kathy Switzer and Nina Cruz sick and both playing here to the sports era made Burma from Cambridge.
They really had a kind of tough in a way because, yeah, they had a fight social norms of the time.

Jake:
[35:20] You know that we look back on the mall is as pioneers now, but they all had to break the rules in some different ways. Bobby give jumped in without a bib.
Kathy Switzer just registered under initial instead of her name.
Do we look back on the now is? Yeah, exactly. You can see parallels in things that are considered controversial today that in 10 or 20 or 50 years, our kids look back on us and say, How did you possibly hold that belief?

Bill Rodgers:
[35:47] You know, it’s the power should be. You’re always dealing with the powers that be, and and I think it was true and international sports as well.
Personality is women or half of most road races and marathons around the world.
They comprise a huge role, you know, running like don’t go.
David Sampson, who took the Olympic gold in 1984. The first woman Olympic marathon, Um, but they had to fight for it, had to fight for it.
And and Kathy Switzer, one of the cool things she did what she put on,
a serious of races around the world, and there had to be 27 championships around the world for an event to be considered for introduction agency on the Games.

Nikki Intro-Outro:
[36:30] For a bit of background. Author Charlie Lovett in Olympic Marathon, details Kathrine Switzer’s efforts to bring the women’s marathon to the Olympic level.
In the late 19 seventies, Kathrine Switzer retired from competitive running and lead the way to the inclusion of a women’s marathon in the Olympics.
In 1977 Switzer, then director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, met an executive for the Avon cosmetics company who told her the company was interested in sponsoring a running event for women.
Switzer wrote a 75 page proposal describing how Avon might sponsor a series of events, and the company liked her idea so much that they hired her to plan the races.
The first Avon International Marathon was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in March of 1978 drawing women from nine countries.
The 1979 Avon Marathon, held in West Germany, attracted over 250 world class entrance from 25 countries. The theory that women’s marathoning was not popular enough to become an Olympic sport was dramatically disproved.
Still, the drive for inclusion in the Olympics was far from over.
The 30 of on International marathon was held in London on the final day of the Moscow Olympics, women from 27 countries competed, and for the first time in history, five women finished below the to 40 barrier.

[37:56] Obviously, we think it’s time the women’s marathon was made part of the Olympics, said Switzer.
We’re trying to prove to people that women are just a suited or even more suitable for marathoning as men.

[38:09] Switzer travel to Los Angeles in February of 1981 when the executive board of the IOC was scheduled to meet.
She knew the vote on the race would be close. The board was made up of nine countries, eight of which were represented at the meeting.
The Soviet Union openly opposed the creation of the race, and Switzer feared that Panama and Romania would side with their political ally.
Spain, Japan, India and New Zealand favored the race.
Belgium appeared to be undecided. Five votes were needed for the resolution to pass.
On the morning of February 23rd Switzer went to the hotel where the meeting was being held.
Unsure what she could do to further her cause. She approached the delegate from Belgium in the hall and began to tell them all about the success of women’s marathoning, the number of women competing, the quality of their races and they’re good health.
The delegate took careful notes and then disappeared into the meeting.
Unable to stand still while she waited for the result, Switzer went out for a six mile run.
At 6 30 That evening, the executive board of the IOC announced that a women’s marathon had been given its approval and would likely be included in the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
The committee had even decided to ignore a rule stating that all new events had to be approved four years in advance of their inclusion in the Games.
The Soviet Union was the only country to vote against the race.

Bill Rodgers:
[39:36] So that’s have not evolved. You know, she was an Avon.
This company, Yvonne, which we all know that got behind helter with doing it’s and so that took some years.
And finally that did occur, you know? And then Joan Benoit Samuelson was in the right place. The right eye.
You don’t believe, uh, Putin student athlete wins Boston and 79 but by 84 she’s ready to crank out, you know, and crank out. She did?

Jake:
[40:03] She won the inaugural Women’s Olympic marathon in 84 the L A Games.

Bill Rodgers:
[40:08] Yes. Yes.

Nikki:
[40:08] In L. A. Yeah.

Jake:
[40:10] Yeah, if anybody has seen well, if anybody hasn’t seen video of her coming into the stadium, no other runner within sight, it’s very dramatic. Everybody should go look that up on YouTube.

Bill Rodgers:
[40:21] Is a Jake? Yes. Absolutely. I was actually working for a beastie.

Nikki:
[40:22] We’ll put that in the show Notes to.

Bill Rodgers:
[40:27] So I was about 60 yards in front of Joan and the ABC truck, and but I couldn’t talk to her, but I made her mood. You get a dramatic, uh, take him by surprise move at the three mile marker, the race.
And I thought you was gonna win anywhere that you would win credit whites, the greater region champion in one New York nine science and was the best in the world.
Um, thinking by surprise. And Ingrid Kristiansen and Rosa Mota, these other champions. But it was a hot day, and I think it was a step stone. Ah, real mark. You know, and then women didn’t.
In this world when all over the world, you know.

Nikki:
[41:08] Well, kind of related to that. So if you could go back in time and spectate any of those historic races in Boston, what race would you like to go back and see?

Bill Rodgers:
[41:20] Oh, my God. This truck, this is toe. You know, I met Johnny Kelly. Both Donegal is a miracle. OK, the fourth. My name.

Nikki:
[41:24] You can have more than one.

Jake:
[41:26] Uh

Bill Rodgers:
[41:31] Boston Marathon champion from Canada.
Robert Cherien from Kenya. Moses generally from Kenya. I did a lot of the reverse around the world have been.
You know, when a one Boston changed my life, I got invited to other race around the world.
And But if I could meet clears tomorrow is the king of the Boston Marathon.
I’m not sure who. The creaminess, you know, maybe Joan. Or maybe Catherine. Dear Eva has a four time winner of Boston. You know, uh, is very toss up in a way, but I think I, like, see Tamar.
Ah, and have met him. I’ve met some family matters of hits, you know, but But I probably go back to the early days when he was a racer, you know.

Jake:
[42:14] If I had to answer the same question, I also go, Damar.
But I think I want Oh, I think I want to see that last win when he’s such a veteran, so many miles under his belt and still powering through to a win in 1930 31 30.
I think you know after he’d been doing it since he’d been running that race since the teens.

Bill Rodgers:
[42:36] You know what’s cool about Mark duty with always teacher coach, like a scout leader has been of the kind of a little bit of a religious guy worked up in key normal school.
You know, King College, there is a Damar half marathon. I am hoping to run it this year if we can run, you know about, at least ever, you know. But yeah, he was iconic. Figure. He took a bronze medal in the Olympic Marathon.
I don’t think his seven wins will ever be challenged in Boston, but you know, just just anybody. Anybody here. And I think Boston being the oldest consecutively run marathon in the world.
It’s a global sport, you know, it’s it’s not. It’s not just a domestic sport is global. It’s like soccer. So So you’ve got competition.
And so this is really tough that he has that record, you know, about you seem like I guess I wish I wish I would like to have met the doctors who told him that he shouldn’t really young art murmur.
I heard I heard that the doctor leader passed away it so well, you know, maybe I’ll go back to this running.

Jake:
[43:40] Uh huh.

Nikki:
[43:41] I think I’d like to see the race between Johnny Kelly and Tarzan Brown on Heartbreak Hill.

Bill Rodgers:
[43:49] We’ll be dramatic. That would be dramatically.

Nikki:
[43:50] Yeah. Yeah. And I just like the, um you know, the push you get when somebody thinks they got you and how that can motivate you to pull ahead.

Bill Rodgers:
[44:00] And, you know, Johnny Kelly was also astounding figure.
He has the all time record for 61 for finishes at Boston.

Nikki Intro-Outro:
[44:10] A note from the editing room on young John Kelly, Tarzan Brown and Heartbreak Hill.
Ellison Brown, widely known as Tarzan Brown, was a member of the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island and also known as Dear Foot among his people.
He was a two time winner of the Boston Marathon in 1936 and 1939.
He also participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
He was scheduled to participate in the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo, but those were canceled due to the outbreak of World War two young Johnny Kelly or Johnny Kelly. The younger was a fixture of the Boston Marathon for six decades.
He won the 1935 and 1945 runnings and finished in second place, a record seven times between 1934 and 1950.
He finished in the top 5 15 times, consistently running in the two thirties.
He ran his last full marathon in Boston in 1992 at the age of 84 his 61st start and 58th finish.

[45:15] Heartbreak Hill is one of the most feared stretches in any marathon in reality, at a 3.3% elevation, great at its deepest point and just 600 meters in length.
It doesn’t sound so bad, however.
It comes at the 20 mile mark of the race, right after two other challenging hills and after runners trash their quads, running the 1st 14 miles on a downhill trend.
The name comes not from generations of runners who have suffered up the slope, but from one particular heartbreak.
During the 1936 race Tarzan Brown raced a blistering pace early on.
The press actually didn’t follow him, assuming that he would crash and burn just past Mile 20 on the fourth of the New and Hills, Johnny Kelly caught up to Tarzan Brown,
as Kelly overtook Brown, an amazing feat given the already record breaking pace that Brown had set.
Kelly padded Brown on the back.
What followed was a struggle between the two men. Brown took the lead on the downhills, and Kelly took the lead on the up hills until, finally Brown took the lead again toe win the race as Kelly fell to 1/5 place finish.
The struggle inspired writer Jerry Mason to name the last new in hill Heartbreak Hill because Brown broke Kelly’s heart there,
in 1993 Globe reporter Michael Vega, covering the unveiling of Johnny Kelly statue, reported the following.

[46:45] As the defending champ.
Kelly admitted that he was a little cocky when he came up on a struggling Tarzan Brown as they approached the treacherous stretch of hills and new and Kelly gave Brown a tap on the back, which was all the fuel Brown would need to rekindle Hiss fire to win the race.
The late Globe sports editor Jerry Mason, who witnessed the incident from the press vehicle, saw it as the turning point of the race and dubbed it Heartbreak Hill.
He named it after me, Kelly said. I didn’t mean to refresher anything when I tapped Tarzan Brown and it was just a tap.
But Mason said, I should never have done that because it wasn’t right For 15 years, he kept reminding me about it until I told him enough’s enough.

Bill Rodgers:
[47:28] Now he was Julie in baseball terms to be blue guarantee. Or maybe maybe Lou Gehrig was to Johnny Kelly.

Nikki:
[47:35] Is it?

Bill Rodgers:
[47:36] Yeah, I’m always gonna leave for running. But the hurting Brown is a guy who struggled a lot, unfortunately, in his life was very poor.
There’s no money in the sport. And he didn’t get treated right, you know, a lot of times. So that was something that I always, you know, all of its wonder to new. The history of sport really wanted to fight against because of the way athletes like mistreated.
No, but yes, I would’ve been a great deal to see because they’re lost. Really? Even I think, you know.

Jake:
[48:06] Yeah. And you know, it was a good race because we’re still calling Heartbreak Hill. Heartbreak Hill. 80 odd years later.

Bill Rodgers:
[48:15] And how many other runners have hold it there? In fact, they every place to drop out of Boston.

Jake:
[48:21] Uh

Bill Rodgers:
[48:24] I dropped out there three times steak, so I highly recommended as a drop out of place.

Jake:
[48:26] Uh. Well, I only ran Boston once, but I really considered that as a dropout. Spot is that was coming up. It was rough.

Bill Rodgers:
[48:36] What year did you want, Loser.

Nikki:
[48:37] You considered? Ah, the entry on to Boylston Street as a dropout point, if I remember correctly.

Jake:
[48:43] Uh, yeah. The last last three or four miles were were bad. I ran in 2016. I got ah, charity bib in 2016.

Bill Rodgers:
[48:53] Absolutely. And it’s Oh, my gosh.

Nikki:
[48:53] With with three weeks notice Bill three weeks notice.

Bill Rodgers:
[48:57] You know, you’re you’re a real stalwart that you finish your you know, a lot of the new runners.
I wasn’t that dedicated efforts. Boston was was too hot, and I didn’t.
I got dehydrated, and I I kind of I wasn’t that determined finish.
I mean, harping on my walk home. I looked in Jamaica Plain, but, um, one of the good things that came out of in Cox involvement we needed the support Well, cloning the old race director for many years.
It’s such a great guy with no financial sport.
He knew he needed. He tried to get it, couldn’t succeed with it.
Finally, America Flynn of Boston worked with many of the top runners like Andy Broke, Foot Very Fire and ah, bunch of others, including my brother Charlie Banner around 20 center.

[49:48] And talked to some of the political leadership from Boston.
What you got to do because the top runners are going to go with the millions.
And for two years, with the exception of the great runner from Britain, Jeff Smith, it was a weak field at Boston as the last of his own is about the best coming.
Yeah, some of the best Have car. Sam Brown. Duke it off with Johnny Kelly. Have Dirac Okay, coming out.
Whoever is there, you know, it started to go to the races. Were the money because money was being allowed around the world.
So finally, yes, the be a Every Lenten said, Yeah, we gotta change, can, can’t stepped up to the plate.
They have been a great sponsor or something like 34 years and that that led to the Boston Marathon being able in the b a okay to continue their leadership.
And it’s four is wonderful. Any good?

Jake:
[50:45] And it helped open it up to amateurs like me because then they could have the course support with water stations and volunteers and traffic control. You know, all the all the stuff you need to have that bigger field.

Bill Rodgers:
[50:49] Yes,
yes, absolutely,
yes. Absolutely. It changed the sport. I mean, every year, about $30 million.40 million dollars or raised a possible, a lot of different routes.
I worked with one of those groups. I work with impact melanoma because my grandfather died from melanoma.
And so all the runners air tight in one way or another.
Their group of Boston champions like Ryan Hall that complicity Deena Kaster or Olympians like those runners shelling Flanagan eso So we all work training from old.

[51:30] Interest in a lot of different aspects of the race.
A fundraising time. How you can enter the Boston Marathon, how you can become better. Why you should try your cell.
I mean, you don’t have to run the Boston Marathon to be fifth. I think if you can run build up to about three mouths, you’re doing pretty good.
You know what? You bill your party. Oh, probably reduced your chances of having a heart attack pushing for us guys, you know.
But I think I think that that kind of side of our sport still not known that well,
and I’m hoping no common day that they be particularly in one hand over 19 start, Actually, Now we know that a lot of people who are all in our people, who are very sick have diabetes, diabetes, oven, family.
So I know about that. I used to work with American Diabetes Association, but some of these people are falling because it didn’t have a way to get, you know, in high school in America, you get chosen for a team.
Well, I think we should have a choice. More choices.
But I like the the choice where you can take part in another sport, you know, that’s why I’m glad to see soccer and sports like that road to.

Jake:
[52:39] Well, speaking of Cove in 19 and exercise, I’m curious, too, to hear your perspective.
I know back in your Jamaica plain days, you used to train by logging, Ah, whole lot of laps around Jamaica Pond,
and there’s been a lot of controversy about whether they should make the path around to make upon one way so people aren’t breathing on each other as they pass.

Bill Rodgers:
[53:02] Well, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s interesting.

Nikki:
[53:04] I understand there’s a lot of neighborhood drama over this question.

Bill Rodgers:
[53:09] Wow. You know, I think I think they do. Protector health. This is for everybody.
This isn’t just for this person in this sport, you know, superstar athlete, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean?
People in the news all the time, just for everybody. This for the public, for everybody.
So I think whatever makes sense. So when I go for a run of form the mass Romanek, if,
I’m in an area where I can get out, there are people in the Chen style running, but the other side of the road, you know, And, uh so So I had no problems, but yeah, I remember running around the pond.
There was never the ass product. Is that, of course, a virus that I would, You know, I explore the different trails you gotta look for where it’s not too crowded.
You know, it’s tough. Boston yourself some areas. When I was down there recently visiting my girlfriends are son and wife there, and I could see areas away from the big crops.
Do you do searching a little bit, but I know where you can go.
It is beautiful around Yeah, it’s just a beautiful place.
And so so Parks and I used to run a Franklin park. You know, I go up to the park.
The French Park zoo is their loved zoo. You know, go up around there.
You run and golf courses just down your street. Now I run in my neighborhood. I go wherever the part time hers. Yeah.

Jake:
[54:29] It’s got to be the key.

Nikki:
[54:30] I like to run in the wilderness section of Franklin Park.

Bill Rodgers:
[54:34] Yes, yes. You know, to run your we’re part of unique twist about their we run in.
The change in the summer is a little. It’s easier you get out of the sun, you know, run in the early morning when it’s when it’s cooler.
I always went over the bottle of Avery, alluded with water with me.
I run like 1/2 a mouth and a stop and I take a drink.
Go on another quarter mile, half mile, take a drink. That way you’re building a heart. You know you’re getting stronger, you can do it. We can all do this.
You know, those people get all this person to run of everything that’s 100 years old.
Hard to believe that we have that. We all have the strength. I don’t think that makes sense in a certain way, but I think the point I’m trying to make us way have.
But we all were in endurance animal. We’re not really very quick.
Even those guys who move quick and soccer. If it all are the same bull, most of the animal kingdom, they cannot spend us. But we do another big heart.
But we got after health when we see that, um, these days, you know.

Jake:
[55:39] So you’ve talked a little bit about your current running regimen, and you’re mixing in a little bit more walking a little more Galloway style. But what does your what does your calendar for a year look like these days? What are the high points of your racing season now?

Bill Rodgers:
[55:52] A guy. I still go to races we may prime. In my youth.
It was 30 years old or whatever. 45. 35.
I kept racing. I quit one year. So you’re half during the Vietnam War of Jonathan. It’s done.
You know, it was very tricky, but But I got I couldn’t support is very lucky to be able to get So So I go to about 15 Right now, I’ve got about 35 races a year.
Mainly, I go into the Expo’s I meet new runners.
I try to talk to them about avoiding engines. That’s everything. You have light injuries.
You’re gonna keep building your heart. You’re gonna avoid keep your health and everything.
Um, but I’m dirt grass when you can. I did it putting us good.
Go to a specialty running store. You know, whether it’s marathon sports and different neighborhoods or PR running in Southwark Borough where I go or wherever, get some real expertise.
Um, those are key things. I run about 30 miles a week. Sometimes 40 is my high 72 years old.
Um, I think the things I tried I still have a competitive runner to a degree I go to these races like fighter in the age group, they just 17 74.
And the thing about is a living fourth. Whether it’s cycling or swimming or running, you can keep going.
Gonna Kelly later. That was largely when you can’t keep running a B actor.

[57:15] People are out there trying the wind with quite a few, and some of them it’s just phenomenal. We probably have a 1,000,000 Americans over the age of seven who were running, and some of their are phenomenon.

[57:27] I can’t get near them and you can’t bring shorter because we way spent 40 50 years running.
There. We have I don’t have a cellular level where we have pretty good health, but we comment.
I don’t know how to describe it made. Maybe it’s that our bodies are a bit tired, you know, these were nickel cards and these 70 year olders who are new to it.
Maybe they started 60 that was tired or something, and they start working out and they’re like cars that were in the garage and come up.
These people are really phenomenal.
There’s no there’s only one runner who has bucked this trend, and that’s Jonah and Sam was just the only one.
I think she explains it. Being just a cross country skier in Maine.
The winter did you got sprung arms and body.
She can really push, you know, And she got to certain lane set, and I think she just has this kind of attitude that I’m going to keep going for a while. You you know, But it is a sport for all life of the heads.
And, uh So, no, I I wrote in my girlfriend, Karen, you know, and, um, some of my buddies. But we can’t run together. It’s on my buddies now. Like I said, it’s teams bore.
So for five or six of us, we run. We goto a little, uh, par, and we find different neighbor, you can run anywhere it. The best thing is, if you get on the dirt, run through the woods, you know.

Jake:
[58:53] I love that feeling. I like toe were in Hyde Park.
We’re pretty close to the Blue Hills and I like to take my dog. He’s a little older now. He doesn’t go as far with me, but, ah, hot summer day. If you go first thing in the morning in the woods, you know that in the shade. So that that that cooler, moist air, if you like, you could just go on go.
You know, it’s great with. I like to keep it easy.

Bill Rodgers:
[59:11] Yes. You’re smart runner Jay. Smart runner. I was always I was always a dumb runner. I would go out in the morning and coming up empty. What’s read?
Listen, smart. You know, I’m trying to go out earlier, and but but I think it helps a lot. Yeah, You run. Do you bring your dog with you.

Nikki:
[59:31] I like to run at 9 p.m. That’s my sweet spot. Yeah.

Bill Rodgers:
[59:33] When the sun style? Absolutely. Because the stun the son Nicky is our enemy. For Justin Charming. It’s the hardest thing to do.

Nikki:
[59:39] Yes. Yes, it is.
And people say if you run first thing in the morning like you’re more likely to do it, you know, you’re not gonna get distracted, But I find I need the whole day to talk myself into it.

Bill Rodgers:
[59:44] Dehydration?

Nikki:
[59:54] Like I got to be like, Nikki. You’re gonna do it today. No, really. Get out there. I need a solid 10 hours to psych myself up.

Bill Rodgers:
[59:55] No.
Yeah, that’s good. I mean, you.

Jake:
[1:00:00] Uh huh.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:00:02] Yeah, but you know everyone’s difference. Most people must live like rooting a job, going to work and everything. 40 hour got the top.
They run in the morning because that sets your day up. Because if you go on, really say you’re working.
I know supermarket. You’re working people. A. You’re exhausted by the end of the day.
But if you have, if you have a hard labour time, something physically labor some you working construction or something?
You know what I mean? You know it’s different, but so most people are out there in the mornings, especially in the summer. It’s in the winter. It’s probably not a good idea. It’s so cold and icy here. Nothing that.
But I think we all have to find what works for us, and that’s where we all have.

Nikki:
[1:00:48] I’m going back to the marathon. I believe that when you were winning in the seventies, the finish line was not the finish line that we all know and love today.
Can you explain like where you went when you came into bright in how the course ended?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:01:04] Yeah, the start line was in the same either.
I don’t go back to making 24 when the b a A and exchange it. It would likely international rules.

Jake:
[1:01:13] Is used to start in Ashland, right? When it was 24 a half.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:01:17] Yeah, I started in Ashland, Mass. Now it’s unhappy. Tension is, and at a mountain half something.
But it was a little different. Even when I started it in 1973 it was a rough.

Jake:
[1:01:26] I didn’t realize that. Where was the starting line back then?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:01:29] Today you start going down the big hill. You know, we were around the corner about 100 yards behind the access area now, so there was a mad dash for about 100 a few 100 yards.

Jake:
[1:01:32] Yeah.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:01:43] People work sprinting him to this turn.
It was ridiculous. It’s a marathon, you know.

Jake:
[1:01:48] Yeah. That doesn’t sound like a good, comfortable start to May.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:01:50] It’s not a good strategy is not a good strategy. So it was a good move, you know, years later when, uh, Hancock became involved, too, And Dave Macko, overuse, probably the best race director organizer in the country,
was hired by hand pockets, really organized and so well, it’s team a d M SC sports.
But yes, it was different when I finished in in in the seventies and everything into the eighties.
In 86 they changed hands, came on board. Prudential Center was where we finished, and that’s where all the shops are now.
We used to go finished down in front of this big stature that what’s there and so, uh ah.
But in 86 when Hancock came on board and contributed quite a large amount of money to this, they’re gonna have it.
And further down the road, by their building, the building and everything. That’s what it was.
It’s not so different. I like the old finished a bit better because we take a right on Herford.
Anyone straight up Erfurt. It took a sharp left and ran downhill about two or 300 yards.
A. When you finish, you make the left hand turn onto Boylston.
They got about half a mile is a tough finished go.
You know that you did Alaska Well, you know, it’s a long ways.

Jake:
[1:03:09] I did, I did. I was in a lot of pain for that last half mile.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:03:14] And it can kind of it’s so emotional. When you run a marathon and you knock it off feather in your cap.
I’m going to say it is a feather in your cab. You know what I’m talking about?
Everyone has done any marathon knows that, But in this particular Boston, Boston is the marathon that I think runners want to do more than India.
There is heavy competition from New York City Marathon, which you will be doing its 50th this November.
Yes, over. It is cleared out. Okay. You know, And of course, Boston.
Some version of Boston I hope, will be run in September.
But it’s a challenge on a worldwide basis. You know, London Marathon is a big marathon, very successful.
They raise something like $100 million at London in my all the marathons modelled themselves after Boston.
So there’s a lot of weight on the must create a They have good leadership time. Grill the leader. Now, you remember great Boston Jackal. Um, he was about some marathoner himself back.
He became a lawyer and all that Gloria Ratty Jack Fleming. They’ve agreed a great team there now before it was just work only and Doc sent, you know.

Jake:
[1:04:32] Right. It’s a little bit bigger operation now.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:04:35] The bigger, much well more financed and more smoothie operated event.

Nikki:
[1:04:42] So, Bill, you had four wins in New York. Also. How How did those two courses compare? You know, from, ah, from a racing strategy or the experience?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:04:52] You know, to me, they were very similar, you know, And I’m from Harford in between Boston and New York, so I felt a little bit of a connection, but I was really Alice like any other marathoner in those days.
The war, many marathons 73 74.
New York started in 1970 and, uh so I ran my first New York and 74 was four laps of Central Park.
September was 90 degrees.
It was brutal. But I had a friend in Compliment from New Jersey who it will be twice in those day. It’s that so I thought, Well, go do it.
Because first prize is a trip to Olympia, Greece, and I’m a huge fan of the Olympic Games, said I wanted to know if I could win that.
You know, Olympic Airways, you know, I want to believe that helped me for 20 miles over 1/2 mile ahead.
But the heat got me and I folded and a felony in our hall from the, uh, Staten Island area and, ah, 1,000,000,000. My came up.
It said Bill, because we run as we help each other when we’re down, that’s a different way the sport is.
We’re competing with this camaraderie. It’s a bill help you coming some water, and I kind of hobbled to the finish, you know?
But then, in 1976 um, the BoE, the organizer of the originator of along with a couple other people that your,
love I found it the, uh, the modern era nursing. Unearth the fiber or raise.

Jake:
[1:06:21] Fibrosis Yah.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:06:22] Yes. So so friendly books trained your helmet. Massachusetts were Frank Shorter, our country’s Olympic gold medalist.
Him inside the most recent there’s only two, and and I Olympic marathon. I have terrible race in business, both to run this New York City Marathon.
I said sure, Yeah, run it, you know, because that’s what it was like in those case.
We run everywhere, you know, got running shoes will travel, you know, so great was making jokes.

Jake:
[1:06:47] Uh

Bill Rodgers:
[1:06:50] I wonder if they’re gonna build will pull this off in New York, you know, it’s so new running over the various under Narrows Bridge in order to Elgin runners in the race, which we thought it’s a huge race, you know.
But for me, it was my my Olympic race because I had a foot injury and and got beaten up in the Olympic marathon. It makes what I was capable of.
So So the day in New York and 76 is a beautiful crystal clear looking middle today.
No, he, you know. And so, Troy, I took the lead coming into the Cheney over the Queensboro Bridge and and I I really to the finish, you know, that sent me up once I wanted, I knew have shop winning again,
because you did Boston. You know, you could do Boston again.
You get a power. You do that sport when you run and Nikki, your runner, when you go out and you do your run, you know you could be with you,
all appear. It’s a psychological kind of sport, but that’s why Tom Brady comes out on radio.
He knows what he can do with what he does. I’m serious.
It’s same for all of us. And once you’re not aw, and hands, you know, once you do, OK, then you start thinking, Well, maybe I can you a change.
Then you start thinking, Well, maybe I’ll do 1/2 marathon. It’s a kind of a slippery slope. You have to be turned.

Jake:
[1:08:08] That is exactly what happened to me. We did a couch to five k program. Uh, excited. I had stopped running and started smoking for a decade. Two decades after high school.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:08:19] I love. I love. Are you a smoker? Hope you’re next. Well, I love the explorers. Good.

Jake:
[1:08:22] Oh, yeah. Yeah, I haven’t. It’s been a little over nine years. That’s what.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:08:28] Good for you.

Nikki:
[1:08:29] But you replaced smoking with running as your addictive behavior.

Jake:
[1:08:33] Exactly?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:08:33] Absolutely. I was always I always had that behavior, you know, it’s a you know, it’s not begin. But I had relatives diet from smoking.
Now, people I knew smoking kills still something like 200,000 Americans a year.
Uh, you know his bad news, you know? So I want to convert all every time I go to a race.
I asked people at a clinic that’s 200 runners. There may be 50 whenever I see a ex smokers in the audience.
And I love you, you people are because how do you get out?
Is I know someone to do Couldn’t quit.
It was no in their boats and so very, very tough.
But, um But I think the thing is, once you’ve done an event, you know of New York is exciting.
It’s like Boston that the blood brothers or sister to, you know, just they’re the same and she conquer was to Chicago. Has a great marathon people in Chicago couple times, but it’s a flat radius. I was bitter on a course with hills everyone’s a little different.
Some people are good on hills, and some people are better on the flat. It sounds like a contradiction. New York It’s actually slower than Boston.
It’s a little bit tougher because you’ve got the bridges road surfaces look a little more challenging. The Boston. I think we do a better job with the roads.
Mayor wants your job.

Jake:
[1:09:54] And the mayors of all the talents heading in this relative, relatively little of the Boston Marathon is in Boston.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:09:57] Yeah, Yeah.

[1:10:01] You’re absolutely right. But, you know, friend Bo used to come to the Boston Marathon before there was in New York City Marathon.
You know, that’s where he cut his teeth through. And George Hearst, one of the founders of the New York City Marathon, also did that.
So everyone did the runners and out of New York and London Marathon in the Berlin in Tokyo. Drink up.
The Japanese were always very much in the marathon, you know, going back 100 years just like Americans so works for Has our sport has the history that can match baseball or football or basketball or any other sport.
Because we’re a look export or even prior to the Olympics. You know the situation.
You know, the first cross country races came from England, and I think like it in 47 hours.
Those were old sport, and we were meant to move. You know, if you ever armed born to run, you know how humans evolved this sort of thing, and and, uh, to run down our prey and build our cardio.
You know, we haven’t agreed her. We can never bigger heart for a body size than a lion.
He’s being that sprint. We just need a little head start in there.

Jake:
[1:11:14] With? Yeah, the proto humans. Any any deer in the forest could outrun. It’s on the short, but we could keep him going until they got tired and just keep running them down, running them down, right?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:11:25] That’s right. That was the Galloway walk. Run.

Nikki:
[1:11:29] Yeah.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:11:32] Then there, Harvard researchers that Look at this, You know, human evolution, how we evolved, you know, planes and everything, Erin Getty or wherever you know, human kind of all of that Africa.
Uh, okay. You know, it’s it’s no strange thing that these were some of the best athletes in the world.
And Mrs Trump today, you know?

Jake:
[1:11:55] Have the the tradition of running and in the highlands in the conditions.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:12:01] Yes.

Jake:
[1:12:02] Turn out some really excellent runners.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:12:05] Yes, yes. If you are 7500 feet and I 10 Kenya, you know, our narrow be 5000 feet of Europe, the all suit.
Then you come see level. You got 5% more, Occident.
Wow, This is great. This is solely. See, I can beat this runner to sea level. So, Ryuji and you see it all the time. All the time.

Jake:
[1:12:19] Uh huh.
I’ll tell you,
the reverse is equally true. You know, I live about 15 feet above sea level right here in Boston.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:12:32] Yeah. Absolutely.

Jake:
[1:12:33] And when we go out west to visit people or to go on vacation like we’re in Yosemite a couple of years ago up in the mountains, man, it takes it right out of me. It’s not a chance. I feel like the biggest couch potato. Pretty decent shape.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:12:38] Yes.
Yeah.

[1:12:48] 5% Miss oxygen and in charge of the edge that use athletes from else. Duty out. And they’re not only from Kenya or Ethiopia are Africa.
There are Americans from altitude, and some of our top breath owners and distance runners, and historically have been from multi.
Some have not been, you know, like Frank Shorter was born at sea level in Munich, Germany.
You know Alberto Salazar was born in Cuba, you know, Does he? Lyndon, who’s born at sea level? I think California.
So it depends. But some very Cup winners have been born in El Student Colorado, or you got, you know, so you can see the effect.
So we’re telling him that the physical part. But there’s a little part, you know, in timber.
Some of the best athletes really kind of just made up their mind.
J. Kennedy from in 1918 when he finally won Boston.
You read this block? You know, about how you finally made it, explained government windows finally, how it changed his life, you know?

Nikki:
[1:13:46] Bill. How do you celebrate Patriots Day today now that you’re no longer running Boston?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:13:53] You know, I go into Boston and work with Hancock on one of the ambassadors, Hancock. And and so I work with, uh, sometimes we would go to the Expo.
Usually, we would do it. Ends like we make me with you. Cannot employees.
They have something like several 100 employees who will run the Boston Marathon, including Mary Keychain, who runs the Boston Marathon for Hancock. Do you work for him?
He’s a blossom marathoner itself at 23 years or something.
And great. Meyer, 1983 Boston Marathon champion work through their employees. It takes him out of training Runs off course.
Uh, so So we’ll do Clinics, you know, will meet with some of the Hancock people. And financial services will go to some events with them. And Deena Kaster.
Is he Lyndon? All these athletes commit menthol med.
You know, we just have fun, because well, we know we were lucky.
We were lucky. Really? To win this race, you know? And what you want, you win it and you have a chance to do other stuff. You know, we’re all lucky.
So and we get fun, then we get to go to some great dinners. Food is good.

Jake:
[1:15:03] Yeah. Yeah, That sounds like a good group toe to spend some time with two.

Nikki:
[1:15:07] When you don’t have to worry about what it’s gonna do to your stomach the next day, it’s really good.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:15:08] Yeah,
as a living. But But, you know, I will tell you one other thing.

Jake:
[1:15:12] Right, right.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:15:15] Just one last thing, Nicky. Because I loved hearing the runners on.
I love going to the finish, any marathon, but I guess in particular Boston first marathon and where I failed most three times, you know.
But I left. See the happiness Empire’s.
You cannot buy happiness. It has to come Commute, you know, are something. And you see these runners come in and the people is, it’s everybody.

[1:15:46] This is the most. I don’t know if the word includes that has been overused.
Truly, truly is forward for everybody but top and everybody.
And to see people come in, all smiling.
They’re happy they’re running with each other.
It’s just incredible. I really girlfriend one year, you know, And it is. Just mind boxing. When you can do that. She’s run with water.
Marine, Your son John is run. I mean, it’s a family sport.
It’s got everything. So when you’re Hancock and be a told me Bill we don’t issue anymore, it’s actually 2000 now. 17.
Go home. So I went home and my girlfriend I didn’t run.

[1:16:26] And then after we came back from the run and started getting phone calls, you know, and tell it it was a bombing in Boston.
What are you about? Probably a car Radiator exploded, something weird.
And on TVs, audio went marks on the ground Said yes, bottling it some of this terrorism. I knew it was right away.
A new order was right away, you know? And, um, you know, we were target sort of.
Even though those two guys never intended Teoh, you would at the Boston Marathon the intended to hit another place to big crowds by, you know, terrorism. When you see it, you also.
So I’ve been in others once involved in a semi military thing. A pretty on foreign country once where I was on the ground in the military were going by with machine guns and stuff.
So it’s a little her acting, but I knew what it happened that there So my friends had run.
And my daughter one waters is a finish line.
You know, my brother was there, so the fear hits you, you know? And that’s what they wanted. One of your The runners are pretty tough.
The boss is wrong. It’s for real.
I think Boston proved that we all proved that America moved.

Jake:
[1:17:41] The incredible demand. The fact that had to increase the size of the field for the Boston Marathon in 2014 proves it that people were clamoring to come back as soon as they could.
They had open make a bigger race than ever before the following year.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:17:56] And there’s the sadness. You know, young Martin. Richard, this is the great sadness in the other people, you know, innocent, you know, And, um but I think that the b a in the city of Boston, virtuous ponders handle it.
So well, one of my friends, you know, one day I got a call.
Um, the, you know, one of my friends.
So he had one having been in the Boston Marathon and Keith more Rafferty Jackson. Every year he would run. It was a fundraiser, you know, and have Boston It only aim is metal and group called medals for mental, you know?
So it’s for kids in the hospital and eso anyway and smell program. So he gave his middle. I wonder, was one of the surgeons that is an Iraqi war veteran guy. And he was a surgeon there.
Bath, angina. And I went in and I gave a medal.
We gave the medal to this young woman who, yet working on her leg, she had been beaten up by travel.
You know, there old man moves there. It’s ah, thought provoking.
Spay the least. You know, you meet people who really hit eso most of us have never been hit. You know, we were never situated.
Awesome. Do you get hit? But I saw the memorial, you know, in the days afterwards, but or think of I don’t runners like I said, it’s a team sport in sport.

Jake:
[1:19:20] Yeah, one thing I was happy to see. A few years later, I was at the, uh,
city of Boston archives in West Roxbury and the the city Archives actually catalogs and stored a lot of what was left for that more them impromptu memorial in Copley Square.
They have shoes and cards and posters and marathon medals and all the obviously not every single item that people left, but a selection. Just so.
100 years from now, somebody can open up those boxes and get a sense of what Boston felt at that time.
What I thought was really good thinking, Teoh.
I had the foresight to preserve that.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:20:00] And I remember going I was down. There were two later I went after the memorial and the messages were from around the world, and at the time I was getting phone calls. It was really weird.
Target tripping on my cell phone has been phone calls like from the BBC and everything. What is your time in?
You know, the London Marathon is coming up in a week marriage. We were gonna check this marathon down. It’s No, no, you know. So runners London saluted the runners of Boston.
It’s a worldwide sport. Like I said, we all stick together. But some of the marathon was the races I went to in the immediate days and months afterwards. You know, you haven’t checked your baggage and everything and knapsack for fear of terrorism.
We’ve had very little in us because we really watching tough, you know, And, uh, but it was sadness, you know? It was the satellites.

Jake:
[1:20:54] To me. I think about every race I’ve ever been in. And what this Spectators in a marathon. They’re not in a sports stadium having hot dogs brought to their seat. They’re standing out in the rain for six hours, clapping for strangers. They’ve never heard of going by.
Right, said those those that those are the people who were attacked really makes me sad.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:21:14] Yes, very true. They were there, their friends when we were running, you know, that’s what makes the Boston Marathon and makes marathoning. It was such a great sport. There is this this huge connection.
Bring the participants in the rates, you know, and their family and friends. Just powerful or anyone. You don’t have to have family and friends here.
You know, I just went over to see it the first time because I lived in Boston and see this old event, you know, and but it’s never ending. Lee, Um, I don’t know.
It’s never really something that I think the Boston Marathon when I look there now, actually, all of you, the military and the big blocks out there, and they really got a lot down good.
And we got it done that, you know, because, um, it is an issue, and we have it smart, you know, Name of the game. The Spectators are key.
I love being a spectator. Now that I’m retired marathon.

Nikki:
[1:22:09] Bill. When you run, do you read the signs that Spectators have?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:22:14] Science. Um, well, you know, when I was running, it was it was my last Boston with few pounds and nine was running with two of my friends, including my internal medicine doctor.
Good pretended suits. And he was kind of He’s trying to clear the way for me because I was older. That 61 years old, you know, 11 years that was coming on was coming out of the cancer treatment and everything, so I was a little beat up.
But I, uh But they help me through and, uh, free fun.
I mean, just as part of the Boston Maryland huge part, and you can get a feeling for it from TV coverage today.

[1:22:50] You know, which wasn’t there so much years ago. It was bigger and bigger.
And I think the people people are watching it different around the world. You know, a lot of the Spectators and everything, and it’s shown around the world, you know, on NBC Sports World.
Because one of the world marathon majors start safe, swirl around major, you know, to our shortest, our sport is getting more and more strength. I think it says it’s only going to get stronger and bigger.
It’s gonna be more people that will be in it or not are gonna be running marathons that they’ll run. The 10-K is five kids.
There are national programs like anything, there’s a big program or the UK were a national program for people to get into running through their parts.
You know, she running some of some of the great parts of in Boston.
We adrenaline comments When I first moved to Boston, um, I saw in wintertime they had it, though the Christmas lights up, holiday lights, everything I said nominal.
Remind me when I was in high school and I do a little run three mile run for the neighborhood and see the lights.

[1:23:53] And my brother and I started a Jingle Bell run in 1977 from our store in Cleveland Circle that he was the 1st 1 ever done in the country.
You know, Jingle ball run. But that’s what I sport. It’s about this really just like a good stuff.
99. 29% of it is celebration, you know that?
That’s what it That’s what I think of all the time. All the time.

Jake:
[1:24:19] So, Bill Rogers, your book is marathon man. And in this time of social distancing, if people want to get a copy of that and perhaps even a signed copy of that, where should they look?

Bill Rodgers:
[1:24:23] Yes. Yeah.

[1:24:32] Yeah. My brother and I started a store in 1977 called the Bill Rogers Running Center.
It’s a little online store now for many years Were in Cleveland Turkel. Oh, even historic Faneuil Hall. My brother ran the store for 35 years. You know, it was a resource center for runners. It wasn’t just a retail store. That was all right here.
But my book is about becoming about. There’s from my book is about and, uh, bad. Sign it for anybody would like a signed copy.

Jake:
[1:25:01] They should do that through the Bill Rogers running Center online.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:25:04] Yes. Yeah, that’s a good way to do it.

Jake:
[1:25:06] And we’ll include the link in this week’s show notes, so people will be able to find that.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:25:09] Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Nikki, to.

Nikki:
[1:25:12] Okay, You’re welcome.

Jake:
[1:25:13] Bill. Thank you so much for doing this today. We’ve really appreciated the conversation.

Bill Rodgers:
[1:25:17] You on the roads, OK.

Jake:
[1:25:19] Absolutely.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:25:21] Well, that about wraps it up for this week. To learn more about Bill Rogers in the Boston Marathon, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 187,
We’ll have a link to the Bill Rogers running center and a direct link to buy an autographed copy of Marathon Man.
We’ll also post more information about the Boston Marathon legend to be talked about with Bill, including Amby Burfoot, Jeff Galloway, Tarzan Brown, both Johnny’s, Kelly’s and the King of the Boston Marathon. Clarence DEMAR.
We’ll include classic photos from the Boston Marathon, courtesy of the BPL, including some of the shoes of the 19 forties. That’ll make your feet hurt just looking at him.
And we’ll link to video of Joan Benoit Samuelson. Amazing win in the inaugural 1984 women’s Olympic marathon.

[1:26:12] And of course, we’ll have a link to information about the unappreciated role of women in the shaping of Puritanism, our upcoming historical event.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcasting hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or you can go toe hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do, drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:26:51] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.