Better, Fixx learned, to sneak out the back door. 3) Run on flat places if possible.” And, later that month, after a Monday outing: “What did I learn from this run? 1) it’s harder to run alone than with someone 2) and slower 3) three tootsie rolls seemed to help, but only a little.”įixx kept at it even if, at the time, anyone leaving their home to jog in shorts was viewed as an eccentric (or, as neighbors deemed him once, a burglar on the make). In neat script he also kept detailed notes. Now, he bought a small notebook and began logging his runs as they increased in duration: a mile, then two, then three. He also had a tinkerer’s mind: He loved puzzles and, like his father, record-keeping, having picked up the skill taking notes for his sergeant in the Army. By ’64 he had partnered with a former Ducks middle-distance runner named Phil Knight, and the duo began selling Japanese track shoes out of their car trunks at meets, calling their operation Blue Ribbon Sports.īut Fixx preferred to finish what he started. Inspired by a visit with Lydiard, Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman returned to the States, intent on spreading the message. In New Zealand a track coach named Arthur Lydiard, fresh off leading three runners to Olympic medals, hit on a then-novel concept: to “run for fun, and from the fun will come the will to excel.” In 1962, Lydiard persuaded 30 sorta-in-shape men to go for regular runs, dubbing the group the Auckland Joggers Club. Who in their right mind would run 26 miles for any other reason?Įlsewhere, however, a niche movement was afoot. To enter the Boston Marathon was to endeavor to win it. Men like Roger Bannister were to be admired, not imitated. At the time, however, Americans viewed running as monotonous, difficult and potentially dangerous. His weight crept from 170 to 213, the pounds hanging thickly on his 6-foot frame. He took the train to the city, knocked back martinis at lunch and smoked two packs of Camels a day. There, Jim lived out the torpid suburban existence of the ’60s, when less than a third of adult Americans exercised regularly. The family upgraded from a walkup in Jackson Heights, Queens, to a two-story house with a lawn in Riverside, Conn. By 1967, he had earned a promotion to editor of McCall’s, then the third-largest magazine in the U.S. A child, Paul, arrived in 1958, followed in short order by another son, John, and twins, Steve and Betsy.Ī fluid writer and adept editor, Fixx landed a job back in New York City at The Saturday Review. After graduation he married his college girlfriend, Mary Durling, and moved to Sarasota, Fla., to write newspaper obituaries.

Bill, where he wrote for the local paper. Following a stint in the Army, he attended Oberlin on the G.I.

Most did so not in preparation for competition or to gain social status-if anything, leaving the house confers the opposite right now-but with the hope that covering three miles, or 10, or one, whether at a six-minute pace or a slow trudge, would in some way do them good, or make them feel better about themselves or the world, if even for a moment.įrom that day forward, a clock ticked in Jim’s head. The diehards upped their mileage the reticent runners returned to the sport the novices gave it a shot. They ran before sunrise, in the afternoon and late at night, headlamps leading the way. They wore Nikes or Hokas or whatever shoes they found in the closet. Reliably, they passed by, AirPods in, head down, lost in their own worlds. Just empty streets, eerily quiet, devoid of motion. The past couple of months, as shelter-in-place guidelines took hold, forcing Americans indoors, you could walk many neighborhoods and not see a moving vehicle. Consider the humble jogger: at times celebrated, at times maligned but, for the most part, taken for granted.

Jim sun corona md