Julia Chase, Pete Close, Amos Kujala Part of Manchester Road Race History


BY RICK DYER
Welcome to everyone. And thank you for your support of the Manchester Road Race, which celebrates its 83rd running on Thursday. 
This is the tale of three runners. Their names are Chase, Close and Kujala. 
One was the first woman ever to complete the Manchester road race course. One was the last Manchester athlete to win the thanksgiving day road race. And one, well . . . He was always just plain last.

Each of these athletes played important roles in the history of our annual thanksgiving day run. But more importantly, their stories can hopefully offer us some important lessons---not only about the sport of running, but also about life itself.

Julia chase grew up in the Groton area. As a kid she’d sometimes run a mile or so to school. Olympic marathoner Johnny Kelley lived in her town, and she would often see him practicing on the roads. Kelley was a six time Manchester road race winner and he became Julia’s mentor and encouraged her interest in running. 

Even though there weren’t yet high school teams for girls, Julia won the New England A.A.U. women’s half-mile championship. Prior to the 1970s, women were prohibited by A.A.U. rules from competing in races with men, and from running in any event longer than a half mile.

Julia attempted to run at the 1960 Manchester road race, but was turned away. So she came back in 1961, when she was a 19-year old sophomore at smith college. Julia had mailed in her entry weeks before the race. And she notified the media that she was going to run in Manchester’s turkey day five miler. Remember, this was more than a decade before the title nine laws were enacted. It was unheard of back then for a female runner to run with the guys in a long distance road race.

When Chase and two other female runners showed up on main street in 1961, there was a great deal of excitement. There were also a lot of media people in attendance, including a photographer from life magazine. Race officials again told chase and the other women athletes that aau rules prohibited them from running. They were denied numbers. 

But when the gun sounded, Chase and the other two women lined up at the back of the pack and ran the course anyways. Julia Chase was the first women to cross the finish line. She completed the race in 33 minutes and beat nine men that Thanksgiving. The following week, LIFE magazine published a big photo feature about the day that Julia chase toppled the gender barrier in Manchester, Conn.

Julia chase went on to earn her medical degree and practiced psychiatry in new jersey and Connecticut for many years. Her gentle act of protest in 1961 worked. It didn’t happen overnight, but thanks in large measure to her, the A.A.U. rules were subsequently changed to allow women to compete against men, and to run all distances. Last year, more than 12,000 runners registered for the Manchester Road Race. Half of them were females.
  
Peter Close grew up in Manchester and attended Manchester High School. He was a skinny high school sophomore in 1952 when he first ran in the Manchester Road Race. Close placed 32nd in a field of 43 runners that Thanksgiving with a time of 30:45.

But Close loved to run, he practiced very hard, and he had a goal: he was going to win his hometown road race. Close finished 11th at the road race in 1953 and 10th as a high school senior, in 1954. He won a track scholarship to St. John's University, and came home every Thanksgiving to run in Manchester. Pete placed fifth in 1955, 10th in 1956, and he was second in 1957. 

In 1958, his senior year at St. Johns, Close finally realized his dream. He won the road race with a time of 24:43. It has been a long grind for me since i was 32nd seven years ago,” he told Manchester Herald sports editor Earl Yost after the race. “This is one of my biggest victories."

Pete Close joined the marines after college and he competed in the 1500 meters for the United States at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. He later served as the sports information director at M.I.T., and as the head track coach at Tufts University. His victory 61 years ago marked the last time a Manchester runner won the Manchester road race.

Amos Kujala was an older runner who ran in 15 road races a year throughout New England during the 1940s and 50s. Born in Finland, he was a farmer and a stone mason from Harvard, Mass. So what made Amos famous? Lots of last place finishes at the Manchester road race.

Kujala competed in the Manchester Road Race thirteen times between 1946 and 1959. He usually placed dead last, or darned close to it. The fans loved Kujala and cheered for him as enthusiastically as they did for the winner. They knew that the road race just wasn’t over until old Amos ambled down main street.

Here is what six-time Manchester champion Johnny Kelley had to say about Kujala: “I knew Amos when i was a boy entering the road racing game and he was an old-timer shuffling through New England’s April through November calendar of week end contests, with no pretense of finishing anywhere but a radiantly beaming. Dead last. He was a worthy man.”

Amos Kujala ran in Manchester for the final time in 1959. He finished the race with a time of 52 minutes, last in a field of 115 runners. His leg was amputated in 1961, and he died two years later.

Chase, Close, and Kujala obviously came to the Manchester Road Race from different backgrounds, and with varying degrees of athletic skill. But I believe they shared two important common denominators that made them exceptional. 

First, they each had tremendous passion for running. They loved their sport. They weren't running for tee shirts, or the bling. They competed because they found personal rewards and benefits in doing so that were much more valuable than any medal or trophy.

Secondly, they were persistent. Julia Chase had the door shut in her face twice. But she had the grit and courage to keep coming back. And she refused to take no for an answer. She eventually unlocked that door, not only for herself, but for thousands of women who followed in her footsteps. 

Pete Close finished near the end of the pack in his first race. It might have been tempting then to switch to another sport. But he kept at it, and eventually won the Manchester Road Race, and became an Olympian. 

Amos Kujala competed in road races every week for years against men who were much younger and faster than he was. He knew, with almost absolute certainty, that he’d probably be the last person across the finish line. But like the Energizer bunny, he just kept on running.

So there you have it, the tale of three runners. Chase, Close and Kujala: they were athletes who in their own unique ways made history at the Manchester Road Race. You can chase after your goals and dreams.
  
Pursue those things that you love. Do them for the sheer joy that comes with the knowledge that you always tried your hardest, and always did your best. I wish you much success!

--Rick Dyer is the Manchester Road Race's official archivist.

What Shoes are You Wearing? Kipchoge, Kosgei, and The Nike Vaporfly Advantage?

I've written a couple of articles recently, and taped an NPR interview, on the subject of Eliud Kipchoge's 1:59:40 marathon, Brigid Kosgei's 2:14:04 and the fact that both were achieved in updates of the Nike Vaporfly shoes. I don't think the shoes should be banned, as they may have benefits for our daily training. But perhaps they should be restricted--the way sports fluid are restricted in the Olympic Marathon--in elite international competitions.

Here are my articles: New York Times ; Podium Runner ; National Public Radio



Jared Ward To Appear Sunday Night on "Shark Tank"

You’ve gotta admire Jared Ward. The guy gets around. He goes to the Olympics and finishes sixth in the marathon. He runs a 2:09+ at Boston. He helps Saucony design running shoes. He publishes scientific articles on marathon pacing.

And now he’s headed to "Shark Tank," the popular TV show for entrepreneurs with a big dream and a thick skin. This Sunday evening, October 27, Ward will appear with two BYU buddies to see if they can garner an investment in their company, Myostorm, and its leading product, the patent-pending “Meteor.” The Meteor is a vibrating, heating massage device. 

A week later, Ward will race the New York City Marathon, where he finished a strong sixth in 2:12:24  last year. Then it’s on to the Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta next February 29. Ward finished third in the 2016 Los Angeles Trials, punching his ticket to that summer’s Rio Games.
Mark Cuban tries the Meteor on "Shark Tank"
Ward says the Meteor has played a big role in his continued success. “I use thousands of dollars of recovery equipment every day, and the Meteor fills an important niche,” he notes. “I take it on every trip, and use it to release my glute muscles daily. It’s also fantastic for plantar fasciitis, and any deep massage you need. I love that the technology is research-backed.”

This video with BYU associate professor Brent Feland explains how the Meteor works when applied to a muscle group.

Myostorm began its life with a successful Kickstarter program 13 months ago. The development team, including founder and CEO, Jono Diperi, and 800-meter runner, Shaquille Walker (PR--1:44.99), then decided to audition for ABC’s Shark Tank. They advanced through the early rounds--hey, just like a big track meet--and made it to the finals earlier this year when Sunday night’s episode was filmed. 

Ward has faced high-pressure situations plenty of times before, and he knows how to get ready: train, train, train some more. This one was different.

"We prepared for a lot of scenarios in the 'tank'," he says. "But the way things turned out was not something we were prepared for."

Notable Runners Larry Berman and Jimmy Gilbert Contributed to Apollo 11 Moon Success

Larry and Sara Mae Berman
Apollo 11 landed on the moon 50 years ago today--on July 20, 1969. Many of us, at least those with a few years on their calendars, remember the day and the images very vividly. 

Two notable runners had a front-row seat on the Apollo-success team. It turns out both were mathematicians/computer programmers: Larry Berman and Jimmy Gilbert. 
 
Jimmy Gilbert


Berman, who has a personal best marathon time of 2:38:03 (Boston Marathon, 1970) is married to Sara Mae Berman, three-time winner of the Boston Marathon women’s race (1969, 1970, 1971.) He was a founder of the influential Cambridge Sports Union athletic club in Cambridge, MA, and is still active in nordic skiing and orienteering. 

Gilbert, 76, has run over 100,000 miles in his lifetime. In 1979, he helped famed exercise physiologist and running coach, Jack Daniels, develop the first iteration of what many now know as Daniels’s VDOT tables and calculations. The original work, titled “Oxygen Power: Performance Tables for Distance Runners,” primarily amounted to 82 pages of pure numbers ( vdots, distances, and times). Gilbert, a matematician, helped Daniels turn his data into equations that generated all the numbers.

Bermans finish 1970 Boston together
In a recent email, here’s how Sara Mae Berman summarized her husband’s contributions to the Apollo program: “From 1962 to 1972, Larry worked on the Apollo Program at MIT's Instrumentation Lab, which designed the guidance and navigation system, both the hardware and the software. Larry was in the software group, and wrote the program that guided the ascent of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) from the moon surface to rendezvous with the Command Module. 
Berman working out at home in Cambridge


“It was an exciting time. He and his group worked long hours, often got called in the middle of the night if they were needed at the Lab. (Fortunately we lived only 1-1/4 miles away.) Larry has many stories to tell; met many of the astronauts, especially when some took courses at MIT. He tells of visiting a classroom for astronaut training in Houston, and seeing a motto spread at the top of the blackboard: "Relax. Remember that every piece of your spacecraft was built by the lowest bidder." The astronauts were test pilots, risk-takers, and had a good sense of humor.”

Gilbert worked at NASA for 35 years, retiring in 2001 at age 58. He has continued running since then, and has also worked on several race crews of unlimited hydroplanes, including the famous Miss Budweiser and most recently Madison Racing's Miss HomeStreet Bank (of the Pacific Northwest).

Here's how he describes his work on the Apollo project:


Jimmy Gilbert
"I was assigned to the Apollo onboard computer group.  Our particular group was tasked with building a mathematical simulation of the Apollo spacecraft's, including most systems on all the vehicles (Command Module, Lunar Module and the Saturn launch vehicle). The simulation that we built was for training flight controllers prior to mission launches. We could run our outputs into the telemetry streams for a fraction of the cost that a full-up simulator manned by astronauts, and we could do that at any hour of any day. Our math models did an excellent job simulating what would happen.  Also we built our models so that we could insert faults to gauge the response of the controllers being trained.  Math models were a good idea.

"We built our models by taking the code written by MIT's Draper Laboratory and copying its functionality into our math models. The models we built were robust. They were used quite extensively for training for all the Apollo missions, and it eventually became difficult to tell if Mission Control training exercises were receiving inputs from mission simulators or the math models."

Here's what my "Oxygen Power" book looks like, including a title page autographed by Jack Daniels, and a page full of numbers. Aren't you glad we have interactive websites now?






Boston 2019 Schedule


The Boston Marathon's coming this week, and I'm excited to
be there once again. I've run the last six consecutive Bostons, including last year on the 50th anniversary of my win in 1968, but this year I'm taking it easy.

Whew! Sometimes, it's nice to take it easy.

I'm planning to run the 5K on Saturday morning. I'll also be making a number of other appearances, listed below, with a focus on the BAA's new "Unicorn Club." That's a special VIP opportunity that's open only to runners who have finished at least five previous Bostons. I'm the Unicorn Club "ambassador" and am looking forward to meeting my fellow Boston veterans.

Where you can find me over the weekend:

FRIDAY
4-5 pm: The Unicorn Club's special bib-pickup room at the Expo.

SATURDAY
12 noon-1 pm: The Unicorn Club room at the Expo.

1-2 pm: Authors' Corner in Expo, Booth 427, signing copies of my book Run Forever.

3 pm: Runner's World Townhouse (179 Newbury St., between Dartmouth & Exeter). Panel Discussion: "How To Run Your Best Boston"


SUNDAY
10-11 am: Authors' Panel, "Late Life Running: the New Frontier," Hynes Center (Expo), Room 200, with Jonathan Beverly, Gene Dykes, Gail Kislevitz, and Roger Robinson.

11 am-noon: Authors' Corner in  Expo, Booth 427, signing copies of Run Forever.