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| Jon Anderson won the 1973 Boston Marathon by nearly two minutes in 2:16:03 on a hot, sunny day as he passed Finland’s defending champion, Olavi Suomalainen, after 20 miles to take the lead. He was a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team and competed in Munich, Germany in the 10,000 meters after finishing third at the Olympic Trials. Jon won his first marathon, the 1971 Petaluma (CA) Marathon, and also won the 1981 Antwerp (Belgium) Marathon, 1981 Honolulu Marathon and 1984 Sydney (Australia) Marathon. He finished fourth at Fukuoka, Japan in 1973 which was at the time the unofficial World Marathon Championship. His personal best marathon of 2:12:08 was set when he finished fourth at the 1980 Nike-OTC Marathon. Jon represented the United States at the 1977 World Cross Country Championships after finishing in 6th place at the U.S. Championships. While competing collegiately at Cornell, he won the Ivy League Cross Country title his senior year, finished 59th and 36th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships his final two years and his third place in the six-mile at the NCAA Track and Field Championships his junior year achieved All-American status. Jon didn’t start competitive running until his senior year in high school, but still ran a 9:34 two-mile as a prep. He ran personal best times as follows: 3-mile – 13:18.6; 5,000m – 13:45.8; 6-mile – 27:40.2; 10,000m – 28:34.2; Marathon – 2:12:08 and 3,000m steeple – 9:01.0. Jon joined Random Lengths Publications, which publishes forest products market activity and price reports in 1974 and was named president and publisher in 1984-85. He currently serves on the University of Oregon Foundation Board of Trustees. Jon resides in Eugene, Oregon with his wife, Terri, and youngest son, Drew. He has two older children, Clark and Erica. Jon was very gracious to spend two hours on the telephone for this interview. |
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| GCR: | You are in a select group of Boston Marathon Champions. Describe how it feels to have succeeded on so high of a stage and reflect on what this has meant through the years. |
| JA | When I started running as a senior in high school I knew I wasn’t particularly fast or quick and I figured that somewhere down the road I was going to run a marathon. I didn’t really run a marathon until after my collegiate running was done but it was on my radar since the beginning of my serious training. I had been on the Olympic team so going into the Boston Marathon, which was my fourth marathon because of the heavy foreign influence, my goal was to be the first American. To actually win the race was maybe not beyond my wildest dreams, but right up there. When a person accomplishes something like I did it may be kind of cliché, but it is something that no one can ever take away from you. I don’t wear it on my sleeve and when I’m introduced to someone new it isn’t mentioned that I’m a Boston Marathon Champion. Oftentimes I may know someone for quite a while before they learn that it is in my resume. When that occurs it is often fun as they know me and have an ‘oh, wow,’ experience. Of course I’m older and heavier now so I don’t look like a Boston marathon winner. |
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| GCR: | You were known more for your track accomplishments, particularly at 10,000 meters, when you won the Boston Marathon in 1973. How did you decide to move up in distance and to test the waters in the marathon? |
| JA | I spent a couple years in San Francisco after college and did nothing practically but eat, run and sleep. My first marathon was the Petaluma Marathon in 1971. I won it and my time was a high 2:23 on a fairly hilly course in the Marin County area. As you travel from San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Petaluma area, it isn’t exactly flat! I was pretty encouraged and it gave me a qualifying time for the 1972 Olympic Trials Marathon which at that time was run in Eugene in conjunction with the Olympic Trials Track and Field Championships. So that was a step in the right direction for me. But I continued to run track and made the 1972 Olympic team in the 10,000 meters by a complete surprise. I had run a very good 10,000 meters to place eighth at the AAU meet in Seattle a few weeks before the Olympic Trials. Though I was eighth, I was the sixth American. They the raced it in those days separate from the Trials. I already had a Trials 10,000 meters qualifier, but my AAU time was fast enough to be an Olympic qualifier. I had a brief moment of mulling over whether or not I should run the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Trials as I had geared more for the marathon even though I was a relative novice. There were at least five faster Americans in the 10,000 meters. I ran two other marathons before Boston. One was the early day Oregon Track Club marathon which was kind of a workout with my friend, Steve savage. The other was in San Mateo which was also kind of a workout, but both of those races were running under 2:25. They were not serious competitive efforts. |
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| GCR: | How confident were you in your training prior to the Boston Marathon, what was your pre-race strategy and did you feel you had a chance to contend for the win especially with defending champion, Olavi Suomalainen of Finland, in the field? |
| JA | I didn’t have winning the race as a goal that I thought could happen. My strategy was to run with Jeff Galloway early in the race because it was a hot day and I knew Jeff was more experienced than I was. In that experience was conservative pacing early in the race which was how he made the Olympic team at 10,000 meters the year before. |
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| GCR: | How did the race develop and what were some of the major strategic moves that day? |
| JA | I ran with Jeff for quite a while and pulled away from him around 10 to 13 miles into the race. I was clearly feeling good and hit the right day. Due to the hot conditions competitors slowly fell off of the pace. When I pulled away from Jeff there were still about ten runners in front of me. Lutz Phillips from Germany took off way too fast and I don’t know if he even finished. Suolmalainen was up there along with a British guy and Tom Fleming. I didn’t run with Tom during the race. I did a fair amount of running by myself and picked guys off. I very much remember passing Suomalainen for the lead during the hills. Later on I found out it was right at about the 20 mile point. He didn’t offer any resistance as it appeared he was having a side ache issue as he was rubbing his side – I think there is even a picture of that somewhere. |
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| GCR: | In the previous 15 years the only American Boston Marathon champions were Johnny Kelley in 1957 and Amby Burfoot in 1968. How supportive were the crowds as the race progressed and as you approached the finish line and were leading? |
| JA | I got a little bit emotional when I took the lead and realized where I was. Then after a few seconds I collected myself and, pardon me, I ran my ass off! I fully realized where I was and told myself I could do something that was really special. I hadn’t been on the course at all before the race, not even driving and had been told by some runners that if you are on a good day ‘Heartbreak Hill’ goes by quickly and it did. The hardest part was going downhill after the Newton Hills. My thighs were screaming but I was able to keep going and to hold a good pace. I was told that Tom Fleming gained a little on me, but I don’t think it was too much. I kept a solid pace and don’t know what my last few miles were but I do know that I ran fairly even splits for the race. My first half may have been a minute faster than the second half which is pretty good on a hot day. The crowds were remarkable as it was Patriots’ Day and the Red Sox game had ended before I came through the latter part of the race. The crowd had let out of the stadium and it was absolutely packed along the streets. I also have memories earlier in the race of great support when I ran through Wellesley. |
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| GCR: | What do you remember feeling as you crossed the finish line and of the post-race happenings |
| JA | By the time I was rounding the corner and heading toward the finish at the Prudential Center I for the most part knew I was going to win. The truck with photographers was in front of me and I was getting reports from people as to where I was in the race. So for the last mile I knew I was going to win unless I fell to my knees. I looked down the street and the way the finish was set up there was a bank of photographers less than ten yards past the finish to capture the finish line photo. I crossed the finish line and immediately turned around and ran back up the street. I actually passed Tom Fleming in the opposite direction and he was running toward the finish line in second place. I have a picture on my wall that has my arms up high which was maybe 50 to 100 yards up the street. These were the days when they served beef stew in the Prudential Center after the race. I tried calling my wife and parents, couldn’t get hold of my wife, but did talk to my mother. Before I could call again, Jock Semple, the Boston Marathon Race Director, caught my eye and said, ‘Jon, collect call.’ Of course he was directing the Boston Marathon on a shoe string budget back in those days and that is no criticism of Jock as he was the one who kept the race going for many years. I remember sitting up higher than reporters and talking with them. |
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| GCR: | How was the treatment you received as one of the top amateur runners in 1973 compared to the present days of professionalism? |
| JA | I was staying at the Copley Plaza on my own. I rode the buses out with all of the other runners before the race. I didn’t receive any special treatment. Since it was a noon time start there was plenty of time to get out to Hopkinton. My dad paid for the trip. Amby Burfoot and a few other runners had some kind of apartment near the start so at least a half dozen of us stayed inside in the shade before the start. Of course we didn’t have to warm up much. After the race I partied with the Finnish Runners at the Lenox Hotel and Tom Fleming was there too. We had a good time. I had already met Olavi at a race in Puerto Rico in February of 1973. The Finnish community in the Boston area was supporting these runners who came across the Atlantic for the race. The next morning I woke up and took the subway to Logan Airport by myself and had to walk down the steps into the subway backwards as my legs were so sore. |
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| GCR: | Prior to your exploits in Boston you were best known for making the 1972 Olympic team in the 10,000 meters. How big of a goal was it of yours to qualify for the Olympics and what does it mean after nearly 40 years to be once and always an Olympian? |
| JA | My first goal was to qualify for the Olympic Trials because other than my third in the NCAA 6- mile I hadn’t done that much nationally. Then it became a goal to try to make the Olympic team. As far as being an Olympian, it isn’t like I won a Gold Medal or anything, but once you are an Olympian, that is something that no one can ever take away from you. What’s really fun now is that Dick Fosbury has become very active in a group called the World Olympians Organization and there will be a gathering point at the London Olympics where it will be fun to reconnect. |
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| GCR: | At the Munich Olympics you didn’t make it out of your qualifying heat for the Olympic 10,000 meter final. Was this disappointing or were you pleased to have given it your best effort? |
| JA | It was disappointing that I didn’t make it to the final. My recollection is that from the three heats they took the top five runners from each and the top five other times. I was in the third section and knew what time I had to run to make the final. That is the best section to be in for a long race that isn’t that tactical. I ended up forcing the pace and there are pictures taken by Rich Clarkson of me leading. When I forced the pace Miruts Yifter would pass me and then slow it down dramatically so I would take the lead back and force it again. When we got to the final 800 meters I didn’t have the kick I had in Eugene at the Olympic Trials. I finished eighth in my heat and missed the final by about eight seconds. The most positive thing I took from the race was that I did run my fastest time by about a second which remains as my personal best time in my running career. |
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| GCR: | The Munich Games were marred by the terrorist hostage taking and killings. Describe your memories of this tragedy and its effect on you, your teammates and others. |
| JA | My roommate, Steve Savage, and I were both done racing. We woke up that morning and found out there was something going on and could look over to the apartments where it was happening. Steve and I had already planned, along with representatives of Puma, our shoe supplier, to go out to a little retreat in the foothills of the Alps. We decided to get out of there and go ahead with our plans. We spent the day at this nice resort on a lake and while we were out by the pool we listened to armed forces radio to keep up with the news. When we got back to Munich that evening it was dark and we ended up riding the subway from downtown Munich to the Olympic Village. At the gate everyone had been stopped and there were several hundred athletes and coaches waiting to get into the village. I had no idea what time it was and didn’t have clue as to what was going on. There were young German soldiers with machine guns who weren’t letting anyone in. So we stood there for 45 minutes to an hour until all of a sudden no more than fifty yards from where we were the helicopters took off and we were let into the village. Those helicopters were going to the airfield where they tried to rescue the hostages and everything was blown up by the terrorists. |
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| GCR: | Do you have any great memories of your time in Munich with your roommate, Steve Savage, or some of your other United States distance runners or foreign athletes? What was the security like before and after the hostage drama? |
| JA | I remember going out on evening after our events had concluded where Steve and I must have jumped the fence or something and we went out and found a local bar and had a few beers. I don’t recall seeing any other athletes and don’t have a clue where we were. But I remember walking across fields. The security was virtually non-existent. A roommate of mine from college got into the village and got an actual athlete’s pass. He talked me into it and I gave him some kind of credential and he went to the line and ended up with a pass just like I did. Duncan McDonald and Don Kardong, who were not on the Olympic team, but who made team in future years, were in Europe to compete in other meets and were in the village with regularity. Steve and I also palled around with a 10,000 meter runner from Germany who spoke decent English. A few days after we had competed, Steve and I, our German friend and a couple of his buddies all ran the Munich Olympic Marathon course as a training run – just for fun! |
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| GCR: | Did you attend the Munich Opening or Closing ceremonies? |
| JA | I attended the Opening Ceremonies. There was beautiful weather throughout the Olympics until the Closing ceremonies as that was a gray, ugly day. It was kind of ironic and I just decided to get out of there as we had arranged to run some races in Italy and Brussels, Belgium. |
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| GCR: | The 1972 Olympic Trials 10,000 meters is memorable both for the stifling heat and your last lap kick to place third. What was your strategy to run your best in spite of 95 degree heat? |
| JA | I planned to go out slow and to run with Jeff Galloway and Jack Bachelor. I knew better than to go out with Frank Shorter, Tom Laris and the guys up front. |
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| GCR: | Of the main contenders for Olympic team, Frank Shorter led the lead group including Greg Fredericks, Gerry Lindgren and Tom Laris while Jeff Galloway, Jack Bachelor and you stayed a bit off the pace in the early miles of the race. What were you thinking and how did you feel as you apparently played a waiting game? |
| JA | I found out later the three Florida Track Club guys’ strategy was for Frank, the dominant runner, to get people sucked into going out too fast and then for Jeff and Jack to hang back and to pick them off. I knew Gerry wasn’t in good shape but his racing personality ensured he’d be up front. |
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| GCR: | During the middle miles of the race Fredericks and Lindgren dropped back from Shorter. Then Laris faded and was caught by Galloway and Bachelor after four and a half miles. As you watched what was transpiring ahead of you, were you formulating plans to make a push to catch those in front of you? |
| JA | I remember passing Tom Laris and moving into fourth place. I had gotten to know Tom when I was in the San Francisco Bay area as he lived down there. In the week leading up to the Trials race we had some meals together and did some running together. Tom patted me on the butt for encouragement when I went by him. Even though I felt like I was still learning the event, I remembered conversations I had had with other runners over a beer where we talked about what it means if you finish in fourth place. Tom Laris had been on the 1968 Olympic team and told me that ‘Fourth place is nothing!’ and that ‘No one will give up an Olympic spot to an alternate even if he is injured.’ So these thoughts stuck in my mind after I went past Tom. I was in fourth place and I told myself, ‘Fourth place is nothing!’ My whole thoughts were that it was time to run my ass off as it was ‘Olympic team or nothing!’ So I started running as hard as I could. I had no idea how far ahead of my Jeff and Jack were at that point and, of course, Shorter was well ahead of them. |
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| GCR: | Despite being 60 yards behind Jack Bachelor for the final spot on the Olympic team with a lap to go, you were able to find another gear, catch him on the home stretch and finish third. What combination of your tenacity, it being your hometown where your dad was mayor and the crowd cheering for you helped you to such a great finish? |
| JA | When I moved into fourth place the crowd had picked up on that fact and maybe sensed that I had enough time on that hot day to catch up with Galloway or Bachelor, though Jeff ended up getting well ahead of Jack. So during the last mile the crowd noise built upon itself. There had been articles in the local newspaper, the Register-Guard, about me making the final and how it was a great accomplishment for the hometown boy as it was unexpected to the masses, though I expected it. Herb Yaminaka, a long-time University of Oregon employee, described to me years after the fact that the clapping and noise followed me around the track. Somewhere in the last half mile it really got crazy in terms of noise. Once I got into the last lap and was running so much faster than Jack was the noise increased until with 220 yards to go it was just deafening. At that point the entire stadium erupted because they could see it was likely I was going to pass Jack. I ran the last lap about eight seconds faster than Jack as I ran 63 point something and he obviously was struggling. I passed him with about 50 yards to go. I couldn’t have done it anywhere else except here in Eugene. Everything was right – I ran pretty well on a hot day and had this phenomenal crowd experience. Bill Bowerman was quoted as saying it was an example of a crowd taking over an athlete’s mind. |
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| GCR: | How exciting was it to qualify for the Olympic team? What was the combination of tiredness and exhilaration? |
| JA | I wasn’t very tired (laughing heartily). You can imagine the adrenaline effect. It was entirely unexpected for me to come in third place. I still had on my radar screen that I would be running the Trials Marathon. |
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| GCR: | One of your fellow Olympic teammates and Oregonians was Steve Prefontaine who is larger than life due to his athletic achievements and early tragic death. Did you spend much training, travel and social time with Pre and what are some memories you would like to share? |
| JA | I didn’t train much with Pre as it would have been hard to keep up with him and my training was so different. We spent social time and travel time together. After the Olympics we both ran in a meet in Rome in the 1960 Olympic Stadium. I raced in Rieti and he may have also. Pre’s high school coach Walt McClure always talked about how there was one time in high school when I beat Pre to get a spot in the State track meet and that was one of several things in high school that lit a fire under Pre. He had expected to make it to State, but I finished in the third and final spot in our District meet. I guess he was pissed off enough that it added a little kindling to the fire, though he never mentioned it to me. |
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| GCR: | You were one of the pallbearers at Prefontaine’s funeral. How surreal was that entire scenario? |
| JA | It was my first experience with the death of someone I knew well. I wasn’t somebody who palled around with Pre, but we went out for beers and were in the same group of friends. I was at the party that night he died. Not having had the experience of having someone die that was young while I was young was surreal and something that I wasn’t as prepared to deal with like in later years after I had experienced death more times. |
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| GCR: | We’ve discussed two big highlights of your running career, but let’s go back to where it all started at Eugene Oregon’s Sheldon High School. How did you get started running and what were some of the highlights of your limited high school distance running? |
| JA | We were a skiing family, but my family was involved in the University of Oregon sports program where my dad had graduated. Dad was the head high jump judge at the three Olympic Trials in Eugene. We were and are family friends of the Bowermans, so I was around track and field in grade school and junior high school. I ran I the all-comers meets around here but never thought of myself as a track athlete. With our skiing background we started a ski team at my high school which I skied for all three years of high school. Before my senior year I decided to get in shape for skiing and started running about three miles a day for five days a week. I ran from my home to my high school and back. I ran an all-comers mile at one of the meets that Coach Bowerman had started at the P.E. field behind Hayward Field. I recall the first time I raced a mile after running for about three months it was somewhere between 5:10 and 5:15. So I kept running through the summer and got the idea that since our cross country team wasn’t too good and I was running that I might as well go out for cross country. By the second race I was the top guy on the team. I ran pretty well in cross country but didn’t make it to the State meet. I missed qualifying as an individual and there was a certain guy named Steve Prefontaine way up ahead of me. |
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| GCR: | How much impact did Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track coach, have on your indoctrination to training concepts at the beginning of your competitive distance running career? |
| JA | The winter of my senior year in high school I made a decision to run track so my dad said that I should go out and talk to Coach Bowerman and get some advice. I went to his home up above the river and vividly remember sitting at the Bowerman’s dining room table and talking with Bill about his philosophy and system of training. I got some notes from him but don’t have the original two week training pattern that he wrote out for me. It was my introduction to his ‘hard, easy method,’ ‘date pace’ and ‘goal pace.’ Bowerman believed that your ‘date pace’ was where you were currently and ‘goal pace’ was what you wanted to run at the championship meet at season’s end – that is it in a nutshell. So we learned pace and did interval workouts twice a week that included running at both paces. |
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| GCR: | What do you remember as the highlights of your one year of running track in high school? |
| JA | As the season progressed date pace got closer and closer to goal pace. That is one of the main principles of Bill’s program. I got pretty good and ran about a 9:34 two-mile in my first year of running though I wasn’t particularly quick. We ran dual meets against many high schools in the area. One funny instance occurred in a dual meet against Willamette High School when my team won every event except the 880 and the mile. Guess who ran the 880 and the mile? Me. Roll ahead to 1996 and I was in Dallas, Texas for the Cotton Bowl game with my wife and dad as Oregon was in the game. A guy came up to me who looked vaguely familiar and it was the guy who had beat me in the 880 around 30 years earlier. |
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| GCR: | You went across the country to Cornell for your academic and athletic pursuits. What led you to select Cornell? |
| JA | I went to Cornell mainly for academics. I liked running, but since I only raced competitively my senior year it wasn’t high on my radar. In a fashion I followed my brother east as he was two years older than me and went to M.I.T. Our parents both supported and encouraged us to get out and to see the world in our college years. I did progress pretty well at Cornell and have made the comment to others that there was always a carrot out in front of me that I reached and then could move toward the next goal. People ask me what I think would have happened if I went to the University of Oregon and I believe I might have got lost with all of their great runners. At Cornell we competed in Division One, but wasn’t like the competition in the SEC or Big Ten or Pac Ten conferences. There was an attitude at Cornell of supporting us in our athletic pursuits, but the team wasn’t full of athletes pointing toward national championships or the Olympics. |
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| GCR: | In Cross Country at Cornell, at the Heps Championships you were outside the top 20 as a freshman and improved to 15th place, All-Ivy League fifth place and Ivy League Champion over the next three years. What factors led to this consistent improvement? |
| JA | I did okay my freshman year in cross country but my running went downhill in track maybe due to ‘freshmenitis.’ When I got home that summer I was ready to transfer but in talking with my father he encouraged me to give it another year which I did. At home in the summer I did a lot of running and got more focused on it. I went back to Cornell in pretty good shape. I think the accumulation of training and miles took a while to kick in as it doesn’t just happen overnight. A runner can have talent but still has to build up the cardiovascular system. |
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| GCR: | You won the Ivy League Cross Country Championship by 24 seconds your senior year. Was there anyone close to you for any of the race or did you pull away early and just run your own race? |
| JA | We ran a lot of dual meets when I was at Cornell and a few weeks beforehand we went to Harvard and ran at Franklin Park in Boston where Tom Spengler just drilled me. I had an approach though to point specifically for the championship meets. I trained through some of the dual meets which weren’t as meaningful. I wasn’t completely rested or peaked for that race when Spengler beat me handily so as my coach, Jack Warner, told me years later I evidently said, ‘Don’t worry coach, I’ll beat him at the Heps.’ Sure enough I did as I was in peak form and it was one of those days where no one in that field was going to beat me. The Heps were at Van Courtland Park and one of the neatest things was that so many runners had raced there and knew what a time meant on that course. There is a big, wide flat area that goes into some rolling hills after about a mile and a half. And after about three miles I pulled away. I ran by myself for quite a way and felt great the entire time. You hit some days and others you don’t, but that was one of those days that I had it. |
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| GCR: | You ran very respectable at the NCAA Cross Country meet your junior and senior year finishing 59th and 36th respectively. How tough was the competition at that level and what do you recall from those races? |
| JA | It is an entirely different race moving up from a conference meet with 70 or 80 runners to over 300 runners at the NCAA meet. I qualified as an individual my sophomore year and wasn’t ready mentally as I was so nervous, though I learned from it. My junior year the meet was at Van Courtland Park and I thought I ran pretty well there. My senior year I had higher expectations because the year before I finished third in the NCAA 6-mile. That race was at Williamsburg and it just wasn’t my day. I couldn’t handle the fast early pace and I remember guys passing me toward the end. |
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| GCR: | Your first big honor on the national scene was when you finished third in the NCAA 6-mile your junior year. What were highlights of that race and what did it mean in your running career? |
| JA | Leading up to that race I was second in the Heps to Spengler in the 2-mile – in track he beat me every damn time I raced the guy! At the IC4As, which was a big meet back then, I was third in both the steeplechase and the 6-mile. They were on back-to-back days and I had a decent time in the 6-mile. Our track team at Cornell had a tradition of combining with the University of Pennsylvania and sending a team to England. I had qualified for this all-expense paid trip but I told my coach I wasn’t going as I was going to run the NCAAs. The team went to England and I went the other way to Des Moines, Iowa and had a real breakthrough with my third place. I felt fairly comfortable before the race – I remember sitting in the stands with some Harvard guys including Keith Colburn who was a year ahead of me. I knew some of the guys from Oregon just from coming home to train in the summer – Pre was there along with Roscoe Devine, Steve Savage and a number of others. This was helpful as I knew they put on their shoes just like I did. I don’t remember too much about the race except Bob Bertlsen from Ohio University winning and my getting passed by an Englishman, David Hindley, from BYU who finished second. That was big for me to get third and become an All-American. I had steady progression tom that point but that qualified as a ‘leap.’ It got me that summer into a running camp that the U.S. Olympic Committee sponsored here in Eugene which had top runners from all over the country. It gave me the feeling that I could run with these guys and I belonged. |
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| GCR: | You set Cornell records in the indoor and outdoor two-mile run and in the 3,000 steeplechase and we already discussed your success at the 6-mile distance. What was your favorite event on the track? |
| JA | Back then we ran a lot of two mile races and didn’t run the steeplechase or 6-mile until championship meets, so I was a guy who ran the two-mile. But if you look at results of the Heps indoor and outdoor two-mile I never won. Spengler beat me by about a yard in one and another close call in another. And then my senior year I got hurt with a stress fracture. |
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| GCR: | In the mid-1970s running was not a professional sport so you had to balance training with work. How difficult was this and did it have an effect on preparations for the 1976 Olympic Trials and your choice of concentrating on road racing versus track events? |
| JA | After a couple of years in the San Francisco bay area I moved back to Eugene. My dad was very supportive with paying my travel to races. Then I started to get some race invitations where they at least covered my expenses. I recall going to London, Ontario for the Springbank race a couple of times where they covered my travel costs. Back then we thought we were in hog heaven when a race invited us to run and paid our expenses. Maybe where I went wrong in retrospect is that I tried to do both the 10,000 meters and the marathon and wasn’t particularly successful at the 10,000 meters. Making the Olympics in the 10,000 meters kept me thinking I was still a track runner so I still focused on the track. In fact, after winning the Boston Marathon in 1973 I didn’t race it again for many years as I thought track was ‘where it’s at’ for me. The reason I didn’t run the Boston Marathon again for many years as it trashed track season when you run an April marathon. As I got older and the running boom hit I focused more on marathons and other road races. |
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| GCR: | Why didn’t you compete in the 1976 and 1980 Olympic Trials Marathons? |
| JA | I was injured in 1976 and I didn’t see any point in competing in 1980 since the U.S. wasn’t sending a team to the Olympics. The 1980 field was strong though since most of the top guys did race. |
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| GCR: | You set your personal best time of 2:12:08 at the 1980 Nike-OTC Marathon in Eugene. How thrilling was it to do so in your home town and at the same time to finish in a strong fourth place? |
| JA | I actually left some on the table that day as I really hit it. I probably wouldn’t have been able to break 2:11, but could have run a high 2:11. But that never bothered me – what’s the difference between 2:11:59 and 2:12:08 anyway? Not very much. |
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| GCR: | In June of 1981 you won the Antwerp Marathon in Belgium. How did you decide to put that race on your schedule and how did the race develop that led to your being victorious? |
| JA | Sometime in the mid-1970s distance runners started to get more invitations and to make some money. Marathon racing was booming so much that top racers were turning down invitations as we couldn’t run the distance too often. Bill Rodgers did better at that than I did. Deciding to race in Belgium had to do with my schedule as I was working, the course and the expected competition. I pulled away fairly early in the race and went on to win. |
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| GCR: | Six months later in December you faced top competitors including Sweden’s Erik Stahl and three-time champion Duncan McDonald in the Honolulu Marathon. How tough were they and what was the turning point that allowed you to gradually pull away with about 10 or 11 miles remaining en route to a 40 second win over McDonald? |
| JA | That was a Nike sponsored and Nike was booming, or what was considered booming at that time, though it is nothing like today. So they sent me out to Honolulu for a week with my family and everything was paid for so that was very cool. Stahl took off early but stayed within sight. I remember running by myself with just Stahl in front of me and Duncan was a short ways behind me. There was a loop and I passed Stahl midway through the race. After that I stayed in the lead and it was just a matter of maintaining my pace. |
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| GCR: | Describe your relationship with Nike and how you ended up wearing their shoes for much of your running career. |
| JA | The running boom that had hit after the 1972 Olympics kept building through the late 1970s and fortunately Nike came along around that time. My win in Boston in an international event was the first by an athlete wearing Nikes and I wore Nikes the rest of my running career. Before that I had worn the handmade shoes that Bill Bowerman had put together. |
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| GCR: | Are there any other marathons, shorter road races or track events that stand out for reasons such as a particularly hard effort or tough competition? |
| JA | There was a beach run in Seaside, Oregon in the mid-1970s that I’m unsure if they still hold. My peers were all running. Kenny Moore, who was one of my heroes as he was a bit older than me, was there. I had always looked up to him and enjoyed getting to know him better when we were both on the 1972 Olympic team. It was a 7.8 mile race that was a big deal back then. Kenny and I ran shoulder-to-shoulder for about three miles in the second half of the race. We were both running as hard as we could with less than a mile to go and Kenny said to me as he dropped back, ‘You can have it.’ There was some kind of great satisfaction in that. I’ve told him that several times since then as we cross paths often. That was memorable as I broke him. As I mentioned before, the Heps cross country race where I handled Tom Spengler still comes to mind. Another race was one headed up by Jack Lydick in the San Francisco Bay area, who is battling cancer now, when he led the West Valley Track Club. He was a mid-2:20s marathon guy. I ran a 10-mile WVTC race within six months after returning from the 1972 Olympics in Vallejo, California. I ran under 48 minutes and it was one of those days where no one was going to beat me as I felt so good the whole time. Jack had this publication called the NorCal Running Review which I subscribed to even though I had moved back to Eugene. He made a remark in his publication to the effect that the course must have been mismeasured when I ran that fast. It gets under my skin even to this day as I knew I had really done it that day. Jack has had reunions in the Bay area and 30-40 guys from my era like Tom Laris have shown up. |
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| GCR: | One final question related to marathons. Were you a part of the big 100th Boston Marathon celebration in 1996? |
| JA | They had a get-together that was really cool and a neat experience. What they did was to bring back as many former champions as possible. There was one Canadian guy in a wheel chair who was eighty plus years old. There were many recent champions who were no longer competing. One of the days they closed the ball room in the Copley Plaza to the media and all of the past champions were invited to be in the ball room. I don’t recall meeting any particular people but there were just so many champions there. |
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| GCR: | Who were some of the competitors in college and afterward you respected and enjoyed racing the most based on their talent, drive and competitiveness? |
| JA | I pretty well had Tom Fleming’s number, but I respected him. I don’t think either of us was gifted with great physical talent but we both worked really hard. He always wanted to race hard and run fast. In my college years a teammate I respected, Phil Ritzen, had limited talent, but he worked hard. In fact, he worked too hard as he never rested. |
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| GCR: | Your represented the United States at the 1977 World Cross Country Championships finishing with a very strong 10th place. How tough was it competing with all of the world’s top runners from the mile to the marathon and what do you recall of that race? |
| JA | I kind of snuck on the team as there wasn’t much of an emphasis that year by many of the top U.S. runners. Frank Shorter decided he didn’t want to compete, maybe because there wasn’t any money and there was a bit for some of the road or track races. That race in Dusseldorf was quite an experience and was done at a hippodrome, which is a horse race steeplechase course that was all grass surfaces with barriers. If someone now would tell me they were tenth at the World Cross Country Championships I would say, ‘Wow!’ Most people wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but I had a good day and was tough. With several hundred runners I got out and somehow held myself together. |
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| GCR: | What was your training mileage in high school and college? |
| JA | I would have no idea how many miles I was running in high school that first year but I’m guessing I got up to at least five mile runs, maybe longer, since I was around running. Since Coach Bowerman had written out a training program for me it did include a long Sunday run which he told me I had to take if I wanted to be a distance runner. By the time I was in college I was following Coach Bowerman’s pattern which my college coach learned to accept as he saw I wanted to be a good runner. My college coach and I had some different philosophies, I respect him to this day and he is still a friend. We didn’t butt heads but he was much more interval oriented while I followed the Bowerman ‘hard, easy’ approach. When I came home after my lousy freshman track season and decided I was going to give this ‘running thing’ my best shot my mileage beefed up. Those were high mileage days back then and I was pushing 100 mile weeks. I also started doing 20-mile Sunday runs. Some guys on my college team thought I was nuts. |
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| GCR: | When you became primarily a marathon racer, how much did your mileage increase, how often did you do long runs and how far did you typically go? |
| JA | I tried to string together high mileage weeks, but eventually I moved to a two week cycle where there was a higher mileage week that might be as high as 110 miles if everything went right and then I would do 85 or 90 miles the next week. This is where I ended up using Bowerman’s influence heavily. He had said that there is something odd about the seven day week since we had three hard days and four easy days. This didn’t guarantee illness and injury would stay away, but it helped avoid the bane of any athlete. The week gave us one extra easy day to add to the ‘hard, easy’ training. As I got out of college for the marathon my training usually included one day of track intervals, one day of hard fartlek of about 15 miles in length if I was really hitting it hard and one very long run. I did long runs every week which also followed a two week cycle. When I was building to a marathon and was two to three months out from the race one week was a build up week with higher mileage and a harder paced long run and the next week I backed off to 18 to 20 miles easy. Before the 1973 Boston Marathon I did do my first 30-mile long run. It was not fun. I ran that long a few times and my body and brain got fried when I went past the marathon distance, but I forced myself through it. I did try to go hard even on those 30-milers. |
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| GCR: | Through the years, based on whether you were training for cros s country, track or marathon racing, what were some of your favorite track workouts and road sessions? |
| JA | For intervals I really liked to do what I called ‘660 step ups.’ Of course everything was in yards back then. It was a ladder where I did 660, 440, 330, 220 and 100 yards. I would play around with it. Sometimes I would go down the ladder and do it as many as five or six times. Other times I would go down the ladder and then back up to the 660. There was variety in distance and pace as the 660s might be at 66 or 68 second pace for 440 yards while the 110s could be 15 seconds depending on where I was in my training. I didn’t particularly enjoy long intervals on the track such as mile repeats – I did them, but didn’t enjoy them. |
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| GCR: | How important is the mental part of training and racing and developing the ability to endure increasing levels of discomfort? |
| JA | The mind is at least half of the equation if not more. A runner has to want to do this and that comes from the brain. |
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| GCR: | What have been the positive effects of the discipline and tenacity learned from running on other aspects of your life? |
| JA | I’d like to think I still have some discipline as I’ve gotten older and it is as much a part of my personality as anything else. A person tends to have or not have discipline whether or not they are an athlete. I guess I was fortunate to find running and to apply the discipline that was taught to me particularly by my father. I don’t think running brought discipline to me. I think that my running reinforced the discipline that was already inside me. In order to succeed there also has to be desire which is different than discipline. |
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| GCR: | You had a chance in the 1970s to train with other top distance runners in Eugene. What do you feel are the benefits of training with others? |
| JA | Looking back I wish I had had more training partners. In Eugene, Oregon there were lots of good runners when I was training, but I had a job and other runners had jobs and families so trying to do workouts together was very difficult. When I had the opportunity to do an interval workout with another person it was remarkable how different it felt. I could go much faster without more apparent effort. |
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| GCR: | With the luxury of hindsight, is there anything you could have done differently in training and racing focus that may have resulted in better performances? |
| JA | I haven’t gotten into specifics with top runners who are training here in Eugene now, but one aspect of what some do, especially those under Mark Rowland, is to rest up for an extremely hard workout. You can never completely orchestrate a workout to be like a race, but it is like tapering for a workout. I’ve seen some of that with Russell Brown, the miler, and would like to look at his training log and delve into it. I’ve noted some of these incredibly intense workouts and maybe that could have benefitted me if they had been added to my training regimen. |
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| GCR: | What did each of your coaches do to contribute to your success as a person and a racer? |
| JA | Coach Bowerman had a great influence on me. When I ran down in the San Francisco Bay area he set my training plan. In the late 1970s after he had retired from Oregon we spent the better part of track season with him meeting me once a week and putting me through a track workout which was really fun. I sort of charted my own path in college after I really committed to give it a go at running for my sophomore year. When I got past my prime and looked back I appreciated my college coach, Jack Warner, more. He took over the program at Cornell when it was at a down point and rebuilt it. He also did this in the late 1960s and early 1970s which were extremely volatile times on campus. He was a Marine and as I reflect back he was a steadying influence. I’m sure he had to bite his tongue at times and when he went home at night his wife had to listen to him talk about these ‘young punks who were raising hell’ that he had to deal with. I appreciated Coach Warner later in life. |
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| GCR: | With your success on the track, roads and cross country, which is your favorite and why? |
| JA | When I think recently of watching my son who runs cross country for the high school and doesn’t compete in track, it reminds me that cross country is really fun. We went down to the San Francisco area for a Stanford-Oregon football game and it happened that the NCAA Regional Cross Country meet was going on that morning. So we went out to watch and it was nostalgic. |
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| GCR: | Similarly, you raced over your career at distances ranging from two miles to 5,000 meters to 10,000 meters to the marathon. Which was your favorite road racing distance and why? |
| JA | I don’t know if you can call marathon racing a favorite as ‘favorite’ just isn’t the right word for the last six miles! Anything from 5k up to 10 miles were great distances for me to run. |
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| GCR: | Who are some of your favorite distance runners among the scores you have met? |
| JA | I mentioned my buddy, Steve Savage, who stopped running not long after the 1972 Olympics. We don’t cross paths enough even though we live in the same town. Oregon Coach Vin Lannana has had some reunions so it’s fun to see the guys. I enjoy seeing them all as they are a cast of characters for sure. |
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| GCR: | Is there any one runner, living or dead, with which you would love to chat with on a training run and why? |
| JA | Ron Clarke. I have never met the man but he was a hero when I started reading about running and following the sport. He obviously trained very hard and he was like Pre in that he wanted to run fast. I understand the racing mentality, but there is a place for those who want to test the limits and to run fast. It’s interesting that the OTC Elite middle distance group coach, Mark Rowland, talks about running fast and racing as there is a distinction. There have been plenty of guys over the years that could run fast and Ron Clarke was one of them, but when it came down to the Olympic Game he didn’t quite come through. My mentality, especially on the track, was to run fast. I hate to this day watching guys jog the first three laps of a mile or first two-and-a-half laps of a 1,500 meter race and then crank it up and run 52 seconds for the last 400 meters. |
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| GCR: | What is your current health and fitness regimen? |
| JA | I’m a bit heavier and try to get out and jog two or three times a week. I run mostly on the treadmill. It’s not that I like the treadmill, but I have some slight lower leg issues that flare up more often when I run on pavement. The treadmill has some bounce and give that the roads don’t have. I don’t have any serious injuries – just some aches and pains. The Achilles’ tendon surgeries I had in 1978 and 1979, which were removals of ‘runner’s bumps’ and which extended my running career have never been a problem. I have a passion for golf and try to stay somewhat in shape so I can keep up with my teenage son on the ski slopes. I’m not totally out of shape for a guy who is 62 years old, but I’m not a fitness freak and I don’t have a real regimen. |
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| GCR: | What dreams inspire you and goals drive you with respect to your health, personal life and professional career with your accumulated wisdom of experience and years? |
| JA | It’s hard to believe I’m entering what some call the ‘Golden Years.’ My marriage is my second and I kind of made a mess of my first one where we split up when our kids were young, so that is a focus and a goal to see fatherhood all the way through. I run a small business which provides information about forest products which has 15 employees and my goal is to somehow find a succession that keeps it independent rather than selling it to some larger corporation that messes it up. If I have to maintain ownership in retirement and keep a little more distance from it, I will. |
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| GCR: | Are there any major lessons you have learned during your life from growing up in Eugene, your collegiate experience, the discipline of running and sharing your knowledge, your professional life and adversity you have encountered that you would like to share with my readers? |
| JA | I remember a gentleman I met named Phil who ran the Great Hawaiian Foot Race and who said, ‘This is not a dress rehearsal.’ This is kind of a cliché but it means that when an opportunity arises we have to grab it and I believe that is completely true. As I’ve gotten older I recall what my father, who is a member of what Tom Brokaw calls ‘The Greatest Generation,’ did. He fought during the war in Europe and not long after the war he travelled the world including to Nepal where he went to Mount Everest base camp and then higher up on K2. Afterward he put the war behind him and got involved in civic government and involved in our state. My dad built a nice small business and rather than pursue the dollar after he reached a certain level of financial wherewithal he lived life. Our family does qualify as affluent and my father ended up in an affluent position but he didn’t have any desire to make ten or twenty million dollars to live the kind of life which he wanted to live. Life to him was more about experiences and he had a lot of great experiences. When I think of a philosophy of life, what is in me as much as anything is what I saw from the example set by my father that life is more about experiences than possessions. |
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| | Inside Stuff |
| Hobbies/Interests | I do some crazy things. I keep a daily rain gauge at my house and have done that for 15 years. I have a collection of ball markers from my golf travels. I go to Scotland almost every year to play golf, have done so for about 15 years and love that as a getaway. Golf is definitely a hobby. I have a good collection of golf books and also found a collection of running books I accumulated many years ago. I forgot I had the collection of running books as the boxes haven’t been opened up for 25 years |
| Nicknames | I’m not really much for nicknames. One is my initials, ‘JPA.’ One of my college roommates thought it had a bit of a ring to it. There are probably other nicknames I don’t know of from people who don’t like me (laughing) |
| Favorite movies | Oliver |
| Favorite TV shows | I don’t watch television for entertainment. I do watch the news |
| Favorite songs | I go through phases. My 16 year old son has been listening to Bob Marley recently and I like that music. When I was young I liked the Beatles. One of my favorite lesser known groups was Moby Grape and I still like listening to their music |
| Favorite books | A recent one is ‘The Greatest Generation’ which was extremely fun to read. As far as classic books, ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ |
| First car | A gray Volkswagen bug bought for $400 in San Mateo, California. I blew it up in Dunsmere, California driving it from San Francisco to Eugene |
| Current car | I drive a Lexus Sedan which is a wonderful car to drive but with what I call ‘TMT’ – too much technology as it has too many bells and whistles |
| First Job | My first job was at a golf course. I was one of the summertime flunkies on a greens crew. Back then it wasn’t riding a mower for me. I walked behind a smaller mower and mowed the greens and tees. The older guys rode the large mowers and did the fairways During one summer I worked for a tire company here in Eugene. I never worked harder for $1.50 an hour. It was nonstop work taking tires off and putting them on cars. The same family had a farm and I helped bring in the hay when it was ready to be harvested |
| Family, Children and Siblings | My wife is Terri. I got it right the second time around as she is very supportive and fun. We were blessed with our boy, who we didn’t expect, and it has been cool. I got another chance. Our son Drew is 16 and in the process of finding himself. He fancies himself as a lacrosse player. I try to get him to run more because he is a midfielder. He ran cross country but hasn’t quite latched onto running though he has some talent. He is way faster than I ever was but he has to decide if he wishes to pursue it more. My older children are both adopted. I have not heard from or seen my son, Clark, for several years. He has had some serious drug and alcohol problems. He is very talented musically as he is gifted with music inside him. My daughter, Erica, has really grown up and matured in recent years and is working for the IMF in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut and then earned her Master’s degree in International Studies from NYU |
| Pets | My wife and Drew love animals and we have three dogs – a Newfoundland, a Golden Retriever and a French Bulldog. They are very big, big and little. Our ‘Newfy’ is about 150 pounds. He is like a St. Bernard except that he is a water dog. We just moved from a home with five acres south of town to a home in Eugene about three blocks from Hayward Field so we are shrinking from four cats to one or two. We don’t know how the other cats will make the move as they are fairly wild – we’ll try, but we don’t know what is going to happen |
| Favorite breakfast | I don’t eat breakfast much anymore but I like a good old ham and Swiss cheese omelet |
| Favorite meal | I like Italian food |
| Favorite beverages | I’m a beer drinker and love all of the microbrews |
| Junk food you can't resist | As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to stay away from it, but I love a big bowl of ice cream. It used to be fuel for me when I was running much more |
| Early running memories | The first All-Comer meet, the time I lost the 880 in that high school dual meet where our team won about every event and the District meet when I ran against Pre |
| Running heroes | Since I grew up in Eugene, Oregon and my dad was supporting Coach Bowerman, the heroes of my day were Oregon runners Dyrol Burleson, Jim Grelle and Jim Bailey. Dyrol was from Cosgrove, Oregon while Jim Greille was from Portland, Oregon and they were two of Bowerman’s early top milers at the national and international level. Jim Bailey came here from Australia, was a bit older and was the first person to run a sub-4:00 mile on American soil |
| Greatest running moment | Winning the Boston Marathon has to be it |
| Worst running moment | Dropping out in one race at Hayward Field. It’s the only race I ever dropped out of. That was a real low spot |
| Oddest thing a coach said to you | I’m sure Coach Bowerman said some really strange things to me, but I can’t remember any of them. He loved to pull your leg and make you think. You may have read that Coach Bowerman peed on a lot of people’s legs in the shower over the years as a practical joke, but he never got me! |
| Childhood dreams | There was a time when I wanted to be an Olympic skier, but anything in athletics was part of my dreams as I was a big sports fan |
| Funny memories | I can’t think of anything that stands out as my aging brain has buried them |
| Favorite places to travel | Scotland, where I have had many travels. I’ve traveled a lot In the U.S. and, people can dump on politics these days, but when I travel to Washington, D.C., it is pretty special. I like Boston a lot obviously. I like it because of running success there and since when my brother was at M.I.T. and I was at Cornell I used to go down to Boston to visit. It’s a neat city partly for all of its colleges and universities |
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