New York Road Runners Club Newsletter Summer 1973
(edited for clarity purposes October 2007)
Justice at the Central Park Reservoir
(The Origin of the Central Park Track Club)
by Dave Blackstone, Central Park T.C.
I started running long distance in the summer of 1968 at the Central Park Reservoir, a secluded 1.58-mile level loop of dirt and gravel. And although I then ran for basic fitness, I arrived prepared to race anyone in sight, even animals. One June evening after completing the reservoir loop in what I considered record time of 9 minutes and 30 seconds (6 minutes a mile pace) I was sitting with my buddy Leo by the Pump House at the southeast tip and heard the sound of a runner coming around the bend. The sleek figure emerged and streaked out of sight. “Must be doing wind sprints,” I said to Leo. Leo walked to the straight away along the Fifth Avenue side, returned and said, “He’s gone.” Another guy standing near us said, “That’s Gunther Moses. He goes around and around at ever increasing speed and that was his first loop!” Then I carefully considered whether to race this Gunther Moses guy his next time around, but when he materialized, I flatly reject this. I told Leo, “I’ll wait until I’m fresh.” Leo did not respond and looks at me strangely. I say, “ Let’s see if we can run two loops of the reservoir from now on Leo.” Leo said, “Let’s grab a burger and some brew.”
In our life times five years is a long time. Certain events have indelible impressions – such is the snap shot in my mind’s eye of the phantom figure of Gunther Moses streaking beneath the sunset at the Central Park Reservoir.
Distance running in 1969 appeared to be much the same at the reservoir. There were perhaps ten of fifteen joggers, out of shape, and an occasional runner. By then I raised my mileage to twenty-five miles a week. At that point I considered myself unbeatable. On a hot Saturday afternoon I came upon a short, balding man who had very good form, but who apparently because of advanced age (about 40) I thought he was no match for me. Rod Mac Nicholl then proceeded to run me into the ground, accidentally, while talking to me unwinded in a metaphysical way about the marathon and how people cover the distance at five-minute mile pace. I said to Rod, “Show me the way.” I immediately knew that he would be my coach. He said a few words to me and I responded, “You mean you have to run all year round?” “In the winter?” “Out in the cold?”
The picture changed in 1970. There were more joggers on the scene. Many looked fit but they were just jogging. In 1970 it was impossible for me to heed Rod Mac Nichol’s calling – run all year, increase the mileage, shorten the stride and take off ten pounds – I had to make my mark as a lawyer and had “heavy movement” work to do. I stopped running at the reservoir “on top” and ran alone on the bridle path below. “Nobody but us horses and long-hairs on the bridle path,” I thought as I sped past two mounted police one evening and soon heard the galloping horses gaining. “Pull over,” a mounted police officer commanded. I thought to myself wishfully, “Am I going to get a ticket for speeding?” This hope was dashed when the police officer told me that I could go to jail for running on the bridle path. Such was the state of polarized City in the summer of 1970.
I think it was in the spring of 1971 when real changes occurred. Guys like Tom Cameron, Jim Nolan, Jerry Miller and Peter Mechanick, once joggers linked together and became a wondering herd to be seen regularly on top and below at the reservoir.
There was also this guy Frank Handelman, who crept along so slowly I felt sorry to him. I thought that he was such a young guy and that it must have been the effect of the Vietnam War.
I moved back on top in 1971 and could tear through four loops of the reservoir at six-minute per mile pace – and that kick. Oh! That final kick! One day on route to my setting a “course record” I heard this guy tailing me, and the race commenced, but I could not shake him. I hit the straight away on the Fifth Avenue side and started my long big kick to Engineers Gate at 90th Street. Swish goes Emile. Here I am running as fast as my two legs can carry me and some little guy named, Emile Laharrague, dusts me. It turned out that Emile had just arrived from France and was a sprinter there, who maintained modest condition at the 1.58 mile reservoir by running it in sub seven minute and fifty seconds. I also learned to my chagrin that Frank Handelman too could run the reservoir in under seven minutes fifty seconds. One day Handelman told me to stop racing the joggers in Central Park and go to Van Cortlandt where the action is. So I went to Van Cortlandt Park in the fall of 1971 to challenge the action in a twenty-kilo race. In the race I grabbed the lead for about two hundred meters but then finished only in the top half and slightly ahead of this famous woman runner, Nine Kuscsik. Van Cortlandt was an inspiration – I went back to the drawing board. That winter for the first time I often trained at night at the reservoir. The 1972 Munich Olympics was approaching and the qualifying time for the U.S. Olympic marathon trials was sub two hours and thirty minutes. I raised my mileage to fifty miles a week, did speed work and ran with Carl (super surgeon) Soderstrom and assistant district attorney, Bennett Gershman, who trained one hundred miles a week. A few women arrived at the reservoir, mostly just jogging. The place was crawling with well-conditioned runners, including this bearded guy Fred Lebow, who ran funny but who seemed to be trying his best and was into organization of long distance running. After the Crazy Legs Mini Marathon, an all women’s race held at Central Park in June 1972 a la Fred Lebow, many women started training at the reservoir. Lynn Terreri and Joyce Wackenhut became regulars.
In September 1972, Frank Shorter inspired our country by taking the gold in the Munich Olympic Marathon.
When the good weather ended in the fall of 1972, my thoughts as an aging distance runner turned to Montreal in 1976. Look, I thought, Mohamed Gamoudi of Tunisia was thirty-four when he took a silver, and Mamo Walde from Ethiopia and Jack Forster from New Zealand were in their late thirties or early forties when they were world class marathoners.
I started training with Bob Urie from Utah, who was already fifty years old. And a group of us organized the Central Park Track Club. When the good weather came the following year, we had a very serious track team working out at the reservoir, our track.
There were many women CPTC members training as well, Lynn Terreri Blackstone. Cathy Burnam, Mary Hoffman and Sally McGee. These women logged miles that probably would have impressed the likes of 1952 U.S. Marathon Olympian Ted Corbett.
It is August 1973 as this is written. The days are growing shorter and soon in September the reservoir crowd shall dwindle leaving a handful to continue through winter’s night.
In life what is crucial? What is it that makes us road runners wish only to move effortlessly at five minute per mile pace over dusty terrain? I am personally struck by the utter simplicity of it all. Away from all the tactical human intercourse and excess, secluded within my only body. Manipulation and deception get you nowhere on the road. The naked truth is that you get out what you put in at the reservoir. In running there is justice.