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Marathoners cast in metal run through Stockholm

Marathoners were streaming into the west side of the stadium. They would run a partial lap around the track before ending their 26.2-mile journey at the finish line I’d just crossed.
I wanted to have one last look. I glanced back down the track at the finish line fifty yards behind me, up at the expectant faces looking down from the stands. The people in those stands in 1912 had watched Jim Thorpe win two Olympic gold medals—later stripped from him for having played two seasons of semi-professional baseball. The decision was controversial and the medals were restored after his death.
I turned to walk through the archway. On the wall high above, a staff held out the Swedish colors, a yellow cross on a sky-blue background. The flag whipped and snapped in the wind.
I ambled through the archway, clutching my plastic blanket and finisher’s medal. On this June day the Stockholm Marathon had for me already become history, my 3:26:44 finish converted to mere blips on a computer disk. I was dismayed at what had happened. Once again the awful distance had declared its mystery, sprung its trap.
My legs hurt.
I walked a short ways to a soccer field and stopped in front of a blue-eyed blond girl, exemplar of Scandinavian beauty. She looked up and, noticing the tiny American flag printed on the corner of my bib, spoke in perfect idiom:
“Did you run good?”
“I did the best I could.”
“That’s the best!”
Then she went to work with her knife, reclaiming the timing chip.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

The picture of my first race award hangs on the wall like an old memory

Going Down Slow, a book of running adventure, is available on paper or tablet from the usual sources. But you can read the prologue free here.

You won’t catch me rhapsodizing about running. You may not even ever hear me say I like it. I’m not sure I do. It’s severe and it trades in misery. It’s the price I pay for living. It’s just what I do. I reckon I’ll keep it up until they scatter my ashes. My super-heated molecules will mix with the air, become part of it and circle the globe. You might run down the road and breathe a bit of me. It may give you strength.
Runners say the difference in a jogger and a runner is an entry form; a runner competes in races. By that definition, I became a runner in April of 1998 at the age of fifty-seven, after being a jogger for eighteen years, where I routinely logged six miles a day. I didn’t know why I did that. I had the vague idea it was good for me somehow. After writing two books about running, I still don’t know why I do it.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

The old memories come back about this time each year

On Fridays I would take Momma out for supper. One Friday we ate at Pizza Hut where I could have spaghetti. She wondered why. It was because my first race, a 10K which I’d kept a secret, was on the next morning. Four days after her death, I had surgery, and, following recovery, trained for eight weeks and ran my first marathon. Running began a new life for me. For her, life itself was a hard run. By coincidence, it ended as my new one was beginning. Endurance had defined her days. She left it with me.

On the Sunday supper table at Momma’s: chicken and dressing, giblets gravy, cranberry sauce, fried rattlesnake, boiled potatoes, fried corn, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, poke sallet, sliced tomatoes, green peppers, fruit salad, homemade relish, cornbread, biscuits, pecan pie and coconut pie.
That supper was on September 23, 1984 in the Smith Bend community of Jackson County, Tennessee. Just an ordinary Sunday feast—except for the rattlesnake whose head I had chopped off after he failed to bite my brother and me. We dressed the snake, Momma cooked the meat. It would have been a feast even without it. Poke sallet? Momma served that delicious weed even in wintertime; she canned it.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

A poignant moment came yesterday as I was greeting finishing marathoners at the Flying Monkey Marathon. A runner named Graham Gallemore, who is sixty-nine, crossed the finish line.

He pointed at a tin campaign-button-type pin he was wearing on the front of his tee. He’d had it made. It showed a picture of Angela Ivory.

“She still pulls me through,” he said.

The last time I saw Graham was on June 9th in Memphis at Angela’s funeral. The last time prior, I’d seen Graham was at the 2010 Flying Monkey, which I had run myself. I had come upon Graham. Angela was accompanying him a ways during his run. Pulling him through. I stopped briefly that day, and she hugged me. Pulling me through, too.

When I tell people about Angela Ivory, I say she ran a marathon in every state. Then she ran a marathon in every state again. Then she ran a ultramarathon in every state (She maybe lacked six or seven finishing this last goal). And as amazing as that may seem, it’s not even her story. that’s not her story at all.

She did that while fighting cancer.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Natural Arch is higher than we thought

The climb up here was spooky. No rock climber would call it technical, but it was steep and high and you had to hold on. When I’d first looked up and seen the arch I’d thought, a hole to the sky.

Why would two old endurance guys seventy-plus-years-old be climbing on rocks? The short answer of course is we’d climbed up to get a closer look at the arch, one of no particular distinction, at that, one lacking even a picturesque name.

We climbed back down from Natural Arch, which is scarier than climbing up. I started a run at the base of the cliff. Joel’s plan was to drive his truck down the single-track some six miles, park on Old Woman Road and ride back to meet me on his mountain bike. It was a cool day and getting lost in the wilderness wearing running shorts was a bad idea. Since I’d never been to this place before, prior to leaving he decided to give me some advice.

“Remember, when you come to the tee, go left.”

“Right! When you come to a fork in the road take it.”

“Right,” he said.

Left, it was. We understood each other.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

El Camino stretches west of Rabé

The four-lane stretches northward toward Hassan II Mosque. I glance at the white surf crashing on the black rocks of the road’s curving flank. At that moment electricity flashes through my legs and they turn to spastic stone. As I pitch forward Albino grabs me in a bear hug. He stands like a gate post holding me upright. The length of a marathon is 42K; we are at 31K…

Wednesday, October 17, Rabé de las Calzadas

Again, I find myself running on el Camino de Santiago, running through Rabé de las Calzadas and onto the chalky dirt single-track that starts at the edge of town, at the little church with the walled cemetery with stone crosses, climbs two miles up a beautifully severe valley of steep cropland and sheep pasture, grand vistas marred by not a single man-made structure – no fences! – finally to an abrupt crest offering an expansive view north where a tiny town sits in all that vastness like a stamp on a giant post card.
I stand looking, thinking no one is around. Then, turning, I see a woman sitting at a pile of rocks on the bank above me. Our eyes meet. I spread my arms over the scene before us, and say,
“Hermosa, hermosa.”
“What?”
Oh. English.
“Beautiful,” I say.
“Yes, it is.”

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Susan Ford at Ironman Florida, November 4, 2006

Susan Ford is a monster. Stay out of her way and you won’t get hurt. That’s a hyperbolic way to paint the tender-hearted veterinarian from Cookeville, Tennessee, but, too, a way of saying she is the hardest charging training and racing fanatic I’ve seen.

At this moment she is in Kona, Haiwaii awaiting Saturday’s World Championship Ironman. As is Amy Dodson, another friend, with whom Susan is sharing a hotel room. Yesterday’s post was about Amy. This one is about Susan.

Recent training ride along Blackburn Fork, Jackson County, Tennessee

I knew Susan when running a 10K put her at risk of overuse injuries. No more. Fourteen Ironman races have changed that, transformed her to a hard body that could cut glass. Her Twitter handle is @Ironmaam. That’s a good title for the story too.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Amy Dodson on the cover of Runner's World, July, 2011

Amy talking with @smithbend at Bell Buckle, June, 2001

It has been my good luck to stand in a place where I met some pretty amazing people. Two of them—Amy Dodson and Susan Ford—will be running The Ironman World Championship at Kona, Hawaii this coming Saturday. Both are my good friends, although they never met each other. And both began their endurance journey in Cookeville, Tennessee. Because of that commonality they planned to share a hotel room at Kona.
This story is about Amy. It’s an old story, first published in Running Journal. Although already written, it was on my mind in April, 2000 as I was running the Boston Marathon for the first time, because that’s when the story appeared.
The story is about how Amy started running. In one sense, it’s a disservice to her, because she has since accomplished so much. Just part of it makes a long list: Boston Marathon first woman leg amputee, marathon world record, 100-mile ultramarathon, two-time ITU World Paratriathlon Champion… It goes on. But this story is about how she began.
Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Blackburn Fork two years ago

When Josh Hite and I innocently turned down Blackburn Ford Road on our morning run of Friday, August 27, 2010, we didn’t know we were headed for the scene of water’s most forceful devastation we’d ever seen. That day we waded the river and scrambled through house-sized piles of tangled trees. Three of the four bridges crossing the river, along with their abutments and piers, had been scattered by the flood’s immense force. Judy Richardson, who lives in a house on ground barely high enough to survive the flood and overlooking one of the bridges swept away, said it looked like the Colorado River had coursed through that narrow valley.

What Josh and I saw that day astonished us. We rambled the length of the gorge in amazement. Several hours and twenty-two miles later we found ourselves in Gainesboro, hungry, dehydrated and exhausted from exploring and running through the August heat. His wife Martha drove from Cookeville to Gainesboro to pick us up. A year later my account of that run became Chapter 40 in the book Going Down Slow (2011).

Today, Josh and I made our second anniversary run down the river. The run has become an annual habit. Things have changed remarkably for the better there since last year, and certainly since two years ago. The road has been raised and rebuilt, the section at Judy Richardson’s house paved even. In places where the road comes close to the river, rip-rap has been placed on tall embankments which should resist future undercutting. The piles of trees have been mostly removed. The bridge at Zion Road has been replaced by a longer and higher bridge, remnants of the old collapsed bridge hauled away.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

The Westside Runners are different from any group that ever attracted my attention, let alone my participation. There are no officers, no bylaws, no membership list, no dues. And no one is taking names. We simply meet at six p.m. every Wednesday in the parking lot of Foothills Running Co. and go running. Running alone, together with the fellowship it provides, holds the group together. That’s it. Jennifer Hackbarth usually brings drinks. No committee makes recommendations; no one appoints a committee. Runners range from the very accomplished to the beginner.

“I’ve found out that when a man in a red dress runs into the street, the traffic yields.”

Occasionally someone throws out a suggestion, as Josh Hite did late in May. His idea: have a red-dress run, sometimes called a hasher run. We make decisions easily. And so on the sixth of June, we found ourselves in red dresses following Josh’s chalk marks.

The following is a story in pictures of that run – three miles, three bars, and a million laughs, the first ever red-dress run in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE