America's Coach declares distance running is about to boom

By Scott Benjamin

Jeff Galloway – who is billed as “America’s Coach” and invented Run-Walk-Run training - says he believes “in the next year and a half you are going to have your biggest running boom ever because more people have taken up running because the fitness clubs have been closed” during the pandemic.

“I have yet to hear of someone getting COVID by running outdoors, or even by running indoors,” exclaimed Galloway, who ran in the 10,000 meters at the 1972 Munich Olympics and has been hosting and coaching runners in clinics and retreats since 1975.

“The vaccine is not going to eliminate this virus,” he said in a phone interview with Patch.com. “I think it will be manageable by this summer. However, I think we will be dealing with this through the rest of 2021.”

Galloway, 75, who lives in Atlanta, said there is a possibility that the Summer Olympics in Japan, which were rescheduled from last year due to the pandemic, will not be able to accommodate spectators.

After graduating from Wesleyan University in Middletown in 1967, Galloway came to prominence in the 1970s during the initial running boom.

His Florida Track Club teammate Frank Shorter, who graduated from Yale, won the 1972 Olympic Marathon in Munich– the first American to accomplish that feat since Johnny Hayes in 1908.

Runner’s World has stated, “By all accounts, Frank Shorter is the father of the modern running boom.”

Galloway’s Wesleyan teammate Bill Rodgers captured both the Boston Marathon and the New York City marathons four times between 1975 and 1980. Joe Concannon of Litchfield, the late Boston Globe sportswriter who co-authored Rodgers’ memoir, said Rodgers had charisma that was similar to that of Arnold Palmer’s reign in golf in the 1950s and 1960s.

Suddenly all of the sporting goods stores sold running shoes.

Wikipedia has reported that an estimated 25 million Americans took up running during the 1970s and 1980s.

However, by the late 1980s – after Nautilus became part of the conditioning vernacular – fitness clubs began to sprout. Some athletes preferred stair-masters and treadmills in an air-conditioned environment to the roads and trails.

Now, a generation later, Galloway expects people will continue to take up running after the pandemic subsides.

He told Patch.com in 2016 that since the mid-1980s, the biggest change “has been the influx of women.”

Most recently, Galloway said he “couldn’t believe that there were 450 women who qualified” for last year’s U.S. Olympic Marathon trials.

“Maybe there aren’t that many that are world class, but to have that many at the trials is amazing,” he remarked. “The quantity of quality has become much greater.”

Galloway said he was impressed that Molly Seidel, who had been an NCAA champion in cross country and track & field at Notre Dame, placed second in the trials in her first marathon. Seidel was only eight seconds behind the winner - Aliphine Tuliamuk. Sally Kipyego was third, taking the last spot on the American marathon team.

Their times were slower than the usual winning times in the Olympic marathon. However, Galloway said he has been in Japan during the summer and it is usually “hot and humid, and can create a lot of changes.”

Among the men, he said he is encouraged about veteran standout Galen Rupp, who placed first at the trials and had won a bronze medal in 2016 at the Olympics in Rio.

Galloway noted that the top African marathoners have run negative splits, and Rupp has not done that.

“However, he is experienced and a strong competitor, and I think he can make the top three, and he could win it,” he added.

America has the most Olympic medals in the marathon at 11. But it has only won four medals in the last 49 years.

Jacob Riley was second at the trials last year in Atlanta and Abdi Ahdirahman was third.

Galloway said he has “mixed emotions” about the decision to exclude the marathoners from the new set of track & field trials in June 2021 at Bill Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon to determine the qualifiers for the Summer Olympics in Japan.

Runner’s World has stated, “what would the field look like in a Trials makeover? Do you invite the more than 700 women and men who qualified for last month’s race? On what grounds? After all, if the 2020 Trials aren’t a good way to pick the 2021 Olympic team, then the rules for participating in those Trials should also be considered invalid.”

Said Galloway, “It will be almost a year and a half between the marathon trials and the Olympics. For marathoners, there can be a lot of issues in training. If one of the qualifiers isn’t up to speed he or she should give up their place to someone who will be ready to compete.”

Galloway qualified for the Olympic 10,000 meters by taking second place at the trials in 1972 while his Florida Track Club teammate Jack Bachelor was initially listed as the fourth-place finisher but was ultimately disqualified for bumping the third place runner in the homestretch.

In a magnanimous gesture, Galloway paced Bacheler a week later through the U.S. Olympic Marathon trials and allowed him to finish just ahead of him so that he could take third place and qualify for the Munich Games.

That September Shorter won the gold, Kenny Moore - who would later become a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, placed fourth - and Bacheler came in ninth – the best overall performance ever for the U.S. in that event.

Galloway remarked that across the world the standards for selecting the respective Olympic marathon qualifiers are “all over the place.”

Some countries use trials, some appoint a committee and others use the Boston Marathon results to make the selections.

“Using Boston can be good, except you do have some steep hills,” Galloway explained. “But it is a strong test with an elite international field.”

Given the circumstances, might there be a psychological advantage for the American marathon qualifiers in knowing well in advance that they have a guaranteed spot in Japan?

“Different athletes respond in different ways,” Galloway said. “However, most of them have coaches and they get good advice.”

He said even though sponsorships have become more available over the last generation, most Olympic track & field competitors struggle financially.

Galloway said even with the sponsorships – such as the one that Visa has had for the top American decathletes for more than 30 years – most Olympic track & field athletes “aren’t going to make as much money as they would in a regular career.”

The pandemic has exacerbated the problem.

Hammer thrower Gwen Barry told USA Today last year, “For track and field, we rely on track meets, track events, going overseas. Because there’s literally nothing, no competitions, that’s our income.”

For “America’s Coach” the pandemic has temporarily canceled his running clinics and retreats.

Instead, there have been virtual Zoom sessions, 60-day running challenge events, the usual E-training workouts and podcasts.

Of course, there are the in-house newsletters, the monthly column for Runner’s World and updating some of his 32 books.

Apparently, Galloway also invented Run-Write-Run.

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