Books byHal Higdon
From Dogs And People
In 1971, Hal Higdon published a humorous book about running titled On The Run from Dogs and People,. The title came from an article by that name he had written for Sports Illustrated eight years earlier about the Boston Marathon. It was after that article appeared in 1963 that the upturn in numbers at Boston began.
The book was well received by the runners of that era--but there were very few people running long distance races in the early 1970s. The book soon went out of print. When the running boom began, On the Run from Dogs and People appeared again in a 1979 reprint edition, which eventually also went out of print.
Nevertheless, Higdon had created a cult classic--one that kept appearing on lists of the "Top Ten" running books. "We didn't sell that many copies," Higdon admits, "but it seemed like every copy had been read by 50 runners." Remarkably, few runners ever threw their copies away. Even 20 years after the book's first publication, people would appear before Higdon at Expos with smiles on their faces and dog-eared copies that they finally wanted autographed."
On its 25th anniversary in 1996, On the Run from Dogs and People appeared again in a third edition. When all those copies sold, it again was out of for several more years, before recently being reprinted again. More than anything else written about running, On the Run from Dogs and People captures what running was like before the boom. And it will have you roaring with laughter too. Following is an excerpt from the book that every serious runner should have in his or her library.
THERE IS A CERTAIN MAJESTY to the weather of the Middle West. Running outdoors as I do, I get to know it. No television weatherman can tell me more than I learn during daily training runs. I look up, while running the beach, at puffs of clouds floating over the horizon and know soon it will rain. I touch the northwest wind after it has crossed 60 miles of open lake, and understand that winter soon will come.
In early winter after the first few inches of fallen snow, I bounce over the golf course. The ground beneath retains its summer springiness. I am rabbit. I run the length of a fairway, then look over my shoulder to see the long dotted line behind. Once, near my mother-in-law's house on the south side of Chicago, I trod a nearby track in inch-deep snow and circled round and round, each time moving a half-lane wide of the previous lap's tracks. At the end the entire track was covered with my presence. Footprints in the snow: a visible mark in space of my effort, more so than mere numbers on the dial of some coach's stopwatch.
As winter continues the snow grows deep, drifts,; the ground beneath it becomes hard, rutted. The woods fill up. One cold day on the beach a ridge of ice forms at the water's edge. Two days later the ridge has grown five-feet high, a God-made barrier that continues to grow as the northwest winds drive the waves against it to break, splash, freeze. I no longer can run on the beach. Winter has narrowed my vista.
There is the road. Always the road. Near Michigan City the snow plows leap quickly to the fray when the first flakes appear in the air. The sound of their blades scraping the asphalt echoes through the night. Sometimes the plows lose. The passing cars already have beaten the snow flat. I don spikes to grip the packed snow as though it were a rubberized track, the kind that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to lay down in Olympic stadiums.
Days later the packed snow turns to ice. I change to rubber-bottomed shoes with ridges for traction. Cotton socks. I wear sweat pants, sometimes two pair. A turtleneck sweater. A sweat shirt. Sometimes another. A double pair of mittens: the inside wool, the outside leather. My hands never get cold. A knit cap, red, which on windy days can be turned and pulled down below my chin to form a hideous frost-covered mask. The kind the Green Bay Packers wear while preparing for December games.
A hooded parka, the final barrier against the worst winter can throw at me. Thus clad, I run in sub-zero cold (25 below being my record), and as curious neighbors in warm houses gaze out through glazed windows at my passing, they shake their heads. But I am warmer than they. I finish my run soaked with sweat. I relish in my victory over nature. Peter Snell once said: "I enjoy bad weather because I know that while I'm outside suffering, all of the rivals I'll race next summer are indoors doing nothing." Believe Peter Snell.
Should the weather warm too early, I feel cheated. It happened that way late one January. After a week of snow and crackling cold, the temperatures soared into the thirties. I cursed, because winter had been defeated too easily. I wanted to struggle against it for at least one more month to prove my mettle. It is like a miler who, having anticipated a hard blow against his number one rival, sees that rival stop lame before the final straight. Victory will be his, but with a hollow ring.
More often, winter only seems to flee, then when you have relaxed, it tightens its grip. It is dark late in the morning and dark early at night. I run at noon so I can see the sun. I wonder, will winter last until June? Then one day, it is gone.
The snow releases its hold on the golf course, but leaves mud, a more fearsome enemy. I stay away. On the beaches, the massive ice barrier remains, resisting the rays of the sun, melting reluctantly. There is a surreal quality to the beach now, rough, pitted like the face of the moon, lingering patches of ice, driftwood, stones. I run there anyway. In the low spots on the road, melting snow forms puddles. I dodge onto lawns to avoid wetting my shoes, but the lawns are soggy. I splash through the puddles seeking the high spot in the pavement. watching always for the approach of a car that may shower me with spray. One day pounding waves rip the last of the ice barrier from the shore and roll across the beach flattening it to highway smoothness. I know now it is spring.
The woods come alive. I run along my old paths again, see the buds emerging on the branches of the trees. It is like time lapse photography. Each new day we have moved one notch closer to summer. I realize that the grass, brown last week, has turned emerald green. Birds. I run into a wooded area I call Moon Valley, around a series of looping trails, up and down hill. I follow the bridle path that winds through Michigan Shores, a thin trail, bushes on one side, sometimes the backs of houses, meandering along the bank of a creek that soon finds the lake. I head toward New Buffalo on a course that takes me over streets, path, gravel road, golf course, wooded trail, beach and highway. I can run now in almost as many directions as the compass, and one day I return to a path I have not visited in a week and find myself striding past a blanket of purple flowers stretching to the next ridge. God is with me in the woods.
The layers of winter clothes vanish now, one by one, until I am running unencumbered, shorts, a shirt, sometimes not even that, barefoot along the soft surface of sand by the water's edge. I splash lightly through the shallow water. It is cold. As it warms, my domain is invaded by bathers, sand castles, outboard motors, bikinis, and soon I leave the beach to them and seek solitude elsewhere. The golfers have reoccupied their fairways, which I cede to them willingly, no more wanting to intrude on their world, than have them intrude on mine. My vista once more narrows.
But I still have the road. Always the road. One day I cross the highway to explore a new route, down country roads, past farm houses, trailers, billboards, broken-down shacks, garbage piles. Each yard has its dog that comes snapping and snarling to the edge of the road daring me to take one false step toward him. I run on.
Sometimes I drive to the rough cinder track that sits atop the hill next to the junior high. I move in circles of precisely 440 yards, round and round, run, jog, run, jog, my spikes biting into the surface, tearing holes, kicking up dust, run, jog, as the hand on the stopwatch spins, defining my accomplishments, linking me to a more orderly world. At another time, another place, another age in life, I ran frequently in this orderly world, accepting its discipline as one means of fulfilling youthful ambitions. I touch this world only occasionally now. I walk from the track, sit on the curb, throw off my spikes, and run barefoot through the long grass on the infield, dodging through the sprinklers that make the grass grow so that in the fall football players can grind it beneath their cleats.
One day the sky turns black over the lake. Lightning flashes on the horizon. Thunder rumbles. I see the storm moving toward me. It rains. A warm, summer rain. Welcome. The heat that had hung like a damp blanket over my running trails for nearly a week vanishes. I sniff fresh ozone in the air. I splash through a puddle, uncaring. My feet slosh in my shoes. I carry my splattered glasses in one hand. The other brushes the water from my forehead. Sweat stings my eyes. I push the pace harder, harder, harder. I am in no hurry to get home. Rain helps me run faster.
When the children return to school, they abandon the beach to me. I claim it greedily and run toward the harbor, following the crooked line of the shore. Tomorrow when I run there again, the line will have twisted into a new pattern. Above, white trails trace the routes of jet planes, unheard, thousands of feet overhead, heading for eventual touchdowns at O'Hare Field. Two white jet trails move toward each other. I watch, hoping they are at different altitudes. They cross. Each day the sun will set a little further south, casting its glow orange in the surf at the water's edge. I turn at the harbor to return home and the sky changes suddenly to dark blue.
At the end of the run I wade into the water. I swim more in September and October than I do in July and August. One day the sky will turn gray. I will wear a sweat shirt and not wade at the end of the workout. The sand will feel cold under my bare feet. Soon I must go back to wearing shoes. I know now it is fall.
The golfers too have gone, leaving me their spongy carpet. I accept the gift. Sometimes I drive south to the national park, sneaking in around the fence to run among gold, red, yellow leaves. Soon there will be more leaves below me on the trail than above me on the trees. Then I will go for an early run on the beach and find a thin sheet of ice just above the waterline.
One day I test the wind and note that it comes from the northwest more frequently now. I know the sign because I live in the outdoors. A few crystals of white float down as I run along the road. They melt touching the still warm pavement. My vista is narrowing again, and it is time for my double sweat suit, my gloves, and that knit cap like the Green Bay Packers wear. Another year of seasons has passed.
Seasons is an excerpt from On the Run from Dogs and
People by Hal Higdon, Copyright © 1971, 1979, 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.