by Larry Eder
This is Sunday, December 17, 2023.
I am going to take you back to my long runs while I ran for Santa Clara University in the late 1970s-early 1980s.
Running long runs on Sundays in the Santa Cruz Mountains was part of my college life.
My college coach, Dan Durante, taught engineering at Santa Clara University and worked at Lockheed, working on missiles and such.
On Sunday runs, Dan Duranta, Paul Gyorey, Danny Greco, Danny Crowley, Rick Allen, and I would have these existential talks on nuclear proliferation and just, well. building missiles that could destroy the world. As we were running along at a seven-minute pace early on, Dan was trying to get us not to worry about an atomic war (quite a real thing in the late 1970s-early 1980s).
The conversations were far-ranging, and no topics were off the table. Dan was a Reagan conservative, we had several independents, and I was left of, well, everything. Our conversations on the long runs covered everything. Oh, and we listened to different opinions.
First, you need to appreciate Dan Durante. Dan was a fine runner, running a 3:05 hilly marathon and breaking 55 seconds at 400 meters, all in the same year, in his mid-fifties. A New England accent, Dan loved coaching us, and we loved Dan. He was possessed by engineering, but he was like, well, the anecdotal meets the scientific. Dan was a Lydiard fan (that is Arthur Lydiard, who I would meet a few years later), and Bill Squires, the famous coach at Greater Boston Track Club, combined. We did long runs and long intervals. He built us up over 4-5 years to race. Most of us had huge improvements. We ran 70-120 miles a week, yes, while keeping at least a B average at Santa Clara University, no mean feat.
Dan built our weeks around two workouts, a long 18-22 run on Sundays and a Tuesday workout like 20 x 400 meters, 6 x mile, 4 x mile, and 800. We would be out on the Los Gatos track all winter, many times, just Paul, myself, with Dan timing us. It was grueling, but Paul and I wanted to see just how fast we could be, and we improved well.
We did long runs nearly every weekend of the year. The long run, then, hydration and reading the NY Times on Dan and Cherri’s (his wife) porch, and then, a nice breakfast in Los Gatos.
Early in the runs with Dan (Dan would run 12 of our 22, heading back in time to watch us work the hills in the last five miles), Dan told me not to worry about nuclear war because half of the weapons probably would not even work, and especially those from the Soviet Union, which he wondered out loud, how many were in workable shape. About this time, Rick Allen, one of our more colorful teammates, would imitate a mushroom cloud as I went into an existential crisis.
Paul Gyorey, noting my anxiety, would use that moment to pick up the pace, pushing down to about six and one half minute a mile pace, and Paul and I would take off, Dan would head back to the house. Paul knew I could take bomb talk for only so much time, as it was quite real to me.
It was in this complicated, wonderful environment, in Sunday discussions with engineers, philosophy and history majors, that I developed as a distance runner and, more importantly, as a human being.
When I have rough days, I go back to that time with Paul Gyorey, Dan Durante, Rick Allen, Danny Greco, Gerhard Behrens and Danny Crowley, and consider how lucky I was during those years.
Long runs are a key part of our training program.
Your workout today, is a relaxed long run, 45-60 minutes slow, on the trails.
Consider the past year and how lucky you are to be alive.
