Bob Anderson Interview

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Bob Anderson — August, 2022

Bob Anderson founded Distance Running News during his high school senior year of 1966-67. Several years later the publication changed its name to Runner’s World and grew to 400,000 subscribers and 2,500,000 readers before he sold it to Rodale in 1984. Runner’s World was the most important running publication during the running boom. Contributing writers included Kenny Moore, Joe Henderson, Joan Ullyot, George Sheehan, Don Kardong, Amby Burfoot and Hal Higdon. Major interviewees included Jim Ryun, George Young, Ron Hill, Jack Foster, Rod Dixon, Derek Clayton, Gerry Lindgren, Steve Prefontaine, Jerome Drayton, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Mary Decker and Zola Budd. Bob also founded Ujena Swimwear and branched out to add the Ujena Jam Talent Search Week and the Ujena Fit Club. The ideas kept coming as he founded Anderson World Books, created the Double Race Series in 2012, started the My Best Runs website and developed the Kenyan Athletics Training Academy in Thika, Kenya. Bob has been running for over sixty years since starting in 1962 and running a 4:41 mile, 2:08.5 half mile and finishing in the top ten at the Kansas State Cross Country Championships as a prep. His focus on operating and growing Runner’s World and Ujena didn’t allow Bob time to race to his potential during his peak years. He stepped up his training in his late forties and ran 17:06 for 5k and a 1:19 half marathon at age 49, a 10k in 35:24 at age 51 and a 59:17 ten-miler at age 53. To celebrate fifty years of running in 2012, Bob ran fifty races that totaled 350.8 miles with a 6:59 average pace. In the early 1980s, he was honored by President Reagan as one of ten outstanding young men in America for his contributions to health and fitness. Bob is a renowned fashion photographer of over 600 models at more than 350 locations around the world. He lives in Los Altos, California with his wife, Catherine, and their Schnoodle, 'Daisy.' Bob was extremely generous to spend nearly three hours on the telephone for this interview.

GCR:

THE BIG PICTURE AND RUNNER’S WORLD We are part of a small group of ardent runners who have been lacing up our shoes and running for decades. When you started running sixty years ago in 1962, could you have imagined how running would have contributed to and shaped your life and how the running scene would grow?

I did start running on February 16, 1962, and I still have that logged on a piece of paper which I saved. I quickly became very addicted to running. It was a very positive addiction. I wanted my life to be consumed with the sport I loved. I must admit, I had no idea that we would be experiencing tens of thousands of runners at the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon and millions of dollars of prize money. In those days, a runner could be paid anything and be classified as a professional athlete and unable to compete in the Olympic Games. There have been so many changes, but the one thing that is much different when I started running is that we see so many people out on the street, of all ages, in running gear. Back in 1962 my dad was in his forties, and he would have felt so uncomfortable in a pair of running shorts. Though he did some running in the Navy, he would have felt peculiar being outside in running shorts. I knew running was going to take off, but not to this degree.

GCR:

There are dreamers in life and there are doers. My tagline is ‘A Goal is a Dream with a Plan.’ What is it about you, your personality and your upbringing that led to you founding Distance Running News which became Runner’s World, founding Ujena Swimwear and Anderson World Books, creating Double Racing, founding My Best Runs and so much more that takes what you can think and turns these ideas into reality?

One thing I have always believed is that we only live once. There are so many things I have wanted to do. In fact, most ideas have come about when I have been out on a run. I would be thinking about something, like in 1972 when I was about twenty-five years old, I thought it would be fun to take a group to Munich to the Olympic Games. I knew that Track and Field News took groups to running events. My idea was to do some advertisements to see if anyone was interested in joining us on a Runner’s World Olympic Tour. A friend of mine said, ‘Bob, what do you know about the tour business? How can you take a group of people to Germany for the Olympic Games and provide tickets, housing, transportation and everything else?’ I said, ‘You learn how to do it and you just do it.’ If you want to do something, just do it. That’s been the whole basis of what I have done. Early on, before I started Distance Running News, I thought it would be cool to know some World Record holders. It would be cool to go to the Olympic Games. I realized I was a fair runner, but certainly not an Olympic-caliber runner. So, rather than being there as a runner, I could be there in the press box. Derek Clayton, World Record holder in the marathon for twelve years, became our advertising and sales director. We are very good friends. I could never run at all at his level. But, as we became friends, we went out on training runs together. All these thoughts that I’ve had and almost everything I have wanted to do, I have done. I wrote a script for a movie, made five movies, photographed girls in bikinis and travelled all over the world as a photographer, ran the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon.

GCR:

How did you decide to start Distance Running News while you were still in high school, what was your goal as far as running news content and growing your circulation and subscribers and can you take us through its infancy as a publication?

As a runner, at age fifteen I ran a 2:08.5 for 880 yards and won my Junior Olympic age group by outkicking a guy who was one year older than me. Very quickly, I became interested in running a marathon, believe it or not. The marathon I wanted to run was the Boston Marathon. I wasn’t a great student, but I was very interested in running a marathon. I was subscribing to Track and Field News and to Browning Ross’ Long Distance Log. I got a few names and addresses, and one was Ted Corbitt. He was an ultramarathoner and Olympian. I wrote him and told him I was seventeen years old, was interested in running the Boston Marathon and asked him for training ideas and addresses of other runners who could help me. When I came home from school one day, there was a letter from Ted Corbitt. What a super guy to write back to a seventeen-year-old and in that letter, he told me what I should do. He said that running the Boston marathon at my age was too young. He told me how to build up my running and he gave me more names and addresses. I started writing to others like Fred Wilt and Percy Cerutty and they wrote me back. I had an idea to start the Marathon Statistics Bureau. I liked to put names to things I’m doing. I started collecting race results as there were a few marathons back in those days. I wrote results on note cards. I also collected information from Ted Corbitt on ultra-racing. On a school bus in October of 1965, a friend and I were going to a cross country meet where Jim Ryun was running. Of course, he would run very far ahead of us. Out of the blue, I said to my friend, Dave, who ran a 1:53 half mile a year later, ‘I have all this information and know there must be other guys like you and me who would like to have it. I want to start a magazine.’ One of the things that was exciting was coming home, getting mail, and corresponding with all these people. I thought for a minute and said, ‘I think I’m going to call it Distance Running News. Dave, what do you think?’ He said, ‘Hey, let’s do it.’ We put together some articles and had some other stories we had already received from runners with whom had corresponded. Hal Higdon sent an article about the road to Brighton, the 52-mile race from London to Brighton. This was a first-class article. I put together the first issue three months later. Some people have said it was mimeographed, but I correct them. It was printed in a print shop. It was twenty-eight pages that were five-and-three-quarter inches by eight-and-a-half inches, so half the size of standard paper. I had columns. There was a photo on the cover. I printed it with a masthead, and it looked like a little magazine. I also had written New Balance and Blue Ribbon Sports and they had little ads for ten dollars. I printed and mailed copies to the people who sent me material. Postage back then was only four cents. Recipients loved it. The other publications I subscribed to mostly carried race results and I read the results three or four times while I worked at Kiddie World and had breaks. I asked for a subscription price of one dollar per year. I received five dollars from many people who said one dollar was for the subscription and the other four dollars were to help because they loved what I was doing. Every day when I came home from school, there were letters in my mailbox for subscriptions and from people wanting to help out. At that moment in time, there was a pocket of runners in Boston and one in San Francisco with the Bay-to-Breakers and Dipsea races. Los Angeles had runners. These pockets of runners were isolated and needed a voice to bring them together to share the running scenes in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, England and Australia. The reception was unbelievable. I had printed a thousand copies and, in the scope of things to come, that was small potatoes. But, when you are seventeen, just turning eighteen when the first issue came out, and you bring in five hundred and thirty-two dollars of revenue, in 1966 that was huge. It was never about revenue, but revenue pays the bills, revenue pays the printer, revenue pays the postage.

GCR:

What were some of the key reasons you were able to grow from a twice-yearly, black and white publication with less than a thousand subscribers in 1967 to a monthly, color magazine with 50,000 copies circulated monthly in 1975? How much did Frank Shorter winning the 1972 Olympic Marathon add to the excitement about running in the U.S. and the expansion of your readership?

The first thing that started in the 1960s was when President John F. Kennedy started the 'Fifty Mile Hike Challenge.' Americans started thinking about fitness. Back in those times, America wasn’t fit, and that challenge started a new movement. Then when Kenneth Cooper came out with his book, ‘Aerobics,’ which encouraged jogging, a lot of people started jogging. That book may have become a best seller. So, many people were jogging and testing the waters. In the meantime, we can’t forget about Billy Mills in 1964 when he won the Olympic 10,000 meters and everyone was glued to their black-and-white television sets. Peter Snell and Jim Ryun were increasing interest in running. Sports Illustrated was including running coverage in their magazine. Distance Running News brought people together with eight hundred copies. The next year we went to four issues and were up to fifteen hundred copies and it grew from there. It truly took off when Frank Shorter won the Olympic Marathon in Munich. That nailed it as his Gold Medal got a lot of press. That truly had people thinking about distance running as a sport.

GCR:

How did adding Joe Henderson as chief editor, and your move to California add to Runners World’s ability to expand your content and attract new readers?

I wasn’t book smart in school, but I was street smart. By the late 1960s, I could write well, but I needed someone to express what I wanted in the magazine. Joe Henderson was working for Track and Field News in 1969 when I asked him if he was interested in moving to Manhattan, Kansas to work for us. He said I should come out to California and check that area out. We were approaching ten thousand in circulation, so we were growing. In Manhattan, Kansas, I did have Arnie Richardson, with the Road Runners Club of America, helping me out. Basically, I went out to California and met Joe in October of 1969. I also met Pat Beal and Walter Stack. They told me there was at least a race a month out there. They took me to Rockland, California and Bruce Dern, who I knew as an actor, was running in this 50k race. I met him, which was unbelievable. He amazed me because he was a solid runner. After that experience, I said, ‘Okay. I’m moving out here.’ I put everything in a ten-foot truck. I had a Mustang and couldn’t drive both it and the truck, so I put an ad in the paper and a guy responded and drove the truck. Interestingly, six years later we held a Halloween party and had a band. The bearded drummer comes up to me and says, ‘Remember me? I’m the guy who drove the truck.’ He told me he stayed and had been there ever since that trip. Imagine the odds of that.

GCR:

We’ve talked about the first half of the 1970s. What I remember from the last half of the 1970s when I was in college was Bill Rodgers winning four times each at the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon from 1975 to 1980. How much was Bill Rodgers responsible for the growth of Runner’s World as the biggest star at the marathon distance was a U.S. athlete?

One of the things that I felt was needed as Runner’s World grew in circulation was to focus on guys like Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar. I made sure that we regularly gave attention to these runners. Even though Frank Shorter made the cover of Sports Illustrated and the public knew of him, the strategy at Runner’s World, that some people were calling ‘The Bible of the Sport,’ was to ensure that everybody knew these names. Almost every issue we had an article about Frank or Bill and, as more top women came on the scene, we ran articles about women, who now were running much longer than a half mile. We also included more content and regular reporting on master’s running. Bill Rodgers and his great personality helped everything to work together. The next thing you know, we were up to a hundred thousand monthly magazines in circulation. We just kept growing and it was hard to stay on top of it.

GCR:

What did you do as readership grew and your subscription base increased in the late 1970s and early 1980s to find a balance between content aimed at hard-core, competitive runners and stories for casual runners and joggers looking for a wide variety of articles on topics such as running your first 5k, nutrition and stretching?

It was a challenge. At one point, and we did receive some criticism for this, we started having two covers. One cover for the serious runner might have Bill Rodgers winning the Boston Marathon or New York City Marathon. Another cover would be for the news stands as around 1979 or 1980 I felt that we had to be on newsstands. It was difficult to accumulate names and addresses of people who may be interested in the magazine. As we were growing, our expenses were also growing. We probably should have done an eighty-page magazine to keep our costs down, but we were doing a 112-page magazine because there was so much content to cover. We also did regional editions to include results for various parts of the country. We added additional publications like the Weekly Racing Report and The Marathoner. But the controversial item was the two covers as I might put a movie star like Donna Mills, who was a good runner, on the newsstand cover. Paul Newman’s wife ran the Boston Marathon and we had her on the cover one month. Donna Mills and Paul Newman’s wife were on the newsstand cover, while subscribers had the cover with a more serious runner. The idea was that the book, ‘Aerobics,’ got people into jogging. I wanted to move people from jogging into racing. To me, racing is very addictive. That’s the real charge. I never call myself a jogger, no matter how slow I’m running. I’m a runner. I wanted to help people who were only joggers to move up and experience what running a race was like. It could be a fun race like ‘Bay-to -Breakers’ and then beyond. We all started at some point. It was a critical balance and some of the more serious runners wrote in, said what we did was terrible and asked why we put a pretty woman on the magazine cover. They asked if this was just to sell magazines. Quite honestly, the answer was 'yes.' Of course, we wanted to sell magazines. I had a payroll of around fifty employees. Even though I had no experience when I started the magazine, I had to think like a businessman. I didn’t start companies to make money but, the idea was, if you do it well, the money will come. But you need the money to pay the bills.

GCR:

I always looked forward to special issues such as the Annual Shoe issue and Annual Marathon Rankings. How much did special issues spur increased attention and readership?

The Annual Shoe issue became very significant for advertising sales. The most crucial factor of the Annual Shoe issue is that shoes became dramatically better. In a gutsy move, we had a number one shoe and number two shoe and ranked maybe fifty shoes. A number one rating in the Runner’s World Annual Shoe issue was estimated by sources to have a value of three-and-a-half million dollars of running shoe revenue. There was a fine balance and we had to make sure we never crossed the line because we had two Starting Line Sports stores and a mail order business. When we had finalized the number one shoe, until the magazine was released, we never, ever tried to order that shoe. As soon as the magazine was issued, we tried everything we could do to get the top-rated shoes for our stores, but they sold out quickly and nobody could get them. At one point back then, Nike was spending over a million dollars a year with us on advertising. Brooks might have been spending seven hundred thousand dollars. Wouldn’t you think that, if we were being encouraged to give a rating, that we would have rated a Nike shoe number one? One year Brooks had the number one training shoe and Nike had the number one racing shoe. Nike had the number two training shoe. At that time, Nike said they thought something wasn’t right and they were treated unfairly. They pulled out all advertising. The next thing I know, the Federal Trade Commission was involved, and it made the news. There were stories that Bob Anderson was being investigated and they suggested that I may be taking bribes. It was on the front page of the Mercury News out here in California that Bob Anderson and Runner’s World were being investigated. That Annual Shoe issue sold more than we had ever sold with that publicity. I was involved in legal depositions, we lost all the advertising from Nike, our number one advertiser, and there were lawsuits going back and forth. That is the ugly part of the story. The bottom line is, after the FTC did all that investigating, they found nothing. A year later, when they found nothing, on page three of the Mercury News there was a little note, ‘The FTC has concluded their investigation of Bob Anderson and Runner’s World and found no wrongdoing.’ This is how the news media works.

GCR:

Since you mentioned conducting stories of great runners, who were some of your favorite interviewees and were there some that truly helped establish Distance Running News and Runner’s World in the early years?

One thing we did in every issue was to have an interview. In the beginning, Hal Higdon was a great writer and had remarkable stories about his running. We had an exceptional story on Walter Stack. Many people remember him as a bricklayer who was a runner. But, at age sixty, Walt ran around a 3:30 marathon. Jim Ryun, George Young, Ron Hill, Jack Foster, Rod Dixon, Derek Clayton, and Gerry Lindgren were excellent stories. Many people don’t realize how great a runner that Gerry was. There was some controversy that Derek’s World Record marathon in Belgium may have been on a short course, but it was on cobblestones. Steve Prefontaine – how could anybody not put Pre on any such list? Jerome Drayton, from Canada, had lots of information and interesting things to say. Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers were obviously great. Later interviews with Mary Decker and Zola Budd were memorable.

GCR:

What can you say about the writing contributions of people like Kenny Moore, Joan Ullyot, George Sheehan, Amby Burfoot, Hal Higdon and numerous others that reads like a Hall of Fame of writers for the sport of distance running?

George Sheehan became a phenomenon. For a few years we organized a National Running Week, and he was a magnet. When he walked into a room, he was surrounded by people who wanted to meet him and talk to him. We put together an amazing staff. Around that time, Jim Fixx wrote ‘The Complete Book of Running.’ Running had almost become a cult. That word is usually negative, but there was a positive group of runners. We had outstanding writers like Kenny Moore, Joe Henderson, Hal Higdon, George Sheehan and Joan Ullyot who had so much they wanted to say to the world about running. Hal Higdon was a full-time journalist when we met, and he gave us his early articles because he wanted to get the word out about running. Kenny Moore and Eric Seagal were big-time writers who wrote pieces for us. Hunter Thomas wrote for us. These writers were usually paid a certain amount by the various publications they wrote for, but they volunteered with us to author stories without being paid and said they just wanted to have their articles in Runner’s World. It was the same with photography. Mark Sherman, over in England, who is still a very well-known photographer, contributed. People wanted to be part of the Runner’s World.

GCR:

After 18 years, you sold Runner’s World to Rodale. How was it letting go of your baby after eighteen years, sort of like when we let go of our children after eighteen years and they go to college, join the military or start a career?

By the time I sold the magazine, we were up to four hundred thousand subscribers and two-and-a-half million readers per issue. That was a very traumatic situation. As much as I throw myself into what I do, it does take its toll. I would get into the office at six o’clock in the morning and pull myself away at 8:00 p.m. On Fridays, I would stop for the day at six o’clock or six-thirty. I would keep the weekends free unless there was a trade show or race that I needed to attend. It took its toll on my marriage. I have two great kids, Michael and Lisa, but my wife got to the point where she did not like the lifestyle. She liked the monetary aspect, but not the rest and she filed for a divorce. She had a good attorney and she only wanted cash, and a lot of cash. We had other magazines and had published a hundred books. We had 350 employees. The only way the divorce could be settled, and I had no options I could see, was to sell the magazine. Since I had to sell Runner’s World, there were two important things for me. I wanted to only sell to a company that would keep it going and, hopefully, improve it. I also wanted my employees to be taken care of. I didn’t want them on the street. As soon as the news was out that Runner’s World was for sale, I talked with many companies. ABC Publishing was one. Some companies were telling me who I would have to fire. I met with Rodale Press, who had magazines like Prevention and Organic Gardening. We agreed upon a number and that they would take care of payroll for six months or until an employee found a job. So, everyone was guaranteed six months pay and benefits. They offered positions to a few people, but few wanted to move to Rodale’s office in Pennsylvania. That was a challenging time, but there was a positive effect. I started Distance Running News because I am a runner and I found myself morphing to a weekend runner. I was at the office all day and didn’t have much time for running. I do have enough natural ability that I could run only weekends and run a five-mile race at 5:30 pace per mile in my late twenties.

GCR:

How cool was it to be invited to the White House and honored by President Ronald Reagan for your contributions to health and fitness and did you have any memorable conversations with the President?

Oh, my gosh – that has to be one of my life highlights. I was selected to be one of the ten outstanding young men in America, which are men under the age of thirty-five. One of the other honorees was Lee Atwater, who was the Special Assistant to President Reagan. There was also a city mayor and a football player - a very nice group of guys. I met Lee Atwater and, when I got back home from that event, I called him and said, ‘Lee, I know that President Reagan was a runner. I’m wondering if we could set up an interview?’ Casey Conrad was the founder of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and he had given me some background about the President. Lee said he would check, and he called back in an hour. ‘Can you be here on Friday?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ I was through my divorce and brought along my girlfriend at the time, Karen Landau. We were sitting outside the Oval Office and there were FBI agents there. I was so excited being there that it was unbelievable. An FBI agent walks up and says, ‘Are you Bob Anderson? I’ve been reading Runner’s World and I’m training for a marathon. Can I get your autograph?’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘Here I am sitting outside the office of the President and an FBI agent is asking for my autograph.’ It was so exciting. Then we went into the Oval Office, presented President Reagan with a sweatsuit and took cool photos. We sat down and were talking about when he was in college on the relay team. He loved running and even suggested that he had read Runner’s World. The whole experience was so exciting. I can remember thinking back to when it started on a school bus with Distance Running News and now I was sitting in the Oval Office doing an interview with President Reagan and being honored for contributing to fitness in America.

GCR:

RUNNING CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Before we go forward to the years after you sold Runner’s World, let’s go back to your formative years as a runner. Were you an active child as a youth and early teen who played in sports and how did you start running?

Before I was fifteen years old, I did attempt to play baseball on a team. The only position that worked for me was the bench. I had four brothers and we played catch. We would call it ‘Spec.’ We wouldn’t throw the ball directly to each other. We would throw it so one of us had to run full speed, put out our glove and reach for the ball. ‘Spec’ was short for spectacular. In basketball or baseball, I wasn’t good, and I don’t like to do anything where I’m not good. When we were talking at the dinner table, my dad was talking about when he was in the Navy and running in combat boots. On February 16th, 1962, I went out for my first one-mile run. I couldn’t finish. At that point, I was a non-runner. Running a mile was not possible. I didn’t realize that my breathing would calm down later. I did start running a few miles here and there. There was a six hundred yard run at Broadmore Junior High and I ran around 1:35. I placed second. This guy beat me at the line by inches. That was so exciting. That was my first race. I absolutely loved it. I started training more and doing longer runs. I was not a good student and, for some reason, am not very book smart and good at taking tests. But running gave me a charge to the point that I became completely obsessed with running right from the beginning.

GCR:

What did your high school coach, Coach McGuire, do to shape your mind to have the mindset of a racer and what did you do in training as a novice runner?

Coach McGuire was unbelievable. He made us believe that we could do anything. He would tell us to not feel sorry for ourselves. Once, after I had been running and was in decent shape, we did a workout of forty-eight quarter miles. We did eight sets of six quarters and started each one every two minutes. We got an extra minute of rest between sets. Roger Bruening, Dave Zimmerman, me and the other guys were averaging sixty-eight to seventy-two seconds for every quarter mile. Seventy-two seconds was the slowest. Imagine that we did forty-eight of them.

GCR:

You mentioned running a 2:08.5 half mile when you were fifteen years old. What were your high school racing highlights in cross-country, and were you enjoying the competitiveness of distance running?

Our senior year, our first cross-country meet was a triangular meet against two top schools. Back in those days, cross country was about two miles. Some courses might be 1.9 miles, and some might be 2.1 miles. There was a course at Shawnee Mission West High School that we ran the fall of 1965 during my senior year. We were primed and set to go. Five of us on my team were shoulder to shoulder and ahead of everybody else. I kicked into high gear and led our pack. All five of us finished within three seconds, there were a couple other runners, and then our sixth and seventh guys were up there. I was in about third place and saw the finish line, kicked and won. At our regional meet, we were racing the real studs. Our training had been perfect, and we were set to go. I was up front battling a guy named Jerome and a runner from Washington High School and the three of us were battling. My teammates were close behind. These two guys had always beaten me. I moved to the lead, and it was a different world. We were around a mile and a quarter into the two-mile race, and it was uncharted territory for me in a race of this importance. They were right behind me. They moved up and I got elbowed. It did feel like a different world. We were racing back and forth, and I ended up third. Those two guys got me, but not by much, and we won the Regionals. We were primed for State. We had an easy week of training before State. My legs at Regionals were ready to go, but at State felt like they were full of lactic acid. In hindsight, at least for me, the week was too light. We had been training hard the entire season and my body was used to that. I hadn’t done enough challenging work the week before State. We basically jogged the whole week. I ended up okay in ninth place but was hoping to do better.

GCR:

Top ten in State is great in cross country your senior year. What were track season highlights as you aimed to end your high school running strongly?

I did end up running a 4:41 mile but, considering that I ran under ten minutes for two miles in cross country, I should have done better. We were running on cinders which didn’t help. But my best friend, Dave Zimmerman did run 1:53 for the half mile. He was about third or fourth on the cross-country team but was by far our best 880-yard runner. I liked the atmosphere of track season but did not do that well. In that day and age there weren’t road races in the summer, so the longest I had run in a race was two miles until the Junior Olympics three-mile. After the track season there was the one AAU meet, and I ran sixteen something in the three-mile. At that point, if there were 5k and 10k road races or even a half marathon, I could have run good times. But those races didn’t exist.

GCR:

Since you were running and racing in Kansas, what was it like having your fellow high school Kansan, Jim Ryun run a sub-four-minute mile, go to the Olympics and run another sub-four at the Kansas State meet?

I ran some cross-country races where Jim Ryun won by an unbelievable margin. It was so exciting. And his coach, Bob Timmons, was great. Jim was such a talented runner. At that age, I started imagining now it would be in his shoes and doing his workouts. Jim Ryun, being from Wichita East High School in Kansas, was incredible. It was amazing to have such a talented runner who ran sub-four and got down to 3:55 against the legendary Peter Snell.

GCR:

What was your running experience like in college at Kansas State?

In high school I received one on one attention during cross country. The focus from my coaches was less on track as we were part of the track team. I went to Kansas State, and I realized that everybody on the team was capable of running sub-ten minutes for two miles. Attention went to the stars like Conrad Nightingale in the steeplechase. I stayed on the team for a while, but it wasn’t fun. I’m not taking anything away from our coaches, but it wasn’t that enjoyable. What was enjoyable was when I ran ten miles on the road with a bunch of guys or by myself. That was still enjoyable.

GCR:

How was your transition to road racing and your first marathon?

One of the things I was hungry for that didn’t exist too much were road races. And I wasn’t bold enough then to organize a race myself. The total number of road races in Kansas around 1969 were three or four or five in the entire year. There was a marathon in western Kansas that Arnie Richards knew about. So, we went out to this marathon, which was my first marathon. While I was getting ready for the marathon, I was working at a print shop where Dean Copenhauer gave me a key so I could work at night. I grabbed dinner at a bus stop because I was living by myself in a little basement apartment. I would leave work, run a bit, eat, come back and work until three, four or five o’clock in the morning and be on my feet the whole time. I was training only fifteen miles a week. When we got to the marathon there were maybe twenty-five runners in the field. This marathon was straight out and straight back. There were water stops every five miles that also had salt tablets. At the two-mile mark I was completely dead. My legs were completely gone, and I had twenty-four miles to go. I did hang in there and stated doing telephone pole running. I would look ahead and run to a certain telephone pole and walk to the next one. I finally finished slightly over four hours and it was a challenge to have finished thirteen miles out and thirteen miles back on Kansas roads. I met some nice people including some who were already subscribing to Distance Running News.

GCR:

Did you do anything different and get improved results for your next marathon?

My second marathon was the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in 1968. In the meantime, we had done an article in Distance Running News about hitting the wall at twenty miles. I was doing more training, but we were printing articles on marathon training, and I wasn’t following the advice due to lack of time. I drove from Manhattan, Kansas to Hurley, Wisconsin for the Paavo Nurmi Marathon. I was running along at 2:47 pace and felt like I could run better. I saw the twenty-mile mark ahead and was still on 2:47 pace. I thought I could even pick up the pace. I hit the twenty-mile mark and within yards completely fell apart. There was an ambulance cruising the course and they kept asking me, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a ride?’ I must have looked very bad as they asked me that four or five times. I finished in 3:31. When I said I fell apart, I fell apart. Even though I was in better shape, my longest run was, at most, a fifteen miler. This was in the days before electrolyte drinks and energy gels. I ran out of fuel in the marathon. If they had had what there was when I ran the Boston Marathon in 2013 it would have been different. At Boston, every mile was a fluid station. I drank Gatorade one mile and water the next mile and I never fell apart. The last half mile was tough, and my pace was slow, but I held together. At Paavo Nurmi, if I had been fueled right, could I have kept at 2:47 pace? I don’t know, but 2:55 at least.

GCR:

Over the next decade, as you worked hard with Distance Running News and Runner’s World and focused on growing that publication, did you still run marathons or were you racing shorter distances?

I have only run eleven marathons. Even though I started the magazine because I wanted to be a marathoner, I realized very quickly that my best distance was 25k or 30k, even though there aren’t many races of that length. That would be my best distance. We started the fun run program, and every week had a fun run at Foothill College. We had over three hundred sites around the world that were fun run sites. We had races that we alternated – a six-mile course, five-mile course, four-and-a-quarter mile course and a mile around the campus. That was my racing because there was a race every weekend. I was able to run 5:20 or 5:30 pace for five or six miles on the road. There weren’t 5ks or 10ks or certified courses. And since they were fun runs, we wouldn’t even record the times. We had a timer yelling out times at the finish. Each of us heard our time and went to a table where we received a certificate. Certain times would earn a gold certificate, or a different color certificate and we wrote in our time. The fun runs had no entry fees and no awards. The course distances were accurate, but not certified. But these weren’t official races.

GCR:	When you did start running marathons, what kind of performances were you running?
BA	In the midst of this time, I ran the New York City Marathon in three-thirty-something. I ran the Honolulu Marathon in 3:16. I got blisters in Honolulu, and it was also raining. It took me six weeks to recover. My feet looked like someone took a meat cleaver and chopped the bottoms of my feet. That was the only time I had bad blisters like that.

GCR:

After selling Runner’s World, you were in your late thirties. Did you ramp up your training and what were racing highlights as you became a master’s runner?

After selling Runner’s World, for about nine years, I trained, but selling the magazine was so traumatic, that I focused on our new company Ujena. We did Ujena Jam promotions that included a 5k race and I won every 5k except for one. I did some fun runs at Foothill College, but spent those nine years concentrating on Ujena, learning the apparel business, putting together catalogs and making that work. I didn’t truly start racing again until I was about forty-eight years old. At age forty-nine, I ran 17:06 for 5k which would equate to a much better marathon time. Basically, I’m not a marathoner.

GCR:

You had some stellar performances in your fifties that were comparable to the top distance runners in the country. Can you tell us a bit about the training you did to prepare for your 35:24 for 10k at age fifty-one and 59:17 for ten miles at age fifty-three and any memories of those races?

Just before I turned fifty, I ran a 1:19 half marathon when I was forty-nine years old. I had sub-six-minute pace going until the last three miles. I was training forty-two miles a week. When I was running from my house, I had fourteen different courses. To get ready for racing season, I went on a one-hundred-day program. Every day I decided on which course I would run, and I had to run faster than the time before. All the courses were odd distances measured in my car. For example, I knew that the gate at Rancho San Antonio Park was precisely two point four miles from my house. Since I knew what I ran on a course a week or two earlier, I had to run faster this time. My coach was my watch. I would be sprinting to the end and maybe beat my time by four seconds. The next day I picked another course. The shortest course was one-point-eight miles, and I purposely had a couple courses that I ran easier, maybe 7:15 mile pace. That would be an easier day, and I might improve my time to 7:10 pace the next time on that course, but not 6:30 pace. Those were strictly road courses and sharpened me up.

GCR:

Did you do any tempo training or speed workouts on the track?

I would also do a progressive track workout that I called a ‘step up. I did five times one mile. Each time I ran it on the track I achieved the goal of the next mile having to be faster. The rest in between was whatever I needed so I could run the next mile faster. So, at age fifty-three, as I prepared for the ten-mile race, I started off at 5:47, a little faster than I wanted, but it felt okay. After about three minutes rest I was ready for the next one. I ran 5:39 and hadn’t wanted to be quite that fast with three more to go. Finally, I was ready for the next one. ‘Ready, go.’ I ran 5:27. I was thinking, ‘Oh. Oh. I’ve blown it. What am I doing?’ This was my mindset. But I had to do it. I got on the starting line for the fourth mile but wasn’t quite ready. When you are doing a workout without a coach, you get to the line, but back off for a few seconds. ‘Go!’ The fourth mile was 5:19. I thought, ‘How in the world am I going to do better than this?’ I’m getting ready for the fifth one and calculating what I had to do each lap. I was on the line. ‘No, no, no.’ I backed off again. I’m thinking, ‘Bob, just relax. Go!’ At the half mile I was slow by a couple seconds. ‘Bob, do it. You’ve never done the mile step up workout without improving every mile.’ When I was into the fourth lap, I told myself, ‘I am going to do this!’ I finished in 5:17. Two weeks later I ran the 59:17 for ten miles. I hit the first three miles at 5:40 pace. It’s a great feeling to be clipping the miles away and with controlled breathing. That feeling of racing at that kind of pace is electric. I may have been able to break fifty-nine minutes if I fueled better. My last mile was 5:59.

GCR:

One of your toughest race goals was completion of your own personal fifty-week challenge. What was the genesis of this and how did it play out as the weeks went by and you worked to execute your action plan?

My son and I were sitting in the car, driving after a race, and started thinking about doing something in celebrating my fifty years of running. And, just so you know, my son is as addicted to running as I am. We stopped and were talking as we were having a hamburger at a favorite restaurant. I said to him, ‘I need to do something special for celebrating fifty years of running.’ I had some success and had run races that turned out well, but nothing very special. A lot of my ideas come quickly. I wondered what it would be like to run a race every weekend for an entire year, not just a month. Many challenges people do are amazing like when Michael Wardian ran across the United States. We were trying to think about doing something that would be significant, at least to us. We thought about doing a fifty-race challenge. Since many people had done this, we wanted to do something different and include time. The question was, ‘What would be something at my age to celebrate fifty years of running that could be significant to us?’ We decided the average pace should be seven minutes per mile. A 5k every weekend would be somewhat simple, so we figured we should average a 10k every weekend. We finalized the challenge as fifty races and three hundred miles of racing. Two weekends during the year we wouldn’t race. I like having rules so, if we started a race, we had to finish no matter what. The idea was, if we blew one race, that was it. So, that was the fifty-race challenge. My son was doing work in video production and had the idea that we should film this effort and that is where ‘A Long Run: The Movie’ came about. It was an unbelievable situation because each week I was at the starting line and knew if I fell apart, I would blow the whole deal. When I ran Falmouth, the humidity of around eighty-five percent on top of seventy-five degrees was tough. At the America’s Finest Half Marathon in San Diego, I was at the ten-mile mark and running seven ten pace. Of course, if I ran a half marathon at this pace, I had to make up for it with a 5k at 6:35 pace. Then I hit this hill and was falling apart. This was race number thirty-five or so and I had about fifteen races to go. One side of my brain was saying, ‘Bob, you have to walk. You are in bad shape.’ But the other side of my brain was saying, 'Yes, Bob, but if you walk it’s over because you will lose so much time.' Those last three miles were terrible. I ended up running over 1:40, I think a 1:41. I lost six minutes more those last few miles. I did have some races approaching where I thought I might make up some time, and I did. At the end, I was averaging a few seconds over seven-minute pace for forty-nine races. I ran a two-mile in 12:19, made up the time, averaged 6:59 for the fifty races and the year was over. What an amazing experience having my wife, Catherine, my son, Michael, my business partner, Waitman, and my brother, Barry, at most of these races. I flew out to the Ted Corbitt 15k Classic in Central Park to celebrate the guy who wrote me when I started Distance Running News. On that trip I met up with George Hirsch, publisher of ‘The Runner.’ What an amazing year!

GCR:

You didn’t race the Boston Marathon until 2013 when you turned in a very respectable 3:32:17 at age sixty-five. What do you remember of the course, the crowds and the experience and how sad was it that was also the year of the terrorist bombing?

Before we went to Falmouth in 2012, we visited the Boston Marathon office. There were trophies and a library which even included back issues of Runner’s World. I had been to the Boston Marathon many times. In the 1970s, before there was an Expo, we decided to do something at the Copley Plaza because we thought runners should have something to do the day before the race. We rented the ballroom at the Copley Plaza and had our Runner’s World writers there – Joe Henderson, George Sheehan and Amby Burfoot. We brought back issues of the magazine. We had presentations. We packed the ballroom. Everyone loved it. I had been at the Boston Marathon at least ten times doing promotions, but it was so hectic that I never ran the race. I would just do the fun run. I decided to prepare for a marathon because the other ten times I raced a marathon I wasn’t prepared and always fell apart. My son and I ran a half marathon course every weekend. I planned to do two long runs, but only did one. I wish I had done the second one. We ran twenty-two miles on a training run through the hills and Mike and I were primed. Right off the bat in the race I was thinking, ‘This is an aided course where records don’t count? There were some hills.’ We all hear about Heartbreak Hill, but not the hills before that. Oh my gosh – the crowds were cheering, and we all felt like rock stars. We were clipping along and wanted to run eight-minute pace. Mike’s stomach started bothering him about nine miles and he backed off. I was feeling good and kept going. I did not fall apart until a mile to go, but my last mile was my worst. I was planning to run 3:30 and was close at 3:32:17. My Garmin watch registered that I ran 26.42 miles. We started in the back. I hadn’t qualified for the race, so I started in the back with the charity runners. There was a lady I know who started with me and, when I looked at the finish results, I passed seventeen thousand runners. I was running along, tucked in behind people, and sometimes they would just stop. Running that race was an incredible experience and I felt the best I ever felt after a marathon. My wife, Catherine, was filming from the second floor of a building right at the finish line. I had tried to contact her before the start so she would know when I started and when to expect me at the finish. That was also a year where the runner tracking wasn’t working well so she didn’t know where I was in the race. So, she was at the finish waiting to do video and waiting to take still shots. She never saw me finish. She walked down to the street and did see me, and we chatted. She asked about Michael and decided to go back to our hotel. I walked down the chute and then the first bomb went off. I was about one block away from the explosion. I was trying to find Michael. I didn’t have a cell phone with me. Then the second bomb went off and people were running. What a scene that was. I still couldn’t find Mike. I later found out that the second-floor windows where Catherine had been standing were blown out. When she walked to me, she walked by the trash can where one of the bombs was left. Michael did finish about two minutes before the first bomb went off, so he wasn’t impacted. But I didn’t know this and couldn’t find him. I went back to the hotel. One thing about the United States, when we activate, we activate. There were already police at the hotel. Catherine and I went up to our room, but still had no word about Michael or where he was. We put the television on, and the news people were discussing what had happened. The phone rang and they asked if there was anyone in our room who we didn’t now and there wasn’t. The phone rang a second time a bit later, ‘Dad, it’s me.’ Oh my gosh. Imagine that I didn’t know where he was. I rushed downstairs, we embraced and were crying. The hotel personnel wouldn’t let Mike up to our room because he didn’t have a key. What happened with the bombing was very tragic. It’s like bombing a church. People’s lives were taken. After the fact, as horrible as all this was, the Boston Marathon is the most exciting single race I have ever done. After the event, you feel like a rock star in Boston.

GCR:

OTHER VENTURES In the mid-1980s you founded Ujena Swimwear and Swimwear Illustrated magazine, and this branched out over the years to add The Ujena Jam Talent Search Week and the Ujena Fit Club. How much time and energy have these ventures required and how exciting was it to go in a different direction?

Starting Ujena and doing the magazine, Swimwear Illustrated, were exciting. At one time, the magazine was the third fastest selling magazine on the news stand. We sold 147,000 copies of one issue on the newsstand. Runner’s World did better with only one issue, the Olympic issue. But the normal sales for Runner’s World on the newsstand were 75,000 to 80,000 copies. Learning manufacturing meant buying sewing machines and cutting tables. I had always been a photographer and had taken photos for Runner’s World. I absolutely love photography. It can be fashion photography, landscapes or sports photography. The Ujena Fit Club site has a place to log in all your races. If you go there and put in my name, you will see over a hundred of my races. If you check the age group ratings, I believe my 59:17 ten-mile is my best performance at eighty-four percent or so.

GCR:

You are a top-notch photographer who has photographed hundreds and hundreds of models at locations all over the world. How amazing has it been to be able to travel to the most beautiful places on the planet and are there certain locations and models that stand out in your memories?

There were models like Patricia Ford, April Wayne and the list goes on and on. We travelled to Jamaica, Barbados, Paris, Australia, Hawaii, Cabo, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Monaco and all over the world. We found models over the years who used running as part of their fitness routine. What people don’t generally know about models is most women who look great in swimwear don’t just wake up in the morning and that’s the way they look. They are involved in fitness. It was interesting to have a product, Ujena swimwear, and that we designed the product. We had one suit, the Yellow Twist, one of our original suits, that generated over a million dollars in sales. We sold almost twenty thousand of those swimsuits. We did special suits like the Diamond Head Chamois bikini that we introduced in 1984. It’s a more expensive suit that we still sell today. We sold one this week. We were travelling, doing photography and started the Ujena Jam. We also introduced the Ujena Fitness Challenge that was on the beach. The women had to stop at stations to do pushups, jumping jack and lunges. Of course, they ran between the stations and did a swim in the swimming pool. At the end they ran a 5k. We had events like this to make it interesting and fun. We had a fun costume party. We had a ‘Mother of the Year’ award to recognize one of our models who had at least one child. We had a ‘Miss Deaf’ competition as we had models who were deaf. We produced a Power Aerobics event with twenty models on stage. They had to stay in their small area and do high kicks, lunges and the like. Every minute we eliminated one person who was showing the least amount of energy. We got down to the last two who were running in pace, doing jumping jacks and whatever they could do in their five feet by five feet square. That was an exciting competition. We had television crews film the event. Ujena is at a much different scale today, but at its peak had 350 employees, which was as large as Runner’s World. At one point we had forty-two Ujena stores around the country and a big mail order business. We moved to the internet. I used my knowledge in publishing and my contacts to make Swimwear Illustrated a success. It was easy to get that magazine on the newsstand because I dealt with the same distribution company and people. I did have to learn the business of manufacturing. The best way is to hire experts and we brought in good people. We set up a factory, but it was before wages in northern California went off the charts. When we had a factory with sixty sewers and other employees back in the 1980s, the wages were five fifty an hour. With hourly wages and workers’ compensation insurance, we are now at twenty dollars an hour. So, we opened a factory in Mexico. It was exciting, we did big events, and we got a lot of exposure. It was exciting to have an idea and to make it work.

GCR:

For those who haven’t heard of it, can you elaborate on the race series you founded in 2012 called the Double Race Series?

My friend and I were out on a run and were thinking that we should do something different. We were talking about triathlons, and I figured I would drown in the swim and my balance wasn’t what it used to be on the bike. One thing I told my friend that I liked at all-comers track meets was running the mile and then doubling and doing the two-mile. They were individual races with a break in between where it was cool to hang around and talk with other runners. Most of the time at all-comers meets, we would run our races and then leave since there were no awards. One thing led to another, and I said, ‘Why don’t we do something new and call it double racing, but the difference would be that the mile time and two-mile time would be added together for your total time.’ There would be time in between, but a runner would have to decide how hard to run in the first race. Our major event now is a double road race that totals 15k. The first race is a 10k and the second race is a 5k that starts an hour and forty-five minutes after the start of the 10k. The break must be long enough for the slower runners in the 10k. We had one woman, ninety-years old, who barely finished the 10k in time to start the 5k, but she did and had a three-minute break. I figured there would be a lot of strategy involved. If a runner was ten seconds behind in the first race, he knew he had to run eleven seconds faster than the leader to win the race. A good friend, Bill Dunn, a good master’s runner said, ‘Why don’t you use a yellow jersey, so we know who the leader is?’ So, we introduced the yellow jersey. We started the Double Road Race Federation. It is a tough event. Even though we had thirteen hundred runners in our first race in Pleasanton, we found it is much tougher than running one race. Many people have trouble with the 5k coming up which is after the 10k and a break and then feeling strong for a second race. Entrants either love the concept or it’s a one-shot deal. I love it. We have the Golden Gate 8k Double Race which is a 5k and a 3k. In December is the Palo Alto standard 10k and 5k double. We’ve done double races in Japan. We’ve done them in Kenya, where we also have a training academy. We’ve had double races in Indonesia. Since the unofficial start in 2010 we’ve done about a hundred fifty events. The first two were in Mexico in 2010 and 2011. We brought it to the United States in 2012 and that was when it truly started. The World Record for the double 15k is Julius with a 29:17 for the 10k leg and then a fourteen flat for the 5k. We did a double half marathon which is basically a 15k and 6k at about 7,000 feet altitude in Nyahururu, Kenya in 2015. The half marathon double was completed in about one hour and thirty seconds – incredible! The guy with the yellow jersey ended up second overall. He won the 15k by a few seconds and then another guy beat him by enough in the 6k to be the overall winner. The Double Road Race Federation is going strong and double racing is going strong. We attract a few hundred runners. Its like what has happened with ultraraces. Once people realize it is a real event, they race. Some serious runners have told me it is a gimmick, but it’s not at all. I love it and not just because it was my idea. We are keeping it going and expanding it on a regular basis in Kenya. It is a unique event and we have had some tremendous performances.

GCR:	How did My Best Runs start and how has it evolved? Has putting out over two thousand Running News daily columns expanded your depth and breadth of knowledge beyond what you could have envisioned?
BA	My Best Runs has over a million unique visitors annually. We update the running news daily. We want to continue promoting running. It isn’t a break-even proposition, but it keeps us out there and it is good for running. There are many great running websites and I like to think this is one of them. My Best Runs is one of the sponsors of the Double Road Race Federation.

GCR:

You briefly mentioned your training academy in Kenya. Will you expand on this?

We have the Kenyan Athletics Training Academy in Thika, Kenya. We have fourteen athletes training with us. We conduct a monthly time trial. The winning time recently at a similar altitude to Denver, Colorado is low twenty-nine minutes. We had one athlete start with us a year ago who had a best time of thirty-six minutes. A couple of months ago he ran 30:04. We are setting up farms to grow fruits and vegetables like bananas, mangoes, avocado, corn, beans, cabbages and more to fund the academy and to increase the participants’ work skills.

GCR:

WRAP UP AND FINAL THOUGHTS What are the major differences, both good and bad, in distance running when you started in 1962 and present day?

The major difference is when the sport went professional. Clearly, that was very good. Good runners can now make a living from the sport. Running is now recognized as a fitness activity by millions of people around the world. Years ago, there was a concern that if you ran too hard, maybe you would die. The technology aspect is very different. Shoe technology keeps improving. I can’t imagine that one day it will be legal to be running on springs or innovative technology beyond where we are at present. In general, I like technology improvements. I like being able to go on a run, come back, and see where I ran, my splits and my heart rate. New runners take that for granted. We didn’t have that and now we do, and I love that. I believe most changes over the years have been very, very good.

GCR:

What is your current running and training regimen

For the last year-and-a-half, I’m getting in sixty miles per week. Half or slightly more is walking, and I do count walking. One time I ran the Fontana Half Marathon, which is a down hill race and my quads were trashed. I ran around an hour and twenty-five minutes. The next day, even walking was hard. Now, walking helps. I’m seventy-four years old and a friend and I ran 10k a few days ago at an average of 8:19 pace and talked the entire way. I know I can run a 10k under fifty minutes. My day is not complete without a run. Some days I will run for a step count of a hundred, walk a bit and run for another hundred strides. When I do that, I might be running at 7:45 pace or 7:30 pace. One thing I like to do when I get in at least sixty miles a week is to be up front that part is walking, but by design.

GCR:

What are the major lessons you have learned during your life from your youth, the discipline of running, achieving life balance and any adversity you have faced that you would like to share with my readers

The most important thought is if you want to do something, then do it. If you love writing and you get it down, the bigger thrill is to publish. It can be on the internet or a physical book. Don’t just talk about your ideas but do them. That is the full package. If you want to go to the Olympic Games and bring people along on tour packages, then do that. If you want to start a swimwear company, start it. If you want to start an academy in Kenya or create a special race, make it happen. Instead of waiting for someone else to do what you are thinking about, do it yourself. Since we only live once, we should think of the things we want to achieve in life and plan to do them. I might be seventy-four years old now, but I have many things going and there is still a lot more that I am going to achieve. Why? Because it will be cool. I have had people come up to me and tell me they were going to do a running magazine, but they didn’t. I wouldn’t be rude, but would think to myself, ‘Why didn’t you?’ Everyone can have ideas but to make the ideas come to life is exciting. To me that is like winning a Gold Medal at the Olympics, even though that would be beyond excitement. At the same time, be realistic. If all I did when I was younger was to train and figure out how to avoid injuries, maybe I could have run thirty-one minutes for 10k instead of my lifetime best, which I ran as a master runner, of 35:24. What is thirty-one minutes in the big picture? At the same time, publishing a magazine that ends up with two-and-a-half million readers is to me like winning a Gold Medal. I couldn’t have won a Gold Medal through my athletic skills, so how else could I win my Gold Medal? Maybe my Gold Medal was two-and-a-half million readers of Runner’s World. But the real Gold Medal that I will share with you is a letter I received that is like many letters that were sent to me. A woman wrote, ‘Bob, I want to thank you for publishing Runner’s World. I was at my grocery store and bought a copy of Runner’s World. I hadn’t heard about it before. My husband was very overweight, and he read it. He started running. Bob, I want to thank you for saving my husband’s life.’ That is my Gold Medal.

	Inside Stuff
Hobbies/Interests	I still have my stamp collection. I was trying to figure out how I could turn that into a business because I love collecting stamps. Also, I love movies. We have a movie collection of DVDs and video cassettes and probably have five thousand movies. I like to go extreme in what I do. Over a period of time, my wife and I were playing backgammon and logged the games. We had a goal to play two thousand backgammon games. We might have played as many as six games in one day. We kept plugging away. They weren’t on the computer, but on a live board. My main hobbies are running and photography. I love taking pictures of flowers and trees from an artistic view. Every time I drive through Stanford University, which is almost every weekend, there is so much to photograph there
Nicknames	‘Bobby.’ When someone called me ‘Bobby,’ I knew there was an issue
Favorite movies	My all-time favorite has to be ‘The Godfather.’ In my top five is ‘Rear Window’ by Alfred Hitchcock. ‘Casablanca’ had a simple story but is up there. Even though I love the new Tom Cruise movie sequel to ‘Top Gun,’ it’s not in my top five. Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest’ and ‘Godfather II’ would probably complete my top five. Dramas are my favorite genre
Favorite TV shows	: Most of my television watching was when I was a kid. We don’t own a TV set and haven’t for quite a few years. ‘Mission Impossible,’ ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ were favorites. As a kid, I watched a lot of TV
Favorite music	I like a variety of music. Jazz is one favorite type. With all the music that is out there, I have to admit that ‘The Beatles’ and ‘The Rolling Stones’ are older sounds, but I still like them. I didn’t get into rap
Favorite books	I’ve liked a lot of different books. I liked ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and other Ernest Hemingway books. I like business books such as anything written by Warren Buffet. More recently, I haven’t been reading as much as I used to
First car	One of my first cars was a 1966 Mustang convertible
In-between cars	There was a time that I owned a Porsche, a Mercedes, a Rolls Royce - I went crazy! Then I realized that cars were just transportation
Current car	I drive a 2008 Jeep Cherokee
First Jobs	My first jobs were baby sitting and mowing lawns. Then I got a job at Kiddie World. I had to run there because it was three miles from the house, so it was a good workout. At Kiddie World I drove the train and some other rides and that was good. Later, I got a better job with a landscape business. The next to last job I had was at Kansas State. I needed to earn some money to pay the forty-two dollars a month for my basement apartment. I worked on a moving crew and that lasted four days. Lifting pianos wasn’t my thing. After that I worked for a printer and did layup. That was in 1969. That was my last outside job. After that, I never worked for anyone else
Family	There were five boys in my family, four brothers and me. Unfortunately, two have passed away recently. There were my mom and dad and the five of us who were very competitive which I think helped sow some seeds for later in life. I was second oldest. My older brother, Bill, passed away in January 2021. He was ninth on the running streak list. He had been running at least a mile a day for over forty-six years. My wife, Catherine, and I love each other so much. We’ve been together for twenty-six years. It took us only twenty years, but we got married in Central Park in a treehouse in 2016. We love Central Park. I have two great kids from my first wife, Lisa and Michael. Lisa is going to be fifty in August and Michael is forty-seven. Lisa ran the Big Sur Marathon. Mike has run several marathons and runs all the time. We have four great grandkids – not great-grandkids – but grandkids who are great (laughing). They are all very athletic. Lisa has three children. I’m only five feet, five inches and my eighteen-year-old grandson, Jackson, is six feet, three inches. He is a great baseball player. Owen is a great soccer player. At age seven he ran a seven-minute mile. Even though he focuses on soccer, he can run well. Carly is very athletic and a great girl. Our youngest, Bear, is Michael’s only child and is five years old. We have a great family
Pets	We have ‘Daisy,’ who we rescued off the street on March 2nd of 2020. We were going down to Mexico every month before the pandemic. We found her and brought her back. She’s a great little dog. She’s a ‘Schnoodle,’ which is half Schnauzer and half poodle. I get in sixty miles a week and she gets in thirty miles. Daisy can run a 7:15 mile or run steady for 10k at nine-minute pace. We also have a cat, ‘Enzo.’ He’s a great cat. We had a couple more cats, but they passed away
Favorite meal	My wife, Catherine, is such an amazing cook. If I didn’t run, I would weigh well over two hundred pounds. I like all sorts of food, but I also like more unusual foods like escargot. When we go to Paris, which is one of our favorite cities, I go out for a run along the Seine River and meet Catherine at a café near the Notre Dame Cathedral and I order escargot. I also like onion soup and skirt steak. I enjoy many different casseroles. Catherine makes an amazing meatloaf. I also like Italian food and sushi. I love a full range of food
Favorite beverages	We love Bordeaux wine, Chianti, and Champagne. My favorite red wines are the ones where I don’t wake up in the morning with a headache, so quality red wines. On Friday nights once the covid pandemic started, we called it our ‘pizza night.’ We have pizza that we buy take out at a restaurant. Then Catherine doctors it up with special sausage and mozzarella cheese. We have a bottle of Champagne and watch Netflix in a little theater in our house. On a very hot day after a run, I could have a beer, but that’s uncommon. We also have what I call ‘The Runner’s Cocktail,’ which is one of our current favorite drinks. We get a big wine glass and fill it halfway with Perrier or any sparkling water. We add a quarter glass of grape juice. On top we add a splash of both concentrated lemon juice and lime juice. Next, we add a shot of apple cider vinegar. Then, I add three cranks of sea salt. Because of the vinegar, it foams up. On top of the foam, I put cayenne paper and that increases the bubbling. That is one of the most refreshing drinks
First running memories	It’s the 600-yard race at Broadmoor Junior High School. In my mind, that was the beginning. At the same time, not that much afterwards, when I ran the 2:08.5 half mile at the Junior Olympics at Winedot High School put the icing on the cake. That was when I beat the guy that was one year ahead of me. He went out strong and I pulled up on him at the quarter mile. We ran side-by-side until I pulled out ahead and held the lead until the end. That put the icing on the cake. One thing that is interesting is that my all-time best time for 880 yards is that 2:08.5
Running heroes	Interestingly, part of being my hero includes meeting these runners or becoming friends with them or even colleagues. Derek Clayton, World Record holder for the marathon for twelve years. We became friends and work mates. Herb Elliott. He also worked at Runner’s World as our Australian Editor. Running with him in Perth with kangaroos running around – that was amazing. Peter Snell was truly a hero. Billy Mills, Jim Ryun and Steve Prefontaine were heroes. I knew Steve less than these others
Greatest running moments	My ten-miler in the Stockton Ten, and particularly after I hit the six-mile mark in 35:02. That 2:08.5 half mile and that ten-miler at age fifty-three were big and spreads out the years from being a teen and then almost forty years later. I also can’t forget about the Boston Marathon
Worst running moment	I can’t think of a worse moment than when I blistered after two miles of the Honolulu Marathon, and it took six weeks before they were fully healed. That was bad and was my worst moment
Childhood dreams	As a youngster, I had challenges I needed to overcome. I had a very bad speech problem and had to learn how to speak properly. I went through speech therapy. There are words that cause me to stumble. My mom’s name is Elizabeth and I had trouble with that. The words ‘ear’ and ‘air’ sound the same to me. When I was growing up, it seemed like I had some cards against me. I remember thinking, ‘You know what? I’m going to get past this.’ At that point, I wasn’t a runner, but it was the same approach as running a marathon. First, you have to start. Secondly, you must get past that twenty-mile mark. Third, even if an ambulance driver is asking if you need a ride, you make it on your own. I knew I had these challenges, but told myself, ‘Bob, you are going to do something.’ In my family I may have been the least likely to succeed and there were remarks like that, it made me stronger. My vision back then was that I was going to do something with my life, I was going to make it happen and the person that was truly going to make it happen was me
Funny memories	I signed up for a 10k Turkey Trot one year that was the weekend before Thanksgiving. I was all set to run a fast time. So, my wife and I arrived a little more than an hour before the start. No one was there yet. There were tables around, toilets, and cones, but no people. We thought that was strange. Then we realized it was Sunday and the race was the day before on Saturday. So, I ran the course anyway and ran thirty-six something. I was ready to go sub-thirty-six. Oh well, it was just a hard training run
Favorite places to travel	Our definite international favorite is Paris. We absolutely love Paris. We love the museums. We love running along the Seine River, going to the cafes, and walking the streets. Very different types of places where we love the surroundings are Indonesia and Bali. We can be walking or running through the countryside and find a little café in the middle of a rice field and drink the local beer. Going past little temples - Indonesia and Bali are incredible. At the same time, we can’t forget London. Domestically, we made a point to visit San Francisco and spend about twelve days and nights in the city. We did this for three straight years a few years back. New York City near Central Park is amazing. New York City is number one in the U.S.