RunBlog Run: Bob Hodge ran the 1980 NIKE OTC Marathon in an epic battle with Dick Quacks.
The NIKE OTC Marathon was a glorious marathon that ran for a short time from 1973 to 1984. In 1988, the NIKE OTC Marathon became a 25k for one year when NIKE stopped sponsoring.
Bob Hodge wrote this piece about the 1980 version of the NIKE OTC Marathon where he battled Dick Quacks.
The NIKE OTC Marathon was held during the first week of September each year. It was one of the epic times in our sport.
Enjoy this piece from Bob Hodge. You can find Bob’s writing here http://bobhodge.us/project-eagle/
Best efforts
NIKE OTC Marathon 1980
It’s an early race, an early start, and I feel like I’m going on a training run home with a bunch of friends. This race doesn’t have the big city atmosphere of Boston or New York, just a small press crew somewhere up front and a motorcyclist leading the runners.
After a few miles through the neighborhoods outside of Hayward Field, where the race will finish on the track, we crossed the Willamette River on a footbridge with a great view. I was happy with the race and didn’t think too much about split times, just ran by feel.
(Reported at 31:57 10K — swimming for now)
My only attempts at a marathon race were in Boston, where there are no meaningful splits, just traditional checkpoints at odd distances, where there’s never been anyone to split in any way.
They presented a Globe report in the following days showing who were the top ten runners at each checkpoint and the leaders in record times.
I often wonder why no one even went out of their own accord and walked the miles; probably the BAA police would have been arrested for vandalism.
So you learned a valuable lesson in walking by allowing your body and mind to be coordinated, just as it was during all the kilometer trials, when you react to what was happening with the other contenders, sweaty brothers. Today, every athlete wears a fancy watch and starts crying if they lose a few seconds on the kilometer split.
Kevin McCarey, another Nike gang, seemed to be setting the pace, perhaps as required.
So my mind wandered, or part of my mind, while the pace seemed good enough and the lead group dropped from half to a dozen.
Coming into the race, I had a great summer after getting over the fact that my dream of running the Olympic Trials marathon in May and all the effort I put into preparing for the winter of 79/80 had gone up in smoke. the boycott and my subsequent decision to run only Boston and skip the trials, which were shams I wanted no complicity with.
http://bobhodge.us/hodgie-san-
After the flare up and out in Boston, I cleaned up and slowly regrouped.
Between May 1st and August 31st I ran 11 races, winning 8 of them, including a 4th at Falmouth, where I contested the Rod Dixon and National 20k Road Championships. I was unusually tired after running a 20K on a very hot day on a hilly course, and I was worried that I might not recover for this marathon.
I was also running in Reebok Racers that my new sponsor provided about a year ago and they were falling apart at the seams. Just before flying to Oregon, I received two pairs of shoes that were shipped from the UK and I was told they were made by the company’s founder, Joe Foster.
As I opened the boxes on my way back to my cabin in the woods on the Norwell River with my teammate Dickie watching our run; “Hoji, they look like clown shoes!”
Not wanting to wear barely tried on shoes in my marathon and also not wanting to look like a clown, I went with a rather worn and torn pair.
Nike Eagle shoes were all the rage during this affair, an “Eagle Gathering,” including several shoe malfunctions. Could be operator error.
Dick Quacks – Benji – Mike Buman – John Graham – Jeff Foster – John Anderson – Dave Smith etc, a great group of competitors, but it didn’t matter, it was me against the world, or in this case against Nike, whose athletes dominated in this competition. After all, I liked to think of it this way. my fellow competitors and I worked together until it was time to beat each other to the last man standing.
The pack shrunk and I guess I contributed by lifting the face. 30k passed in 1:32 but I didn’t pay much attention. I had Dick Quacks on my shoulder and the lead motorcycle in front.
In the final stages we passed a few runners who were still coming out as we headed back to the finish.
As I recall, Dick went up several times and opened a small pipe, but I pulled him back each time. At one point, the co-director of the race, Peter Thompson, said something to Dick that I assumed was urging him on. (Peter revealed that he was keeping Dick on track because he had taken a wrong turn.)
Rounding out the finish line, Dick made a decisive break, and as we entered Hayward and the clock loomed, I came up with a haiku.
I raised my legs high,
Run two ten and join the men
Only life and fate
I could see 2:10… My official time was 2:10:59.
My friend Jack Welch, then editor of the road racing column for Track & Field News, described Dick’s race as “two ten marathon wings.” Well, all my life I’ve been a winger and only twelve seconds behind. Cinderella boy, tears in my eyes.
I had a feeling of resignation. after all these new zealands, the european track stars probably wouldn’t be here if the olympics hadn’t been boycotted, they’d be in europe on the track.
I shook Dick’s hand just as he was shooing the reporters away trying to get a picture of his bloody feet. After that I walked back to my hotel and jumped in a cold tub filled with ice and beer.
I missed the awards, I honestly never thought about it. Funny kid, me against the world like my comic hero Alf Tupper from Tough of the Track.
I was feeling this event and the people behind it were cult with their whole “Eagle gathering” and the new racing platform was named the Eagle just like that.
Part of me was disappointed that I was never recruited. The other part was happy not to join any group that wanted me.
Lone wolf.
As I was lying in bed in my hotel room after my shower and watching the US Open Tennis, drinking beer and getting hungry, my friend Tom Fleming, who had retired from racing at some stage, knocked on my door.
“Hoji, what are you doing lying in bed, people are looking for you? “TF have a beer, let’s order some food.”
“Man, we’ve got a party, get dressed!” We went to someone’s house, sitting naked in a hot tub, with Ed, a college employee, signed by the cast of Mary Decker, her latest injury.
TF, God bless him and I ran many miles together in Florida in Jan/Feb 1980. Tom was obsessed with professional running and convinced me to go to Boulder CO to meet with Jim Lillestrom, the programming man.
And so we did, but also walked around, Boulder and its height a Mecca of sorts. We went to the Coors Brewery.
Boston was my Mecca, not that I doubted the benefits of altitude. I am more the mother of invention and thought than the blood values ​​of matter and oxygen.
I returned home to my cabin in the woods to no fanfare and a letter from my sponsor Reebok that they were terminating my current contract on terms.
I got injured before the Fukuoka Marathon my second place award (almost a career ending injury) if I did the math, but I kept banging my head against the wall until my honey brought me back to my senses.
What I call tearing victory from the jaws of defeat.
I recently returned to Eugene for the Olympic Track Trials and was reacquainted with Benji Durden, whom I hadn’t seen since December 1992 at the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL.
We went for a run and, grinning and teasing—Benji remarked that my 1980 Nike OTC race had to be my best marathon.
My calculation.
Beppu Japan 1982 1st 2:15 Questions to win.
Nike OTC 1980 2nd 2:10:59
Boston 1979 2nd 2:12 from obscurity to obscurity.
Fukuoka 1982 5th 2:11 lead slipped after victory.
Boston 1986 2:14 6th regained some dignity.
Olympic Trials 1988 2:16 7th end
More than a feeling
1979 winter and I feel free and locked into my running, living on the South Shore of Boston, Hanover MA, working at Runnery, a running shoe retailer, with owners and friends Sharpie and Stevie.
The Boston Marathon is just a few weeks away and I’m starting to find my groove. I feel pretty good about every run, my feet barely touch the ground, I swim like my heroes Ron Hill, Abebe Bikila, Frank Shorter and my teammate. with Bill Rogers Greater Boston Track Club.
My goal is to beat my other teammate, Randy Thomas-Hay. We are good friends, me from Lowell MA and Randy from Fitchburg MA. We push each other hard in training and especially in the race leading up to the big race, Boston.
Our other teammates, including Dickie Mahoney from Weymouth and Vinny Fleming from Jamaica Plain Boston, make for a very dynamic fun-loving group, but serious when the gun goes off.
Another pretty decent runner from Michigan, Greg Meyer, joins our group.
In other words, looking back, I can see that it was a perfect storm of terrible events orchestrated by our beloved eccentric coach Billy Squires, who is also a college coach and professor at Boston State College.
I ran Boston in 1977 and failed to impress, finishing 46th in 2:28. My teammate Vinny finished 5th in 2:18.
My third place finish in 1979 set off the entire sequence of events leading up to Nike OTC 1980.
For better or worse, and it was.
Our politicians falsely defend…
Let’s work together. dance tune with a message.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=:
Turn up the volume
