Went to the local American Legion meeting last night. What a blast! Lots of beer, lots of shots, lots of BS-ing.
The guy chain smoking and drinking hard sitting next to me noticed I had a running shirt on. So he started telling me old stories of his running days. Turns out he was the former school record holder for the mile at the University of Colorado. He ran 4:00.04 way back in 1959, only five years after Roger Bannister first broke the four minute barrier. He said that during that race he had outkicked Wes Santee. He joined the Marines once he graduated and headed up the physical fitness department at Quantico. But once Vietnam kicked off, he gave up running and went over to do what jarheads do. And the guy never gives up, as someone at the meeting told me he had punched someone in the mouth at the last meeting who called him a "chickenshit Marine." The punchee required stitches.
6 comments:
Whoa - who was this guy? (name)
pretty cool, although I must admit, I had no idea they had watches back then to be able to read out hundreds of a second...
nevermind.. further research reveals: "In 1916, Heuer introduced the "Micrograph", the first stopwatch accurate to 1/100th of a second. This model was soon followed by the "Semikrograph", a stopwatch that offered 1/50th of a second timing, as well as a split-second function (which allows the user to determine the interval between two contestants or events)."
Excellent story....outkicked Wes Santee....he's got to be for real.....who the hell knows who Wes Santee is but us nerd runners who know track history who also happen to be former Jarheads!!!!
Jeff Farrell
I forgot his name, he bought me quite a few shots. He's at the Legion often, so I'll find out soon. And yeah, he mentioned enough dork runner stuff that I think he's for real. He even said he won the CO state high school mile his senior year in 4:42 in basketball shoes.
basketball shoes?
you mean he doesn't run barefoot. pathetic.
Marines kick ass! As do their offspring.
Post a Comment