So many Larrys

The '80s saw the rise of the second-tier U.S. male marathoner, while most codgers sat around. Today, practically every teenager has a Gen X uncle who bangs out sub-three-hour marathons

The 1980s are still widely regarded as the base point of “old-school” marathoning, rife with working stiffs logging hundred-mile weeks for nothing more than the glory of running under, say, six-minute pace for the marathon. (I’m talking exclusively about men here. Elite women marathoners existed forty years ago, but the American woman who was allowed to put in heavy running mileage without the status of either a professional athlete or a diagnosed neurotic did not yet exist. If you couldn’t chase a three-hour marathon, being that serious about any recreational physical activity had to be a sign occult psychopathology.)

There is some validity to this perception. Professional running itself was a far more limited enterprise than it is today, especially on the roads; the Boston Marathon, for example, didn’t offer prize money until 1986, though by then it was a glaring outlier in insisting on being an “amateur” race. Lucrative shoe contracts? Surely you laugh. In this light, 2:10 marathoners weren’t running for material gain to an appreciably greater extent than were 2:20 marathoners or 2:30 marathoners. Men from the lower echelons, local yokels who ran 5K in 15 minutes or slower, would gather for 20-milers at six-minute pace on Sundays, with whoever showed up welcome if they could hang with the gang. When I started running in 1984, a marathoner who was enthralled with triple-digit mileage and habits like strict, sauce-free pasta-loading in the days before a race was as likely to be a 2:40 guy as an elite or aspiring elite.

In 1983, 84 runners broke 2:20 at the Boston Marathon—almost all of them from North America and most of those New England residents—with another 179 breaking 2:28:30, among them women’s winner Joan Benoit (2:22:42). That’s 263 runners at 5:40 pace or better.

A 2013 Runner’s World article by Amby Burfoot explores the reasons for these phenomenal results, much of which can be attributed to a strong net tailwind. Like the fantastic journalist he is, Burfoot—who won the 1968 edition of the race when he was, like, 14 years old—relied on the top runners of that long-ago afternoon to explain the glut of second-tier men’s performances. When you integrate their comments, you see one major theme: “I was in my prime in 1983.”

Why would so many runners have been at peak lifetime marathon fitness? It’s facile to refer to Frank Shorter’s winning gold for the U.S. in the marathon at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and noting how many boys and young men who were around 14 to 22 years old at the time watched that happen. Do the math, and what Burfoot’s subjects related—from winner Greg Meyer the 2:27 types—makes this idea look solid or at least semi-tumescent.

It seems that a lot of non-world-class dudes simply fell in love with the idea of overperforming at distance running at the same time. The many who are still with us* today are happy to say so, as they were at the time. It’s not surprising how many of them have had long careers in coaching.

Today, despite more people working from home and the class of citizens who could already enjoy running having even more time than before, it’s unusual for working people to run very high mileage consistently unless they have some chance of getting something in return other than a chain of social-media likes. Actually, I don’t know that for a fact, I just know it’s true. And if it’s not, maybe those types are the rare humans toiling away in online silence, divorced from the backslapping hijinks of Strava.

But—and this is a big ole but—for all the devoted training of that 1980s bunch, few of them kept racing once their best days were behind them. Many of them didn’t even run anymore, not because of “burnout” or injuries but because a critical but self-limiting phase of their lives was just…over. It was unusual to see deep 40-and-over fields even at sizable events, and even the first guys over 50 (who in those days generally looked ready for assisted living) would get more of a golf-clap than a genuine cheer even if they ran 34 minutes for 10K thanks to their sheer rarity. Most people over 40 just weren’t expected to move around much unless they were moms dancing to Jane Fonda’s aerobics videos while no one else was home.

When I started running, one of the people who encouraged me, explicitly by example, was Larry, the father of one of my friends. who lived less than half a mile down the road. He had started running in his late thirties, and by the time I took up running myself at 14, he had established a goal of breaking 17:00 at age 40 at a local 5K. I watched him try, and I watched him run 17:04, which satisfied him partly because the day was warm, but mainly because he extended himself as far as he absolutely could in trying.

Larry looked older than 40 in his resting state, in large part because no one was yet shaming balding men for sporting the kind of combover whose ignominy Homer Simpson would “popularize” in the 1990s. When he was running, he looked a lot older, but not a day over sixty-five—unless he was huffing and groaning his torso-akimbo way up a hill, when birds would stop singing until his disappearance had been confirmed from the highest branches. (I kid, but only a little. Larry really did have awesomely bad running form, and no shame about becoming coated in his own snot and spittle before the halfway point of any race.)

I was running in the range of 20:00 when I watched my friend’s genial car-salesman dad do this. It was faster than most of the kids on my solid high-school team could run. It suggested I had lots of room for improvement, but also that there was no point at which I would necessarily have to give up something I was rapidly falling in love with despite a lack of objectively stellar early returns. It implied you only had to look like, and be, a badass from the time a starter’s gun was fired until the moment you finished, meaning that any mortal could effect in themselves this Incredible Hulk-like transition.

Larry usually won the masters division (I’m no longer treating “masters” as a possessive; maybe I was never supposed to) at smaller races after he turned 40, though there were a few over-40 fellows in the extended area breaking not only 17:00 but 16:00 for 5K. But Larrys were comparatively rare, and I think Larry himself had hung up his running shoes by the time I finished high school. He either had bad knees or, just as likely, worried about developing them. That was a common concern then, one that either never widely panned out or lots of people learned to ignore.

Today, there are Larrys and their female counterparts everywhere. My view of this is terribly skewed owing to where I live, but when I travel, I see the same thing, albeit watered down to a saner level.

Men and women over 40, 50 and even 60 are running competitively and supporting their regular racing with solid mileage. Some are carrying the habit over from their younger years, while many never get going until their forties or later. If the best of the, day, over-fifty best are maybe a little better than the same cohort in the 1980s, the number of older runners running decent times—comparable to a 2:30 from a male in his prime—has exploded. Not only are people not quitting as senior-hood approaches, but they’re also insisting on starting up after years, or an entire lifetime, of little to no meaningful exercise.

The reasons for this are perhaps more varied than what fueled the 1983 Boston Marathon avalanche of “good, not great” times. I would credit a simple combination of free time, vanity, and the growing realization—now decades removed from its genesis—that older people are capable of a lot more than people understood forty years ago. People care about looking good and bragging rights over things that were never previously social currency. And professional athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jaromir Jagr, Nolan Ryan and Tom Brady playing at a high level well into their forties surely hasn’t hurt the development of this epiphenomenon, even if most people my age aren’t using the same “anti-aging” remedies most of today’s pros rely on to extend their careers.