Probing the Artifacts

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The Resurrection of An All-Time Great

By Marc Bloom for DyeStat

When I think back 36 years ago to an historic track event that I created, I still shake my head in wonder: when putting together the field I overlooked one of the greatest of all American runners. It was only when two men pulled out of the race with injuries, and then at roughly the same time I received a plea from the slighted athlete, that I offered him a spot on the starting line at Madison Square Garden.

Oh, me: the embarrassment! The appeal came in the form of a letter (see above), dated December 8, 1986, still in my possession. Reading it recently, I wanted to cover my eyes in shame. The letter started out with an oddly formal, “Dear Sir,” and went on to enumerate various credentials of obvious pertinence — expressed with the same humility that the gentleman demonstrated at 77 when we recently spoke — delivering quite a blow to my track expert ego, then and now.

The letter specified:

— 1968 Olympian in the 10,000 meters after winning the U.S. Trials, first American finisher in the high altitude of Mexico City;

— Set world indoor record for 3 miles on three different occasions, the last time in 1973 at the Garden;

— Competed on the International Track Association “Pro” Tour in the mid-1970s;

— At age 39, ran a 3:55 1500 meters, equivalent to about a 4:14 mile;

— Once 40, won the World Masters 10k road race in 31:24 in California;

— At 41, No. 2-ranked masters road runner in the U.S. by The Runner magazine, running masters best of 30:51 10k, also in California.

That last point of excellence really hurt. I was editor-in-chief of The Runner, sponsor of this new event. I had certainly known of the performance extolled in my own magazine, hadn’t I? How had it slipped my mind?

The athlete’s letter had begun: “I am very much interested in running the Masters Mile, which I read about in The Runner.” And the letter ended with this: “My real love has always been indoor track. I have done seven weeks of speed work. I am confident I would be one of the strong contenders and would make the race exciting."

What the athlete did not say, with a sense of restraint that marked our reminiscences, was that in his heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s he defeated Billy Mills, Steve Prefontaine, Gerry Lindgren, Jim Ryun, George Young, Ron Hill, and Michel Jazy, at one time or another. It’s doubtful anyone else from that era had earned such distinction.

Perhaps, if you know your track history, you were not surprised to see above that the letter was signed: Tracy Smith.

While editing The Runner, a national magazine founded in 1978 by the publisher George Hirsch, I would often bring up top runners turning 40 with George and we would wonder about their mid-life potential, especially in the mile. Was a sub-4:00 at 40 possible? Keeping a watch on birthdates, we knew that a number of reputed milers and other top distance men were going to start turning 40 in 1987.

This was new: With the running movement now some two decades old, it had served to nurture championship-level runners past their primes and still in good shape. Masters competition reflected this sea change in the fitness level of older athletes. And there were opportunities to earn a few bucks here and there on the expanding road race circuit.

With George’s advocacy, I was given the mandate of creating a Masters Mile event — not just a one-off but hopefully a series of races — to highlight both newly minted masters with world-class backgrounds along with local and regional runners who were fairly unknown outside their own areas but still running pretty darn good.

The first step was obvious — a meeting with Millrose Games meet director Howard Schmertz. I knew Howard well and he trusted my instincts. Years earlier, in 1974, Howard had come to me to organize the first Boys High School Mile at Millrose. It was a smash hit with fans and the high school community. I put it together for five years, then, busy with The Runner, passed it on to a colleague, Larry Byrne, who made it even better and nurtured his baby for more than three decades.

Over a luncheon meeting with me near his law office, Schmertz expressed interest but had reservations. Millrose had contested a masters mile earlier and it had fallen flat. Armed with the names of elite runners who’d turned 40 or were about to, I convinced Howard that times, literally, were different, and that the event would have all the makings of a success. Howard said yes and we were on our way.

It was agreed that I would assemble the field, and that all athletes’ expenses would be handled by the meet. Some entrants would fly in a few days early for press events. The men would represent different career arcs and locales, even different countries. It would be quite a mix: some athletes well-known, others not so prominent, and perhaps intriguing for providing a bit of mystery.

Questions arose. Could an unknown with no credentials other than marks from local road races or all-comers meets hold up against stars of the past who’d set records and taken an Olympic starting line? That occurrence, observed Kenny Moore, would be like Arnold Palmer getting beaten by a club pro.

And what about those former stars: could their 40-plus legs still churn with speed on the Garden’s rather merciless, 11-lap-to-the-mile track? Was it all about speed, or would long training mileage and tactical cunning still be needed in the runners’ arsenal?

These questions and more would be answered on January 30, 1987, in The Runner Magazine Masters Mile, the first such invitational event — with legends, luminaries and locals — ever held. Schmertz scheduled the event for 8:50 p.m., prime time, to open the marquee section of the 80th Millrose Games. The Wanamaker Mile, with Eamonn Coghlan seeking a record seventh title, would go off, as always, at 10.

The legends: 49-year-old Bob Schul, the 1964 Olympic champion in the 5,000 meters, and 45-year-old Noel Carroll, the former Villanova 800-meter star from Ireland who held the masters 800 world record of 1:53.22.

The luminaries: Sam Bair, 40, former AAU champion and 3:56 miler with an array of masters road racing victories; Barry Brown, 42, former world-class steeplechaser and 3:58 miler, current American masters record holder in several events including the marathon; Mike Hurd, 41, of Great Britain, Boston Marathon masters champion the previous year; Web Loudat, 40, former 4:04 miler and 1986 runner-up in the world masters 10k road race; Lou Scott, 41, 1968 Olympian and 1967 Pan Am silver medalist in the 5,000, who ran a 1:57.3 800 at 39.

The locals: Atlaw Belilgne, 42, a New Yorker of Ethiopian heritage, and college math professor, who was the reigning national masters 10k cross country champion and winner of a NY-area trial staged to determine the best local entrant; Larry Olson, 40, from the Boston area, the reigning national masters 15k cross country champion with a long list of New England titles and recent 4:26 indoor mile.

Tracy Smith? He fit somewhere between legend and luminary. Smith always seemed to be in his own category anyway. 

After all, no one else had ever won a medal in the world cross country championships just three years out of high school. No one else had “stolen” a victor’s trophy from Jim Ryun at an international meet in Italy. No one else had run sprints to exhaustion under an interval-mad coach and also logged miles up to 12,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. No one else had waged pull-up contests with Kenny Moore while the two were Army buddies, and track teammates, stationed in California.

And who else had worked as a Presbyterian minister as well as cop on the beat in L.A., put food on his plate by dusting off balls in a bowling alley and wrapped up his career with two decades of coaching high school cross country in Central Oregon?

It all began for Smith when as a child in Arcadia, in southern California, his parents were immersed in the outdoors. They bought a cabin in the mountains overlooking Palm Springs so that Tracy and his younger brother would learn to appreciate the natural environment. “We were there almost every weekend,” said Smith. “I started running the trails just for the joy of it in fourth grade.”

The setting was at 7,000 feet. The Smiths’ cabin was at the end of a sloping road about a half-mile long. In the winter, when it snowed, young Tracy would sled down the road, then run back up the half-mile hill with the sled under his arm in snow boots. 

Sounds ike an Emil Zatopek workout.

“I did that all day long,” he said. “For years.”

It was no surprise that once of age Smith would run track at Arcadia High. In Tracy’s senior year of 1962-63, his family expanded their outdoors horizons by acquiring a fishing resort up in the beautiful little city of Bishop in the eastern Sierras, halfway between Yosemite and Death Valley. 

Bishop was about 4,100 feet elevation, with postcard perfect trails worthy of the Rift Valley in close proximity. Smith would run repeat miles on a dirt road from 8,000 to 10,000 feet. Back home he had an excellent coach, Bill Peck, who put all of Smith’s assets together for a state mile championship in 4:14.4 and nation-leading 9:11.6 2-mile, the second fastest ever. Smith’s mile PR was 4:12.6, fourth in the country that season. Ironically, the guy just ahead of him in third, from Detroit, was Lou Scott, at 4:11.3.

Peck, who had won the Culver City Marathon, gave Smith a mere 40 miles a week but high quality. According to Peck, the most effective way to do intervals was to start modestly no matter how good you felt and gradually work up to peak speed. In that way, Smith said, your most demanding work at the end would feel just as “easy” as your initial effort. 

Smith’s fitness was put to the ultimate test a month after his state meet in a match race thrown together by none other than University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. This was before Bowerman would co-found Nike and design new types of running shoes, with the help of his wife's waffle iron. The man’s restless creativity was hard to contain.

In an era when high school running still had all the pizzazz of a P.E. class, and distance events often took a back seat to the sprints, Bowerman got the idea to bring Smith to an open meet in Eugene on Independence Day to run against Gerry Lindgren, making his first plane trip out of Spokane, Wash., and Dave Wilborn  from Albany, Ore. in a featured high school showdown in the mile. 

Smith told me he had no idea who Wilborn was. Smith had heard something about Lindgren, then a junior at Rogers High, and the Washington state cross country and mile champion. When Smith first laid his eyes on the elf-like Lindgren, he said to himself, “He looks like a little junior high kid.”   

In the race, Lindgren would show that within that scrawny physique was an all-consuming power, driven by training no one could ever imagine. 

The 5-foot-11 Smith and junior-high sized Lindgren, in over-sized purple shorts, raced ahead, running even to the final home straight. Smith gained a stride, then Lindgren did. “Every time I tried to pass him,” Smith said, “he fought me off.” At the line, Smith was spent. Lindgren was, too, but had the will. Smith dove across the finish in desperation, falling to the ground (photo left). Lindgren won. Both youngsters were timed in 4:12.9. It was Smith’s only defeat of his senior year.

“That was the turning point in my career,” Smith told me. Before long, when he saw the 17-year-old Lindgren as a high school senior clocking an 8:40 indoor 2-mile and outrunning the likes of world record holder Ron Clarke, Smith thought back to his Eugene duel and felt, “If that little guy can do it, so can I.”

And he did. 

From the mid-60s to the mid-70s, Smith’s national titles, world records, versatility and staying power — his range from cross country distances to the short work of indoor track to his consistent prowess in the 10,000 — made him as finely accomplished as most any runner could be.

After the pro tour ended in 1976 (Smith had a three-year deal totaling all of $10,000), Smith’s world-class career was over. He still kept in decent shape, while doing some coaching, teaching and odd jobs to support his family.

Approaching 40, Smith resumed quality workouts while adding longer runs. Before the Masters Mile, he trained 55-60 miles per week with long and short intervals, hill work and a weekly effort of 18 miles that took him up to 10,000 feet. Smith averaged 62 seconds for his 400 repeats with a lap recovery and told me after he was added to the Millrose field that he thought he could run 4:12 in the Garden.

Then why was Smith so edgy after he arrived in New York from California?

Because the other Millrose runners also expressed confidence bordering on hubris. Did they think they were still 20… or 30? Did the feeling of being on the precipice of a new and exciting era deny the aging process? Did the idea of competing in Madison Square Garden throw their adrenaline into overdrive?

On so many fronts, it was an all-of-the-above moment, certainly for Lou Scott, not a miler since high school, who told me, “I’ll be ready to run 4:05. I’m planning on running 4:00 by the end of the summer.”

At the Masters Mile press event the day before the meet, Sam Bair said, “I haven’t stopped running since college,” and that he weighed 5 lbs. less than when he was a sub-4 miler. Mike Hurd, the British marathoner said, “I was in the Royal Air Force for 22 years. I train pretty hard, twice a day, 80 to 90 miles a week.”

Noel Carroll, public relations officer for the city of Dublin, said he had broken 2 minutes for the 800 28 years in a row. Currently his training including 10x200 in 30 seconds with 45-second recovery, plus, other days, 300s, 400s, cross country runs and distance runs. He told Irish Runner magazine, “For me, an 800m race is like an art form, and a great 800 is the greatest work of art there is.” 

The artform that is running seemed to cultivate a sense of renewal in these men, an opportunity for validation of one career and perhaps the start of another. To them, this was no “experiment.” Still possessed of the patina of youth, they rushed to the fore, each with a personal battle cry. 

Time to race, baby. The Garden. Millrose. The indoor Olympics. A packed crowd.

Maybe a moment to enter a spotlight that could be short-lived. By this point, word was spreading that later in the year Jim Ryun, Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers would all turn 40. 

Smith sized it all up and grew tense. He had left the winter ease of the Owens Valley, the hills, the hunting and fishing, the certainty of life, for the raucous, shattering midtown Manhattan tumult, crazy people on every corner, not a mountain trail in sight.

Smith went back to his hotel room and drifted into contemplation. He thought about the casual air of readiness he’d heard among his opposition that awakened doubt. He tried to balance his fear with reflections on his own survival instincts, how’d he had always come through even at long odds.

Like when at Oregon State (he would transfer to Cal State Long Beach), Smith defeated the favored Lindgren by 20 seconds on Lindgren’s home course in the Pac-8 cross-country meet; became the first American man to capture a medal in the World Cross Country Championships, taking third at Rabat, Morocco, in 1966, before his 21st birthday; raced to PRs of 4:03.8 in the mile, 3:43.6 in the 1500 (about a 4:02 mile) and 8:29.4 indoors in the 2 mile; collapsed after relentless interval work at 6 o’clock in the morning dished out by the Hungarian speed master Mihaly Igloi, and always got back on his feet for the next set.

And most particularly when, in the greatest race of his life, he set his third world indoor 3-mile record in 1973, 13:07.2, on the Garden track, in the USA Nationals. Smith lapped most of the field after coming back from a lingering Achilles tendon injury that, he said, caused him to spiral into depression. “I would wake up at night shaking,” Smith said at the time. No one in the celebratory crowd of 15,928, cheering Smith’s closing laps on their feet, could have imagined his vulnerability.

It had been quite a saga since the 10-year-old boy trekked the snowy road with his sled, up and down, till breathless in the mountain air. Smith, in New York, longed for the same serenity now.

He wondered whether the Garden’s track-wise crowd would remember him 14 years later. Many Millrose fans sat in the same seats year after year, as though willed to them. The intimacy between spectator and athlete could overwhelm or inspire. 

“The hours were ticking away,” Smith said. “I worried, how am I going to handle this? I needed to calm down or I’d be depleted by race time.”

Smith realized he could not rely solely on his resume to pull him through. He needed something more profound, something with a deeper meaning, something spiritual. He opened the bureau drawer to find the familiar Bible.

“I’m a Christian,” Smith said. “Sometimes I carry a Bible with me. I started reading. The more I read, the more confident I got. I felt the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The next night in the Garden, warming up, Smith, then working as a church youth director, was able to hold onto his spiritual grace. “I felt the power of the Resurrection,” he said.

When the 10 men took the line, the appreciate crowd roared with approval. The athletes’ presence alone was worthy of an Olympian moment — the audience of Wall Streeters and Mad Men, some svelte runners themselves, others with pipe-and-slippers paunch, thrilled to sight of the 1 percent, the elite younger-oldies, pledging to remake the meaning of middle age.

Indeed, four in the field were Olympians. Gold medalist Bob Schul got the biggest hand. “There’s a big difference between the 40-year-olds and me,” Schul told me then. Schul would turn 50 in the fall. “I get frustrated when I try and run speed work. I’m looking forward to seeing what my body can do.”

I had enlisted Jim Beatty, the first man to break the 4-minute barrier indoors, running 3:58.9 in 1962 — he was now commemorating his historic run’s 25th anniversary — as guest of honor to start the race. Beatty set 10 American records and five world records. Who knew indoor racing better them him?

Smith had chatted up Beatty for advice, telling him he planned a big move with five laps to go, as he had done to success in the 1973 3-mile. Beatty suggested otherwise. Five laps out is too far, he said, go with three.

Beatty shot the gun.

The men took off to shrieks of affirmation from the capacity crowd of 18,122. Belilgne went for the lead uncontested, hitting the quarter in a slow-ish 65.1. Brown was second, Hurd third and Bair fourth. Smith was back, no hurry.

“One thing’s in Brown’s favor,” Beatty had said. “He understands the glamour.” Brown had run Millrose every year from 1964 through 1981.

Brown moved up to the lead. Bair was now third. He felt his size, 5-7, helped him on the turns and “get more lift off the boards.” Brown’s half-mile split was a pedestrian 2:12.7. The hubris was gone, these older gents were playing it cagey.

Smith’s calm informed him. One could say he had the patience of a saint. With his regimen of 40 pull-ups a day (some with 20-lb ankle weights), he visibly led the field in upper body muscle. And maybe in indoor quickness as well. From his massive accrual of speedwork under Igloi, Smith always felt at home on the boards, never in want of a youth’s turnover.

Indeed, the occasion was like an Igloi reunion. At various times in their prime, Beatty and Schul had each trained with the Hungarian. Igloi was known to leave scars but few dismissed his genius.  

With four laps to go, Brown still led with Bair second and Loudat, a math teacher from Albuquerque, third and Smith closing with tactical precision. Smith said he could sense that the crowd remembered him, spurring him on. “Man, I can still do this,” he told himself.

Bill Stewart, 44, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had felt the same. Initially entered in Millrose, he was the masters mile world record holder, running 4:11.0 in an open indoor race four years earlier. At the time, however, officials did not recognize 40-plus performances in open competition as records, so the fastest “pure” mile on the books was the rather soft 4:24.4 by Frank Pflagling at College Park, Maryland, in 1973. (World masters events contesting the 1,500 produced faster “equivalent” times.)

Stewart, who trained with the University of Michigan squad and the celebrated coach Ron Warhurst, told me he’d run 100 miles a week for the last 14 years. He raced every event from the 800 to the marathon, with times of 1:48.7 and 2:21 in his 20s. But after agreeing to compete in New York, Stewart had to beg off with a stomach ailment.

The other late withdrawal was 40-year-old Kjell-Erik Stahl of Sweden, a two-time Olympian in the marathon who’d run a Swedish record 2:10:38 at 36 and won the 1986 Stockholm Marathon at 40 in 2:12:33. It would have been interesting to see the 6-foot, 2.50-inch Stahl try and handle the indoor track, but an injury kept him home.

Another possible runner of intrigue was Tom Sullivan, 43, a physician from the Chicago suburbs who in 1961 had run a high school record mile of 4:03.5, shattering the prior mark by six seconds. A few weeks before Millrose, Sullivan, who’d gone on to run for Villanova, sent me a letter saying that while he had the urge to compete, he could now train only three days a week because of his medical practice.

In his absence, Sullivan declared his former Villanova teammate Noel Carroll the favorite because of “his ferocious finishing kick.”

Not so fast. Coming around the bend with three laps to go, and the crowd’s “w-o-o-o factor” worthy of Wanamaker, it was Brown and Loudat one-two, and Smith easing into third. At the start, hearing the chatter, Smith had realized that his rivals also had nerves: the mile and the Garden wielded incantatory power. 

“I thought to myself,” said Smith, “I have a secret weapon.”

With precisely three laps left, as though hearing the whistle Igloi used as a signal to unleash his runners’ kicks (think Percy Cerutty’s towel and Herb Elliott), Smith took off and there was no catching him. He cut cleanly around each curve for a sizzing 61.2 last quarter and winning time of 4:20.00, a masters-only record by more than four seconds.

“It felt like 14 years ago,” Smith said. “I was Resurrected.”

The meet director could not have been happier. “Remarkable,” said Howard Schmertz, “and the crowd loved it.”

The field was ushered home to ringing applause. Loudat closed well for second in 4:24.66, with Brown third (4:26.08), Olson fourth (4:27.07) and Bair fifth (4:29.11). Hurd, a house painter by trade who raced the roads almost every weekend, took sixth (4:31.58). Clearly the true milers behind Smith prevailed.

Scott, seventh (4:35.44), found he would need some bit of magic to reach his 4-minute hopes. Belilgne was eighth (4:35.78), supporting his local entry. The two oldest and most decorated, Carroll and Schul, were ninth (4:37.11) and 10th (4:59.13). 

I considered it a triumph that the almost-50 Schul dipped under five minutes. Surely it was a minor success for the Olympic champion — Schul had been coaching runners at an Air Force base near his home in Ohio, and years before had done a stint as national coach of Malaysia — and he took a risk running with the youngsters, but he came away with a classy display of fearless fortitude. 

Schmertz was not the only excited meet director. My phone rang off the hook. Leading American race directors craved a Masters Mile. I got overtures from Europe, though nothing came of them. A former world-class miler and business man had a possible title sponsor lined up for an international masters mile road circuit he proposed to me, but that fell through, too. Runners contacted me, from the U. K. to New Zealand; everyone 40 and up wanted in. The concept was copied, and before long other invitational masters miles sprang up around the country.

As I lined up additional races that would expand into a five-race eastern circuit, I knew I had to try and entice Jim Ryun. At his suggestion, I flew out to Lawrence, Kansas, to meet with him and his family. Ryun was a devout Christian. He wanted to find trust in me to merge with his prayers as he contemplated a decision to run.

We had dinner. The Ryuns prayed. Jim said yes.

Ryun joined a circuit under new “ownership.” In spring ’87, The Runner was bought out by its competitor, Rodale’s Runner’s World, with George taking the position as the publisher and me, after catching my breath, as a senior writer. My new independent role was just right for me then — I’d turned 40 myself and needed to spend more time at home — and I enjoyed working with the RW editor Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion.

The RW circuit would feature, in addition to Millrose, the Olympic Invitational at the New Jersey Meadowlands and Mobil One meet at George Mason University in Virginia, indoors; and, outdoors, Penn Relays, and New York Games put on by the NY Road Runners at Columbia’s Wien Stadium.

The enterprise was a gleaming labor of love for me. I delighted in honoring the all-time greats, identifying new talent and serving the masters cause. As a one-man band, I not only lined up the fields but helped with travel, emceed press events, kept careful watch over the runners when they arrived, got some appearance money for a select few (also some modest prize money), picked up some athletes at the airport and even pinned on a few race numbers as the start neared.

My fastidious care paid off. Crowds cheered wildly. There were heroes left and right — Old Timers Days with old timers who could fly.

In addition to the likes of Smith, Brown, Bair, Carroll and Schul from ’87, the athletes that would compete the next year and through the program’s climactic finish in 1994 featured an international roster of stars never before assembled: Ryun, Frank Shorter, Peter Snell, Byron Dyce, Ken Sparks, Rod Dixon, Wilson Waigwa, Kip Keino, Mike Boit, Lasse Viren, Mark Winzenreid, Rick Wohlhuter, Mike Manley, Duncan Macdonald, Ken Popejoy, Larry Almberg, and a name that seemed to carry destiny with it — Eamonn Coghlan.

My oh my, they looked so marvelously fit, the more so for being older; some were unassuming, others embracing the showmanship. Their appearances dazzled, like some dream come to life, each a pillar of track history.

But, Larry who? Kip Keino and… Larry Almberg? I like to think I helped “discover” Almberg, who hailed from Washington state and was barely known. He was called “Woody” for seeming to come out of the woodwork. Dig into the stats, however, and you’d find that Almberg, at 9:05.2, was the nation’s third-fastest high school 2-miler of 1965. 

In 1989, at 42, Almberg started chalking up masters victories in every event from the 5,000 (15:04 on the track) to the half-marathon (1:08:48, winner outright) to the Fifth Avenue Mile (4:10.16). He was second in the World Masters 1,500 (3:53.18) and 10,000 (30:50). At 40, he had run a 2:26 marathon.

Almberg could do it all, and in 1990, after winning the Penn Relays Masters Mile, he did do it all at that summer’s New York Games, running in my view the most dynamic race of the eight-year circuit: a come-from-behind American Record 4:06.70 to outfox the front-running Waigwa, then the world record holder (4:05.39), who placed second in 4:07.36.

Talk of sub-4:00 at 40 never stopped. No, it would not be Ryun, who got down to 4:20 and no faster.

With more races and new faces, records en masse tumbled from well under 4:20 to well under 4:10, and by the time Coghlan turned 40 in November, 1992, Waigwa’s world best, set at the 1989 Prefontaine Classic, in the pro mile, stood as the standard. (By this time, the asterisk for open times had pretty much been discarded.) A native Kenyan living in Texas, Waigwa had run 3:50.73 in his prime, in 1983. That was the same year Coghlan ran his historic first sub-3:50 indoors — 3:49.78 at the Meadowlands — and won the 5,000 at the first world outdoor championships in Helsinki. 

Tracy Smith could only observe all this from the sidelines. After Millrose, he went on to set a U.S. masters 10k road record of 29:52 but injuries got the better of him and he ended his “second” career, eventually turning his energies into coaching. 

As with Ryun, I flew to Dublin to spend time with Coghlan, inspire trust, and work on a feature story about him for Runner’s World. We hit it off. I watched Coghlan start his training build-up, cruising through 6x800 in 2:15 with a lap jog on a chilly fall day in 1992 at the University College track.

What turned out to be a two-year Six-Race Indoor Extravaganza began in the winter of 1993 with Coghlan smashing the world record in 4:01.39 at the Runner’s World event contested for the first time at the USA Nationals in the Garden. He outran Waigwa by 10 seconds. As remarkable as that performance was, sub-4:00 eluded him.

As the 1994 winter series unfolded, it was more of the same: Coghlan’s best was 4:03.28. Frustrated, Coghlan decided to try his luck on a faster track, at Harvard, in a special race, Feb. 20, at the Massachusetts state high school meet.

In what might have been his last legitimate chance, at 41, Coghlan put his uncanny runner’s depth to work, overcoming injury, age, and the burden of expectation, to run 3:58.15, no lesser history than anything he’d ever done. 

”This sub-4:00 means more to me than any of the others,” Coghlan told me right after the race, noting it was the 75th sub-4 of his career.

The track world was alive, on fire. The letters kept coming. Eamonn’s appreciative note to me from Dublin made me beam with thankfulness that the original idea could enrich so many lives. He felt the masters mile achievement was his greatest accomplishment. 

Even Coghlan’s peerless record would not last forever, not with Bernard Lagat coming around. The 16-time World medalist (seven gold), five-time Olympian and American by way of Kenya turned 40 in December, 2014. In the Wanamaker Mile at the 2015 Millrose Games, by then held at the New York Armory, Lagat — a 3:47.28 miler in his prime — placed fourth in a breathtaking 3:54.91. Coghlan, dashing at 62, was on hand to congratulate him.

Tracy Smith could take pride in what he had started in 1987, trying, as he said then, “to see if I can run as fast as I did in high school.”

Today, at 77, Smith is not ready to relinquish the calling of youth. He still does 40 pull-ups daily, only now in four sets of 10. He gets on a fat-tired bike for 20 miles at a clip, runs a few miles here and there with Igloi-style 200s and serves his latest passion, stand-up paddleboarding on mountain lakes.

After his racing days ended, Smith and his family eventually moved to Bend, Oregon, in 1994. Tracy and his wife, Carol, were teachers. In 1997, Tracy started coaching high school cross-country, putting in 20 years at rural Crook County High in Prineville. Last fall, they moved to Spokane to be near their two daughters and three of their five grandchildren. (Some bit of irony considering it was Lindgren’s hometown.)

Tracy and Carol spend their winters in Ibarra, Ecuador, to be close to their son, who is married to an Ecuadorian woman, and their other two grandkids. In the warm and tranquil surroundings, Tracy still goes up into the mountains looking for the solitary cleansing and pristine air that have always been his spiritual wellspring. He takes out his board on a crater lake in the Andean foothills, summons the surpassing beauty of the 14,000-foot peaks and paddles into a realm all his own.

Wherever he is, Smith finds the perfect spot for Resurrection. #

Marc Bloom’s personal reflections on track and field and cross-country history appear periodically. Marc’s latest book, “Amazing Racers: The Story of America’s Greatest Running Team and Its Revolutionary Coach,” about the Fayetteville-Manlius cross-country dynasty, was named 2020 Book of the Year by the Track & Field Writers of America. Last fall, Marc was inducted into the new Van Cortlandt Park Cross Country Hall of Fame. 

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