Welcome to Part Five of The Road to L.A. ’84, our multi-episode retrospective on the 40th anniversary of a seminal moment in a golden era of marathoning. We’re telling the behind-the-scenes account of the athletes, the training, and the build-up races. This week we rewind to the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. After a spring of epic clashes in Rotterdam and Boston, the world’s greatest distance runners converged on Scandinavia competing for the crown of World Champion — a title awarded outside of an Olympic year for the first time in track & field history. 40 years later, here’s the story of Helsinki 1983 on Mile 159 of Seconds Flat…

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