Books byHal Higdon
Boston: A Century of Running
Those runners who purchased Hal Higdon's Boston: A Century of Running invariably point to his story of the epic 1982 duel between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardley as the most gripping chapter in the book, perhaps the most dramatic race story ever written.
Yet they only got part of the story. Higdon explains: "Invariably when you publish any book, you make some compromises. You only have so many pages to fill without skyrocketing the price, or making the book so heavy nobody could lift it. The story of the 1982 race featuring Alberto and Dick was so compelling--and the details each runner provided me so vivid--that my early drafts were long, way too long. My editor at Rodale Press, Lee Jackson, and I had to either trim the text or eliminate some marvelous photographs. We did a little bit of both, but the result was that a lot of interesting stories told me by Alberto and Dick dropped onto the cutting room floor."
This is not unusual in the world of publishing, nor in Hollywood, where feature films usually are trimmed to less than two hours for fear of boring audiences. Sometimes the film reaches such a stature that in reissuing it on video, or for later revivals, the director insists that the film be returned to its original length. This is what is called a "Director's Cut." And in the book world, books sometimes are reprinted at their original length. Stephen King did this with "The Stand."
Sometimes the edited version is better, tighter, more readable or more easily viewed. That probably is true with the edited version of "The Duel" as it appears in Boston: A Century of Running. Nevertheless, in the interests of telling the complete story of the 1982 between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley, here is Hal Higdon's "Director's Cut."
THURSDAY BEFORE THE 1982 BOSTON MARATHON, Dick Beardsley watched the evening news on television. It showed Alberto Salazar, the race favorite, arriving in town. Reporters swarmed around Salazar at the airport, thrusting their microphones at him and asking about his chances of victory.
Salazar seemed edgy after a long, cross-country plane ride, but displayed a subdued confidence about his ability to win--as well he might. An NCAA cross-country champion from the University of Oregon, the American record holder at both 5,000 and 10,000 meters, a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, Salazar also was the world's best marathon runner.
He had appeared at the 1980 New York City Marathon for his first race at that distance and confidently--almost cockily--predicted a time of 2:10. Many close to the sport considered such behavior outrageous, but Salazar was simply being honest. He and his coach Bill Dellinger knew from his training that he was capable of that fast a time and, at age twenty-two, Salazar had no hesitation at stating that fact. Reporters might have considered Salazar arrogant, but he fulfilled his promise. He won New York in 2:09:41, the fastest debut marathon on record.
Afterwards, Running magazine pictured the darkly handsome Alberto Salazar on its cover, smiling, dressed in a tuxedo, a red carnation in his lapel. The cover line said it all: "New York's Long-Running Smash Hit." Salazar returned to New York for his second marathon the following year, again predicting victory, again delivering. He ran 2:08:13, breaking by twenty-one seconds Australian Derek Clayton's twelve-year-old world record.
At Boston in 1982, Salazar seemed ready to produce another major marathon victory--perhaps another world record. In March, he had placed second at the World Cross-Country Championships in Rome behind Ethiopia's Mohamed Kedir. Just before leaving for Boston, he had run a 10,000 meter race against Kenya's Henry Rono, the world record holder at that distance. Salazar had planned the race against Rono as a two-part test of his ability. He led all the way only to be outleaned by Rono at the finish.
Now he was in Boston to see if he could run a fast marathon only nine days after a fast track race. Salazar was looking ahead toward the Olympic Games scheduled for 1984 in Los Angeles. "I looked on Boston as a test of my ability to double," he said.
Reporters interviewing Salazar at the airport attempted to extract quotes to use in their marathon coverage. Salazar told them that he had first watched the Boston Marathon in high school. He had grown up in Wayland, a suburb north of Wellesley, only three miles from the marathon course. "I resolved to run Boston some day," he said. Yes, he expected to win. Yes, he was aware of the other runners in the field, but he still was confident of victory. No, he didn't want to predict another world record, but he conceded one was possible. Calling an end to the reporters' questions, Salazar climbed into an automobile driven by his father and headed home.
Watching Salazar's TV performance, Dick Beardsley focused on the other runner's statements, trying to extract some words for motivation. Was Salazar overconfident? Was he too cocky, too arrogant? Did he underestimate his competition, namely Dick Beardsley? Beardsley decided the answer was yes. He respected Salazar for his achievements, but he no longer remained in awe of the world record holder. He believed he could beat him and win the Boston Marathon. Still, he could not overlook Salazar's calm and confident approach to the race.
ANTS IN HIS PANTS
Had Beardsley been able to peer into the automobile carrying Salazar home, he might have gotten another impression of his opponent. Salazar was anything but calm; he was furious at his father. "What was everybody doing at the airport?" Salazar raged. It had been his intent to arrive quietly in Boston the week before the marathon and relax at his parents' home. He planned to catch up on his sleep, become accustomed to the three-hour time-zone change, and take some easy workouts on routes run in high school. Despite his cool demeanor, Salazar usually became very nervous before races. He also was troubled by a knot in one hamstring muscle that had surfaced during a hard workout the day before leaving for Boston. Because of the hamstring problem, there was no certainty he would even run! He didn't want to reveal this, knowing it might encourage his rivals. He purposely avoided mentioning Dick Beardsley by name during the airport interview for the same reason. "I thought right from the start that Beardsley would be toughest," Salazar would later tell Runner's World's Bob Wischnia, "I didn't say anything to the press about him, because it would have just pumped him up."
Salazar knew that he ruled partly by fear, and that the less his opponents knew about him--other than his impressive record--the better. He liked to cultivate an aura of invincibility, but he also wanted to duck the hoopla surrounding the race and irritating demands for interviews and autographs. Instead, he walked out of the airplane to be confronted by just that. "That's the last thing I wanted was to get bushwhacked by a bunch of reporters," Salazar complained to his father.
Alberto's father, Jose Salazar, was a Cuban immigrant. Alberto had been born in Havana on August 7, 1958. Jose, a civil engineer, was an early confidant of Fidel Castro, but soured on the revolution and fled with his family to Florida in 1960, eventually settling in Massachusetts. Salazar's father pleaded innocent to causing the mob scene. "I only told a few people," he said.
"Well, those few people must have included every reporter in town," complained Alberto.
Alberto Salazar became so incensed that he decided not to stay with his parents. He and his wife Molly called a taxicab and moved to a motel in Wellesley. "It was a little dive," recalls Salazar, laughing about the incident years later. "Molly and I were laying in bed before falling asleep, and it felt like I had ants in my pants. We turned on the lights and there were bread crumbs in the sheets and ants in my underwear. I freaked out, took a hot shower, swept up the bed. I had gotten bitten several times. I kept waking up to see if there were more ants." Alberto and Molly moved back with his parents the next day.
Friday, Salazar did some sprint drills, then obtained a massage. On Saturday, he appeared at a race clinic, but skipped the ceremonial press conference where top runners received their race numbers. Jose Salazar attended in his place.
According to custom, defending champion Toshihiko Seko of Japan normally would have received number "1," but Seko chose not to run. The first number, thus, went to four-time champion Bill Rodgers. Salazar would run wearing number "2" and Dick Beardsley "3," based on their fastest marathon times. Among the women, Norway's Grete Waitz received "W-1" and Germany's Charlotte Teske "W-2."
A COACH FOR ALL SEASONS
Rodgers, Salazar and Beardsley shared more than fast marathon times. All had been coached at one point in their careers by Bill Squires. As coach for the Greater Boston Track Club, Squires had guided Rodgers before his first Boston victory in 1975 (although by 1982 Rodgers was supervising his own training).
Salazar had come to Squires for coaching advice while still in high school. Immediately spotting Alberto's potential, Squires soon had him training with the GBTC runners, who referred to Salazar affectionately as "The Rookie." Under Squires guidance, The Rookie ran an 8:53.8 two-mile and won two major 5,000 meter victories in USA-USSR junior meets. He accepted a scholarship to attend the University of Oregon, where he trained under the direction of Bill Dellinger, bronze medalist at 5,000 meters from the 1964 Olympics. Dellinger continued to coach Salazar after his graduation in 1981. By that time Squires had become a consultant for the New Balance Shoe Company, coaching several of its top runners, including Dick Beardsley.
That his former coach now was guiding his top rival didn't bother Salazar. "Bill Squires had done a lot for me and had gotten very little," said Salazar. "He received no payment, just headaches for working with a high school runner. He deserved all the respect I could give him."
That Beardsley might have had even the hint of a chance to challenge a runner as renowned as Alberto Salazar would have seemed inconceivable several years earlier. Born March 21, 1956 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Beardsley showed little interest in athletics growing up in rural Wayzata, west of Minneapolis. He was blonde with a fresh-scrubbed look typical of the northlands. Beardsley admits, "I was a farm boy," he recalls. "My life surrounded the outdoors," he recalls. "I was too involved in hunting, fishing, milking cows. I was a member of the 4-H. I had no ambition to be an athlete."
That changed by the time he entered high school. He played basketball and hockey, but found most success as a runner. Beardsley's best high school two-mile time was 9:48, not good enough to qualify him for the state meet and almost a minute slower than Salazar's best at the same age. He ran two years in junior college and one semester at South Dakota State University, but dropped out of college in 1978 to manage a dairy farm to earn enough money to get married. "I enjoyed running," he recalls, "but I didn't expect to make a career out of it."
For three months, Beardsley did no running, then read an article in Runner's World about what it took to qualify for the 1980 Olympic Trials in the marathon. The qualifying time was nearly ten minutes faster than his junior college best, but Beardsley accepted that as a challenge. "I quit my job at the dairy farm, moved to the Twin Cities, got work at a Foot Locker store and started cranking out 120 miles a week to get ready for the Olympic Trials." At the Manitoba Marathon the next June, he ran 2:21:54, qualifying for the Trials by two seconds.
That continued a string of consecutive races in which Beardsley progressively bettered his marathon times. The string eventually would reach ten. The manager of the Foot Locker where he worked, however, did not appreciate Beardsley's hobby, saying: "Do you want a successful business career, or are you going to continue to fool around with running?" Beardsley decided the latter, switching to another store where he could work part-time and train more. At the 1980 Trials, he ran 2:16:01, running his second half faster than the first. Beardsley already had planned to rent a farm after the Trials, but crossing the finish line in sixteenth place he told himself, "I can't quit now." He decided to run four more years and train for the 1984 Olympics.
After Beardsley's successful run at the Trials, the New Balance shoe company invited him to visit its factory in Boston and also run the Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod, expenses paid. Bill Squires escorted Beardsley during his visit. Beardsley placed well behind the leaders, but that didn't seem to discourage New Balance, nor Squires. Road running was on the verge of becoming a professional sport. More and more races had begun to offer appearance fees and prize money. Shoe companies, profits soaring during the running boom, had begun to aggressively recruit the fastest runners. At one point, Nike had nearly 1,200 runners under contract. Most got only shoes and clothing; a few earned six-figure incomes. Adidas, Brooks, Puma and Tiger (Asics) were among the shoe companies trying to identify and recruit the next Bill Rodgers.
After Falmouth, New Balance offered Beardsley a monthly stipend of $500. That was a fraction of what Nike paid Alberto Salazar to run for its exclusive Athletics West team, but Beardsley had won no NCAA titles. He was ecstatic. More exciting was the fact that Bill Squires offered to help with his training. "I was stunned that a world-famous coach actually wanted to work with me," recalls Beardsley. "He sent me workouts on backs of napkins, torn pieces of paper, and I'd have to call him on the phone to decipher what he meant. It was like Morse code, but he took me to the next level."
Until this point, Beardsley always had run against time, plotting an even pace, not worrying about others in the field or where he placed. He now began to run with the leaders. At the 1980 New York City Marathon, he was running with the front pack near fourteen miles when, rounding a turn, his legs tangled with those of Bill Rodgers. Both fell. Beardsley popped up and chased the leaders over the Queensboro Bridge. His momentum carried him into the lead. Squires was astonished when he saw his new pupil leading on First Avenue. "Dickie, what are you doing?" shouted Squires.
"Coach, I'm feeling good," Beardsley yelled back, but at eighteen miles Salazar swept by him. Rodgers placed fifth, Beardsley ninth in 2:13:55, another PR. Still somewhat naive about the rewards available to "amateur" runners, Beardsley was surprised a month later when he got a $1,500 check in the mail from race director Fred Lebow for his performance.
During a period of ten months, Beardsley would run seven marathons, including a tie for first in the London Marathon and first at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where he ran 2:09:37. Only Salazar and Rodgers had run faster among Americans. New Balance increased his monthly stipend to $1,000. At the beginning of 1982, Beardsley shifted his training base to Atlanta, Georgia. "I went there so I could get out of Minnesota's harsh winter, but I also wanted to train on hills to get ready for Boston."
POSITIVE INFLUENCE
Squires arranged for Beardsley to train with Dean Matthews, who had won the 1979 Honolulu Marathon. At the time, Matthews was ready to give up running, because of back problems. "Dick was such a positive influence, he turned my running career around," recalls Matthews. One day that winter, Matthews wanted to skip a workout because of bad weather; Beardsley convinced him to run.
Matthews recalls: "Dick told me, `Man, it's great out there. It's cold and nasty. The wind will be right in our faces, making us work harder. Nobody else will be out training today. It'll make us that much tougher!' I thought, Is this guy for real? But it gave me a whole new perspective on the sport." Matthews and Beardsley would go for twenty-three mile training runs. They ran up and down hills, practicing mid-run surges, sudden increases in pace that they would use to defeat their opponents.
In March of 1982, Beardsley beat Matthews and Benji Durden in a 10K race, running 29:12. That was nearly two minutes slower than Salazar's best for the same distance, but the time improved Beardsley's confidence, because it was achieved on a hilly course. Hills would play an important part of his strategy to defeat Salazar in Boston.
Two weeks before the marathon, Beardsley flew to Boston to stay with Squires and complete his final race preparations. They drove to Hopkinton so Beardsley could run the first fifteen miles of the marathon course. Squires told his runner to hold back, but when the coach looked at his watch, he realized Beardsley was running a seemingly frantic 5:20 pace. "Dickie," shouted Squires. "Just relax!"
"I am, coach," Beardsley responded. "I feel like I can fly!"
Two days later, Beardsley was scheduled to run seven repeats up and down Heartbreak Hill, except a freak April storm covered Boston with a foot of snow. Squires looked out the window and suggested they postpone the workout, but Beardsley insisted he wanted to run. Road conditions were so bad, Squires had difficulty driving to the area, so Beardsley jumped out of the car and promised to meet him later at Boston College.
Beardsley remembers the workout: "It was sleeting and snowing and blowing and miserable and cold. I couldn't run the main course on Heartbreak Hill because of the snow, so I ran on the parallel frontage road. I couldn't go very fast. I had to run with my head down, but I ran that workout saying, `There is nobody out running today! There is nobody who could do this workout! There is nobody alive this tough!' The confidence I got from that one workout is one of the reasons I was able to stick with Alberto at that point in the marathon race."
Because of the snow, Squires sent Beardsley back to Atlanta. Salazar, meanwhile, was completing his preparations in Eugene. His match race against Henry Rono on Saturday, April 10, nine days before Boston, also was run in atrocious weather. "It was forty-eight degrees and raining," says Salazar. "We were so cold that neither Henry nor I could mount much of a kick at the end. We ran 27:30. I felt certain I could have run even faster, maybe challenged the world record, under better conditions."
GRETE WANTS TO SAY HELLO
By Saturday before the Boston Marathon, Salazar felt confident that his tight hamstring would not interfere with his race plans. He ran a workout that morning on the dirt track at his old high school, featuring a half dozen 330s, averaging 47.6, close to pace for a 4:10 mile. The hamstring remained tight, but didn't slow him. Alberto would run Boston. He continued to stay with his parents, avoiding the bustle of the race headquarters hotel. "I slept in my old bunk bed," said Salazar. "It helped me relax." Beardsley remained in the hotel, but, "I sank into a shell. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to see anybody. I wanted to be with myself."
Late Sunday afternoon, there was a knock on the door of his hotel room. Standing in the corridor was Peter Squires (no relation to Bill Squires), a runner who worked as a representative for adidas, the shoe company. Mary Beardsley tried to tell him that her husband didn't want to talk to anybody. Peter Squires insisted. Reluctantly, Beardsley came to the door. "Grete and Jack Waitz are upstairs," Peter Squires announced. "They want you to come up and say hello."
Beardsley hesitated, but he was enough of a running fan to want to meet Grete Waitz, the multiple New York City Marathon winner. He agreed to come up for a short time.
In the adidas suite, Waitz talked to Beardsley about the advantages of switching to the German shoe company. Beardsley's contract with New Balance had expired April 1, but he and the company had decided to wait until after the marathon before renewing it. Beardsley thought about the irony of his position. Several years earlier, he had attended a sporting goods show featuring all the major running shoe companies. He went from booth to booth handing out a one-page resume. Shoe company representatives accepted his resume, but most offered little encouragement. Only New Balance offered him a pair of shoes. Remembering that, Beardsley returned to his room.
Soon, there was another knock on the door. It was Peter Squires again, this time holding a race uniform and a pair of shoes, saying: "Dick, we'd like you to run for adidas tomorrow."
"I run for New Balance," said Beardsley.
"Yes, but your contract expired."
Beardsley wondered how the other shoe company knew that.
Peter Squires said that adidas would pay him $25,000 if he wore their shoes in the race--"no matter where you finish."
Beardsley thought for a second. That was probably more money than he had earned in the last two years, working and running. He told Peter Squires he wasn't interested.
BEFORE THE START
Monday morning, Dick Beardsley awoke at 7:15. The previous several days had been cool and cloudy with a favorable wind, giving runners hope for fast times. Beardsley opened the curtains and saw a day that was clear and sunny. He moved to the TV and turned on "The Today Show" to check the temperature. Weatherman Willard Scott announced that it would be a "great day for the Boston Marathon: sunny with temperatures in the 70s."
Great day for the spectators, thought Beardsley. He called room service and ordered a hot chocolate and two pieces of toast. Thinking of how the warm weather might affect his race strategy, he began to drink, both water and Gatorade. At 9:00, a driver from New Balance arrived in a station wagon. Beardsley climbed into the wagon's backward facing seat. He was crunched among the bags of other runners, but at least he could be alone with his thoughts. "I put on my game face," recalls Beardsley. "I didn't want to talk to anybody."
An hour later, the wagon arrived in Hopkinton. The shoe company had arranged to borrow a house for the convenience of its runners. Beardsley was led to a room in which he could lie down. There was a stereo and a separate toilet.
Alberto Salazar had breakfast at Mel's Restaurant in Wayland. He had worked there in high school as a bus boy and dishwasher. Everybody knew him. All the waitresses wanted to talk to Alberto, but the normally shy Salazar didn't mind. He ordered pancakes. Mel told him the meal was on the house. "Leroy the cook came out and wished me good luck," recalls Salazar. "I'm always nervous before races, but seeing my old friends made me feel comfortable." After breakfast, he returned home and rested until it was time to be driven to the start by Norm Potochney, his next-door neighbor. The Salazar family planned to watch the race from the finish line. Potochney drove him to the First Congregational Church in Hopkinton, used as a gathering area for the elite runners.
Before track races, Salazar usually would warm up by running two or three miles, including a half dozen 100-meter sprints, each progressively faster. Because the early pace for a marathon is slower than that for a track race, and wanting to conserve energy, Salazar only did about half his usual warm-up on a side street near the church. "There wasn't a really great area where you could warm up," recalls Salazar. "It was crowded. A lot of people wanted autographs. I had to tell them as politely as possible, I couldn't oblige."
Ten minutes before the start, Salazar donned his racing shoes and jogged to the starting line a short distance away.
Beardsley also was headed toward the line, but found that the house in which he was staying was farther away than he thought. Boston had a near record 6,689 starters. It seemed as though every one of them was standing in Beardsley's way as he made his way toward the front row. He was living the runner's nightmare where the race was about to begin and he could not reach the starting line. Finally, he took his place beside the other seeded runners. He removed the New Balance t-shirt and warm-up pants he had worn to the line and threw them toward the spectators on the curb. There were three minutes to go. Beardsley stared at a restraining rope pressed almost against his chest. He looked toward a race volunteer: "You're sure you're going to remove this in time?" The volunteer told him not to worry.
Salazar stood nearby on the front line, but neither runner remembered doing much to acknowledge each other's presence. It was not from any sense of personal antagonism; each was locked in his own personal battle with his own doubts. Months of training lay behind; twenty-six miles lay ahead. Salazar's face was impassive, but inwardly his stomach was churning; his legs felt so weak, he wondered if they would respond once the gun sounded. "Everybody thought I was this tough person, without any nerves," Salazar would say. "In many respects, I cultivated this image. But I had as many doubts as anybody else. That was my hidden secret: I was not that tough! Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards."
Salazar did not fear Beardsley this moment; he disliked focusing on individuals. "The chances that in a race it will come down to you and any one other individual are very slight," he says. "It might be someone entirely different. Anyone can have a good day, or you or the individual you focused on beating can have a bad day. In my experience, you're better off worrying about yourself rather than others."
More to fear was the crowded start. Having grown up in the area, Salazar knew the marathon course. One of his first road races as a twelve-year-old featured a start in Hopkinton and followed part of the course. But he still was surprised at how narrow the road appeared with so many runners crowded onto it. It was a fraction of the width of the Verrazano Bridge where the New York City Marathon started. He worried about getting jostled, or tripped. He reminded himself to hold his elbows out to fend off runners from each side and to take quick and choppy strides at first to lessen the chance of getting clipped from behind.
Helicopters hovered overhead. The crowds of people lining both sides of the road buzzed with excitement. The announcer offered final instructions over a loudspeaker, but the words went in one of Salazar's ears and out the other. Several of the lead vehicles, including the press bus, began to roll down the road. The escort policemen started their motorcycles and moved into position. Starter Tom Brown stood on a platform above the runner's heads. The loudspeaker announced two minutes to go. Salazar began a silent prayer.
Dick Beardsley felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Barney Klecker, a friend from the Twin Cities, standing behind him. Klecker was the American record holder for fifty miles and also had a 2:15:18 marathon best. "Dick," said Klecker. "Good luck. Did you double-knot your shoes?"
Beardsley was puzzled. "What?"
"Your shoes. It's important."
Beardsley didn't like having his concentration broken right before the start. He thanked Klecker, but returned his attention to the road before him, now emptying of people and vehicles. At some point, the rope before his chest had disappeared.
Klecker persisted. "Dick, it's important that you double-knot your shoes."
"Barney, leave me alone!"
But within seconds, Beardsley regretted being so abrupt with his friend. He turned to apologize, but failed to spot Klecker. He looked down at his feet. Klecker was kneeling there, double-knotting Beardsley's shoes!
STALKING GAME
At 12:00 A.M., Tom Brown fired the starting pistol. It caught Beardsley by surprise. Salazar reacted more quickly. "It was like he was shot out of a cannon," recalls Beardsley, who nevertheless quickly recovered. Soon, he was right behind Salazar, five yards back, the two of them already opening a gap on the other runners. "It was like a flock of geese with Al and I at the point of the V," recalls Beardsley.
"I got out a bit too fast, but I was still worried about getting tripped," remembers Salazar. "After we had gone a certain distance, I slowed down and let the others catch up."
The time for the first mile was 4:38, fast, but not ridiculously so considering that the course drops sharply in its first mile. "Dick, you're fine," Beardsley told himself. "You knew that the start would be fast."
Worried about the warm weather, Beardsley had been drinking all morning before the race, even though it caused him numerous trips to the toilet. Seeing that his urine was clear (rather than yellow) assured him that he was well hydrated. Once the race began, he continued to drink as much as possible. Beardsley had gone barely a half mile when he spotted a boy standing beside the road offering runners water. He grabbed a cup from the boy's hand. "As soon as I saw anyone with water," said Beardsley, "I'd grab it and take at least one good swallow and dump the rest on my head."
Salazar, meanwhile, was monitoring his body signals. His hamstring still felt tight, he decided, but not so tight that it slowed him down--at least for now. He made a great effort to relax his body to lessen muscle tension, but somehow relaxation eluded him. "The only thing I can remember thinking during the first few miles," he told Runner's World," was something Rodgers had said. I always claim that the marathon is just another race to me--and it is--but Billy insists that some day the marathon can humble you. I thought about that in the first four miles: `Could this be the race that gets me?' I could feel the knot in my hamstring, and I started to think, `Gee, this must be what Rodgers is talking about.' Here my leg was hurting, and I still had twenty-two miles to go."
The two runners let others move to the front, no one person controlling the pace, but all of them moving in a phalanx. Bill Rodgers was among those in the lead pack along with Ron Tabb, Ed Mendoza, Doug Kurtis and Dean Matthews, Beardsley's training partner from Atlanta.
Salazar knew that these early miles were part of a stalking game, the faster runners trying to conserve energy as much as possible, watching those around them, looking for weaknesses that they might later exploit. Lesser runners pushed to stay with the lead pack, hoping the early pace would be slow enough so that they could stay in contention. It was a hot day. Anything could happen. Eventually, inevitably, they would peel off the back of the pack and would be lucky to finish, or would finish in times much slower than their personal bests--but in the meantime, they were leading the Boston Marathon.
Salazar watched some of these other runners with almost contempt. He thought they were foolish to dart around like water bugs ahead of the pack and somewhat resented them for making him work harder. At one point, Tabb and Matthews surged to a brief lead. Matthews was waving to the crowd. "What are those stupid asses doing?" he said to nobody in particular.
Salazar felt that Tabb was the worst offender, wanting to lead no matter what. If he or Beardsley moved forward to get some water, Tabb would sprint for twenty-five yards to stay ahead. Salazar said about Tabb: "Every time anyone would get near him, he'd just accelerate away, and that's crazy so early in a marathon."
Tabb later conceded: "I may have gone out too aggressively. Boston does that to you."
Beardsley had been told by Squires to not--repeat, not--take the lead in the first ten miles. Beardsley had no desire to do so. "For the first five miles, I felt terrible," he would say later. "It was a warm day. The pavement was hot. My feet were on fire. I worried that I would develop blisters." Squires told Beardsley not to worry about the other runners, to focus on Alberto Salazar. Beardsley was glad that Salazar was not pushing the pace. Like Salazar, he ignored the early surges by Tabb and Matthews.
For Matthews, the surges were a calculated part of his race strategy. He and Beardsley had practiced surging during their long training runs that winter. He hoped that by shifting pace, he could lure Salazar out of his race plan and help weaken him. "At that level, you have to be an initiator," said Matthews. "You'll never win if you let others control the race." He noticed, however, that Salazar remained under control. "Alberto never got entrapped in the surge game. He might have had doubts, but he stayed back. Obviously, he had been well coached."
Doug Kurtis felt comfortable running with the front pack. The Michigan State University graduate (who later in his career would run a record seventy-five marathons under 2:20) said: "I couldn't believe how easy the early pace felt. The first ten miles flew by. After that, I realized it was a hot day, and I was in over my head."
Between Framingham and Natick, they approached a reservoir on the right. Rodgers tapped Beardsley on the shoulder and pointed toward a couple in a canoe. "Wouldn't you like to be out in a canoe right now?" said Rodgers.
"No kidding," Beardsley replied.
Beardsley continued to grab cups and bottles of water. When not drinking water, he poured it over the billed painter's cap he used to shade his head from the sun. He also carried a sponge in the waistband of his shorts, which he would fill with water and squeeze later onto his legs. Beardsley noted that Salazar was not taking nearly as much water as he. "In the latter stages of the race, I'd hand him a water bottle, and sometimes he'd take it and sometimes he wouldn't," said Beardsley
Salazar said: "I took water several times, but only a sip each time, because I was worried about stomach cramps." Salazar later estimated that he drank as little as two-and-a-half cups of water. He noticed that Beardsley often would keep a water bottle and sip from it for a quarter mile. Salazar wondered, does he really need to drink that much? After the race Salazar would decide that the answer was, yes, and that he would have been wise to have done the same.
Up until Natick, Beardsley had followed his coach's instructions not to lead during the first ten miles. With that mark now past, he decided to surge for 200 meters, as much to stretch his legs and test his speed as to break anybody. With a slight acceleration, he moved away from the pack. Only his training partner Matthews chose to chase him. When Matthews reached Beardsley's side, Beardsley told him: "Dean, that was only a fake surge. Don't get excited." Relaxing, Beardsley allowed the pack to gather him into its fold.
Continuing to monitor his own body and the movements of those around him, Salazar understood that eventually the race would be between him and Beardsley. He suspected that Squires had carefully instructed Beardsley on the best strategy to defeat him. That strategy, Salazar reasoned, was to beat him on the hills. "I knew Beardsley had been training on Heartbreak Hill," said Salazar. "I knew I had more speed than Beardsley, so his big chance--other than if he could push the pace from the beginning--would be to push the hills and try to break away. My strategy would be not to let him do that. I figured that if I got to the top of the last hill with him, his confidence would lower."
Indeed, Squires had plotted just such a strategy for Beardsley: planning a series of long surges through the hills between seventeen and twenty-one miles that would wear Salazar down, and affect his confidence. Beardsley would explain: "We figured that if I could be in the lead, or within striking distance, at the top of Heartbreak Hill, I had a chance to win it. Coach Squires said that if I was with Al at that point, it might get him worried about his fitness, because that meant Al would have gone about three miles further than anyone had been able to stay near him in a marathon before."
After that point, Beardsley knew he would need to continue to push the pace to have a chance to win. Squires had told Beardsley: "Dick, Alberto doesn't have a great kick, but it's a better one than yours."
But as the lead pack moved into Wellesley at twelve miles, the hills remained at least five miles away. Until that point, Salazar could wait--and watch.
MIND GAMES
At Wellesley College, women from the school crowded into the streets, forming a corridor so narrow that the entourage of vehicles accompanying the lead runners had to slow to squeeze through. The female spectators shrieked in appreciation of the runners passing their doors. "They were screaming so loud it hurt," recalled Salazar. Several of the lead runners offered quick waves of thanks. Most yearned for the relative quiet once the college was behind them, although there was little quiet on the Boston course that year. The unseasonably warm and sunny weather, plus the promise that Alberto Salazar might set a world record, had attracted more spectators than anyone could remember from previous years. Some suspected the number to be as high as two million, although nobody could say for sure. Boston was a sporting event where you could not count the number of tickets sold.
Nike had a store on the left side of the road, just before runners departed Wellesley around fourteen miles. In passing, Salazar spotted a number of Nike employees he knew, including Brendan Foster, director of marketing. Briefly relaxing his concentration, Salazar smiled and waved at them. Beardsley noticed: "It was as though Al was saying, `This is my turf. This my territory.' He wanted me to know how relaxed he felt." In response, Beardsley began to wave at spectators on the right. He saw that Salazar immediately got a stern look on his face, as though he disapproved.
Remembering the incident years later, Salazar would recall that immediately after he waved at the Nike employees, Beardsley moved to one side to pat the back of a wheelchair athlete they were passing. "It was to psych me out," Salazar interpreted the action, "to show me how good he was feeling."
Actually, while Beardsley did pat the back of a wheelchair athlete, this happened in the Newton hills, almost four miles further down the road! It was an example of how runners in a marathon often compress time, blotting large segments of a race from their memory, as they concentrate on the effort required to continuously move at the fastest possible speed for a period of more than two hours.
At that point in the race, Salazar felt anything but good. "My hamstring felt tight through the halfway point, so I had been concentrating on running as easily as possible," Salazar recalled. "But I had not taken much water: a mouthful here, a mouthful there. It was seventy degrees, but dry. Since I wasn't perspiring, I hadn't thought much about the heat, or the fact that I might be losing fluids. By thirteen miles, I started to work a little. By fifteen, it took more effort. By the hills at seventeen, I had really begun to hurt."
Salazar was not the only one hurting. Kurtis began to fade after ten miles. He eventually would finish 109th in 2:27:13. Tabb and Matthews failed to finish. Tabb stopped at thirteen, blaming a new pair of shoes. Matthews dropped out at fourteen miles with calf problems. He said: "One minute, I was running strong; the next minute, I was out of the race."
Beardsley remembers: "Each mile, we'd lose another runner." By mile fifteen, only Rodgers and Mendoza remained with Salazar and Beardsley.
Near sixteen miles, Rodgers took a brief lead on the long downhill stretch leading to Newton Lower Falls. Rodgers excelled as a downhill runner, one reason he usually ran well at Boston. But his surge into the lead proved to be a final and desperate gambit. Salazar, Beardsley and Mendoza quickly caught him. Rodgers began to lose contact.
It was now a three-man race. Beardsley surveyed the two other runners and himself: "Of the three, I thought Mendoza looked the best, then all of a sudden it was like he dropped off the end of the world. One minute he was there, and the next minute I looked over my shoulder and couldn't see him." Mendoza would fail to finish.
As they made the right turn onto Commonwealth Avenue at the firehouse and headed up the first of the four Newton hills, it was now a two-man race. As planned, Beardsley picked up the pace, moving clearly in front. They had reached the "moment of truth" anticipated by Salazar, when Beardsley would attempt to destroy him. "This is it," Salazar told himself. "Don't let him break you! You're better than him!" Salazar kept reminding himself that if he just stayed with Beardsley to the top of the hills, he could win.
TWO-MAN CONTEST
Salazar might tell himself that, but he was not sure he believed his own words. Beardsley would stretch his lead by several yards, and Salazar would need to fight to gain the yardage back to avoid getting dropped, which would have been devastating psychologically at that point. Mostly, Salazar tried to run just off Beardsley's left shoulder, a half stride back, signalling that he was there and waiting, but sometimes the effort to hold that position was too great, and he dropped to a drafting position immediately behind Beardsley. It was a position he disliked to assume. It wounded his dignity. "It was frustrating for me to be behind him," Salazar admitted. "It was a matter of pride with me that I didn't want anybody to be close to me at that point in a marathon." Salazar had no choice. He was running as hard as he could to stay even. Any time he moved to Beardsley's side as though threatening to take the lead, it only urged Beardsley to run faster.
Beardsley was acutely aware of Salazar's position. "I never looked back," he would say, "but the way the sun was positioned, I could see the shadow of Alberto's head. A couple of times the shadow would loom up bigger, and I'd figure he was getting ready to jump me, so--boom!--I'd take off, because I wanted to get the first jump. The shadow never disappeared. I couldn't get rid of it."
Salazar kept telling himself: "There's no way I'm going to lose this race! There's no way I'm going to let him beat me!" Any chances of improving his world record had long ago been forgotten. Salazar later would admit: "My attitude changed during the race from wanting a fast time, to wanting a clear victory, to finally just wanting to win." Salazar began to realize that, unless Beardsley cracked soon, it might come down to a sprint on the final straightaway, something he feared despite his seemingly superior speed.
Beardsley was in front doing what he had to do to beat the world record holder: run fast between seventeen and twenty-one miles. The fact that four of Boston's toughest hills were located within that four-mile span was almost incidental to his strategy. He had trained on those hills in a snowstorm, so he dismissed them. "I didn't even see the hills," Beardsley would say later. "The hills weren't even there to me. I went flying through the hills."
Royce Flippin, a reporter for The Runner, had been assigned to watch the race from the Woodland checkpoint at 17.75 miles, where he had a view of the top of the first hill. He had watched Mendoza slowly slipping away after the runners had turned at the firehouse. "At the top of the grade," wrote Flippin, "Beardsley seems unaffected by the ascent. He is still running fluidly, with a faint look of anticipation on his face. Salazar appears hot and fatigued, his jaw hanging slightly open and his head dripping from a recent dousing. But he is on Beardsley's shoulder, and as Beardsley crests the hill and begins to surge down the other side, Salazar goes right with him in what has become a two-man contest."
It was Beardsley's strategy to not merely run fast up the hills, but to run fast over the crest of those hills, down the back sides and into the flat valleys between the hills. Beardsley felt he could not afford to allow Salazar even a few strides to relax and gather confidence. Thus, he would betray no hint of weakness. He wanted to hammer, hammer, hammer on his rival until he broke. The pair started up the second Newton hill, having covered near eighteen-and-a-half miles. At that point, an employee from New Balance popped out of the crowd and attempted to jog with Beardsley for a few strides. He could barely do so, but handed the runner a bottle of water, shouting: "Dickie, Dickie, keep it up!"
Beardsley drank from the bottle, carried it for a period, then offered it to his rival a half step behind. Salazar shook his head.
Beardsley and Salazar rushed over the top of the second hill and into the valley leading to the third, a short hill where a statue in honor of the elder John Kelley would be erected a decade later. Beardsley continued to push, but he had not yet broken Salazar. "I was in the lead," Beardsley recalls, "but I was not leading. Al was right off my left shoulder. But at this point, I could almost feel the crowd come to me and say, `You're the farm boy from Minnesota. You're about to score a major upset.' Because now we were at a point where nobody had been able to stay with Alberto Salazar before."
The lead pair moved over the top of the third hill and across the short, flat stretch before the ascent onto fabled Heartbreak Hill. Heartbreak held no fears for Beardsley; he had conquered it in a snowstorm. He had no idea yet how much he had begun to hurt his rival. Their charge through the hills was at a pace faster than anyone had ever run the Newton hills before. Salazar could only remain near Beardsley by reminding himself continuously: "You're better than him! You just ran 27:30! You can beat him!"
Salazar would say later: "It was a whole different game once we got to the hills. We had been running really slow, and from my point that was fine. But once we started up, he began pushing the pace at an intensity that neither of us could continue to the finish. It was a matter of time before either he would break me, or he would have to slow down himself."
DOWNHILL RACERS
When they crested Heartbreak Hill, Salazar was not broken. But neither was Beardsley. The duel continued as each looked for a sign of weakness in the other. Beardsley remained in the lead as they began a long descent past Boston College. It is this descent that many runners fear more than the preceding ascents, because of the punishing effect that downhill running has on the muscles. The elder John Kelley once referred to this stretch as the "Haunted Mile." The ghosts of many runners who at least figuratively had died on this descent were present.
Tom Hart, another reporter for The Runner, was stationed by the Lake Street checkpoint near twenty-one miles. "Beardsley looks stern, but still loose," wrote Hart. "Maybe it's only an illusion engendered by the pertly upturned bill of his white cap, but he seems to have more left than Salazar, who runs with an absence of expression to which Raymond Chandler might have done justice in describing a professional killer. Salazar is locked in two steps directly behind Beardsley, and he's not enjoying himself."
But neither was Beardsley enjoying himself at this point. Five miles remained, and he knew those last miles would not be fun. He also was close to cracking, although he did not want his rival to know it. A sudden move by Salazar might finish him. Beardsley would recall: "I had taken that pounding punishment coming down the long hill after Heartbreak, and my legs bit the bullet. I thought I could break him, but he went right with me. He was still there--and, I couldn't feel my legs! There was just a numbness from the waist down. I put it on automatic pilot, running just on instinct, putting one leg in front of the other."
ONE MILE AT A TIME
Beardsley decided to adapt a mental strategy that would ignore the fact that five miles remained. He would run those miles one at a time, not caring whether there was another, not worrying whether or not tomorrow existed, unconcerned whether any moment he would step into a sewer to be carried far out to sea. He accepted any artifice that would allow him to remain in front, because any moment Alberto Salazar might fall into his own sewer.
"Okay," Beardsley told himself at twenty-one miles. "You're leading the Boston Marathon. You've got the world record holder on the ropes. You can hold this pace for one more mile. One more mile! Only one mile to go!"
At twenty-two miles, Beardsley punched the reset button on his mental speedometer. "Okay, Dick. Still in the lead. All you have to do is run one more mile and you can win this race. One mile to go!"
And at mile twenty-three: "One mile to go! You're beating the world record holder. One more mile!"
The runner behind him, meanwhile, continued to employ his own mental strategies. "Once we got off the hills, he slowed down immediately," Salazar recalled. But Salazar did not move to take the lead. He attempted no long surge that might have gained him that lead. Tactically, that would have been a sound strategy. It would have worked. The duel would be over. But Salazar did not employ that strategy, because he could not! He knew that doing so might destroy him. After leading so long, the pair could easily self-destruct, opening the door for some trail runner who had followed a more conservative strategy. That had happened to Abebe Bekila and Malmo Wolde in 1963. The two Ethiopians, who between them won three Olympic marathons between 1960 and 1968, had set check-point records all the way through twenty miles only to finish ignominiously in fifth and thirteenth places. As Bill Rodgers once said: The marathon can humble you.
"We let the pace drop four or five seconds," said Salazar. "I began to feel good again." But the moment of truth did not come. Salazar, uncharacteristically, continued to run in a drafting position behind Beardsley as the two ran single-file down Beacon Street through Boston's Brookline district.
Beardsley was having difficulty remaining focused. It was the crowds. Running along Beacon Street in the heart of the city, people seemed to press closer and closer. "The crowd noise was so loud that it got to a point near the end when I could not feel myself think," said Beardsley. "It was like standing next to a runway with a jet airplane ready to take off." There were more spectators than he ever had seen in a race, more than he remembered from New York's First Avenue. Crowd control seemed nonexistent. "Why don't people get out of the way?" he thought. A phalanx of eight motorcycle policemen accompanied them, but neither they nor policemen at intersections, nor mounted policemen along the route, seemed to be able to contain the crowd from pressing closer and closer to the point where he feared the long corridor ahead would close, swallowing him and Salazar and ending the race two miles from the finish.
The large press bus that had accompanied the lead runners from Hopkinton also was having difficulty maneuvering through the crowds. Near twenty-three miles, Beardsley was running on the right side of the road, Salazar behind. Beardsley suddenly found himself engulfed by a large shadow, except it wasn't Salazar. It was the press bus, which threatened to push him into the crowd.
Beardsley remembers the bus coming so close it brushed him on one shoulder. Salazar remembers Beardsley not yielding, remaining on the right and pounding on the bus with one fist in anger to keep it away. Salazar slowed and moved around the bus to the left. He used the incident to allay his own personal doubts. Salazar told himself, "That's foolish. Why waste mental energy worrying about the bus. Simply go around it." Salazar decided that it was a sign that Beardsley was about to crack.
With about two miles to go, a spectator lunged out of the crowd at the runners. Beardsley thought it looked like the spectator tried to stuff a dollar bill into Salazar's shorts. Salazar later described the spectator lunging at Beardsley, but missing and striking him on the chest instead. This was surreal. At moments, it would be difficult for each to tell what was dream and what was reality.
As they crossed painted numbers on the street announcing that they had covered 25.2 miles, Beardsley suddenly felt himself overcome with emotion. "Seeing how far we had come and how little we had left to go almost got the better of me," says Beardsley. "I almost felt weak-kneed. I thought, `Not only am I running the Boston Marathon, but I am one mile away from the finish and running in the lead with world record holder Alberto Salazar!' I began sobbing to myself, then I thought, `Dick, get a grip on yourself. You can't break down now. You've come too far. You've got to get refocused.'"
At this point, there was only one mile to go!
SYMBOL OF VICTORY
Beardsley thought that he probably had achieved his greatest lead at that point, but a glance over his shoulder told him it was only five meters. Salazar remained right behind him, waiting, like a panther ready to pounce. Beardsley remembered what Coach Squires had told him: "Dick, Alberto doesn't have a great kick, but it's a better one than yours."
Beardsley decided to go into a long surge and hold it all the way to the finish line. Suddenly, he felt his hamstring cramp. He could no longer push off with his right leg. He would tell reporters later that Salazar detected the limp and jumped into the lead. Salazar later would deny that occurred, saying that he had simply chosen that moment to take the lead. In all probability, it was Salazar's sudden move to the front, forcing Beardsley to react and increase pace, that caused the latter's hamstring cramp.
Regardless, Salazar relentlessly began to pull away. Years later, Beardsley would remember Salazar's lead stretching to one block, then a block and a half: "Before we made the turn onto Hereford Street, it seemed like he had a two-block lead." The videotape of this point in the race, however, shows that as the pair turned onto Hereford Street, Salazar's lead was exactly 2.8 seconds, barely twenty meters. This, indeed, was a duel of classic proportions.
Beardsley's hamstring cramp by now had subsided. Ironically, he had stepped in a pothole and the sudden jarring seemed to relax the muscle. He and Salazar had two slightly uphill blocks on Hereford before reaching Boylston Street and the final straightaway. Eight motorcycle policemen accompanied the lead runners, but they now proved to be more hazard than help. Beardsley found that once he had been dropped, several of the policemen slid into the vacuum separating him from the leader, forming a psychological as well as physical barrier.
At that point, nothing could deter Beardsley. He would run over the tops of the motorcycles if necessary. "Al's lead started shrinking," Beardsley recalls. "It seemed like every ten feet he went, I'd go twenty. I remember him glancing back, and I don't think he expected to see me that close."
Salazar looked back at Newbury Street, halfway up the Hereford incline. He saw that Beardsley was gaining. The motorcycle policemen also saw Beardsley coming, but didn't seem to know which way to go to avoid him.
As Salazar crossed Boylston Street and started a quick right-left zigzag that would take him onto the frontage road paralleling that street, he looked again. Somehow, Beardsley had weaved through the motorcycle policemen without breaking stride. He was there, just off his right shoulder.
Salazar, however, had misjudged the distance. Despite living in Boston, despite having watched the race in high school, despite having visited the finish area before the race, despite having crossed the numbers indicating one mile to go, Salazar somehow was not quite sure how much distance remained once they made the turn onto the frontage road. He would say: "I was thinking, `There's more than a half mile to go.' Then all of a sudden he was on top of me. I looked ahead and realized: less than 200 meters! That was the exact nightmare situation that I had wanted to avoid. With that much left in a race, anybody can beat you. You might have a lot of energy left, but might not be able to turn your legs over. You can get beat."
Beardsley remembers relaxing as he pulled even, rather than using his momentum to roll forward around Salazar into the lead. But it may not have made any difference. Salazar glanced one more time at Beardsley--then accelerated. Very sharply! His arms pumped. His knees rose. And so the duel was won and lost.
"At this point in the race, there wasn't any way in the world he was going to beat me," Salazar later told Runner's World. "I don't care if a motorcycle cop had run me over; he was not going to win!" Salazar's sudden sprint propelled him into a ten-meter lead. Beardsley countered with a sprint of his own, but could not regain the ground he had just yielded. With the crowd cheering wildly, the two ran the last straightaway almost in lock step, one behind the other, Salazar continuing to glance backwards hoping he would not be asked to summon one last sprint. With two strides to go, Salazar attempted to lift his arms in a traditional symbol of victory breasting the tape. He could barely raise them above his shoulders. Time, until that last moment, had seemed almost inconsequential, but the clock above the finish line read 2:08:52, a new course record despite the heat.
LAUREL WREATH
Spent, Salazar almost fell into the arms of two policemen waiting just past the line. Beardsley finished two seconds back in 2:08:54. He too raised his arms, half in joy, half in despair. He said: "I can't believe I just ran 2:08 and only finished second!"
The two embraced each other in the finishing chute, mumbling congratulations. Salazar told Beardsley: "Dick, you pushed me harder than anybody ever pushed me. You've made me run harder than I ever have before."
Those words, spoken by two runners who showed each other no mercy, would become part of the legend of the eighty-sixth Boston Athletic Association Marathon, their duel becoming one of the most memorable races--maybe the most memorable race--of Boston's first hundred years.
The awards ceremony would be brief. It was over even before third-place finisher John Lodwick crossed the line. Lodwick had started slow, passing Rodgers in the last mile. Lodwick ran 2:12:01, Rodgers 2:12:38. Rodgers crossed the line looking like he had been placed in a burlap bag and beaten with rubber hammers. When he heard the winning times, Rodgers said, "I can't believe they ran that fast on this hot a day." Sweden's Kjell-Erik Stahl, who never came close to the lead pack, placed fifth in 2:12:46.
The laurel wreath was placed on Alberto Salazar's head, the medal draped around his shoulders. Beardsley stood on the stand beside Salazar, nobody denying him that moment although he would be handed his second-place trophy later. Salazar raised his rival's arm to join his in triumph. "I thought that was a nice gesture," Beardsley would say later.
Dehydrated, Salazar began to feel woozy. His muscles started to cramp. The top two men departed the awards stand long before the first woman appeared. Grete Waitz had been on world record pace during the early stages and led until twenty-three miles, when she almost inexplicably stepped off the course. She had felt good through the Newton hills, but the downhill stretch afterwards had proved too painful. "My legs locked up," said Waitz. "I couldn't make them move anymore." Germany's Charlotte Teske crossed the line in 2:29:33, thinking she had finished second and was surprised to be escorted onto the victory stand. "Grete was so far ahead," said Teske, "I never saw her stop."
Beardsley and Salazar were sent in separate directions: Beardsley to the media room to give interviews to reporters, Salazar to the makeshift hospital in the parking garage of the Prudential Center, to receive medical care. Having taken little water, he was dangerously dehydrated. His muscles were cramping so badly, he could barely walk. He was made to lay down on a cot. The BAA's Jock Semple started to massage Salazar's shoulders. Others massaged his arms and legs. William P. Castelli, MD, the white-haired director of the Framingham Heart Study and supervisor of the marathon's "medical tent," moved to Salazar's side and instructed his aides to begin intravenous injections in both his arms. In a previous situation at the 1979 Falmouth Road Race, Salazar also had collapsed, his temperature soaring so high that he was given the last rights of the Catholic Church.
Dr. Castelli did not feel the situation was that critical. Actually, Salazar's core temperature was below normal. The problem was hypothermia, not hyperthermia. Hypothermia, or low body temperature, is a common problem at Boston because of temperature differences between the start and finish lines. As the runners had turned onto Beacon Street, ocean breezes had begun to cool Salazar. A rectal probe suggested that Salazar's temperature had dropped to eighty-eight degrees (although that probably was a false reading related to dehydration). Dr. Castelli may have seemed calm, but a nervous television assistant who crowded next to him was not. The assistant told the doctor that they needed Salazar live and in color within thirty minutes, since Mike Wallace planned to interview him on national TV.
Dr. Castelli, having nursed many dehydrated runners back to life, smiled and told the TV assistant: "He'll be ready."
Dr. Castelli positioned two state troopers next to the cot and told them to grab the plastic containers containing intravenous fluid being pumped into Salazar's veins. "Squeeze!" he instructed. In this way, Salazar's dehydrated body absorbed six liters of fluid within thirty minutes. He got off the cot, cramps subsided, head clearer, not able to run twenty-six miles for a while, but ready to meet the press.
THE WAY IT WAS Ask Alberto Salazar his most vivid memory surrounding his Boston victory, and it is none of those moments of truth during its running, not outsprinting Beardsley, not crossing the line first, not having the laurel wreath placed on his head, but rather what happened en route to the press conference. "Remember, that nobody had been able to get hold of me, or interview me, after I finished," Salazar recalls, the trace of a smile tilting his lips. "As they escorted me toward the press room, there was a phalanx of people, including policemen, on each side. Jock Semple and my grandmother--who was eighty-five at the time--were in the vanguard of the group.
"My grandmother, especially, was being very protective. People would hedge in wanting autographs, shouting, getting quite aggressive, and she would push them aside. John Linkowski, who was the equipment manager at Oregon, took some photographer who grabbed at me and threw him against the wall. My grandmother got angry. She had a cane and was swinging it in front of her to clear people out of the way.
"We came to a point where a mounted policeman was blocking us. Jock Semple raged at the cop on his horse, `Get out of the way!' But it was so tightly crowded that the cop couldn't move. So Jock slugged the horse on the leg. And Molly was there, and John Linkowski getting red in the face, and my grandmother muttering curses in Spanish, and the pandemonium and yelling and screaming and it seemed so funny that I began to laugh.
"When I think about Boston, that is what I remember."
After the awards ceremony, Beardsley had been approached by two young kids who had darted under the barriers separating the runners from spectators. One wanted the painter's cap that Beardsley had worn in the race. Without thought that it might some day be considered a collector's item, Beardsley handed it to him. The other asked for the sponge that Beardsley had carried in his waistband. Beardsley gave it away.
While Salazar was being ministered to by medical personnel, Dick Beardsley talked to the press. He first removed his racing shoes and placed them on a ledge behind him. Midway through the conference, Beardsley looked over his shoulder and noticed the shoes were gone. He had promised those shoes to a Catholic priest, a friend of Bill Squires, who wanted to use them for a church fund-raising raffle. Beardsley assumed that Kevin Ryan, one of the New Balance representatives, probably had commandeered the shoes to save them for him.
Some time later, Beardsley was back in his hotel room, soaking in a hot bath to ease the pain in his legs, trying to come up with some explanation as to why he could not have run two seconds faster to ease the pain in his mind. The telephone rang. His wife Mary answered it.
"Is this the room of Dick Beardsley?" asked the person calling.
Mary Beardsley acknowledged that it was.
"Tell him that he ran a great race," said the caller.
Mary thanked him.
"And tell him that I'm the guy who stole his shoes--and I don't plan to return them!" The caller hung up.
MOMENTS AFTER
The following years would not be easy for either Alberto Salazar or Dick Beardsley. On reflection, the 1982 Boston Marathon was the pinnacle of each runner's careers. They had pushed each other so hard, destroying each other physically, that afterwards there was nowhere to go--except down. "My health problems began after that race," acknowledges Alberto Salazar.
Salazar would win his third New York City Marathon that fall, but in slightly slower time (2:09:29) with Mexico's Rodolfo Gomez remaining near him all the way. In the spring of 1983, Salazar chose to run the Rotterdam Marathon rather than defend his title in Boston. His time was respectably fast (2:10:10), but he placed fifth. In 1984, Salazar finished fifteenth at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, still slower (2:14:19). After a battle with various ailments that seemed to defy medical intervention, it would be ten more years before Salazar won another long distance race. In 1994, Salazar surprised people who had written him off as a has-been by winning the Comrade's Marathon, the classic 53.8 mile race between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
What Alberto Salazar seemed to lose on the road from Hopkinton was his will to push himself almost to the point of destruction. Salazar was always a strong runner, but never a graceful one. He was described in print once as running with all the style of a mailbag thrown off the back of a truck. His winning edge--apart from a high maximum volume of oxygen--came from his ability to endure. In tests at Ball State University's Human Performance Laboratory, David L. Costill, PhD had Salazar run on a treadmill to determine his maximum oxygen uptake, the point where muscles cannot absorb any more oxygen from the bloodstream, the point where heart beat plateaus, the point where most top athletes can remain on the treadmill for barely two more minutes.
Salazar had remained on the treadmill four more minutes.
It was this will to push through the pain barrier that enabled him to become great and allowed him to defeat others with equal or even greater natural ability.
Salazar recalls a childhood game that he played with his cousin, Ricky Galbis: "My uncle lived in Maine and sometimes they would visit. Our older brothers often got us to do stupid things, like grab hold of each other's hair and start pulling. You'd be hurting like crazy, and crying, but it would be a contest to see who quit first. And that to me is what marathoning was often like: this brutal struggle, where you think you are about to break, and can't hold out any longer, but you hope the other guy breaks sooner. Survival. Toughness. It's your ability to hold on just a little bit longer than anybody else. You cry, and wish you could end it, and you have all these doubts, but if you want to win, you have to hold on and not let go."
The morning after the marathon race, Dick Beardsley received a call at 8:00 AM from Jim Davis, the president of New Balance: "Dick, there's a car awaiting you at the front door. It's for your enjoyment."
After Dick and Mary dressed, they went downstairs and climbed into a white stretch limousine. They toured Boston, doing the sightseeing they had avoided while he had conserved energy awaiting the race. Toward the end of the day, they were driven to the New Balance offices. Several executives brought Beardsley into an office and handed him a three-year contract offering $30,000 a year. "I need time to think this over," said Beardsley, politely handing the contract back.
After he returned to Minnesota, adidas continued its pursuit. Beardsley eventually agreed to a contract with New Balance that offered $180,000 for three years, not including bonuses for performance. Fortunately, the contract was backed by an insurance policy should Beardsley become injured. He won Grandama's Marathon two months after Boston in 2:14:49, but an Achilles tendon injury forced him to cancel a return showdown with Salazar at New York. In the next decade, Beardsley would become injured in a car crash, nearly have his leg torn off in a farming accident, and be hit from behind by a car while training in the dark near Minneapolis's Metrodome.
"It seemed like I could never train for more than six months without getting hurt," Beardsley would reflect on his blunted running career a dozen years after finishing second at Boston. "My body had taken such a beating--not only at Boston, but in all of the marathons I ran leading up to it--that it no longer would respond."
Beardsley should have been sad, but he had a wide grin on his face: "If there had to be an end, I'm glad it came at Boston."
"The Duel" is an excerpt from Boston: A Century of Running by Hal Higdon, Copyright © 1995 by Hal Higdon Communications, all rights reserved. Autographed copies of this book are available from Roadrunner Press, P.O. Box 1034, Michigan City, IN 46361-1034.