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Bob Sielski ‘64: My Experience as a Runner
I was not always a runner. In high school, I was on the cross-country team in my freshman and sophomore years but didn’t make the cut for the varsity team. I didn’t get back to running until sometime in the early 1980s when I was in my early 40s. I had been a serious, although not competitive swimmer for most of my life, and had been swimming a mile or more for four or five days a week. When the neighborhood swimming pool closed at the end of the summer one year, I was at odds for what to do. I thought about taking up running and read a little about it, but it didn’t sound like much fun. I then asked myself why I enjoyed swimming but didn’t think that running would be enjoyable. I realized that I enjoyed swimming because I could swim well, but didn’t think much of running because I couldn’t run more than 100 yards or so, and was then exhausted. I decided to try and get in better shape for running, and then see what would happen.
I started on an easy run-walk program, running (or jogging) until I was tired, then walking a while before running again. I set out to do this about five times a week, going out for ten minutes, and then returning, for a total of 20 minutes run-walk. I vowed to keep it up for a month before giving up. Well, it worked! With time, I was running longer, taking fewer walk breaks, and before the end of the month was running the full 20 minutes without stopping to walk. The greatest encouragement came from passing the ten-minute turn-around point from previous runs. Without making any effort, I was going farther in the same time. At that point, I was hooked on running, and have never quit since then (except when my orthopedist made me stop when I had minor annoyances like stress fractures and the like).
A very important point for running is to never increase your distance for a single run or the total for the week by more than 10 percent. This I did, and when I was up to running six miles, I entered my first 10K race in June of 1986. That was a great experience for the excitement of going out and running with hundreds of others. I don’t have a record of my time, but it didn’t really matter. I finished nowhere near the better runners, but there were many others around me, some faster, and some slower. That is how it is in large races, you go out for the fun of it, not to try and win.
With that 10K race, I was hopped up for more events and soon got the marathon fever. My first marathon was the Marine Corps Marathon in November of 1987 at the young age of 45. I don’t have a record of my time, but I believe that I finished at about number 10,000 out of 15,000 runners. Running in such a huge field was a memorable experience, and I went on to run the Marine Corps Marathon three more times.
I stopped running marathons for three decades, but in 2010, started again doing the Diamond Valley Lake, California marathon in February of that year when I was only 67 years old. I did a half-marathon and three more full marathons that year, including my first run of the Crater Lake, Oregon marathon, which runs around the rim of the crater, with altitude varying from 6,500 feet to 8,500 feet.
I have now run 54 marathons in 36 states, and my goal is to complete all 50 states while my feet can still keep moving. I have to be more selective now in the events that I enter because many have a six-hour time limit that I don’t always meet. To be safe, I look for events with a time limit of seven hours or more. With the current Covid-19 situation, all races have been canceled, including the Monster Mash Marathon that should have occurred on October 17 of this year in Dover, Delaware. However, the Space Coast Marathon in Cocoa, Florida, near where I live, is still scheduled for November 29, so I will see what happens.
I have often been asked what my favorite marathon was, and I can only think of many memorable events. Certainly, the Crater Lake run is among the top
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Crater Rim Run, Crater Lake, Oregon, August 14, 2010. |
events. I ran it three times. It is exhausting with all of the uphill and downhill at high altitude, a total of 2,000 feet of ascent. And the scenery is breathtaking. Here is a picture from the 2010 run, with the lake and the crater in the background.
There have been many other scenic runs, including the Avenue of the Giants, a run through Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California, and the Tri-Cities run along the Columbia River in Washington. Then there was the Cape Cod Marathon along the back roads of Cape Cod and along the seashore. Other scenic runs include the Manitowoc, Wisconsin Marathon along the shore of Lake Michigan, and Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota along the shore of Lake Superior.
For real fun, nothing beats the Extraterrestrial, Full Moon, Midnight Marathon in Rachel, Nevada, near the U.S. Air Force Area 51, where extraterrestrial sightings have been reported. Run-on State Route 375, the Extraterrestrial Highway in the mountains of Nevada, the event starts at midnight under a full moon. Many of the participants dress up in extraterrestrial costumes (I didn’t) and the most memorable was the fellow who ran the entire 26.2 miles holding a bicycle handlebar that had a basket attached with an E.T. doll in it. My only problem with that race was when the course looped back on itself near the finish, I ran into someone in the dark going the other way, and I was knocked down and a little giddy. I had to walk the last five miles or so, but wouldn’t quit. By then, it was daylight, as you can see from this finish photo.
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Extraterrestrial, Full Moon, Midnight Marathon, Rachel, Nevada, August 25–26, 2018. |
As of this writing I, am getting ready for the Space Coast Marathon that will be held in Cocoa, Florida on November 29, one of the few events not canceled this year. They have a liberal time limit of eight hours, so even if I have to wear knee pads to crawl the last few miles, I am going to do it!