How Fast and Far I Went

by Paul Solberg

I first started running on a summer night in Cambridge in 1951. I was ten, and like most evenings I’d been playing with my best friend, Carl Nordblom. He lived in an apartment building at 998 Memorial Drive, just outside Harvard Square, and it was an easy mile-and-a-half walk back to my house at 44 Bay State Road. That night, when it got to be eight o’clock and time to go home, I was heading to the door when his mother said to me, like she said every time, “Call me when you get home so I know you made it.”

And like every time, I said, “Okay, I will.” But in the few minutes it took me to go down the stairs and out onto the street, I got it into my head that this time I’d run the whole way to see how quickly I could make it home.

Up Mt. Auburn I ran, then onto Willard Street past the Cambridge Skating Club, which I never went to because I hated paying money for the privilege of being cold. Brattle Street came next—it had far fewer cars back then than it does these days, so I crossed it easily and turned right onto Sparks, the streetlights making the humid air bright. From there I went up Huron and onto to Vassal Lane where I ran toward the one-way traffic. Then I hit Callahan Field—the only part of my route that lay in darkness. But I’d been across this stretch of grass so many times, I didn't slow down.. Finally, I tore across Concord Ave, sped down Birch, and reached home.

Despite the heat, I was wearing my usual dungarees, so I was sweating like a bottle of milk on a picnic table and panting hard. I jumped up the brick front steps, tried not to slam the door, and ran down the hall to the phone in the kitchen. When Mrs. Nordblom answered, I said, “I’m home!”

“Already?” she answered.

“Yep!”

“That was so fast! You must’ve run like the wind!”

“I did!” I told her, grinning.

Around this same time, I was trying to find a way to compensate for my size when I played basketball. There was a guy named Frank Galgay who was a couple years older than I was who liked my older sister Joan, so he’d been putting me on his team for pickup games outside our grammar school. Since I was already short for my age, competing against these much bigger seventh and eighth graders was a challenge. I needed a strategy.

One day, my little brother Steven and I saw the Charles Atlas ads in our comic books and were impressed. I imagined myself muscling my way through every defender. “Gee, we should get some weights!” I said.

“Yeah!” he agreed, his eyes bright with the same dreams of power.

But then we looked at the price of the system. Even if Steven and I combined our pitiful savings together, there was no way we could afford it. We’d have to stay the scrawny weaklings we were.

But then I read in a magazine that running built up your endurance, which made it an advantage in any sport you played. I realized that I’d never match the older kids in strength, height, or speed, but maybe if I could outlast them, I’d have the edge I needed.

Best of all, running wouldn’t cost me anything.

At that time, there was no such thing as a “jogger.” People didn't run for exercise. Kids on the track and cross-country team ran, but that was it. There weren’t community races, and or easy-to-find tips on how to build a good workout. But I didn't care.

Every afternoon, I put on my shorts, laced up my sneakers, and headed over to Fresh Pond, the backup reservoir for the city of Cambridge. It sat at the end of Bay Road across Concord Avenue and was 2.5 miles around. I knew the cross-country team at Cambridge Latin High School used it for meets, so I figured it was a good choice for my runs. I tried to maintain a steady pace, though I couldn't time myself since I didn't have a watch—I couldn't afford one! But I could feel myself getting faster and knew I was able to run for longer and longer. At the end of the loop I had to go up a steep hill, cross a hundred yards through a picnic area, and go down another steep hill. The more I ran, the easier it was to navigate those inclines—and avoid slipping and sliding down.

Essentially, I did what you do at that age for any sport: I tried it, and I found I was good at it. Why was I good? I didn't know. But I soon knew I could run for a longer time than most people.

In those basketball pickup games, I bided my time. Up the court we ran. Down the court we ran. Eventually, the big guys were huffing and puffing while I had as much energy as when the game had started. And was a lot easier to poke the ball away from someone or dribble around them when they were sucking air and I’d barely broken a sweat. I kept my spot in the pick-up games from then on, even after Frank Galgay had given up on Joan.

Beside the benefits in other sports, I loved running for the sake of running. I loved the idea of going faster and longer than anyone else. And I wasn’t alone. The early 1950s was the era of the four-minute mile, when runners around the world were trying to break the so-called barrier of human speed and endurance.

I read stories about it in the newspapers and in Sport magazine. Roger Banister, a physician in England, came close to breaking four minutes in the 1952 Olympics. I followed his progress as well as races run by the Australian John Landy and the American Wes Santee, from Kansas.

Bannister was the first to run under four minutes, in May 1954. Then Landy did it forty-six days later, beating Bannister’s record. They went on to have an epic battle running against each other in what was called the Miracle Mile race at the Commonwealth Games in Canada that summer. Bannister beat Landy in the last turn.

As for Santee, he was a world-class runner and had a great career—he won the collegiate cross-country championship in 1953 when he was at the University of Kansas, ran in the 1952 Olympics, and set some world records. And he missed the four-minute mile mark by less than a second—in 1954 and 1955.

If you thought that as I ran around Fresh Pond I liked to imagine myself racing against Bannister, Landy, and Santee, you’d be correct. And if you thought I always imagined beating them, you’d be correct again!

In ninth grade, I joined the track and cross-country teams and ran with them for four years. When the cross-country team practiced, it used a freshmen football practice field halfway around Fresh Pond and then used the path around the pond only for meets. Since I’d been running that path for four years, I had the advantage of knowing the meet route much better than anyone else. I’d already mastered every curve, including the sharp right that came just before the fifty-yard sprint to the finish line.

Cambridge Latin High School ran in the Suburban League. We competed against Cambridge Rindge Tech, Boston College High School, Waltham, Newton, and other schools, many of whom had excellent running programs. But for my first two years, I was undefeated.

I might have stayed undefeated, except I wanted to play other sports too. So, I had an unusual arrangement with my coaches.

In the winter, I’d play basketball and run indoor track. The basketball games were on Tuesdays and Fridays and the track meets on Saturdays. I’d play the Friday night game, get up the next morning, and then hop on the train to Park Street and then switch trains to get to the East Newton armory where the meets were held. The mile was run near the end of the meet, so I usually had about twelve hours to recover between the game and my event.

This routine usually worked, and I usually won the mile. But one year, I had placed into the state meet, and the night before, my basketball team played an overtime game. To make matters worse, the state meet was on a real track—one with a soft, bouncy surface, as opposed to the hard surface of the armory and my school track. I had no idea how to run on it. I didn’t come in last that day, but I wasn’t far from it.

In the spring, I had a similar routine. I was allowed to skip outdoor track practice so I could play baseball. To keep in shape for the meets, I ran home from practice. The baseball field was inside the outdoor track, so on the days we had baseball practice at the same time as the track meets, when it was time for the mile I’d change out of my baseball uniform and into my running uniform, hit the track, run the mile—usually winning—and then head back to baseball practice.

In the fall of my senior year, I stayed on the cross-country team but added football, which worked because the cross-country coach agreed I didn't have to go to practice and because the football games were on Saturdays and the cross-country meets were on Fridays. So on regular days, I went to football practice and afterwards I’d take my gear off and run a couple of miles on the nearby outdoor track. On meet Fridays, when the football team was just practicing returns and other special plays, I skipped football and ran in the meet, right after school. Though I didn't always win, I still did well.

Of course, now athletes focus on one or two sports, and they only have so much eligibility in high school. But back then, I wanted to do it all, and I was good enough for the coaches to want me to do it all.

I figured out a way to get it all in, though as I look back, I see the whole thing was bizarre.

Part of the appeal of running in high school was that there was a great track and field tradition in Cambridge in the 1950s and 60s. Rindge Tech in particular had an outstanding program. One of my best friends in grammar school was the high jumper John Thomas. He went on to Boston University where he won two NCAA titles and was the first jumper to clear seven feet in 1959 when he was 17. He broke the outdoor world records three times and was the favorite to win the gold medal at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics—he ended up with a bronze and a silver.

A lot of Rindge Tech runners went on to Villanova, which was one of the top U.S. colleges for track at the time. One of them, Charlie Jenkins Sr., ran for Villanova 1955-57 and won gold at the 1956 Olympics in the 400-meter and the 400-meter relay and is in the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.

I didn't run competitively in college because there are so many hours in a day and I ended up focusing on basketball and baseball. But although I stopped competing, running was the activity that I stuck with the longest. It never required special equipment, a court or field, or teammates. I didn't have to compete against anyone but myself.

When I was travelling a lot for my job, I’d find a way to get in a run in almost any city I was in, so I’ve run in every state in New England and in dozens of cities including Chicago, Atlanta, Indianapolis, San Francisco, San Jose, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Las Vegas. My second favorite route was when I ran on the Pebble Beach golf course in California. But my favorite route has always been in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where I moved in 1977. That run takes me through dense trees, up and down hills, and past estuaries and the ocean. No matter the weather, it’s a beautiful landscape.

I was fortunate never to have any lingering injuries and ran well into the twenty-first century. I finally decided to stop pushing my luck and stick with walking when I turned eighty. But if you challenged me to a race right now, who knows? I might still have a four-minute mile in me.