Link of the Day: The Magic of Maywood Park

Back in the 1970s three boy high school runners, all from the same school, broke 9:00 for 2 Miles. They did it without magic shoes, no internet rankings, and no special recovery drinks or devices.

Today’s link comes from Jim Ferstle writing for Runner’s World, remembering the year Rudy Chapa, Carey Pinkowski and Tim Keough all broke 9:00 in the 2-mile run.

It’s an insightful read. It reminded me of how much hard work over a long steady period can accomplish.

Enjoy. | jm

The Magic of Maywood Park

by JIM FERSTLE

In the spring of 1975, something magical occurred in Hammond, Ind. Four young men did something that had never been done before, and hasn't been repeated since. Hammond High School runners Rudy Chapa, Tim Keough and Carey Pinkowski, led by their 20-something coach, Dan Candiano, became the only high school runners from the same school in the same year to break 9:00 for 2 miles. It wasn't planned. It hadn't been a specific goal for any of the trio or their coach. It just happened.

Pinkowski did it first, running a solo 8:56.2 on what Keough described as a "horrible," cold, windy day. Pinkowski was on his own because the team's two stars, he and Chapa, never raced each other on the track. In cross country the pair had intentionally tied for first in the Indiana state championships. Candiano devised the plan to preserve his top runners so they could always earn maximum points for the team, as distance runners weren't allowed to run multiple events in 1975. A few days after Pinkowski broke 9:00, Chapa and Keough had their chance. They rose to the challenge, running 8:52.6 (Chapa) and 8:52.8 (Keough).

At that moment the Hammond Trio had the first-, second-and fourth-fastest times in the country for 2 miles. To put the accomplishment in perspective, in 1975 only five other high school runners broke 9:00 in the 2-mile run, out of more than a million attempts at the distance, according to data compiled by noted track statistician Jack Shepard. Shepard's data show that only three times since have two runners from the same school accomplished the feat, and all of them are sets of twins--Chuck and Frank Assumma in 1977, Mark and Eric Mastalir in 1986, and Joe and Jim Rosa in 2010. The Assummas and Mastalirs were out of California; the kids who broke 9:00 were often from warm-weather states on the West Coast. But it was a farm boy from neighboring Illinois who served as an inspiration for the trio: Craig Virgin, who broke Oregonian Steve Prefontaine's national outdoor high school record with an 8:40.9 2-mile in 1973.

"It wasn't Prefontaine or Shorter or any of those guys that were as much of an influence," says Keough. "Virgin was one of us. He was our age. He was from the Midwest . Somebody we could relate to."

While it was no surprise that Pinkowski, a senior, and junior Chapa would run that fast, Keough was the shocker. As a senior, the former football player, former wrestler, former pole vaulter dropped his PR in the event from 9:40 to 9:25 to 8:52. And if it wasn't for the near body block put on Keough by a lapped runner down the final straightaway, Keough, not Chapa, might have won their duel. "I was warming up for the half," says Pinkowski, "and I took a look at the race and saw what was happening. I thought, 'Boy, Rudy must be having a bad day, Tim's right on his butt.' He was coming on Rudy really fast when the [lapped runner] got in his way. [Keough] ran right into his back and pretty much stopped dead before he got going again, and he ended up only two-tenths of a second behind Rudy.”

"Rudy said that he still had a lot left and would have been able to hold me off," says Keough, chuckling. "But I was closing real fast, and I don't think he thought I was coming or would have had time to react." What made it even more surprising was that Keough's fastest quarter mile was only 57 seconds, while both Chapa and Pinkowski had run 5 to 6 seconds faster. "I just didn't have much speed," Keough says.

Keough's ambition had not been to challenge his more accomplished teammates. His goal had been to letter in a sport. His football career ended when he developed an inflammatory bone disease, Osgood-Schlatter. Not to be deterred, he tried out for the wrestling team, where he had the ambition, but not the skill.

"My coach took my mother aside one day after church," Keough recalls. He told her that while he liked Keough and respected his ambition, he didn't think he would make the varsity in the sport. Twice denied, Keough didn't give up. He became a pole vaulter on the track team.

"The highest I got was 10-3," says Keough with a laugh. But he noticed that he could hold his own in running. He seemed to have some aptitude for it: for the hard work, the dedication, the discipline that Candiano preached to his athletes was necessary for success. Keough was too slow to be a sprinter and didn't have the pure finishing speed to be a middle-distance runner, so, with his Osgood-Schlatter disease in remission, Keough became a distance runner.

For Chapa and Pinkowski, the route to the track and cross country team wasn't as circuitous. Pinkowski played several sports--the high-profile football and basketball among them. Chapa wrestled and played baseball. "We were all good athletes," says Pinkowski. "We could do other things besides running." They had other options for the all-important letter jacket and symbols of athletic success, but they could also see that they were destined to be role players on team sports. For some that's enough. Keough, for one, would have been comfortable in the cocoon of a team sport, but there was that rebel element in the trio, says Pinkowski, that drew them to running.

….…..finishing reading Ferstle’s excellent piece on the Runner’World website here.