Run It Fast®

Note: As the title’s present tense suggests, this story about Angela Ivory was written when she was running and feeling well, back in 2006 after she’d fought breast cancer to a sulking standstill and after she’d run a marathon in each of the fifty states plus D.C. She would repeat that running feat and set a new and harder goal. It seemed a happy time for her. She had been free of cancer for two years. We know now, of course, cancer eventually came back. This story was written as a feature for the Herald-Citizen newspaper. It was reprinted in three running magazines and has since been adapted as a chapter in my recent book Going Down Slow. On the sad occasion of her death Thursday, May 31, I dug the story out. As we mourn her death maybe it can serve as a vivid reminder of the full, vibrant life Angela managed to live during her forty-four years.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

One from the vault for Mother’s Day:

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 threaded her days. She left it with me.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Our conveyance accrued runners as it drifted north; the Jones Creek relay team was gathering. Sherrie Giles, having already picked up Dennis Christian in Brentwood, added Bill Baker and me at a hotel near Titans Stadium in Nashville, where we left our vehicles. We headed on toward Southern Illinois where we planned to run the River-to-River Relay the next day, on Saturday. At Calvert City, Kentucky, runner Robin Robbins, whom I’d never met, and team captain John Spencer met us with a 10-person van.

We left Sherrie’s Suburban at a hotel and continued north toward Marion, Illinois. At the packet pick-up there, the girls from St. Louis met us, Tiffany Young and Rachel Langdon. We were seven runners plus a non-running captain now. One to go. After supper at Walt’s Italian restaurant we checked in at the Limited Hotel, a name that gave us some entertainment. There in the hallway we found runner Theresa Saupe together with husband Hank. Hank was to be our driver. He stood nursing a tall boy. Our team was now complete.

Getting up at 3:30 a.m. is not normal human behavior. I know; I saw a turkey hunter and they’re abnormal. My roommate Dennis and I both did. We even talked to him while we had coffee and cereal, the hunter decked out in camouflage overalls. Our idyll didn’t last long. We shoved off at 4:30 driving to the race start. Our first runner, Robin, was starting at 6:30.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

“You won’t catch me rhapsodizing about running,” I wrote in the first sentence of Going Down Slow. And it’s true. I’ve been the sole runner in my family. Going around preaching about running like a religous fanatic was something I didn’t do. If my feet didn’t express my opinion, no words possibly could. I held my piece. Still do.

Still…I want to admit that nothing connects me to other people like running does. That fact enriches my life.

Just six months ago, I ran a 5K with 95-year-old Isabel Garrett. For her trouble, she claimed a 5K state record. I set a state record for my age in that race, too. Two state records from two old people in one race. That’s pretty unusual.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Introduction: The e-mail message arrived as a complete surprise from Scott Williford. I’d known him briefly ten years ago and by first name only, when he occasionally repaired my bicycle at the local shop where he worked part time while attending Tennessee Tech. The message was about him and his wife Mindy, whom I’d known for an equally brief interval, and separate from him before they were man and wife.

I’d met Mindy at the gym. I knew she was a student with athletic skills and that she was an expert whitewater paddler who’d been mentioned in a book on that subject. During our short acquaintance she went running with me one day.

Ten years passed, and Scott sent me the message. I’ve since learned they’ve been very successful. Scott owns a sales agency with four employees that represents cycling and running gear across several states. Mindy is the CFO of a hedge fund, and – ever the athlete – she rides her bike to work more than she drives the car. They live in Chattanooga with their cat Leo.

Scott’s message was poignant and expressive and it astonished me. It’s a story about: endurance sport, a small kindness, awakening and transformation, and success. Above all, I think, it’s a love story. It’s pasted below unchanged. My title was his subject line.

Read the complete story from Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Cover Image of Going Down Slow

The long-awaited book, Going Down Slow – The Times of an Old Man Who Runs, has been released for sale by Amazon. As of this writing, the book’s image and the Editorial Reviews are not yet included on the Amazon web site. In the meantime I am posting those here for readers who would like to browse the book a bit before ordering.

ORDER Going Down Slow HERE

Synopsis: Going Down Slow

The word “runs” appears in the subtitle of this memoir, and the act of running spans the breadth of it. So it is perhaps fair if some call this a running book. Running, however, is not the main topic. Adventure is. Author Dallas Smith is drawn to the adventure his hobby brings. Running is indeed a constant presence in the stories, but mostly as a current that sweeps him along, the reason he encounters the places he describes, the people he meets, and the adventure he finds. Running connects him to everything and everyone.

Events and episodes vary widely, as do the locales where they play out, stretching from the urbane glamour of Stockholm, Sweden to Spain’s El Camino de Santiago to the tussocks of the Arctic tundra to a flood-scoured gorge in Tennessee—and places in between. A run through Central Park suddenly shifts and takes the reader on a fishing trip where three adolescent boys of a distant time and place pulled sagging carp out of a muddy swamp and lugged their haul home. Smith finds adventures and brings them home.

This sprawling story delights and surprises readers. Smith brings observation, insight, and wit. His narrative flows like the smooth stride of a fast runner and makes the reader feel as if he, too, were there experiencing the color and danger of these episodic adventures.

Editorial Reviews

“A legendary runner and master storyteller has triumphed again…But the real victory belongs to the person who reads Going Down Slow…by Dallas Smith, one of the most remarkable athletes on the planet…Whether you’re an accomplished distance runner, [or] an around-the-block jogger…you won’t be able to put this book down. It’s that good…Much of his writing is pure poetry…” Corky Simpson, Green Valley News, AZ

“If Hemingway had been a runner his name would have been Dallas Smith. In his second book, Dallas shows that he is not a runner pretending to write but rather a gangsta of prose wrapping words smoothly around sweaty sneakers and singlets that make you feel as if you were there with him on his running escapades and tales of human compassion.” Joshua Holmes, CEO of Phoenix Publishing, founder of RunItFast.com

“His M.O. combines the relentlessness of a Terminator with the gregariousness of a yearling Labrador retriever. The people he meets confess, vent, advocate, and otherwise reveal their most cherished convictions and thereby obtain a voice to the world…what Smith learns and imparts to the reader is often surprising.” Stan Lawrence, songwriter, mandolin and vocals, Music City Flyboys

“Competitive running probably satisfies many goals for Dallas Smith, but chief among them must be the opportunity to observe humanity in all of its colors and then tell stories about what he saw. It’s the small observations amid lofty thoughts that reveal the soul of this author. Beset with physical and emotional misery after a disappointing marathon in Stockholm, he finds the smile of a stranger brings joy and tenderness to the moment, an experience he links seamlessly to the writing of Saint-Exupery.” Michael Redding, Ph.D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, Tennessee Tech University

“Dallas Smith uses his keen observation ability and his endurance running skill to tell wonderful stories…” Diana Bibeau, president of Nashville Striders

“Pour yourself a big glass of wine, throw a few logs on the fireplace, and snuggle up in a comfortable chair. You are about to be entertained by the tales of a master storyteller… This latest compilation…is honest, poignant, and heartwrenching…” Amy Dodson, ultrarunner, two-time ITU World Paratriathlon Champion

“Dallas Smith is a masterful writer and storyteller, illuminating that whole range of passion that now thrills and now torments the human heart…” Charles Denning, former executive editor of Herald-Citizen, TN

It was bad enough to be good. I’m talking about my performance in the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, November 5. It is best to write about your bad runs and avoid the good ones. Then you won’t be accused of indulgence or self aggrandizement. So my performance was bad enough to be good enough to write about. Here goes then, a story full of excuses.

Which started the second night before the marathon, one of the days where you try to load up on carbohydrates. So my stepson, Derek, who lives in Indianapolis and who ran the half marathon, and I went to an Italian restaurant for spaghetti. Spaghetti with meat sauce. That means ground beef. It was a fateful choice.

You may assume ground beef contains cowshit. Cowshit in turn contains E. Coli, a powerful bacterium which will give you a bellyache and diarrhea. Unless, of course, it is thoroughly cooked.

Read more HERE

The big salmon swims wearily back and forth in a pool no bigger than a pickup truck bed, curving a body long as my arm to make the turnarounds. He is all alone, and it is the end of the line. He has come back home, to the place where he started, finishing a journey that started here in this creek, a journey that first delivered him to a lake and eventually to a restless home in the Pacific; and now, years later, it has finally returned him to this little pocket of water, a place beyond which he cannot go. He swirls, probing the walls of his bleak prison, his last home.

My son Rory and I stand looking down enthralled. We’ve been searching for this salmon a while now. Driving up this valley north of Seward, Alaska on an August afternoon, we stopped to watch the spawning run in this stream, aptly named Salmon Creek. The road departed a short ways from the creek. We bushwhacked our way through blowdowns and stands of devil’s club to the creek and then worked our way up the stream—unconventional taper for the marathon I’d come so far north to run. We stomped around rather casually at first—until I realized we were in the presence of a bear food bonanza. We have become a bit more watchful now. As the stream grew smaller, Rory, who likes to get to the bottom of things, suggested that we continue upstream until we found the last fish, the very uppermost salmon.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE

Spanish ultrarunner Albino Jimenez continues his run across Spain on el Camino de Santiago, the Trail of Saint James. His route started at his home in Burgos, Spain and goes west. He has some 329 miles total to run to reach Santiago de Compostela, the location of the tomb of Saint James, 54 more miles if he continues on to Fisterra, the actual end of land. His daily stages range from 30 to 40 miles, and it should take him around 10 days to complete the run.

As of this writing, he has completed three stages, distances of 44, 38 and 33 miles, and is currently spending the night at Leon. Heat seems to be the main challenge. He reports highs ranging in the upper eighties, 88 on the 3rd stage.

As his run unfolds, I’ll tweet his progress from my twitter account at @smithbend, and post his progress on my Facebook page. Albino is posting his progress on his Facebook page as well.

To read the full story click HERE

We sit on Madrid’s Plaza Mayor drinking beer and eating blood sausage, Albino and I.

My overnight flight into Madrid arrived this Saturday morning. Albino drove down to meet me from his home in Burgos, a city in the mountains 150 miles north of here. After walking around Madrid a bit, we’ve landed here. It is a little chilly but pleasantly sunny this February afternoon.

We sit at a table outside, the busy plaza spread before us.

Sharing our table are Belen and Yeya, two young women Albino called a few minutes ago. They are his age, which is half my age. I’m too sleepy to care about that, having missed a night’s sleep on the plane. We order another round of beer, another plate of tapas. Belen puffs Marlboros, Ducados for Yeya. The marathoners abstain.

You could argue that Albino and I ought to not be here. We are scheduled to run the Barcelona Marathon. We should be resting, saving our energy for the big show. But then that’s not until next weekend. Meanwhile, we have business here.

Read the full story by Dallas Smith by clicking HERE