I don't know why I still have this particular magazine. The fact that I still have it in my possession means it's traveled with me from my home in Indianapolis, to my college house in Bloomington, then on to my apartment in Columbus, IN, an apartment back in Indianapolis, a house in Kalamazoo, MI, then back to my current home in Greenwood, IN.
I am continuing the process of decluttering and cleaning out my house. It's down to the hard stuff now. Boxes and boxes of memorabilia and sentimental things. I've come to the conclusion that scrapbookers are horrible declutterers because we keep EVERYTHING!
I found this in a box of running related papers. One magazine by itself. Why did I keep it? Was there an article I wanted to read? Of course I had to thumb through it...
The ads were the best. Cotton was still "in."
Who remembers Alberto Salazaar looking like this?
He and Mary Decker were my heros.
...or Marty Liquori
It was their 9th Annual Shoe Review issue. These were the top 5 Women's shoes.
...and this is why I think all running shoes should be blue or white.
Because they WERE!!
This is how much shoes typically cost...
I wore the Tigress. Asics was called Tiger back then.
...but if you couldn't afford new running shoes you could get them resoled.
There were multiple ads for inversion boots and hand held weights. No medal racks or fuel belts. The best though was... wait for it... OMG, OMG...
Mind you, this was also the pre-running tight era.
There was an article about getting tickets to the 1984 Los Angles Olympics to be held the following year.
Another article was about the first ever women's Olympic marathon trials, to be held in Olympia, WA on May 13, 1984. It still did not have a sponsor at that time. The qualifying time back then was 2:51:16.
Other articles talked about what it was like to run on an aircraft carrier, training alone, and a behind-the-scenes look at the medical tent of the New York City Marathon.
There was "Tips for the First-Time Marathoner - Bringing marathon training into the '80's." Here is a training chart from that article.
There were the usual advice columns. The questions over the years have remained the same but the answers in 1983 were surprisingly different. There was a question posed by a 28-year old man who had not raced since high school but was jogging 20 miles a week who wanted to know how much time it would take him to work up to training for a marathon. Jeff Galloway's answer to him, in summary, was 12-18 months.
Back then, many running books differentiated between running and jogging. Most said that you were not running unless you were going faster than 8-9 minutes a mile. Only runners ran marathons. That's probably why the First-Marathon Training table maxed out at a 4 hour run.
Fast forward now to yesterday when I received my latest issue of Runner's World. On page 12 of David Willey's Editor's Letter he talks about preparing for their 50th anniversary and introduces one of their "lifers" who says...
There are SO many races now. You can pretty much race every weekend if you wanted but people "race" for fun and socialization. I remember the days when I gave up inside during 10K's when I heard my 2 mile split at over 15:00 and felt like my race was over. Then, in 2011, I ran my first road race of this century and was shocked to find myself leading the women's race at the 1 mile mark (it was a 5K) and even more shocked that were was no one standing there with a stopwatch calling out splits (silly me, I guess every other person in the race was wearing their own watch except me!)
Now back to 1983...
Some of my Sole Sisters remember we were following Kesha online at the Houston Marathon and the tracker was posting everything in kilometers and kilometers per hour. I finally posted for someone to please translate what mile marker she was at! Apparently the venerable Dr. George Sheehan agrees with me!
Another source of controversy. Fred Lebow did not want any wheelchair racers in the New York City Marathon but was allowing some under duress.
The magazine was 188 pages. THE runner's bible back then. So why did I keep this? I still have no idea. Maybe it was all the articles about marathon running. I entertained the thought of running my first marathon while I was in high school. Back then though, there was NO WAY I was going to run a marathon unless I was "in shape" to do it under 4 hours. I couldn't even imagine running for more than 4 hours.
Times change. Life goes on. I finally decided at 40 that I wasn't getting any faster so I might as well run a marathon sooner than later if I was going to run one. My first took over 5 hours... but then I got faster.
Hope you had fun with my reminiscing. Now it's back to decluttering!
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