Home Run

What was once one man's convenient training ground is now a race course named in honor of that man. He talked often of running out the door of the hospital where he worked to train on River Road. The man was George Sheehan, who died in 1993. The hospital was Riverview in Red Bank, New Jersey, where he spent much of his medical career. The river was the Navesink, which flows into the Atlantic within view of the hospital. His old training course now hosts the George Sheehan Classic, which moved from nearby Asbury Park and was renamed for him. It was first a 10-K and later dropped to his preferred racing distance of five miles.

The ideas that grew into columns, which in turn filled his books, took root on this course. This is also where he developed into a much better runner than most of his readers ever realized. He won hundreds of prizes over a 20-year period beginning in his mid-40s. But some of his best learning came after his cancer arrived, his times slowed and his winning stopped. He learned here at
home how most of his readers, who never stand on any victory platform, feel when they race.

George dreaded the 1987 Asbury Park race, which started within a mile of his oceanfront home. His racing pace had fallen of dramatically since he went on hormone therapy for his cancer. He usually relished the question-answer
sessions after his talks. But the night before this race, someone asked a question that stabbed at his heart. "How does it feel to set personal worsts every time you run?" this listener wanted to know.

George's answer: "Embarrassing." He complained that his all-out pace was now slower than he had run the year before in training. He added, "It also can be annoying when people in the trailing edge of a race pack ask me, 'What are you doing back here, Doc?' My first impulse is to say something about, 'What can a runner on drugs for cancer expect?' "

Embarrassment and annoyance didn't keep George from running his hometown race. Afterward he wrote in his weekly newspaper column that his slower pace had taught him an important lesson. "Running back in the pack at Asbury Park was enlightening and inspiring," he said. "I had always written as a representative of the also-rans, but in truth I was always an elite runner - one of the winners. I rarely came home from a race without a trophy, and more
often than not was a winner in my age group."

George met runners here who were new to him. He liked what he learned from them. "What I discovered at Asbury Park was that, from leader to last [finisher], the runners were running at the fastest pace they could. The eight-minute milers, for example, were taking no prisoners. They were not - as I once suspected - lollygagging along, engaged in conversation about last night's pasta party. They may not have the maximum oxygen capacity of those
averaging two or even three minutes a mile faster, but it was costing them the same effort. They were paying with an equal amount of pain. And for me, gaining ground in this flow was just as difficult as it had been a year or so back at a much faster pace."

George discovered he was not the least bit embarrassed to be seen in the company of these eight-minute milers. Nor would he be later when falling in with nine- and 10-minute crowds. They did what he did: the best they could with what they were given.

(Reprinted from Best Runs, published 1998 by Human Kinetics. Available from http://www.joehenderson.com .)