Running Commentary Episode #2

We’re starting another conversation with people who were around in the early days of the Finger Lakes Runners Club. And we have David Rossiter. Hello. And Caleb Rossiter. Hello. And I hope you guys sound enough different that the speaker identification actually will work. Obviously, they’re brothers. And I mostly know you guys as Truck and Spider. That’s right. And so I have to ask, before we get started any further, to confuse anyone, why are you called Truck and Spider?

Well, they call me the Dump Truck. And there were a couple reasons for that.

Known running item, dump trucks.

One was my running style, which is very deliberate. But the other one is I like to go off trail and kind of contribute to nature when the time comes.

Sometimes not so far off trail.

And I have a good story about that. We might as well start with this. You asked for this. The one time I ran New York, I only ran New York Marathon one time, and I think it was 1988. I think it was. Anyway, so, and I made the mistake of lining up where I should have lined up instead of all the people in front. But any, long story. So I get coming down into First Avenue, and all of a sudden I have this terrible urge, terrible urge. And I’m thinking, and the crowds along First Avenue, you know how they are. And I’m saying, what the hell? And I don’t know what, and the porta-potties, they’re there, but they’re long lines. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I get up, there’s a park at about. 100th street or something and i look and there’s a park with a little brick bathroom and i say there’s no way this because my wife my wife literally a brick house right no my no my wife it’s a brick house but my wife you have to this in this little park right and my wife is from ozone park and i did a lot of running in New York City and these places were never ever open they never had the bathroom ever worked so i ran there i said okay i’m just gonna go behind this thing and just shit. It turned out, I get there, I open the door, it’s open. It’s the one time in my life I’ve

actually officially not had a chat. So that’s the dump truck story. Caleb, go to yours. We have to remember our last name is Atrocious. You don’t say Spider. You say Spider Atrocious, Dump Truck Atrocious. We’ll get to that. Leroy, our other brother, Atrocious. So these are our nicknames. And for me, when people say in a store, when I say the coffee’s for a spider, they say, come on, your mother didn’t name you that. What’s your real name? So of course, I’m able to say, oh, my real name is, my full name is Climbs Like a Spider. And I was named that by my wife in the little town of Gubbio, Il Silencioso in Tuscany, when instead of choosing to walk a circular spiral from the bottom of the mountain to where San Ubaldo is in a coffin like Lenin on top for 500 years with his cheeks sucked in. I said, let’s go straight up the side of the mountain. It’s about 1990. We’re in Italy. So I’m crawling up the side of the mountain, thereby not having to go around and around and around like the young people do carrying their 500-pound cross of Jesus in these races they have, kind of like the Palio in Siena. And I’ve realized my wife is not with me because I’m talking and nobody’s answering me. And of course, I’ve crawled up like this on an incline, going on the straight line instead. I’m on the gradient, not the cycles. And I look down and she’s 40 feet below me standing still on the bottom. And then she sits down on her knees and starts laughing hysterically. Apparently, I looked quite funny. So I wait for her to come walking around and around and around. She says, I was laughing because you climb like a spider. And since that point, if I ever hear the word Caleb in my house, I know I have done something horrific and am serious trouble like not scrub the counter the proper European way.

I actually never knew that story. I thought it was just from his running style.

It’s my climbing style, apparently. All right.

So, okay. So then we got to get to Atrocious as the last name, which I believe predates, you probably remember the Traveling Wilburys where it was like, you know, Bob Dylan and all those people.

No, there’s a very simple story.

Okay.

When we, this goes back to the Triennial Finger Lakes Trail Relay. And we have to talk about that anyway. So this was 1981 and we were very tired. We used to run trails and go out from Barton and the railroad grade in English style. I’ll mention that in the middle. So we liked trails, but the guys at High Noon, they every day would start the same point. They would have to run the same course. They say, I ran Genung and it took me, you know, 14 seconds quicker, et cetera, et cetera. So our idea was to get them out on the trail. And we all had done Finger Lakes Trail hiking and et cetera, et cetera. So we decided to have this race and you were supposed to apply to us with your 10 mile time. And we were going to then, because we had six from the county line on Route 79 at Tioga County to Watkins Glen in six stages, which is a long way. Each stage is a long, but we had a shorter stage from Cayuta Outlet to Bennettsburg for it, specifically for Ed Hart or people that, because he was already older at that time. You know, that would be about eight or nine miles, but most were like 15 or 16 miles. Like Caleb, he ran with Joe Daley from the county line to Whitechurch Road, all that way. Well, they were all that long anyway. So we said, if you give us your 10-mile time, we’ll make the teams. And so we were going to name A, B, and C. So then we said, A, B, and C, Atrocious, Bestial, and Crazed. And Joe, I can’t remember if Joe Dabes was in the first one or not, maybe the second. And he objected to being called Bestial. I remember that. But we had, I mean, there’s so many stories about the Triennial, but that’s where the Atrocious comes from. And then for every Triennial since, we were the only team. Then you could form your own teams. Right. After that. And we formed our team. And it was always Atrocious and trying to get people to be Atrocious.

And you were the organizers and you reserved the right to change the rules at any time. Yes. I mean, this is when we met. I believe our first meeting was during Triennial. You were in the third or fourth Triennial. Third or fourth. Okay. This was 1990, maybe. 89, 90?

81, 84, 87, 90. 90.

Okay, so it’s 90.

And I ran against you. I remember that. Right.

And so I had been recruited for this. It was the High Noon team. And I’d been recruited by John Saylor.

Seaweed is his nickname.

Seaweed, we call him.

Seaweed. I have never heard that.

Because of what he eats. That’s how macrobiotic he eats. No, no. We call it macro chaotic. The guy looked like a refugee because he was trying to get faster.

Okay.

So.

You starved. Thank you so much.

So in any event, so I had actually just gotten back from a bike trip from Poughkeepsie back to Ithaca.

Were you a high school student or college?

No, college. I just graduated from college.

Okay.

I was out of college by a year. I graduated in Cornell 89. But I was running with High Noon. And so I’d just done this, like, I don’t know, 200-mile bike trip with a friend and everything. And John says, hey, we need another guy. Could you run this leg? I had no idea. No idea. So, and this was running to the county line.

That’s right.

Was it from Whitechurch?

I think it was from Old 76 or it was either from the base of Shindagin Hollow or it was from Old 76. But I think it was from the base of Shindagin Hollow. And he stuck to me because he didn’t know the trail.

Well, that was later on. So, the problem was is that this is age and gender graded starts.

Oh, we’re already doing that.

And so I start, I’m young, I start at the very last time with Aaron Pempel, T.J. Pempel’s son, who was a high school stud at the time. And we’re running together and then it starts to pour. It is raining so hard. And I’m like debating whether I take my glasses off or on because like I can’t see without my glasses, but I can’t see with my glasses on either. So I’m like, I’m really worried.

This is Triennial.

This is Triennial. This is Triennial all the way. Oh, I’m loving this. And so I’m crashing through the brush. You know, like we can’t actually see the trail. Like I’m following Aaron. I’m hoping Aaron knows where he’s going. I had no time to pre-run the course. I’d only been invited days before. So Aaron, I’m following Aaron the whole way, trying my best to stay up with him because I know I’m going to get lost. At some point, you know, legs are, legs are. I come out on a road. He hits the wall and just stops.

You came out in Level G reen.

Came out on Level Green. And you have to go up a hill on the road.

And then in.

And then back in, I’m like, I’m asking the aid station people, but it’s not really an aid station. I’m like, where do I go? And they don’t, I don’t know.

And remember, back in those days, the markings were very bad on the Finger Lakes Trail. Now they really got it together. But, you know, Joe Dabes and people like that. But it was really bad.

And so I ran up a bit. I’m like, I have no idea. No idea where to turn in. I look back. I see Truck coming up the road behind me. I’m like, I’m just going to rest. So I just stopped, waited, wait until he caught up with me. He’s like, so where do we turn in? And then he shows me where we turn in. We ran together for a little while. And then it was like we were a mile from the finish at that point. And most of it was downhill. Like, okay, see you later.

That’s a great story. You know, you were treated poorly by John Seaweed. So we do have an official motto for the Triennial, which is the race is to the prepared. The race is.

But I mean. You should not have been thrown. No, but I got a good, again, back to the High Noon people that we would rope in. So the second Triennial, we got Larry Prudhomme and was it, someone else, I can’t remember what it was, but Larry Prudhomme, he said he would just stick with.

I do remember Larry Prudhomme.

This one I was running.

I remember the name. I don’t remember the person.

So this is the one I think, I can’t remember where we started. I think we started at the parking lot by the fishing parking lot of the base of Treman. And we went all the way up to Connecticut Hill. And he said he was just going to stay with me because he’s a better runner than me. so we got up into Reiman Woods so we got up above the trail went up to Porter Hill Road and then went it used to go up into Reiman Woods and then it used to go down the other side it was allowed to go down the other side to where the Stevenson Preserve is now and we got up to the top and he’s and I got behind like one I wasn’t even trying to lose him we’ll get there he’s maybe three steps behind me I got behind one tree and went down the hill and I hear them behind me two guys it was him and I can’t remember, Joe Streeter, I think, and saying, where are they? Where are they? Where are they? You took off. And I just took off. And then later on, I’m up on Connecticut Hill. And I go, and then I see them way back on Connecticut Hill Road. They were supposed to be on the trail. They’re on the road and they see me like a mile. They’re yelling at me and then I take off. They were just totally lost. Then he got back to the finish at Cayuta or wherever and he was saying, so unfair. That’s when we were really the race to the prepare. I lost him within three steps. And it’s kind of open up there, actually. The top of Reiman Woods is not very closed. It’s just kind of behind a tree and then gone.

There’s so many good Triennial stories. I mean, Triennial, to be clear, so people don’t know, Triennial Trail Relay was never a Finger Lakes Runners Club event. It still is not. You couldn’t afford the lawsuit.

We were threatened from the first instant. We thought the police were coming to arrest us, but it was just Ed Hart rushing up to take the photos. It was not the police.

No, we thought the Finger Lakes Trail Conference had complained to the police or something because right at the start of the very first one, this car is zooming up and it’s Ed Hart filming.

So, yes, this was a completely underground race, which I must say they’ve really come back into fashion. There’s now all these relays that go from, like, was it from L.A. to Las Vegas? There’s no route.

I mean, I’m going to sound like an old fart now.

No.

Back in those days, I mean, it was very, there were a few races. I think Escarpment was there. There were a few things like that, but in general, trail running was just not a thing.

The Dipsea doodle, the Dipsea in California, which is sort of a hippie race.

In Marin, yeah.

And here there was zero. So when we first said we were going to do Triennial, they didn’t want to do it. That’s why we had to form the teams and kind of convince them to do it.

Just to be clear, Tom Rishel has joined us here, so he’s the fourth voice you’ll hear.

When you get this out of them, then ask me one thing. Just one thing about that. About that. Just I do want to.

Well, back to the insurance for the club. That’s exactly it. We specifically said it’s not. Now, one year, Joe Dabes went and got permissions from the DEC and stuff like that. And I said, just don’t do that. Stop doing that. It’s a participation run. I don’t know. We gave it back to the Mighty Isis, and I don’t know what they’re doing now.

All the runners wanted to be libertarians.

Well, I mean, here’s the thing.

All the administrators wanted to be fascists. And I was in the middle as president. And I didn’t know whether we could get permission from anybody. And it was my house that was on the block.

Because the club wasn’t incorporated.

The thing is, it’s a public footpath.

I’m glad you’re here. I apologize for putting you in this.

And so Joe Dabes sent me a letter saying, why are you totally opposed to trail running? And I said, I’m not opposed to trail running. I’m opposed to not knowing whether I have insurance or not. And that was the whole thing.

Our position was, there’s nobody here but us hikers. What are you talking about? We didn’t want…

This is also before the more litigious society of a run.

No, but I think even then…

Yeah, but wait a minute. Somebody falls down and he falls on something and then he punctures a lung or something like that. And I’m responsible because the Finger Lakes Runners Club organized something. And he didn’t do it.

Normally, normally it’s right.

Joe Dabes didn’t do it. Well, you can always sue anybody for anything. Cornell had to pay tens of millions of dollars to someone who wanted to go sledding on Libe Slope because they had some little jokey sign in the Willard Strait Hall that said, use the tray to get your burger and then go out and have fun outside or something. So I understand. I apologize. We were always looking to make trouble, and we probably would have liked somebody to die.

Well, no, I mean.

I’m going to say all the rest of this. I must say. You’re absolutely right. You weren’t thinking. Just a little. My house now belongs to Cornell anyway.

A side note that since this was before I moved to the Netherlands, but I do orienteering and running and so forth in the Netherlands. There we have something called eigen risico. Everyone has got their insurance in Netherlands, has it. You have insurance for yourself. So when you go to an event, an organized event, they say sign at your, it says your own risk. But the reason it really is your own risk is because you do have insurance. And unless they do something, you can be sued for negligence. If you put a bear trap across the trail or something. But in general, so you really don’t have the, the clubs don’t have this problem.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. They don’t have this problem. But I had a problem. We did. Okay. And I owned it.

And to be fair.

And I wanted to keep it.

I mean, this is one, and I don’t know, we’ll have to find out at some point. I don’t know when this happened. But the reason why the club is actually in the RRCA, we have a group exemption for the tax exemption stuff. And we get our, we’re an RRCA member club. and that’s how we get our club insurance. And so now we don’t worry about individuals being named.

All I wanted to do was to find out whose responsibility, that person who got the policy.

And what I’ve learned from talking to insurance companies is it just depends. And so that’s why it’s really, really tricky.

And as we know from Mr. Trump, you can go after anybody. I mean, if you want to go to court, you can go after anybody.

Jesus, I’ve said his name now twice this year.

Back to 1978.

So Triennial, yeah. I mean, so basically this was a race that went on every three years. And I have to say it was an institution. Like I have stories from each of the ones I ran. I have stories, you know, like finding Herb Engman who had a way. He had a 20-minute head start on me and I caught him in the first mile because he couldn’t see the – he got lost in the first mile.

But Caleb brought one of us, Shatara, his friend, up from one year. She missed a turn, ended up coming down into someone’s house, and they offered her pancakes. She said, where’s the Finger Lakes Trail? And they said, we don’t know. We’ve heard that it’s around here somewhere. Crossing 76 Road.

Was she alone?

And she said, well, but we were having breakfast. And then she had to wander around.

There were guns everywhere.

And then she looked down the road. It was about half a mile and saw a runner crossing and realized that must be where the Finger Lakes Trail was.

So my people getting lost in Triennial was, you know Boris. Boris Dzikovsky. Oh, Boris.

Oh, man.

Boris can get lost on the indoor track. I mean, it’s amazing. But so there was one time, again, another Triennial. We had an early morning start, so we’d need headlamps at the beginning. It was that early.

I like that.

And he had a head start. He’s older than I am. And at some point, I got a couple of miles in, I come on to him in a clearing where he is running around in circles going, where is fucking trail?

I was about to say.

Actually, I had to say.

Let’s just say fuck right now. We’re good.

I had the same thing. We’re good. We had a, I was once on a leg with him from, from Bennettsburg over to Texas Hollow. He started before we came up to that first. You go up the road and then left. And there’s a big field where the trail goes along the edge. I started maybe half an hour after him and he was running around that field. It was one mile, less than a mile from the start. And, you know, if the trail just goes in the woods, it goes along the top there anyway.

Our introduction to Boris, his first FLRC race was Skunk. And Skunk back in the day, Skunk back in the day was when you went out 366 and Dodge and Ellis Hollow and then back Ellis Hollow Creek. Well, John Whitman, I think, was the race director that year. And there were, you know, some kind of aid station or thing at the Ellis Hollow Creek, Ellis Hollow intersection. But they hadn’t set up super, super early. I guess it was like a table there or something. Boris turns right and takes the leaders. He’s that good. He takes the leaders to 79. Oh, gee. And when they hit 79, it becomes pretty clear they’ve gone the wrong way, and they kept to come back and everything. And so, of course, Skunk is also right before Boston. And so he goes to Boston that year and meets the same guys who were still pissed at him. Oh, sure.

Are you aware of one of our top two prizes at?

Christopher Columbus.

Christopher Columbus.

I remember that.

And each year, there was a worthy winner.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway. There was, there was.

So whose idea was this? I mean, when did, when did it enter your head?

He’s pointing at me. I’m, Caleb, I’m pointing at David. Well, I mean, the very first race we had. We both worked it out somehow.

Oh, in the very first race, we gave hardware like saws and things, rusty saws, because the High Noon runners wanted hardware. You don’t come to a race without hardware.

TJ Pempel wanted hardware. So we got like a rusty saw.

And I mean, TJ was hardcore.

TJ always wanted hardware.

But the thing was. And so we raided David’s shed. I don’t know if he knew this.

My wife’s still mad.

And we took a bunch of rotten hardware and started handing it out at the thing. TJ was a pretty good sport about it.

He was. The thing is that people, I mean, it’s a whole different attitude towards running, I guess, with trail running in general. Or running Finger Lakes Marathon, for that matter. You can’t really go by your time as such. You would go by the effort and how well you did and who you beat. And, you know, you don’t run Finger Lakes Marathon. I can tell you this. To run your best time.

Before TJ had ever run a club race, TJ and I ran around the track in Barton Hall one day. And I said, have you ever heard about T-shirt races? And TJ said, T-shirts? You mean they give away T-shirts? Yeah, man.

But our whole attitude is running. My attitude still is that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with track running and road running, but especially road runner. You know, you can’t really compare, right?

So it’s a cross-country approach, man. Oh, yeah. Time doesn’t matter. Place is all that matters.

I’m thinking that David is the true creator of Triennial because I did do all the running in Shindagin Hollow, which is state forest land at the end of Caroline. Last line, last house on the bus stop from Caroline School District. And the great logging trails that they had been put in there. So I lived there and I would train there when I just started running in 1973 or 1974. But I don’t think I put up through the idea of having a race on. think this was David’s reaction my guess is to the High Noon mentality of always wanting to have a time that you could compare and we just said oh and also we did not want it to be the other which is the trail runners who like to run very long trails and just they can walk they can chit chat oh yeah we wanted this to be a super like one of your best efforts of the year like you were training for a Finger Lakes Marathon lay it out and this is why we we did 10 now that

reminds me why we had the 10 mile times was we wanted each leg to be competitive so that’s why we have a leg for Ed Hart. John McMurray was on that leg and I don’t remember we had some people that were putting slower 10 mile time we said fine we have a leg for you guys all right you know and and battle all the way to I have i have a list of the people so I can find and later later on

obviously people picked their own legs and things like that but there was also the age and gender great starters so people were like picking and choosing so you never quite knew what was going to happen and so you know another one of mine is I used to I had a leg against Earl Steinbrecher and Audrey Ballander um and Audrey was a lot older than I was and was a woman and so I was a

lot faster than she was she was ahead she was way ahead and you know what we called you the people in the back who were starting at scratch what’s up the action figures yes because you would be running you’d think you were going to win your leg if you were older and you’re getting closer to the finish on Connecticut Hill and suddenly some wisp of a little boy from Cornell as skinny as a rail just wearing his shorts and you know for a run at 20 miles comes by you as if he’s Michael Johnson and you say there goes the action figure so sometimes they’d catch you so it was a competitive race to the finish because the action figures were coming this one was so like at some point

I like I would like I knew I mean who wasn’t I mean you know who was in your in your leg and you You know people. So, like, I knew Audrey was going to be the hardest one to catch and, you know, except Earl. And so, because he had like a minute head start. He was just a little older than I was. And so, you know, I catch Audrey. There’s like three miles to go. And I’m like, well, either Earl gets lost or if he gets lost, I win. Otherwise, I finished. He had changed and was drinking a beer. I’m like, okay.

But it worked once for me with Audrey. Also, it was the Monster Half Marathon. Oh, yeah. And we finished together. I mean, I came up on her finally with 200 yards to go. It was almost perfect. I mean, they had the seeding. I mean, the length, the difference was perfect, actually.

So how’d you do the seeding? Yeah.

When you started doing that. Did you really think your way through that? I don’t remember. You know, I have to go back and look at my records. We were trying to do different things. Yeah. So the first one we just went, west to east. The second one, I think we did the exact same thing, just going the other direction. And then we started getting creative and we had more time to think about these things.

There was one word.

Now, the simultaneous orgasm.

Yeah, that’s right. I remember that one.

I knew that phrase was going to come out. The whole point is everybody converged from both directions.

That was the one where we went in two. No, that’s the one where we started from two ends. Yes. And came closer and closer. And the idea was to finish it, Upper Buttermilk. exactly with both legs all coming together, both the two legs and the timing. That was the aim. So that was called the simultaneous orgasm.

Did this ever happen?

Let’s not edit this.

No, it didn’t work. It was too much. It was too variable.

It didn’t work.

You know, you try to calculate how long legs will take.

Yeah, how often does it work?

Exactly. Well, exactly. So that was all.

You can’t blame us.

But anyway, that was one of them.

That one was the, I remember this one too, because that was the first one where, Earl Steinbrecher again, he had bought new shoes. He had never worn and wore them in the race. You should have seen the blood on those shoes. Blisters, he’d never worn them before.

So who was the guy who, there was another new shoe thing, and I was involved in it, and I was just leaving for Barton Hall sometime, and somebody had new shoes. And so we took him to places right along the reservoir, all sorts of places, you know. And he was just so angry with us.

You were teaching him a lesson.

That’s right.

A very important life lesson.

But also, we met Tom Meyer. He’d gotten recruited by some team. He didn’t know about High Noon. And I was like, Tom, you should come run with High Noon. And he did. And he ran with High Noon the rest of his time at Cornell. And he just came back for Hartshorne.

But back to the Triennial, I want to say the webpage, which you hijacked one time.

Okay. We’ll talk about that.

Very good. We loved that.

We loved it.

We loved it.

It was totally in the spirit. But that has, I think, all the recollections. Caleb has long articles in there. Yes. And anything I know about that is there. I could go back. We could have a time where I could look and see if there’s more specific things. But that pretty much tells a story. That page has everything on it. So you can just look at that. So if we want to talk about FLRC, we could do that because the Triennial, everything is there that we remember.

Is there something about that that you remember right now that you’d like to say? I mean, you know, because who knows the next time we’ll be.

I mean, about the Triennial.

I just want to say, I think it’s unfair for Adam to have said, you guys kept making up the rules to suit yourself. It is true that at times we penalize people for certain things, coincidentally, just by the amount of minutes that would make us the victors. but there was we had a process we had a constitutional process we did the race committee would meet in Truck’s bathtub and if you weren’t there this is not our problem you have to show up to public meetings you realize but Truck would lie in the bathtub and dream I would dream me something but

I want to tell you something this is really funny you won’t were all the meetings in the bathtub yes and by the way I’ve been in that bathtub you don’t want to be in that bathroom when I when I passed when I said I’m at 65. So I went until I was 65, the last one, I think the 13th one or 12th or 13th, 12th maybe, 12th. And I said, okay, I’ve done it. All these years, I’m 65. This is the last one I’m doing. Mighty Isis, do you want to take it over? And Karen Grover said, yes, I want to take it over. But do I have to sit with you in the bathtub? She actually said that to me. And I said to her, you can use your own bathtub or your own shower. It’s all yours. I’m not one of these people that holds on to things after I’ve given them up. It’s all yours. She thought that was going to be necessary.

I would like to recognize Karen Grover because she put her name on one of the most important awards.

Do the Grover.

When you do a Grover, when you go down to your knees unnecessarily on the trail, that’s called the Monica Lewinsky Award.

Okay.

We will have to.

Okay. They both drink at the same time.

Was that the naughty schoolgirl year?

No.

The naughty schoolgirl year?

They were so wonderful. They all dressed as naughty schoolgirls together. It made Joe Daley’s heart pump even harder. Joe Daley had a thing about red-haired women. And so he would arrive at the starting line, not at the bathtub, but he’s Joe Daley, and he would say, Women with red hair, get five minutes head start. That was, and we had nothing you can do about it. He would go crazy. Well, I felt the same way about the naughty schoolgirl outfits.

They were just too good.

But if they’re all wearing naughty schoolgirl outfits.

I don’t care about the time. I was happy.

The problem was is one of them got lost. Somewhere in Danby.

Showed up at a farm door, right? I’ve forgotten that. This guy opens the door. He’s watching TV, probably porn. He’s like, thank you, Jesus. She’s standing in this place where hardly anybody ever gets to.

And he invites her in.

You bet she invites her.

Because it was the, like, you know, do you know where the Finger Lakes Trail is? And he’s like, no, but maybe my son does. And he invites her in to ask the son. And the son’s, like, playing video games.

You and me are most rich.

It was worth it purely for the story.

Now, if we don’t get off Triennial, we will never get anything else. Because you could go forever.

But I have to do the website story. So, this is, we had, gosh, I’m blanking on his name. We had a guy on the team who had done a, he was not prepared. He had old maps.

Yes.

He, and.

I don’t remember him.

And.

He came down High Z Road. He had maps from FLR, from Cayuga Trails Club from 35 years ago. And they changed them.

Yeah, there’s an old one from like, yeah.

Yeah. A long time ago. So he got, I think, I think he, I think you ran into him like going the wrong direction or something like that. So it made it really clear that he was off the course in a significant, significant way. And it was reducing the time. So I believe that I argued that you should just like give him last place and we would take that, but don’t DQ him. I managed to get that by, but then I was like, well, we have some opportunities here. Tom Meyer at the time was the webmaster for FLRC. And I do technology stuff. And your website was very simple. It was just HTML pages. And at some Dutch domain. So what Tom and I did is we went to, I think there was some time like right after the awards ceremony. And so we went home and I copied the entire website down, put it on the FLRC site, which was Tom’s help. And then we announced on the FLRC site and web and email list that we had won. And we changed all the results so that we did win.

Brilliant.

And they were like, and they follow the link because the link goes to our version of the site, not theirs. They’re like, well, it looks like they won. I remember running into you in an airport like a year later and kind of introduced myself. You’re the guy who hacked our site. That was great.

And I hacked the site I won.

I just love that.

And somehow I said, and I somehow I got on a list and said, don’t trust these tidbits of misinformation, which is the name of his.

I think I remembered.

That’s very good.

The end of that. Yeah. I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. Pretty much fun.

Okay. Back to the Finger Lake Runners Club. So you guys are coming in a little bit later. I mean, Tom, obviously.

Let me start with my story.

How do you get started?

Caleb was doing this before me, so he’ll get that. But I moved back to Ithaca in February, January, February of 1978. I’d been out in Washington State. And I hadn’t been running a little bit out there. I’d been running a little bit. But I got in Ithaca, and I got interested in running, and I decided I was going to run the 5 & 10. And so that’s how I got into running. And as soon as I did, so sort of that summer, I don’t remember exactly, I started going to the FLRC meets.

So this is 78.

This is 78.

Okay. I was not president.

And Jim, well, Barb Booker wasn’t even.

Barb Booker was president.

I think it was still Jim Hartshorne, but maybe I’m wrong.

Well, it might be right in there.

All I can say is Jim was very imperious as typical at the show. We would meet at Schoellkopf. Well, the meets were, it was good. They had monthly meets. They were at Schoellkopf Field. And so you’d have some things there, including Cooper Test, if I remember correctly. Yes, all the time. And I remember, so this sort of in the summertime, and that’s when I got into English-style cross-country, because that course was all set. And I remember that course, if you guys don’t remember it well.

Does this ring a bell for you?

Not for me, but Tom and Bob were talking about it last time.

English-style cross-country was what we did every Sunday. We didn’t stay on the track. We thought that was wimpy. Away we’d go with Bobby Congdon and some crazies. across the waters.

No, but it was a specific, actually it started out with the other road runners because they had a course that was like Skunk Cabbage 10K as a, they’d have some track and then they have road, you know, every, you could go out and do a road race. It was pretty much, it was Tower Road, 366, Game Farm, Stevenson. Right. And it might’ve just been to the same 10K.

It may be the 10K.

It may have been, or it could’ve been Dodge and back down Turkey Hill.

But it was not marked.

Yeah.

It was, so the English style was, When you got to the railroad grade, go over down the railroad grade to Freese, and it wasn’t as well developed then, but it was open. I mean, Mount Pleasant. Down Mount Pleasant across the bridge, now back into the Cornell properties and run that back trail along the Cornell properties.

Freese trails.

But the bridge, the little bridge the engineers built, it wasn’t there. So you went down and then to the base of the Cornell cross-country course. Oh, yeah, yeah. And at the center of the base of the cross-country course is a little link to the stream. You go across the stream. Right there.

You could either take your shoes off and hold them in your hands, because that might make you quicker on the way in, even though you had to put your shoes back on, because they wouldn’t be soggy and wet. Right. Or you could just man up and head straight across, tromping through Fall Creek and squish, squish all the way down top of the road.

So then you went up over the rail, over the rail. Down to Forest Home. And then you ran through Forest Home. And then when you got behind Mann Library, you went up the trail that is from the base of the Plantations, the back of Mann Library, and then across. I don’t know if it was. I think we went just down to the road and straight back into Schoellkopf. I don’t think. Or we might have gone across the top of line.

I think it changed at various times.

Top of line. To the top of. Across the top of line. Halfway through the Ag Quad. Top of line. And then down.

I’m sure it did change in a lot of times.

Cornell But yeah, it was just done periodically, if nothing else.

But anyway, that was the English, so I’m glad to get that on record that was English. And whose idea it was, somebody had an idea that in England, this English cross-country was not like cross-country in golf courses. It’s real cross-country. You know what the original steeplechase is? You aim at the steeple.

Well, someone was just telling me they just had World Cross-Country Championships and then USATF Club Nationals at the same place in Tallahassee. And because it was Worlds the day before, they had built mud pits and hills and things on this normally flat golf course in Tallahassee. So it was actually much more serious. Cross-country should have obstacles.

Or I still remember we did the one up by Mendon Ponds and you’re up and down the drumlins. It’s a real, you know, you’ve got to pace yourself. But anyway, so that’s so my and then one thing I do remember also is they gave numbers. You had a permanent number and I got a very low number. I was like 12 or something.

By the second year, you had a pretty low number, whatever it was.

They were giving, when someone would leave the club or die, Sharon Petrillose was two. Jim was one. Sharon Petrillose was two. And anyway, and somehow I got a very low number because someone had sort of dropped out. So someone had left the club and maybe, I think it was 12 or something, was open and they just gave that to me. And you would wear your, so you’d wear your club number.

I think at the end of the year, it was sort of up to Jim to move you up. And you didn’t move up by singles. You sort of moved up by years. He had his own rules for whatever.

Just do whatever Jim asked you to do.

I got the impression that Jim was in charge.

Well, I’ll tell you the story about Jim. I went to Jim and I said, you know, there’s real problems with the 5 & 10. And I told him what the problems were. You know, no bathrooms, et cetera, et cetera. This was like year two. Jim took a look at me. He was sitting behind a card table, and he took a look at me, and he said, Tom, you’re getting me pissed off. He said, when this is your race, you can do it any way you want. He said, right now, it’s my race. And that was it. And then he called me up about three days later, and he said, would you like to go to dinner with me?

Well, the thing is that he could browbeat people, and he browbeat Ithaca into having the race downtown, being able to close streets, have police protection, and at Stewart Park, I mean, he really browbeat the city to do this.

He really did. And it was going to be Carl Radzik’s race, but Jim came to me and he said, you know, Carl, he said, that young boy, he can’t do it. I’m taking it over.

So, Spider, how did you get started? Where’s your intro point to FLRC?

I think you’ll appreciate this because you’ve taken over the Hartshorne Mile. I’m the same age as one of Jim Hartshorne’s sons And he was my friend My little brother Leroy is the same age as Tommy And they were very good friends throughout elementary and high school And the only person we ever saw in Ithaca Running in short pants Who was grown up was Jim Hartshorne 1960s, early 1960s So at the time when I was say 12 In 1963 playing golf in a golf course with my buddies or my father, Cornell golf course, you would see in their shorts, no shirts, Mr. Hartshorne and Tommy, who had been about nine years old, doing wind sprints on the Cornell golf course while we were playing golf, up and down the part that runs from Moakley straight out to the game farms or whatever, the horse farms up there, really burning. And we thought that was very interesting, but that’s the last time we thought about it. But Mr. Hartshorne was known as the man in the short pants. So then in high school, you have to remember there are three brothers who you’re really interviewing here today, even though Winton isn’t here. We’re a pack, my poor mother. And we were apart by a couple, three years in each direction. I’m in the middle. So what any one of us would do as a youngster, the others would immediately copy. So David had a girlfriend in junior high school. We immediately in elementary had to have girlfriends. I play in a rock and roll band in junior high school and Winton immediately forms an elementary school rock and roll band. You know, David goes and learns bluegrass music in college immediately in various travels. Immediately, Winton and I learn bluegrass. I mean, we just teach. So all the things I love in life. I got the bluegrass from David and Winton. I’ll explain how he made me a Finger Lakes Runners Club member. Winton was younger than us. He was 16. And he announced, while David and I were living together with our flames in Ludlowville, not doing any running, just kind of hanging out and living the college life, that he was going to run the Boston Marathon. It just entered his brain. And he was on the cross-country team with Tommy Hartshorne, and Mr. Porter was the coach.

Stump Porter.

Harold, correct? Yeah. Yeah, Harold Stump Porter. He was around Harold. And there was one of Winton’s friends at Cayuga Heights was named Gibbian who ran with him.

George Gibbian.

They would do crazy things like run up the road. I think it’s called Kline woods. They do repeats on Kline woods. From where the Board of Education is straight up. They were doing these crazy things.

Kline is so steep. I actually, very early days of the Internet on Usenet, had an argument with the Internet, more or less, about whether or not there could be a road that was so steep that it was easier to run than to bike. Because I had biked up. I’d biked up. I’d run up. I’m like, way easier running up. And the bikers could not believe this. Eventually, some guy who’d been in Cornell undergrad and was a grad student at NCSA, at Urbana-Champaign, did the math, worked out the physics. And he was like, yes, at this incline, which is less than what Kline is, the mechanical advantage of a bicycle is outweighed by the incline.

Old category, HC, right? Yeah. So when Winnie announced he was going to run the Boston Marathon, I, who had never taken a step in my life, announced to him, well, little bro, if you can do it, I can do it. Okay.

The qualifier, you had to go to the Boston Qualifier.

And you guys, Finger Lakes Runners Club, sponsored the Boston Qualifier.

That was later. But, yeah, you’re talking about maybe 75, 78.

I can tell you the year. He was 16 in 1971. We were in college.

Yeah, so there was a qualifying time at that point.

But, yeah. So you had to run.

You had a qualifying race.

And I thought it was run by Finger Lakes Runners Club.

It was.

Okay. And so when he had signed up, I just showed up in my Keds and Bermuda shorts at Barton Hall because, you know, I’m 19 and I know what the hell I’m doing. So when he and I take off together, he’s going to run 3 hours and 15 minutes because he had to do 3:30, which is about a seven and a half minute mile. I’m with him to five miles. Now, of course, today at 74, I can train forever. I’m not going to run 7:30s for five miles.

But nonetheless, I did. I should point out, the qualifying, you could also qualify by running 10 miles under a certain time.

I don’t remember that.

No, but at five miles, he decided maybe he could make it to 10 miles at the qualifying.

I did make it to 10, but in an hour and a half. So that’s not good. So anyway, and then I went back to cheer for Winnie to win. And it was very exciting. And he did qualify for the Boston Marathon. I’m not sure my mom let him go.

Because he was 16, right?

But nonetheless. So we got really interested. And I can remember starting just to say, not because I wanted to compete, started running in from Ludlowville to Cornell to go to classes. I thought this was cool. But then sort of, you know, put it aside. And that’s like 10 miles. And then at a time right after college. So for me, this is 1973, 74. I was living in Ludlowville. I’m sorry. I was living in Slaterville Springs, and I decided out of the blue, having seen somebody do it, that I would break 30 minutes in the Ithaca five-mile race. And so I got excited, and every day my daughter would take a nap, and I’d run down Slaterville Road towards Ithaca two and a half miles and come back and whatever. I just got into it. And went and said, look at this. This is sibling rivalry. I get to be a runner now. Now you’re trying to be a runner. And so there was sibling rivalry between the three of us, but not to be the bestest. It was like, who could come up with the toughest workouts to get closest to their potential? And we would give each other, we would coach each other just ridiculous things.

I have to point out, Caleb is by far the more talented runner. More talented natural runner.

Of the three of you.

By time. Oh, absolutely.

But see, this is not what we were looking at. We were looking at who could have the achievement. So I remember much more vividly David breaking three hours in the Finger Lakes Marathon, which is far superior to what, in fact, I ran a little faster, but this is ridiculous.

You ran like 2:45.

Excuse me, 2:39:19, but who’s counting?

I’ve heard that song before.

But I was 2:59.37. Just unbelievable.

So we were very proud of that.

The pain coming down that last hill. You get to the top of the last hill at 20, and you realize, I realized I could do it. I realized, you know, I remember Finger Lakes, you go up, up, up that last big hill. Got 24 miles at the turn. I said, yes, I know I can do this if I run 5:50s or 6:00s downhill, whatever it was. I know I can do it. But the pain, although it’s downhill. But with a good time, I have 23 seconds to spare. What more do you want?

Did each of the three of you want to be the first one to do it of the three? Or, you know, it didn’t matter.

No, I did the thing. He’d done marathons before. It was my first marathon. But I don’t even run.

That’s an amazing time.

Was that 1980? Yeah. Somewhere around there. 2:59. I’d only been running 2:34 or whatever. No, no. I’m sorry. I ran Finger Lakes two times. I run it four times. Yeah. First was 3:08. First was my novice. Yes, they used to have a word for first novice. So in 1980, I’d only been running a year and a half. And I ran 3:08, which was pretty amazing. And then four years later, six years later is when I ran the 2:59. But I ran 3:08 as a novice of Finger Lakes. That, I think, is better than the 2:59. I mean, really, in that sense.

So I would say what I’m describing is about 1975 when I did the Finger Lakes Marathon and went to Boston Marathon at that point. And we just all got into it sort of encouraging each other to be as crazy as possible and intense as possible. The old guard welcomed us in. They had a lot of track meets. And we didn’t understand, being young, that these runners in their 40s were fantastic. We didn’t know what Masters Runners were. We didn’t recognize that. We ignored the Hartshorne Mile. They didn’t mean anything to us. T.J. Pempel and Larry Prudhomme in about 1978 or 2009, when I was training viciously, brutally, with Truck’s help for 800 meters stuff, they were in their 40s. And they and Jack Blakely. Oh, legendary.

He’s still here, by the way. He’s still here.

He passed away.

Oh, I’m sorry. I’m thinking of, you know.

You know who I mean.

I’m thinking of Jack Booker.

Right. Yeah. Jack Booker was very good, too. But Jack, you would be in a race at your peak, my peak abilities, 10 mile marathon, whatever. And I’d be with TJ Pempel, Larry Prudhomme, and Jack Blakely. Blakely.

Blakely.

Lovely guy. Lived over in Forest Home there. His daughter works at Cornell now.

Scotsman.

These people were just incredible when I realize it now. So Larry Prudhomme, the prudent man, when I would train him to run the Hartshorne Mile, he wanted to do it in his 40s. He was running 4:37. Okay. I never got near 4:37 as a 40-year-old. They were very, really good, high-level competition. And it was great for us to have them to run with, but we didn’t realize people got to be pretty special to do that in their 40s.

Jack likely pulled me along in a 800, I think an 800 to a personal best. I never broke through that again. I was trying to catch Jack the whole way and I could not do it. And he was what, six, eight years older than I was, something like that. I mean, I think he was really a cyclist. He really wasn’t a runner. He didn’t really train that much as a runner. He trained a lot.

Well, that’s an interesting point to make because forever, Truck and I will be angry at the Boston Marathon for letting wheelchairs be at the same time with the runners. Poor Jack got hit in some big marathon, I think Boston.

I almost got hit.

And got run over and blew up his leg and he never ran the same again. By a wheelchair. A person racing in the wheelchair.

At the Marine Corps Marathon, I got brushed by a guy, and it turned out he was in a wheelchair. And it changed my mind about wheelchair racing.

Well, no, they should do it. They have their own. But they can’t integrate. I mean, my mind changed. I knew immediately it was ridiculous. They go very fast when they’re coming down.

You want a race?

Exactly. They’re going downhill. You know, even on the Marine Corps Marathon, we were going around the Capitol.

Even in little races, that’s why you don’t have dogs and strollers.

But my most intense memories, I realized I remembered one thing for your interview. I’ll probably forget if I don’t tell you now. And it involves David in a very humorous way. And it shows how irresponsible we are. And I’m sorry about us almost getting your house taken away.

That’s all right. I told you Cornell’s got it now. I don’t give a damn.

So we had so much fun. If you might think that Triennial was almost a nice, funny answer to the High Noon running club who were so straight, we thought. Run and run on roads all the time, compared times. David and I were very good friends with the prudent man, TJ Pempel’s friend, Larry Prudhomme. And where TJ was a very fine runner and a very kind of aggressive competitor and a Marine, former Marine, who liked to get everything right.

He was Marine of the Year, by the way.

Yeah. And when he became a ballroom dancer with his wife, they won the National Ballroom Dance Championship. Yes. I mean, he just couldn’t be number two.

He couldn’t be third in the world.

Right, right. So this is TJ. Larry was very laid back. He had a PhD in French history, but he was a fundraiser at Cornell. And he was very self-effacing compared to TJ. But they were good running buddies. So David and I would go run long runs with them. And this is the 1978, 79 period. And I was getting ready to really bone up for the marathon. And TJ never complained. David and I, of course, as you know, our method of finding the great trails so we can have trail runs with you is run off the trails you already know on something that might resemble a deer path and see what happens. Now, frequently it works out. There’s a cool trail and you come up somewhere else and then it becomes a trail you can use. Once in a while, you’ve got a dry hole. You’re three miles into the brambles and you have to come all the way back. So we take TJ and we’re not trying to do anything to Larry at this point. We take TJ and the notoriously wimpy Larry Prudhomme for a long run up Mount Pleasant one day, maybe 15 to 20 miles. I don’t know if you remember this. And we come down, decide to come down through a different path. it turns into about a half mile of brambles, bogs, a complete forest before you can get to Route 366 and then jog back in from Mount Pleasant. So we didn’t come down the fire trail. We just kind of bushwhacked it. TJ never says a word. He’s a Marine. He’s stoic. He’s smashing through the bog. We were up in mud up to our knees. We’re blood everywhere from the brambles. And what did they say in the 1812 song? Ran through the brambles, ran through the briars. Ran through the bushes

So the rabbits wouldn’t know.

And so we all come out on, and we come out onto Route 366. Prudhomme is not with us. So we go back and get him. He’s sitting there very angrily. He’s trapped in a bog surrounded by brambles. He’s not going to pick his way through it. So we pushed them apart for him. And his first words upon getting on Route 366 was, that’s not funny. We’re all laughing. He didn’t want to get his shoes dirty, whatever. This was the wrong thing for him to do because it set up our plot, our very nefarious plot. Next week, we said, don’t worry, Larry. We’re going to take you on a nice, typical, clean, dry run. Get you ready. And we plotted it. So we run through the parkway in Cayuga Heights, and we come back on Warren Road. And we come down by the bridge at the end of Beebe Lake where Forest Home is. There’s a little…

We come down the steps from the observatory.

Shoes are still clean. Shoes are still clean. Yeah, completely clean. His shorts haven’t got a bit of dirt on them. And it’s just the three of us. And we had worked it out. As kids, we knew that this was where they have a… It’s across from something called Tabletop, where you can ride your bicycle off 40 feet in the air down to the water and learn the laws of physics, which is you can’t push the bike away from you. But that’s another story. So anyway, we came to this flat thing where there’s about 10 yards of shale, and then it drops off 40 feet into the water. And we’re just running and talking. We’re trying to keep talking to Larry. And we have him kind of between us. Unfortunately, there was a little chain link fence we all had to jump over. So, Truckie and I are just like two feet ahead of Larry, and he’s right behind us. Larry has bad eyesight, and he doesn’t have his glasses on on the run. So, we’re thinking he’ll get to the edge and just fall off with us. And so, we keep running and leap off 40 feet.

Into the water.

Into the water.

Which we’ve done as teenagers.

And Larry comes up like a Roadrunner cartoon right to the edge and stops with his toes over. And he does stop, and he’s looking down 40 feet. And we’re down there in the water. We’re falling at the time. And he has the same line. That’s not funny. He starts yelling. We could have fallen onto a canoe. I could have fallen against a cliff. You could have killed me. This is not funny. Which of course is making us laugh. Lying on our backs in the water all the more. By the time we get back to Teagle. He has showered and gone. He is pissed off.

We had to swim up and get up.

But to this day. I remain very close friends with Larry. We’d be always good friends. We call him the prudent man. And in fairness to him, we were being very bad. I know that. In fairness to him, he was as tough a runner as TJ. He was. He was faster. Like I said, he ran a 4:37, I believe, at over 40.

And he never complained. Never.

Sweet guy. So that’s my favorite story from the time. It indicates our attitude, the kind of general craziness of the people who were training for distance at the time.

And I now have to, I’ll have to ask him next time I see him. So Tom Hartshorne, who of course jumped off that bridge many times when he was a kid, has subsequently flip-flopped. And like, he’s like, there could be snags. You know, you don’t know when there’s trees coming down the stream and you could jump on.

He’s become his dad. He’s become his dad. And that’s really crazy because he gave his dad such grief. Yeah.

That was an intense relationship.

Yeah. And always was.

But specifically in that spot, the water is moving fast. It’s quite deep. You know, Cornell used to, you can still see the foundations of a diving board there that Cornell had. And they put it there in the summer and the fraternity boys or whatever would, we could dive off there. And I mean, I remember when I was, this would have been in 1958 or whatever.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has died there. There’s never been a really serious accident there. But there should have been just about every other day. I mean.

Not at that place.

The Gorge.

Where we used to go down the Gorge below suspension bridge.

Truckie and I should not be here today. I don’t know. My mother was thinking, saying, boys, it’s summertime. You can go be in the Gorge all day. Yeah.

I’ve also gone up the side on the Highland Avenues. I’ve gone up the tail. I don’t hear my mind.

Did you run the reservoir trails? Did you run around the reservoir?

Of course.

Oh, yeah.

We do the Viet Cong swim. Oh, yeah. You run halfway up on the railroad bed, come down to where the dam is, hold your shoes in the air, and swim across like the Viet Cong coming up. And then run all the way down the part into the flower garden.

Either the upper reservoir or the lower reservoir.

That’s a good run because you get cooled off in the middle.

You have to do a side stroke. You’re like this with your shoes up above. Yeah, it’s very nice up there. Summer day, it’s great because your shoes have to stay dry. Your body can be all wet. You’ll dry up, but you want your shoes to stay dry.

So let’s fast forward a little bit. You, at some point then, become VP of trails for the club. I mean, you actually get involved with the club organization, yes?

Yeah.

That was after I left.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that’s a little- So maybe we may go back a little, maybe not quite that far. This may have been an Ed Hart time. Trail running becomes a thing for the club, and how does that happen? Is that Ed? That’s Joe and Ed.

And Joe sent me that letter that said, you don’t like running because you won’t let anybody run on a trail.

What happened with Joe?

Well, first off. I said, that’s enough. I think it was. And when I quit, then Joe came along and Joe became president. Joe Dabes, yeah. Joe Dabes. And then at that point, Ed Hart became president. And so it was the two of them.

The two of them.

Mike Turback had something to do with it. I’m not sure.

But the first thing was.

He would sponsor a lot of stuff. He was such a good guy. Yeah.

But let me tell you, when the first thing had started, so we’d done the Triennial, and I’m pretty sure it was the first one. It might have been the second, but it’s the first. And Ed said, can you do this something like every year? And we said, no, no, it’s going to be… We already decided from the beginning, for some reason, it would be Triennial. I thought that was your idea. I have no idea why. But anyway, so he said, that’s when Ed’s Ultra started. He said, I want to do it myself. So I’m not sure if that was 82 or it was 85. So it was either after the first or the second. Had to be 85. Right. Exactly.

82, I was still sort of president.

Because we had run, ah, right, because 85, the 84 Triennial was from the west to the east. Okay. And he said, I want to do the same thing. He started in Bennetsburg, calculated the distance so that if you ended up in Treman Park, you would have done 27 miles or something like that. And he said, I’m doing it the same as you. It’s Ed’s Ultra.

Yeah.

And he had Jocelyn. Ed had the. That came later. In the beginning, the first one didn’t have anything like that. And he had Jocelyn. I’ll still remember at the top of Connecticut Hill, he had Jocelyn.

Ed’s wife we’re talking about.

Ed’s wife, Jocelyn. Come up. His long-suffering wife, we can say.

She was great.

Come up. He had her. I remember it was like in May. It was very hot. And he came. David Bloom can tell you a story about that. He still says, I farted him all the way down the hill. Actually, I’ll tell you the story. So we got to the, so she had catered at the top of Connecticut Hill. So we’d run all the way from Bennettsburg.

So she somehow got to the top.

Well, you can get to the top of Connecticut Hill. You can buy the radio tower. So she was by the radio tower. And we got there and there’s a big spread. And I must have, of course, I don’t want to eat too much because I’ve got to go all the way down. Because you have to go all the way down to Treman Park, although it’s downhill. But I must have had a bunch of hummus and bread. And apparently, David Bloom says, I farted all the way down the hill. and he still will David Bloom was still in my department

give you incentive

anyway but anyway that was the first so that’s when Ed got you know Ed if you know Ed

I know Ed

anything he did he was super enthusiastic about

well we should also describe Ed because Ed is incredibly unusual I mean in the running world and in Ithaca in general Ed was a black professional trail runner

well he was a black

he was a black professional trail runner

he was a black professional I’m going to tell you, listen, I’m going to get this down on record about Ed. Ed had been in the Air Force. Sorry. Ed had been in the Air Force and had been a medical doctor and ophthalmologist in the Air Force. Yeah. Then for some reason, he’s from Toledo originally, and his wife is from Toledo. So I don’t quite sure. Got in the Air Force. When he left the Air Force in the early 50s, I was one of his first patients, is how I’m going to know this. Because I had like lazy eye. He came to Ithaca, and I’m not sure why he set up in—

When was this?

I’d say 1953 or 4. 63 or 4.

53.

53.

Perhaps he followed his wife, who worked at Cornell.

No, I think she wasn’t working at the time. They had young kids.

I think it was the other way around.

The other way around. No, no. Anyway, so Ed came to Ithaca and set up his practice. And I guess my parents had heard about it or something because I had like lazy eye and for a while I had to wear a patch. You were too young to remember.

No, I remember the pass.

But anyway, so I was one of Ed’s. I remember the lack of front teeth. So Ed, that was later. So Ed wanted hospital privileges. And at the time in Ithaca, we had only one black doctor, Dr. Galvin, down on the south side, who treated not only black patients. In fact, he treated my girlfriend’s father, my girlfriend and her family, who he’d been the principal. He was white, but the principal of Henry St. John’s, who was on the south side, to all the black kids. So at that time, they would not admit Dr. Galvin to hospital privileges. He could send a patient there, but he had to be like endorsed by a white doctor. And he was an older guy. And Ed just said, this is bullshit. When I send a patient to the hospital for an hour, because he did operations, he actually went to Afghanistan and did operations, by the way. Did you know that? Yeah. On some mission he went, oh, this is earlier. This is, you know, long time. And did eye operations, you know, through villages, eye operations, you know, like it’s a medical charity at one point. So he just said, this is bullshit. And he went to the hospital board and says, just tell me why I’m a medical doctor with my license in New York State. And you’re going to tell me why I can’t admit a patient at this hospital? And they just backed up. They, you know, that was it. And he wasn’t, you know, then he was very big in civil rights. He was the host when Martin Luther King came here. But he wasn’t a civil rights guy that like in your face, he was just, He’s like, I’m here. What is this bullshit?

He was never strident about it. No, yeah. But he was just saying, this is my— And he always had—he had the kids up to his house. He had a swimming pool in the backyard. And he was up on Troy Road.

Troy Road, yeah.

And he never fought, but he always fought. Yeah. He was always the right guy in the right place at the right time. And I was part of a group of people at Cornell who were on committees that had to do with minorities. And we could always trust that Ed would be there for whatever we needed. And he was really strong that way. I mean, if he told you that he was going to do something, he did it. And I always appreciated him. The only time I didn’t appreciate him was when we went up to the IC track for a couple summers. And we worked out up there. And he would let me be ahead three laps in every four-lap race. And he would come up and he would beat the shit out of me. There you go. Last lap. Always. And he was, what, 10 years older than that was.

So Joe and Ed are the people who really kind of start the trail.

And then Joe Dabes is also when he got, he’s very organized. And then they got very interested. And they decided, I think it was more Joe Dabes who said, I want to have actual, like, shorter races.

It was Joe. Definitely.

And I’m not sure if the first ones were Forest Frolic or…

I mean, certainly those were the trails he was in charge of.

Wasn’t it Ed’s Ultra later?

Later, later. But I’m trying to think what the earlier…

Wasn’t it Ed’s Ultra was first? Well, there was Ed’s Ultra. That was a special because Ed had done it and then they would continue that. But that wasn’t a short trails race. So the idea of having a 15K or 8K trail race type thing, that was when Joe Dabes got the idea. I think he just set those up out in Virgil and with his friend Ray Kuzia. They had good connections out there.

That’s why it’s called the Kuzia Connection.

Yeah, but you know it’s from the Rossiter Cutoff. Do you know that? That’s been all completely taken over by the Dabes.

I thought it was called the Rossiter Spur for you.

Rossiter Spur. I was up there one time and there was a place on an old abandoned road was there. And I went up it and I told him.

Was that after this Rossiter or that Rossiter?

This one. This Rossiter, the Finger Lakes Trail, because Caleb was living in Washington by this time. Finger Lakes Trail. And then he didn’t like the muddy. It was one of these old roads that was really, really muddy. It was an abandoned road. Then he made the diversion about part of it. And then they did the Kuzia Cutoff, which is really nice, actually, I have to say. It used to go right up to the top of Hauck Hill. But that’s now no one knows it anymore because that was my find.

Okay, listen, I have to take off. I have 4:30, believe it or not. My brother, it’s lovely to see you. Good to see you. This is such fun. Are you going to stay around here and we can get together and do it again?

No, I don’t live here. I just come up for Hartshorne every year.

You do.

But I do come up. So I’ll see you next year. I’ll see you before then, I’m sure. Okay. Okay.

Thank you, Tom. You’re welcome. Okay. We’ll continue. Let’s do some other stuff, too. Let’s do Women in the Club.

I was going to say, I keep thinking of all these new people that we’ve got to ask.

We ought to do a special on High Noon, just High Noon or so.

I’m kind of curious to hear these guys talk about it. I say John and Sue are a must.

Okay, but you and I will have a chance to talk. We’ll get more. All right. We’ll talk to you soon. I’ve got to go see Ruth.

I heard from John’s neighbor that he is getting a little— Mike Ludgate. I go to Mike Ludgate’s every night and I play music. Yeah, I’m sorry.

We should do it on sometime that’s not a Sunday because the food’s good here.

Well, we always say the joke about this place we always heard and our parents’ friends were living here is it’s a great place, but to be at the head table, you’ve got to be a Nobel physics laureate. Something like that.

Yeah. I don’t count for enough on that.

Yeah.

I’m trying to think who the oldest women in the club, the early, a lot of them are gone. I mean, Barb Booker, of course. I’m trying to think who you would talk to, Diane. Who the women now who have the longest experience.

What about Nanette Blakely? Is she still alive? That’s Jack’s wife. I don’t know. She could because Jack just died a couple of years.

Anyway, to find women in the earlier days is going to be harder. I’m trying to think. Anyway, I’ll think about that for you. Yeah. But anyway, so I don’t know. Yeah, but VP, I don’t remember. I became a life member at a certain point because they recognized the Triennial. VP for trails, and I don’t know how long that lasted. You could look. But again, Joe Dabes kind of took over everything. He’s so organized.

What year did you move to the Netherlands?

I moved there in 1997. Okay. So that’s when I left here. Okay. Yeah. So then I’ve been back and forth, et cetera, et cetera. But 1997 is when I moved to the Netherlands. Right. And just before that, I got into orienteering with Eric Smith in 1996. And we completely lost. I tell you, when you’re a good runner, you’re too fast, you’re a bad orienteer.

I’ve only been orienteering once.

No, I love it.

I ran almost twice as far as I should have. Exactly. But Eric Smith, I believe he’s still around.

Oh, no, definitely. I go orienteering with him, he and Mary.

Oh, good.

They’re in their 80s. He’s a great ship. I go up to the North Country orienteering both last fall and the fall before. He’s still, they gave him his office. He’s still in Clark Hall. He’s the guy that is a low temp. He’s Mr. Low Temperature.

Oh.

You know, like managing all the low temperature facilities for physics. So he’s still there. No, you should talk to him. He’s never. He was in the runner’s club, too, but he got very quickly into orienteering.

He was known for he could do course certification. Yes. And so.

With a wheel.

With a Jones counter. A Jones counter was invented by Alan Jones from Johnson City or Vestal, one of those places down there. And he was like one of the first guys who did computerized timing as well. I mean, he’s like he’s one of the forefathers of race timing. And a Jones counter attaches on the hub of a bike and sticks into the spokes. And you have to calibrate it. If you can do it completely right, you have to calibrate it with a thousand foot steel tape. I do not have a thousand foot steel tape. But when I was changing the Skunk Cabbage course a couple of years ago, I was talking to people about certification. We didn’t decide not to do it because almost no one cares anymore. But Eric Smith said, oh, I don’t do that anymore. But you can have my Jones counter. So I have I have like the historical Jones counter that I have used and it still works perfectly. I calibrated it by going to the hundred, you know, the hundred meters on the Cornell track.

Eric will know a lot about those early days of the road racing here and that certification and measuring the courses. You should definitely talk to him. Yeah. He’s in good condition. He’s older. He’s 84, 85, something like that. Yeah, yeah. And his crazy wife, Mary, she’s wonderful. She still works at the vet school.

I’ve got to say, thinking back to that 1970s period, towards the end of it, when I think back, it’s incredible the amount of volunteer work that people did to make the club so successful. And I know you have many events now, Adam, but there were a lot of events then, a lot of track events. And I once was, in the days of computer cards, helFinger the club by taking the computer cards with everybody’s address and thing on it. You carry these heavy boxes over to Mann Library and use something or down the basement of the building before Mann Library. Warren, maybe. That’s the way they did that. It’s where Dick Sisler, the great blind scheme professor, worked. And I was in human ecology. So this is 78, 79. Your entire files were in these great boxes of stacks of computer cards, which weighed a lot and you would carry them. But from doing that, I began to realize the number of people from full professors to, you know, postmen to housewives and professionals, from people like Ed Hart at the sort of high end, you know, down to someone who just loved to do it and was 25 years old. They put a lot of time in the club back then. It’s just fantastic how well organized things were. The 5 & 10 every year was a major event.

But the, it’s, I mean, were you guys around when we had Pfitzinger and Predmore?

We definitely were.

We used to train with them.

You used to train with them?

Well, just unbelievable. And when Fitz was here, he’s just a guy, marathoners were brilliant like that. It’s not that they’re going so fast. It’s just they do about 30 miles a day. And so we all were excited when he won. We’re watching the TVs and screaming and yelling.

He was, you know, he had only marathoners. He’s done two. He was 11th in Los Angeles and 10th in Seoul. He was a top American marathoner in both cases.

Yeah.

So we used to run. I still remember some runs with him from the gym where we’d be leaving out from the gym. And he’d come up to us and say, ah, can I just run with you guys today? It’s my easy day. And we say, well, you know, we’re running, you know, kind of hard today. But it’s your easy day. He couldn’t go as slow as we could go. He could not run as slowly. And for a while, he’d say, I’m sorry, guys. I got to go. And he would just, he’s not trying to show off. He just, I can’t run that slow.

Yeah, he had a gear.

Even for his low intensity day was probably about, you know, six minute miles were probably his low intensity days.

Our best marathoner here, Truck’s excited about breaking seven minutes for the mile, breaking the three hours. I’m excited about doing six. These guys You got to think about it They’re running 2:10s This is five minute miles The whole way They’re in another world And so to train with them

I run one five minute mile in my life Right

To train with them was a real treat

But he’s a really I mean he was a great They were a really nice guy And Predmore was so vicious What a competitor No they were those duels I still remember their 5 & 10 duels

Every year My understanding I mean I still remember them Watching them come in 48 minutes or something like that for the 10 mile at times you could not imagine

Predmore was a track guy so you should have been there at the Heps when he would win the Heps 5000 about an hour after winning the Heps mile blasting these 13 minute things on that little 8 laps to a mile track that we know and love he was pretty scary and I don’t ever know whether or how long he in those days it was before the money was flowing uh the amateurism was done Prefontaine’s people had won and sort of stared down

olig cassell and the uh TAC the AAU whatever they called it The Athletics Congress and amateur so there was nothing to do after there’s nothing to do after college it was almost no no no pro so I just I’ve told the story before on the recording so i won’t tell in full detail but Dan Predmore was, in fact, still running in the early 2000s because Pete Glavin, who did the Pete Glavin Cross Country Series, or now it’s the Pete Glavin Cross Country Series, and then it was upstate New York, set up a race in Utica that was meant to be a championship between USATF Niagara and USATF Adirondack. No, Hudson. Mohawk Valley. And so they came up from that. And at some point, I’m running around doing the warm-up with John Hylas, and we’re chatting, and some guy is near us, and Hylas finishes and needs to go back or something like that. And so this guy, I’m next to this guy, and he’s like, oh, it sounds like you’re from Ithaca. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I’m from Ithaca. And he’s like, oh, you still live in Ithaca. What’s your name? Dan Predemore.

I’m like, how did he look in his 40s?

Pretty good, but I beat him. I mean, I would have been in my late 30s at that point is my guess.

You know, it reminds me, I ran one. We had a cross-country series at some point, and I ran in Utica. There was one at the community college there up on the south side of Utica.

Could have been the same place.

And they had one there.

Vernon Verona, is what it’s called.

I’m trying to. No, this was not in Verona. This was in Utica.

This was more like 1978, 79.

This is the south side of this. This would have been 19. You know, the early, mid-80s, early 80s. Then they say I was at Cornell until, I mean, and I went out to, where was I?

I was here for the first year of that. So it was about 1979 they started it. And we had went and called someone from Geneva Valley, somebody from Syracuse. These are track and cross-country competitive clubs. Finger Lakes Runners Club was not a racing club. And I bet you guys aren’t still a racing club.

No, although it sounds like from what Tom was telling me, like, that’s what Jim wanted.

Never happened. So when I had to race, when I was getting good at the 800 for my age level, I had to join Syracuse Chargers. And your club didn’t even have the standing to release me to run for the Chargers. You know, you just didn’t really exist in the track world. Right, right. I don’t know if you do now.

So at this point, the club scenario, there’s still, there’s a Syracuse Track Club and the Syracuse Chargers. There was a schism at some point. And so we don’t even quite know that story. GVH has Genesee Valley Harriers at Rochester

That’s a real track and cross country club

And they are They are the serious national competitors They actually don’t do anything but

That’s why I’m wearing a ring About the 19, you know, the 2013 Cross country championship where we beat Tim in the 60s The Shore Athletic Club by two Seconds, I always wear it when I come to Triennial So I can just show them My little ring, that was a big deal for us that’s a you are right GVH is one of the most serious national clubs right now and um and

and then Buffalo has Checkers um here everything had um when i came back it was all High Noon the High Noon was the competitive aspect of it and the Finger Runners Club at that point so that’s I moved back in 2001 I was in seattle from 91 2001 and so um at that point FLRC put on races, but that was it. It wasn’t a racing club.

You weren’t sending teams to the national

track meet. No. Masters or anything. Anything, really. And at times there were occasional bits of teams would go to something rather like my understanding is the board would approve some money

for people to go. Especially when you got runners like Charlie Fay and

Tom Hartshorne. Well, it was when Tom Hartshorne came back.

Who could run at the national level. Right. Well, Tom had been of course, part of Central Park Track Club, which is the Geneva Valley of Manhattan. They enter every relay, every road race, every cross-country race, and very fine.

And one of the things that, and so during the early days, or not early, but in the Upstate Cross-Country Series, it was really competitive. I mean, to the point where Pete Glavin, Pete Glavin was a serious competitor. He poached people from other clubs, if he could.

Like college football. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

He wasn’t getting NIL.

And the problem was is the Upstate Series was just Upstate. But he wanted people on GVH for all the national events. And so, unfortunately, it sort of wasn’t until he died. I mean, there was major tension about this. We actually almost stopped going to the cross-country series because this was so annoying. Because he kept poaching our runners.

And I hate that when someone’s on your team and they show up in another jersey.

Right. You’re like, come on. You know, we’re little.

But see, because if you had been a USATF club, you would have had to approve a transfer.

Well, we were a USATF club. And that was the thing is you didn’t need to be USATF to run for… People hadn’t signed up with us. Like we were a club, but no one did it. And so GVH would get them to sign up USATF with them. But for the upstate series, you didn’t have to be USATF. So when Mike Nier takes over, we actually have this agreement, basically. You know, it was like you can run the series for one team and be a USATF for another. So the series was just not USATF. And I did this only a couple of years before I got injured. But like 2018 and 2019, I’m actually technically a USATF member of GVH because I can run with them nationally. And then all the local stuff is just unrelated. Because we decided that GVH was going to be the upstate all-stars. Like, it wasn’t fair for us to compete against Central Park and the Atlanta Track Club and SoCal. I mean, come on. Those people have huge, huge populations.

Well, actually, a lot of the people who run for SoCal have never been to Cal.

Really?

USATF passes like Gary Payton, who must have run at Hartshorne, the great 75-year-old.

So, basically, the idea was to try to centralize all of our Syracuse, Ithaca, Buffalo, Rochester runners at GVH and then feel like we can compete next.

Interesting. So you knew Charlie McMullen and Tim well back then?

I knew Tim. Charlie died before.

Okay, because I think Charlie created the club with Tim back then. Tim was explaining that to me yesterday.

Yeah.

How Charlie, what they had done to bring everything together.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So in any event, it was interesting, but there’s definitely FLRC. We are still largely a community club.

Yeah.

Which is great.

It’s fantastic.

And our trick is, is we think, like in the Upstate Series anyway, if we could get all of our runners, because we’ve got Cornell. We get these amazing runners at Cornell. They’re grad students or whatever. But they’re grad students. They’re like herding cats. If we can get them all to come to the same meet, we could win stuff. And it happens like once every five years that we get our A team to everything. So.

But I like the community. I mean, to me, I may have nothing against the Cornell runners running with us. That’s great.

Yeah.

And anyone in Ithaca wants to enjoy and getting these people. But I think the real strength of the club is the getting as many people in the community.

Yeah.

To enjoy running. And like a post-collegiate runner has already run in college. Right. So you’re not convincing that you’re giving an opportunity to run. That’s fine. But what you really want to do is get those. It reminds me of when I started running, getting out to get running. And I think Jim was very much into that also. Keep, you know, run. Get people out to run. And that’s why I like very much our track meets with the clubs that we have, the SOAR and the Groton Project.

Yes, all the kids clubs now. That’s the thing.

It’s good. I think that’s the main function of the club. Also, the races like the 5. I was helping with the 5 & 10 this year. I do when I’m here. And I was very impressed with the diversity of people. were real amateurs i mean like you could see even for the five mile the real 5k real beginners some you know some sorority girls would come down and do it together and you you’d say or something you say you know you’re doing something these races are getting people out there moving and enjoying it and I think that’s the the key thing that FLRC should be doing yeah as opposed and well also even the trail race if you have have you ever run trails before and I love your your challenge where you say, well, here’s an easy trail you can do, you know, or we have a lot of trail races, an easier one, or you can just run a one mile wherever you are, or we have a nice simple 5k. And I think that’s where there’s not a big, what’s the word in English? There’s not a big threshold to get over for people to get out and don’t feel intimidated. Because if you go and see the, you’ll get intimidated if you see the, you know, the Central Park Track Club, you say, I would never do that.

I was really doing the intros at Hartshorne yesterday. I love the number of people who started running late in life, and they’re here at Hartshorne because you can start anytime. I think it sounds like this has always been a focus of the club.

How many members do you have who are paying you dues now?

956.

That’s got to be the highest per capita in the country. That’s a real credit to you guys.

So, yeah, no, the club membership has skyrocketed.

I’m a life member. I don’t have to pay anything. They made a big mistake back then.

So you’re saying that I could join your club and not hamper my USATF membership?

Yes.

Because I would like to support it, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

No, totally safe. So basically, USATF, when you join USATF, you have to, what’s the term? It’s not align. Affiliate. You have to affiliate with a club. Right. And that can be changed, but it’s like a three-month waiting period and things like that.

Well, you have to get permission from the club you’re changing from, which is good.

And so, right. And so basically, because I’m the administrator of our USATF club membership, I hear whenever everyone affiliates with us, I get one or two a year. You know, that’s it. Most people don’t. And so there’s very, very few. And FLRC doesn’t do any USATF competitions. Because, like, again, if we knew we had someone who really wanted to do this, we’d send them to GVH.

But then what? You have USATF starter at Hartshorne. Is that just for records?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. For any world or American records.

So those races are certified. Those are. But those are FLRC offense that are certified by.

They are sanctioned by USATF. Which is, given what Hartshorne has done many years, that’s a damn good thing. Yeah, no.

Oh, and, I mean, I learned my lesson because last two years we’ve had. This year we had a world record and an American record. Last year we had two world records. The year before, Edna broke the world record for W89. Women’s 85 to 89. But our starter, Dan Hurley, he had not updated his certification for USATF. So he couldn’t sign the papers. Or he could, but they weren’t going to accept them. USATF is really particular about the paperwork. And so I learned my lesson. And now I am certain I’m going to have people there every time. And Tom and Charlie, years before, they had some battles with USATF because they were not as good about getting their paperwork in line ahead of time. And, you know, and afterwards you’re trying to prove stuff. But you may have heard there was a gunfire well before the meets, before the races started yesterday. That was Leone Timing doing what’s called a zero gun, where they actually fire the gun on the starting line with, you can see the flames, and they’re videoing it with the finish line cameras.

To prove.

To prove that the gun is accurate. That the gun is starting.

Oh, because they have the time.

They’re starting the whole FAT system.

Oh, because the time is zero.

They’re starting the whole FAT system with that, and that has to be done for a world or American record. If you don’t do that, no record.

Now you’re educating me. Does the FAT have an agreed upon delay before the clock starts? Or does it start on the gun?

It is on the gun.

That’s why we lose a half second every time.

You know, I always remember, even when I was young, reading about Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile, and the famous picture of those old guys with their pipes, with their stopwatches at the finish. I’m wondering how tricky was… I’m not saying it wasn’t a great runner.

So no, hand timing, you’ve got to have three. They have rules?

No, but they had three. They had quite a few.

You have to have three, and you take the middle one, I believe it is.

I know, but these, I mean, I agree.

You know who the guys were holding those little clocks?

The Guinness Book of Records brothers. Yes. They were big pals with Bannister.

I didn’t know that. No, but he later ran like 3:56 or something. I’m not questioning this.

One of them was killed by the IRA during the thing because the Guinness people, they’re related to the Guinness beer family. They weren’t doing enough for the revolution.

I didn’t know that. So those guys in the picture are those finished officials. I didn’t know that.

The other thing you have to have for a USATF or world record is a rail or cones along the inside.

Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

Which does. Sasha Scott, who was the women’s 45. That tall woman. Yeah, the tall woman. She’s the women’s 45 American record holder.

The one who scored 95% or something.

Right. She’ll get the American record for women’s 50 this year, I’m sure. But she said that she actually for a while was traveling with a bin of little cones. Because if she was going to, she was like, I might do it today. I don’t want to mess around.

Very cool.

And if you’re at some meet, you know, she wanted to make sure that she couldn’t. Because like the rail, if you don’t have the rail up, you’re not putting it up, right? You know, like that’s a facility.

That’s a lot of work.

Facility has to have done that. Right. And so, you know, you get to this place and, oh, we’ve got FAT and it’s all right, but we don’t have a rail. She’d be, here’s my cones. But my cone’s out.

But we have a rail yesterday, right?

We did, but that Cornell has to put that out. And they take it down.

So they put it out for the meet that was coming right after us.

Yeah. Very cool. And actually, to be fair, that one, they had a meet last weekend. And since Barton’s closed, they left it out. But normally, it’s up and down. I mean, they take that thing up.

Because we don’t have it for our FLRC meats usually.

Yeah, right. We did this last time, but normally it’s out. See, I’m learning more than you are today. You’re very good.

I mean, some of the stuff is new. You’re a font of information.

But yeah, I mean, and, you know, as president, I came in and the club was not so good at documentation in the past. And so I’ve been learning a lot of stuff.

When you’re the son of the archivist, you have a certain attitude and we appreciate it.

You know, the guy to talk to is Joe. You get Joe Dabes.

He’s in Florida now, so I’m going to have to zoom him in at some point.

You really are because he will. He’s got a steel trap mind and he’ll explain also the reasons of a lot of these things.

Yeah, yeah.

of why, I mean, like Tom does, like Tom can explain the reasons that different things were done and when they were done. And Joe will be, especially with the trail races, he’ll have that all really clear.

Well, and I said, just the people who you start, when you start thinking about this, it’s like, saw Steve Ryan this morning. Yeah. You know, Steve and Bob Congdon, you know, ran together all the time. Terry Habecker, if we can find, you know, he’s still around. Oh, yeah, Terry. You know, John Saylor and Sue Compton for the High Noon history, because High Noon’s sort of an offshoot. I mean, like High Noon and FLRC in some ways don’t even really get along.

Well, I know it just started out of the, my understanding, it started just out of the, they would meet at High Noon and they decided to make it, do a thing.

It was literally, it was literally, you know.

They said, well, we’ll make a thing. And I think even when they first printed the shirts and everything, it was just not a joke really, but it’s just, you can wear that singlet when you go racing. You’re not really a club.

There is no USATF.

You run the Ithaca 5 & 10.

Yep.

And you wear your shirt. I mean, I think I did when I won the five, but, you know, I think I was learning.

For a long time, there was that belief that High Noon was sort of the racing team of FLRC. But, well, that was the way, because everyone was also a member of FLRC. Yeah, right. You know, but you raced with High Noon. High Noon did the racing. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s just fascinating.

Okay, well, I hope when you do your histories, you will find out and then I can listen in and you’ll find the answers to the two things that have always troubled me. Your two most important races to me have ended.

Which are?

You had a cross-country race on the Cornell course every year in October or November, and it was so wonderful. You and I would race there. This is 1980. I remember it was a great—it was a real cross-country.

Did it have a name?

It was the five-mile cross-country race. It wasn’t a Thanksgiving one.

Did we?

We ran the Cornell course? Absolutely. It was a five-mile. Okay. I can remember your hubris. You were ahead after the first mile one. I said, what are you doing up here, bro? And then I beat.

I’ve forgotten that.

Oh, I know. The way I know it, I come up out of the bowl and caught one of the great runners of the day, Wayne Schwark.

Wayne, the big guy.

Because I was getting, I just run the Finger Lakes Marathon. So I was lethal.

Wayne was Canadian.

Wonderful guy. And Reinhold Wottawa was admitted there and wrote a check to be permitted. And that was, I think, when you decided to suspend him because he and his lawyer were both, he was in jail for bouncing checks. And Reinhold’s very-

He was a political prisoner in jail for bouncing checks. He went on a hunger strike.

I remember passing Reinhold on the way to catch Wayne. This race went away. And for me, I love cross country. And that was one of the great, and I wonder if there’s a problem with Cornell not wanting you there anymore. And the other, of course, is the Finger Lakes Marathon, which died because people don’t like to get slower times. The hell with that. That’s a great course.

So the cross country has more or less all moved to the upstate series. So there’s five races, September through November, all around the state. And that’s what, you know, we do build teams of that. So that’s where all the cross country energy has gone.

I’m talking about a period before that.

But it’s like for now. So here’s the thing that a marathon will be back sooner or later because we’ve now got the Dryden Rail Trail, which isn’t complete yet, but the Dryden Rail Trail basically starts at the East Hill Recway, goes out, Stevenson, it’s going to cross 13.

Goes to Freeville, yeah.

Yeah, and then we have to get through some of Etna. Etna’s the block right now. Goes to Freeville, and then Freeville, it goes all the way to Dryden and hits the Jim Shug Trail.

Yeah.

And that’s 16 miles. Okay. So we can easily put a marathon on just rail trail. You don’t have, because the thing that’s different these days about marathons and a lot of road races is there’s so much more traffic. Like cars are a much bigger problem.

You need a lot of state police and that’s expensive.

And that’s a lot.

That’s a lot of people.

It’s just a lot of hard to do.

I have to say the Finger Lakes Marathon course is a lot smaller.

So where did that course go?

Oh, how did it go?

Yeah, where did it go?

How did it go? Oh, it started right above. So they measure back from Marathon. I believe the first year they ran from Marathon to Ithaca. And at least, if I remember, it was well before my time. Okay. Congdon will know. But they started above East Hill Plaza. From East Hill Plaza, you went about halfway, about halfway up hill. There’s a tree.

There’s a tree there, I’m sure.

And so your first mile was, you know, so you ran there and then down Thomas Road.

Okay.

So you went down Thomas, then by the Caroline School, through Slaterville, left on Hartford.

Ah, Hartford. Over the notch. Yep. That’s the first big hill.

And that’s- Oh, that hill sucks. And then you go, well, that wasn’t as bad as going down into Hartford. So then you continue straight, and there’s a big dip, and then back up. It’s the Creamery Road. You come to Creamery Road in the middle of Hartford. Cross, and then you get to the corner.

You’re crossing Route 38.

38. Yep. And then right at the corner where the 220, whatever it is.

221.

That was 15. That was 15 miles. Okay. One more mile to where you turn back up, and that was called Chicken Point, where you would chicken out. Because that was all fine. So you’ve just come down the hill.

Right.

And your legs are all pounded out. You’ve gone run across the flat for two miles now from Creamery Road to 16 miles. And now you’re about to start the long uphill to Hunt’s Corners. Jesus saves. The church, Jesus saves. Moses invests. Anyway.

That’s 20, right?

And that was 20 was before. 20 was sort of about a mile before Hunt’s Corners.

And then comes the real hill.

And then you got to Hunts Corners, and then there’s a nice little downhill, sort of a downhill dip to 23. And 23 to 24 was a double humper.

One mile.

A double humper like this. Very. And now you’re at the top, and I was just telling you later, you’re at 24. Right at the corner was 24. You look at your watch and you say, I’ve got two miles and 195 yards or whatever.

And I need to do this time. It’s impossible.

If I can go six, if I can run six minutes. It’s not impossible.

It’s not.

You’re saying, if I can run six minutes down this hill, I’ll do it, which I did. And you can’t believe, but that, that, what a course. See, so you’re going to bring up, but a marathon is different than the Finger Lakes Marathon.

And then the ladies auxiliary in Marathon, which has never seen people in short pants before. Oh, come on. They gave us lunch, school lunch. Would give us.

You ended at the school, right?

And the school lunch. And you would have a school lunch, the hot soup. The community all came out to look at these strange people coming from Ithaca to Marathon. It was really a wonderful race.

And this is where Finger Lakes School of Massage actually got started. Because one year, and this must have either, it was either 90 or 96. I think it was 90, it might have been 96. Cindy Black, who had started the school, she had done massage somewhere else. And they said that she wanted to start a business. So somehow the FLRC got them to have massage at the finish. And you’re still in your shorts and you just, your cramps, your legs. And I said, this is fantastic. Give me your card. And that’s before she started her school. And now she’s moved away. You know Cindy Black?

I don’t know her, but we had the Finger Lakes School Massage do post massages at Skunk for many years. And then the whole school imploded.

She, I think, moved out of town, but she was the one who started the whole idea. And I think the first just wanted her own sport massage practice and then had started this thing. But anyway, that was one of those. I think it would have been. Yeah. So I ran it four times. I ran. That must have been 90, 80, 80, 80, 86, 92.

Then we went to 98. I don’t remember. So I just want to end because I’m going to have to run. Yeah. This is sort of a running story that has good impressions for somebody who was in the club back then. It’s very funny. So this is 1975 or the fall of 74, maybe. I run that famous Finger Lakes Marathon because I’d been living out in Shindagin Hollow running up in that.

What year did you run this?

Well, I know I ran in Boston 75 by having qualified because that was the year of Lexington Concord’s 200. So I remember this. Bill Rogers. and the woman from Germany won. So I’d qualified by running this Finger Lakes one. No, no. Okay. I ran as a novice then with some great Ithaca runners like John Repp or Reppe, who was a professor much older and we ran like two fifties together or something. Fast forward when you got me crazily trained in 1979. The fall of 1980, I hadn’t broken two minutes and a half the year before. I missed by, as you said, half a second over and over and over again. And all my friends like Joe Daley were trying to help me and pace me, but it didn’t get me. Of course, it didn’t help much that Joe Daley forgot about it one day and then said, oh my God, I promised Caleb to come up to Barton Hall and lead him to a two-minute half-mile. He shows up. He got there in about 2:01 with me right behind him. He said, I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have done that. So anyway, to get strong, David decided the way to do it is always to be a Lyddiard man. We declared ourselves Lydyard men back then. Arthur Lyddiard. You want to be like Snell, which is you could either show up one day and run a marathon or an 800. It’s irrelevant to you. You can do them both. So I spent that fall doing crazy distance and ran the Finger Lakes Marathon to get ready, and the cross-country race there, to get ready to try to break the 800, which I did because of that.

That was 1980.

Right. Crazy because I moved to Washington the next year. Right. So this course, I ran it. And by being third, they had a funny prize because there was a guy named Peter from Cortland who was our best runner. He was Finger Lakes Runners Club’s best runner.

He was not a master by then.

Maybe he’s a little older than me, mid-30s, and I was probably about 30, but he was just wonderful. So he had run like 2:25. He’s one of these guys. And on that course, that’s a very serious achievement. So I come in and I think third in 2:39. But both of those other guys, you’ll love this, did not live in Tompkins County. And the prize, they had a prize called Best Local Man.

Right. Best Local, which is his girlfriends were telling him.

It’s true. I went to the party with Larry Prudhomme, who had run with me. We went to dinner at his house, which was the old Elias House and Elledge House on Hanshaw Road near where we’d lived as kids. And they give you a mug and it says on it, Best Local Man, which I used for years. And so I had Larry pour me the beer into the mug and I showed it to my girlfriend at the time. She was a dance professor who we nicknamed the Flexible Flyer. We won’t go into that. And she looked at the mug and she looked at Larry and she had this great line. She said, I could have told him that. So I have the mug. And also you had a little gift certificate. The prize was from one of our wonderful Finger Lakes runners who owned a tire store called Talmadge Tire. I don’t know if it’s still there. He was the greatest guy. My mom loved to go see him.

Really good guy.

Really good guy.

But he wasn’t a runner.

He would come run with us. He would come run. I mean, he was a pack runner, but he was his hobby. Just like what you’re talking about. I think Ed. And so I go to see him at Tallmage Tire with my little Ford Pinto or whatever. God, dangerous thing. I’m driving around with my car, with my thing. And I said, I’d like to get my free tire. And he said, oh, okay. Well, then I’ll put the whole set on and I’ll only charge you. $300 bucks because the other tire is free. You can’t have a car, that kind of car, it has to have the whole set. It means it’s contingent if you look at the fine print. I’m buying the other three tires. I said, you son of a bitch. I did not buy the tires. So we have to get them shut all the time. They had best novice awards, but yeah, best local man.

Best local man.

The only thing better than that is winning four chocolate medals in a row, my brother.

Hartshorne 70, 70 plus chocolate medals.

You know, I was fantasizing today. 7.7 at 77. Could I do it? I don’t know. 7.7. 7:42, do you think?

Mmm.

I don’t know.

7:42. Well, if you look, fits with your five, 6:40 10 years ago. Yeah. That’s about how much you lose. If you lose about 10 pounds.

That for sure. That I realize.

All right. Well, thank you both. I’m going to end this here.