Episode 4-474 – Frank Shorter

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-474 – Frank Shorter  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4474.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Chris’ other show à Intro: Hello my long suffering friends.  How are you?  Well it’s been a busy two weeks since the last time we chatted.  And I truly missed.  I get lonely.  I worry.  Where have you been?  How do we know you’re not dead in a ditch? Today I’m going to mess with the format again.  I managed to write a really funny piece about varmints that I’m going to perform for you, but it came out at 2000 + words so I’m going to push that after the interview, skip section one and use the intro here to talk about our guest. Frank Shorter.  Yes that Frank Shorter.  It was one of those interviews where I was hopelessly overwhelmed by content and just did my best to touch on a couple fun things with him.  But, the rich tapestry of Frank’s life does not fit easily into a 20 minute conversation – so I’m going to fill in some of the blanks here. Frank was born, ironically in Munich Germany, where he would eventually return to win the Gold Medal in the marathon at the 1972 Olympics.  His Father was a physician in the army.  Frank grew up in a troubled home in upstate New York.  He started running to get away from an abusive father.  Running gave him the freedom we all know and love.  To get him away from his father, his mother arranged to have him sent to a prep school in Massachusetts where he was given the space to expand his running talents.  He went on to run at Yale for his undergraduate and won a number of NCAA titles.  He moved on to Gainesville Florida to study for his law degree – all the while training and racing at an elite level.  The thing about Franks journey in the 70’s was that he showed up at all the marathon runner hotspots with all the legends.  He trained with that famous Florida track club with Jeff Galloway and crew.  He was in Oregon with Prefontaine.  Frank taught Steve how to Ski.  Frank was with Steve before he was killed.  Frank won the elite Fukuoka Marathon . He was the #1 ranked marathon runner in the USA for 5 straight years and in the world for 3. He won the gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972.  You may not remember 1972, but this was the Olympics where the world learned about terrorism.  A crew of Palestinians broke into athlete’s village and held the Israeli Olympic team hostage, murdering some of them. Frank was sleeping on the balcony and heard the gunshots.  Coming full circle, Frank was right there on Boylston Street in Boston in 2013 when the bombs went off.  He won the silver medal in the 1976 games losing to an unknow East German athlete, who most likely was a drug cheat.  Frank has become instrumental in removing drugs from the Olympics – a battle that still rages. Through all this he trained himself with an uncanny mixture of speedwork and volume.  He managed to stay healthy and race across 100+ mile weeks for a decade.  Frank eventually ended up in Boulder where he was the founder of the iconic Boulder Boulder race.  He’s an amazing athlete, a humble, kind and generous guy and I’m sure I’ll be talking to him again. He even has an IMDB page for his roles in several movies!  Great guy, full life, enjoyed meeting him.  … What’s going on in my world?  I’m still training for the Flying Pig in May.  My knee is still a mess, but I’m enjoying when I can. I try to get Ollie out, but the weather has been horrific and I’m at the point in my life where I see less and less merit in unnecessary misery. Hey – a quick heads up – did you see Steve Runner is podcasting again?  Yeah – Pheddipidations is back from the dead.  And it’s not the angry political Steve.  It’s the old runner Steve.  Give it a resubscribe and listen.  It’s good to hear his rational voice. I did manage to get a couple of great training runs out in the woods.  We got a cold snap right after a heavy snow. With the pandemic traffic in my woods the trail was packed down and hard and great for running.  I got out and it was great.  I remembered some of the joy I used to feel being out alone in the woods with the dog.  The cold, crisp air and the packed trail.  Really good. I’ve been getting beaten up fairly well with my new role at work.  But I’m liking it.  I just focus on blocking the time and doing the work.  I’m at a point in my career where I don’t have to worry about failure and that frees me up to be creative.  Makes the work an ecstasy versus a chore. And that’s the secret, my friends.  Remember the gift. On with the show. About Zero ZERO — The End of Prostate Cancer is the leading national nonprofit with the mission to end prostate cancer. ZERO advances research, improves the lives of men and families, and inspires action. Link to my ZERO page: (for Donations) … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  … Section one – Skipped Voices of reason – the conversation Farnk Shorter – Marathon Legend Running career Shorter first achieved distinction by winning the 1969 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) six mile run title during his senior year at Yale. He won his first U.S. national titles in 1970 in the three mile and six mile events. He also was the U.S. national six mile/10,000 meter champion in 1971, 1974, 1975 and 1977.   After graduating from Yale, Shorter chose to pursue a Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of New Mexico. However, he dropped out after six weeks after classes began to impact his training regime. Soon, he moved to Florida to study for a Juris Doctor degree at the University of Florida in Gainesville because of the excellence of the environment and the opportunity to train with Jack Bacheler as members of the Florida Track Club (FTC), founded by Jimmy Carnes, then the head coach of the Florida Gators track and field team.[10] Bacheler was regarded as America's best distance runner, having qualified for the finals of the 5,000-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.[11] The FTC's core nucleus of Shorter, Bacheler and Jeff Galloway qualified for the 1972 Olympics and their success made Gainesville the Mecca of distance running on the East Coast in the early 1970s.[12]   Shorter won the U.S. national cross-country championships four times (1970–1973). He was the U.S. Olympic Trials champion in both the 10,000-meter run and the marathon in both 1972 and 1976. He also won both the 10,000-meter run and the marathon at the 1971 Pan American Games. Shorter was a four-time winner of the Fukuoka Marathon (1971–1974), generally recognized as the most prestigious marathon in the world at that time and held on a very fast course. His career best of 2:10:30 was set at that race on December 3, 1972. Several months later, on March 18, 1973, Shorter won the elite Lake Biwa Marathon in 2:12:03. He won the prestigious 7-mile Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod in 1975 and 1976 and Atlanta's 10-kilometer Peachtree Road Race in 1977.   Shorter achieved his greatest recognition in the marathon, and he is the only American athlete to win two medals in the Olympic marathon.[13] At the Munich Games—which coincidentally is Shorter's place of birth— he finished fifth in the 10,000-meter final, breaking the American record for the event that he had established in his qualifying heat.[8] A few days later, he won the gold medal in the marathon. This ultimate achievement was marred by an impostor, West German student Norbert Sudhaus,[14] who ran into Olympic Stadium ahead of Shorter. Shorter was not bothered by the silence from the crowd who had been duped into thinking that he was running for the silver medal. Shorter was confident that he was going to win the gold medal because he knew that no competing runner had passed him.[15] He received the James E. Sullivan Award afterwards as the top amateur athlete in the United States.[8] At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Shorter dropped out of the 10,000 meters in order to concentrate exclusively on the marathon, winning the silver medal in the marathon[8] and finishing behind previously unheralded Waldemar Cierpinski of East Germany.[16] Cierpinski was later implicated as a part of the state-sponsored doping program by East German track and field research files uncovered by Werner Franke at the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig in the late 1990s. There were suspicions about other East German athletes during the Montreal Olympics, including the East German women's swimming team led by Kornelia Ender; the East German women won eleven of the thirteen events.[17]   From 2000 to 2003, Shorter was the chairman of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, a body that he helped to establish.[18]   Shorter was featured as a prominent character, played by Jeremy Sisto, in the 1998 film Without Limits. The film follows the life of Shorter's contemporary, training partner, Olympic teammate and sometime rival, Steve Prefontaine.[18] Shorter was the next to last person to see Prefontaine alive before he died in an automobile accident.   Shorter was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1984, the USA National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1989,[8] and the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in 1998.   A long-time resident of Boulder, Colorado, Shorter co-founded the Bolder Boulder in 1979. The annual 10k race is a popular Memorial Day event, which culminates with a tribute to U.S. Armed Forces at Folsom Field at the University of Colorado. A life-size bronze statue of Shorter stands outside the stadium. Section two –Varmint -   Outro Ok my friends that’s episode 4-474 of the RunRunLive Podcast.   I still plan to limp through the Flying Pig marathon but my knee is not responding as I hoped it would.  It is weak, unstable and painful.  Basically, well I want to use a family unfriendly word here, but let’s just say it’s not good. Frank Shorter ran the 1976 Olympic Marathon with a bad knee and came in 2nd.  Oy! I have been having a lot of trouble finding the time and inspiration to write and produce this show.  I know it’s getting stale, and you deserve better than that.  I’m considering ways to make it less of a lift for me.  Maybe break the sections up into individual, shorter shows that I could drop more frequently.  Maybe find a theme.  Or create multiple short shows from the various themes I cover here.  Then you could pick and choose what you wanted to listen to. We’ll see how it goes.  One step at a time. I’m heading down to Dallas tomorrow morning and I just realized it’s time change weekend here.  Meaning I’m going to have to roll out of bed at 3:30 AM body-clock time to start a long week with a nice dose of jetlag.  Heard an interesting comment on a call this week.  We were prepping for a executive meeting with one of our customers.  There were two senior executives from our side.  They were talking about a big deal that needed to close at this customer.  One of the Execs said to the other “You need to make it personal.”  That struck me.  After all the professionalism is sorted out every business transaction is personal.  I’ve always tried to avoid that.  Making business personal. But you can’t.  It’s personal whether you want it to be or not.  But making it personal allows you to leverage empathy – so it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  How about that for a thing to try this week? Make it personal. And I’ll see you out there. And I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Rachel -> Coach Jeff -> Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.