By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Way There
One of my first tests as Michigan Runner editor was write about the 25 top state running stores. So far I’d set foot in three. Publisher Art McCafferty wanted six top-25 features, one each bimonthly, to fete our magazine’s 25 years in print.
“Let me give you phone numbers,” Art advised. Not surprisingly, many were clustered around Ann Arbor, long and still a hotbed for active runners, related commerce and hoped-for ad bucks.
Nine Running Fit stores owner Randy Step’s name came up at once, so I called only semi-prepared for a hyperkinetic ex-funeral home head already moving on from retail to birthing outdoor happenings. Many had odd names like the Martian Marathon, T-Rex Triathlon Series and Dances with Dirt ultra-trail races.
Runners camped out overnight for some of these, communing over fires with nourishment of their choice, fidgeting after in sleeping bags — My back isn’t used to this. Did I bring enough carbs? — then dashing pre-sunrise towards the woods and who knows what wildlife adventures there.
Loyalists swore by and at how Step’s events helped them feel keenly alive outside boxes and, possibly, their minds.
The University of Michigan’s hometown and environs had other draws. Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic Marathon champion and key figure in the mid-1970s U.S. “Running Boom,” had a shop there in his heyday.
Frank returned, many surgeries later at age 63, on a sizzling June 9, 2011, morning to tackle the Dexter-Ann Arbor 10K, his first go on a replaced hip.
His son and daughter-in-law had just taken teaching and research jobs at the University. The Shorters went long on miles and education: Frank’s dad had been a physician; after graduating from Yale, he’d pursued a law degree in Florida while training with other soon-to-be Olympians Jack Bacheler and Jeff Galloway.
“Hang on,” Frank said as I collared him — among later finishers, but first on a just-rebuilt hip — post-race. “Let me throw up first.”
That dispatched with, he elaborated on state running greats he had vied against and been friends with, his family, then cut us off perfectly after 6:20 asking “Where’s the beer?”
In the Rochester hills just north of Detroit, redheaded brothers Keith and Kevin Hanson operated four stores while running a post-collegiate racing and training team. U.S.-made Brooks shoes helped sponsor their effort to produce better U.S.distance runners.
One, Brian Sell, made the 2008 U.S. Olympic marathon team, the became a dentist. Another, Desiree (Desi) Lynden, placed seventh in the 2016 Olympics marathon and in 2018 became the first U.S. woman in 33 years to capture the Boston Marathon.
As a whole, Hansons- Brooks athletes dominated state races they chose as warmups for better-paying national and world events, pocketing in the process at least champ change.
The shortcut for me to write about the “25 top state running stores” was single phone calls to Step (nine), Kevin Hanson (five), Gazelle Sports chain owner Chris Lampen (five) … That made 9+5+5=19 with three calls; only six to go.
Art had pre-assigned some “25-Year Most …” series stories to running scene veterans he knew could wield words. I was default guy for the rest.
Of the races Art, Jennie and I chose as “Most Iconic,” I’d run several. The Grand Rapids River Bank Run, Flint’s Crim, Traverse City’s Cherry Fest 15K, Mackinac Island 8-miler — had bigger turnouts, not to mention sponsor banks. I loved one-offs and oddities still more.
One I picked was Saugatuck’s Mt. Baldhead Challenge. By 2002, word was out this new 15K boasted a climb up 300-some steps to a dune-top summit; then you’d wind down a wooded trail back onto asphalt, around the river and across the bridge back to a harbor arts town more bohemian and ready to serve creative needs than most neighbors.
Still fit at 47, I ran it for the first and only time that year, won a James Brandess wood-block print for faring well in my age group, stood on podium giving hell to a friend I had finally beaten, and we both felt like Wicks Park kings.
Less than four years later, I found a way to get back here working and playing fulltime as an editor.
Where did we leave off from last week? Back in Three Rivers Super 8 beds, Carter and I phased into Friday the 13th sleep and alarm clock peeping 5 a.m. now Saturday. Are you ready?
We showered and dressed for the forecast of Lawless Park squalls, packed video and still cams, monopods, umbrellas … Carter, the human camel, had hauled too to the room his drone rig and laptop.
“What, Carter,” I asked. “You didn’t pack a tablet too?”
“Not for the room,” he said. “But it and lots more are packed in the van for sure.
As we pushed the wheeled luggage cart down symmetric halls with sequential numbers and occasional vending portals, I pictured Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel in the film “The Shining.” The haunted ones ghosts and corpses was 237, 11 down from our Super 8 evening digs.
The red down arrow came on. Ping, elevator doors opened for our all of one-floor descent.
In the old days, I told Carter, we took the stairs — up and down — with luggage —14 floors were nothing then. We’d lug two or three loads before and after racing 10 miles through Flint …
“I though you’d waken up,” he said.
“How can I?” I asked. “The hotel’s out of caffeinated coffee. The desk guy’s set up fresh batter for the waffle-maker, four yogurt flavors, plastic-bagged bagels and English muffins; sugar and creamer packets; and larger oatmeal envelopes we can heat in water good also for making tea and cocoa … but only decaf?”
“Tap your waterproof boot heels three times,” Carter said, “and repeat ‘There’s no place like home.’”