This is in the early stages, just a very rough draft so far.
It all started in 1974. My sister Tracy had left her bike on the front lawn, under an enormous dwarf pine. I know, that sounds like a contradiction, but the ancient tree was only as tall as our two story house but also about half as wide as the house, too. Wide enough, in fact, for several of us to hide behind it’s double trunk at once, as we did often while playing hide and seek back in those days. I had seen my sisters and my dad riding their bikes.It seemed like such fun and I felt left out. So, seeing an opportunity, I straddled the bike. It is worth noting that I have three older sisters, and Tracy is the middle sister. So she was several years older than my three year old self and as you might guess, the bike was far too large for me. I probably only fell once and was trying a second time when my sister spotted me and ran to get my father. I’m sure I had tried several times before he arrived on the scene to tell me I wasn’t big enough for that bike. I couldn’t even get on it, I was just falling over immediately.
Dejected, I watched my sisters in redoubled envy as they rode their bikes in whatever amount of time it was until my birthday. My dad arrived home and carefully told me he had something I could use, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t a bithday present and I think the reason for that was he wanted to reserve the right to give it away when it had served it’s purpose. He had the smallest rideable bike I’ve seen in my life.
Despite being small enough for a newly minted four-year-old, it was quite solid and heavy. It was grey and someone had taken a spraypaint can to it, putting green highlights in a couple spots. The tires were solid rubber, so there was no risk of a flat. It was perfect. I didn’t care that it wasn’t ‘mine’. He took me to our front walk and had me ride down it’s slight grade to make it easier for me. Naturally, I immediately tried to ride back up that tiny hill but, of course, I wasn’t ready for my first hill yet. That was the first of many hills I tried and failed to climb, but as with all of the future hills except one (so far), I kept at it and eventually conquered it.
As I grew, I eventually upgraded to a Schwinn bike that was designed for young ladies, with the top tube dipping down to allow for a skirt to have clearance. Of course, I was mortified to have a “girl’s bike”, and my dad rectified the situation by purchasing a cover for the top tube that made it look like a boy’s bike. The cover was red and he painted the rest of the bike red to match. Now it looked very much like a Radio Flyer, which suited me just fine. I spent many hours riding my red bike around the neighborhood and was especially fond of riding it in a vacant lot next to our house that was filled with pine trees and owned jointly by a number of families in the neighborhood, including mine.
Some time later, my mother had the notion that the whole family needed to get more exercise and made us all go out at the crack of dawn to ride our bikes. We would ride about half a mile to the corner of Prospect St and Pond St, which gave us access to a one mile loop. I didn’t know them at the time, but that was (or would be?) the location of the home of a family with 4 daughters, who become important later in the story.
Quickly mastering the single lap that my mother wanted to do, I decided I wanted to ride a second lap. Her newfound committment to fitness was approximately equal to the average person going to the gym as a new year’s resolution, however, and my desire to ride endless laps of the one mile loop was squashed rather quickly. I’m not sure how long we kept at that ritual of riding two miles total, but I have a feeling it wasn’t that long. I began to ride more and more around the neighborhood, however, and quickly became one of the stronger riders among my friends.
We even brought our bikes camping, as we did every summer. There were usually dirt roads for us to ride on and we did so with enthusiasm, bumps and all. One summer, when I was maybe 8, we camped at Ascutney State Park. Mt Ascutney is often used as practice for climbing Mt Washington, as it is roughly half the distance and elevation as Mt Washington, so two repetitions roughly equal climbing Mt Washington once. At the age of 8 and with my heavy red bike, it is pretty comical that I thought I would ride that bike up the mountain, but I tried with the fearlessness that comes with having no idea how difficult a task is. I probably got about 20 feet up the hill before running out of steam and having to stop. I tried a couple more times, but it was a task obviously far beyond me at that time. I think back on that and plan to take another crack at it as an adult, just for the sake of nostalgia.
When I was in the third grade, I liked to play soccer, tetherball and tag with my friends on the playground and quickly learned that I had enough talent in tetherball that none of my friends would play against me. I found that I had so little talent at the other two, that I was often subjected to embarassment. At one point, someone went as far as to tell me I was the slowest kid on the playground. I worked at it, got a little better, and was quickly advised that I was now the second slowest. Being the competitive person I’ve always been, I worked hard over the next several years to improve my speed and by the end of the 6th grade, I was winning sprints at the school’s track and field day. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was a runner at that point, but that was the seed of my desire to be a runner.
Around that time, my dad decided it was time for me to learn to swim. His idea of teaching someone to swim as to toss them in some water and let them figure it out. I absolutely panicked and would have drowned had he not pulled me out. I think he might even have tried it the same way a second time before giving up. Shortly thereafter, he signed me up for swim lessons with Red Cross. My first instructor was a giant, in my recollection, though he was probably of average height and medium build. He was just a giant compared to me and I also remember him being impatient with me. That part too, may have been my perspective as a small child who was now afraid of the water and the idea of drowning. Luckily, he picked up on my discomfort and handed me off to another instructor, a very petite young lady named Claire. The petite part was important, because I didn’t find her intimidating at all and she did a great job teaching me everything I needed to know to learn to swim other than the prone float, aka “Dead Man’s Float”. Every time I tried to do this, my legs would quickly sink. She decided I was doing everything else well enough that the prone float wasn’t a big deal, so she checked it off with a wink and moved on with my lessons.
During some of our family vacations mentioned earlier, my family would swim across a pond to a picnic spot. One person would row across with our lunches and I had to ride with the rower. I wanted to attempt the swim, but the rest of my family was unanimous in asserting that I would be unable to make the swim. I’m quite sure, in retrospect, that they were right, but it was a tough pill to swallow at the time. I was never one to back down from a challenge, no matter how ridiculous it was.
I’m not sure when he started getting back into it, but by the time I was eleven, my dad had rediscovered his own childhood passion for cycling. He joined a club called Elan, and found them to not live up to the name. He then joined Cycling Club Basingstoke, known for their jerseys that were two-tone blue with pink sleeves. This club was full of talented racers and he worked diligently at becoming a stronger rider himself. Eventually, he would be referred to as the ‘heart and soul of the club’. He had grown up in Ludlow, Vermont, and as you might expect, he had become rather adept at climbing hills on his bike. He once again mastered this skill through hard work and his childhood experience, earning the nickname John “make ’em cry on the hills” Green.
That year, at age eleven, I rode in my first bike race, either in Concord or Exeter New Hampshire. I remember he gave me a choice of doing both races, but I don’t recall which one I chose. I think I probably went with Exeter, but I’m honestly not sure. I had gotten an upgrade from the clunky red bicycle of my earlier years to a very slightly less clunky black steel bike. It was enormously heavy by today’s standards and even on the heavy side for the 80s. It was spray painted black with no glossy finish so no one was going to mistake it for an expensive racing bike like my dad rode.
The kids’ race was a few laps of the criterium course. Criteriums are generally about a mile-long course with either a set number of laps or the most laps that can be completed in a certain amount of time. For the kids, it would have been 2 to 4 laps. I remember there was a tall girl with long, brown hair who didn’t have a helmet and she ended up using a borrowed leather helmet that probably would have made good padding inside a shell helmet, but really wasn’t great protection for her head by itself. After the race, I made some disparaging remark to my dad about how she hadn’t had her own helmet and used one that wasn’t a ‘real helmet’.
He quickly advised me that any material things I had didn’t make me any better than people who weren’t as lucky, and added that she had beaten me in the race. My pride wounded, I quickly pointed out that she was taller than me and therefore likely older. He agreed that she was probably older than me, but added “She probably just trains more than you.” I didn’t even know what ‘training’ meant, so I had a lot to learn. He explained that if I wanted to ride faster, I would need to ride my bike even more than I was doing, and with a purpose. So I did.
My family often spent the day at Plum Island, a beach in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I loved the ocean in general, especially building sandcastles, playing in the waves and going for walks along the beach. I had three older sisters and a younger brother, so getting the car packed up with everything we needed was a rather large undertaking. As a child, and probably due in part to the significant time preparing just to leave the driveway, I always thought of Plum Island as a very far-away place. So, when my eldest sister, Betty, who loved the ocean as much if not more than I did, suggested that we ride our bikes to Plum Island one summer day, I was certain she was joking. She was not.
We made the 15 mile ride that had always seemed so much longer on a hot summer day, and I remember she bought me an orange juice because I seemed like I wasn’t faring well with the heat and the effort. That orange juice was better than anything I had ever tasted, likely because of dehydration. We locked our bikes up and enjoyed a great day at the beach. Is there any other kind? Anyway, as time went on, I ended up being the one trying to talk Betty into riding to Plum Island more often but she became less enthusiastic about the bike trip as time went on.
I continued to train, wanting to be a great cyclist like my father. The same year I rode in my first race, that I mentioned earlier, he had qualified for the National Veteran’s Road Race. Back then, riders over 30 were termed Veterans. He placed 8th overall and 5th in his age group (35 to 39). That same year, he placed 5th overall and 2nd in his age group in a special invitational stage race between high end Canadian and US racers known as Coupe des Ameriques. If you aren’t familiar with stage racing, it is a bicycle race where events are held on multiple days. The Tour de France is the most famous of these races, held over three weeks in France. The Coupe des Ameriques, if I recall correctly, was a four day race.
When I was 12, my dad pointed out a 7 mile loop that could alternately become a 9 mile loop with a quick add-on in the middle of the loop. I altered the loop slightly by taking a small detour that took me past the aforementioned house with 4 girls, one of whom I had a pretty bad crush on at the time (actually, 3 of them, but mostly the second oldest, Dena). I began to diligently ride the course, starting at 7 miles, then 9, then multiple loops of one, the other or both.
Sometimes, as I rode down Tenney Street, about a third of the way into the loop, a blond haired boy would yell various things at me. The first time, he yelled “Hey, Fatso!” which was pretty comical given that if anything, I was unusually thin. He was about as thin as I was, also. I laughed so hard I almost fell off my bike. Another time, when I was wearing a red, white and blue t-shirt made by some kids at my elementary school, he yelled, “You look like a flag!” Once again, I found it amusing, but there was a girl standing near him who clearly didn’t. Looking mortified, she didn’t say a word, but her eyes quite clearly said, “He is SOOO embarrasing!” I imagine she gave him some rousing speech about how wearing my Penn Brook Elementary School t-shirt was showing my ‘Patriotic Spirit’, because when I rode by on the next lap, he was still out in the yard and yelled, “Hi, Spirited Biker!” Years later, I thought back on this incident and wondered who the boy was. Georgetown is a tiny little town and it is quite likely I know him now, though I didn’t at the time. I’m pretty sure I know who the girl was and he might have been her brother, which would be a pretty amusing plot twist. I’ll get to that later.
I kept riding diligently, growing stronger and adding distance. In time, my dad decided to reward my hard work with another new bike. This one really was new, not a clunky, second hand bike like the others. It was a shiny, blue Univega Gran Premio, which was a fairly light steel bike that would have been considered a pretty respectable racing bike at the time.
Now, I was truly motivated to train hard. I would ride, 30 or 40 miles at a time. My cousin in North Andover, MA, started to get interested in cycling too, so I would ride the 8 miles to his house and we would ride to Harold Parker State Park, adding on quite a few more miles. One day, I did a lap of one of my training loops before riding to North Andover, we did a particularly long ride there and by the time I got back, I realized I had some energy left. So, I hit my Georgetown training loop again and totalled about 90 miles on the day. I was tired and sore beyond belief but I proudly told my father of my feat. His immediate response was “You should have ridden another 10 miles! I didn’t know at the time that 100 miles (aka a ‘century’) is a big milestone to a cyclist or I might well have dragged myself through those 10 miles.
It is worth noting, that this is also about the time I took up martial arts. I loved watching “Kung Fu”, a TV show about a Shaolin Monk who traveled to America in the time of the wild west. The same cousin that I rode bikes with would take me to a formal garden in the yard next to his house and we would ‘spar’, though our technique was crude and untrained. I started reading about Karate and Ninjutsu, studying the moves and practicing them in my room. Years later, I would take that training a step further.
Also at that time, I took part in a school activity known as the Presidential Fitness Challenge, aka The Presidential. There were track and field events as well as situps and pushups. There was a minimum performance level you had to meet in order to pass the challenge and of course, we would compete with each other to see who could run the fastest, jump the furthest and do the most situps. My best event while still at Penn Brook as the high jump. Unlike the track and field event where you jump over a bar, we had a black felt-covered board and chalk. You would mark the board from a standing position, and see how much higher you could hit the board.
In Georgetown, the Junior High School and High School are in the same building. When I got there, the Presidential Challenge was a little different. The high jump, to my great disappointment, was no longer and event, but it was replaced by a 600 meter run. Another change, which thrilled me quite a bit, was a school record board. In the gym lobby it hung, immortalizing the best athletes the school had seen at that point. I say at that point, because the greatest athlete the school had ever seen would soon tiptoe through.
Comparing my performance that year to the various records, I realized I had little chance to surpass most of them, but the 600m run record was 1:29 and I was running it around 1:40. As an adult, I now know that 11 seconds is an eternity in such a short race, but at the time, it seemed very doable. I began training by running around the football field where the actual test took place. I would look up at the record after every gym class and imagined myself beating the record. It would be amazing to have my name up there. One time, another student asked me why I was looking at the records. I replied with a question, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one of the records was held by someone who is at the school now?” I was assuming these records had been set many years ago and everyone on that list had graduated.
“What are you talking about,” the other boy asked, “that record right there, the 600m is held by someone at the school right now. Aaron is a Junior.” I suddenly had extra motivation, since the record holder would know that I had beaten him, if I could manage it. I redoubled my efforts.
Keep in mind, I had never laid eyes upon Aaron, at that time. One day, while I was running my laps around the football field, a tall, blond haired boy stopped at an opening in the fence between the school and the field. There were two openings, and the boy was quite a bit larger than me, so I cautiously walked toward the other opening he wasn’t occupying in hopes of avoiding a potentially unpleasant encounter. The boy was having none of it and walked to the opening I was approaching. He intended no harm, though, and cheerfully called out, wondering what I was up to. I explained that I was training to break the school record in the 600m and he made some supportive statement that I don’t quite recall. Then he asked my name. I responded, and he told me, “I’m Erik “. I wasn’t fully paying attention at that point, and thought I was speaking to my idol.
So, of course, I gushed about how cool I thought he was, being such a great athlete and a saxophone player to boot. Saxophone players were automatically cool, in my book, and he had a reputation as a very talented one. Taken aback, he said “Thanks about the sax, but you think I’m an athlete?”
Incredulous, I stammered that he held the school record for the 600m and was captain of the cross country team. How could he not think he was an athlete? “Oh,” he said, “You’re confusing me with my little brother. Yes, I play the sax, but he’s the athlete, out of the two of us.” He said one more thing, with a laugh, but I was unable to recall that last remark until more than three decades had passed. That’s a long story in and of itself, but I’m not going to tell that one at this point.
Another time, the following year, I was planning to run more laps, I was somewhat dismayed to see that the field was in use by the soccer team. I still hadn’t beaten the record, so I was still working at it. I like soccer, don’t get me wrong, but they were disrupting my training! Thwarted in my planned workout, I decided to watch the game. I slowly came to the realization that no one else was showing up to watch. No parents, no other students, no one stood with me on the sideline. In fact, even the team was on the other side, since I was technically on the visitor’s side. This didn’t matter, as I was the only fan for either side, but I still thought about walking over to our side.
Looking over, I noticed a few boys, most of whom I knew, sitting on the bench, waiting for their chance to take the field. One of them, shockingly, had hair past his shoulders. Keep in mind, this was the mid 80s, and boys with long hair weren’t common at all, especially in Georgetown. I looked closer and realized my mistake. It was a girl! We had a girl on the hockey team, but that was because there wasn’t a girls’ team. In soccer there WAS a girls team, so I was confused as to what she was doing over there. So, of course, being a teenage boy, I walked around the field to investigate and used that as an excuse to go flirt with her.
Never in my life have I ever been shot down that quickly while simultaneously realizing I had just found a great friend. Her name was Jen and we are friends to this day. She and I hung out quite a bit during lunch throughout my years in high school. At risk of sounding like a broken record, that’s a long story that I’m not going to go into right now either. Just trust that the two stories I’ve put off are actually VERY significant to my triathlon story, I’m just not going to tell that part right now.
Anyway, at this point, which was my Freshman year, Aaron had graduated and the cross country team was suffering in his absence. I actually think they hadn’t won a meet for several years prior to his graduation, but now I was paying attention and the endless chain of loss after loss being announced by my classmate, Danielle, who read the announcements in the morning, were wearing on me. Something had to be done!
Soon after, in gym class, my gym teacher had us playing flag football. I was pretty speedy at this point and would often run every ‘kickoff’ back for a touchdown until my teammates finally forbade me to field kickoffs so they could play too. After one such display, the gym teacher, who was also the football coach, said, “You have a natural stride. You should try out for…”. During his pause, my heart soared. He was going to invite me to try out for football! Being on the football team would be a dream come true for me, as I loved to watch and this would be my chance to get on the field. “…the cross country team.” he finished.
I was crushed. He didn’t want me on the football team after all. Then again, being on the cross country team would help me be more like my idol, Aaron. So, it wasn’t all bad after all. Shortly after that, it was basketball season, and I tried out for the Freshman basketball team.
I was already at my full height, just under 5’10” and I was quite fit, but I lacked skill and my shot was inconsistent, so I spent most of my time on the bench. I was mostly in it to stay in shape over the winter in preparation for training to save the cross country team from another winless year anyway, so I didn’t worry too much about that. There was one game, however, where we were up by so much in the first quarter that I spent most of the game on the court, and for some reason, my first few shots all went in and I was off to the races. I missed a lot of shots as the game went on, but my early success spurred me to take more shots and I ended up with 15 points, 1 point shy of the Freshman record. I got my first taste of a crowd cheering for me, and I liked it.
As I walked off the court after the game, my personal cheerleader (each of us had a cheerleader who would get up and cheer just for us whenever we scored) griped “Did you have to shoot so much? Kidding, nice game!” and a few others laughed at her complaint and congratulated me. As I kept walking toward the locker room, a tall pretty blonde girl ran to catch up with me to say “Nice game!” I decided being a sports star was a good ambition to have. As an aside, that girl becomes important to my triathlon story too, but you know I’m going to say it: that’s another story for another time.
The next day, Danielle announced the win over our opponent, Rockport High School, but sadly, she didn’t mention the high scorer like she usually did. I was pretty upset, but tried to pass it off as a joke when I spoke to her about it. “Oh, fine, don’t mention ME when I’m the high scorer!”, I said. I am quite sure she saw through my false non-chalance and realized I was hurt. She told me she just read from a script and whoever wrote it hadn’t mentioned who the high scorer was. So, the next time we played Rockport, she ad libbed, “by the way, in the previous game, the high scorer was Rob Green, The Scoring Machine, with 15 points!!” That nickname stuck with me through high school, often used mockingly because I wasn’t acctually that good at basketball, but I loved it all the same.
Soon, the basketball season was over and I resumed running training. Since I was no longer focused on just beating the 600m record, I began running on the road. I quickly realized that even if I ran really slowly, I couldn’t run for more than a few minutes without stopping. All of my 600m training had been speed/stamina work and I hadn’t built up any endurance. I complained to my dad about this and he suggested going for a bike ride after my runs to extend the workout and get some cardiovascular benefits from it. I did so, and my experience in multisport had begun. Eventually, I got to the point where I could run a mile without stopping and my dad gave me a 5 mile route to work on.
I began by running a half mile, walking half a mile and so on until I had completed the route. As time went on, I began running longer and longer while walking less and less. Eventually, with great pride, I ran the entire 5 miles. It wasn’t fast, but I did it. One limiting factor is that I had severe asthma at that age and exercising in the cold triggered attacks. So, I had to limit my speed, and even then, I had an asthma attack pretty much any time I ran. As the weather began to warm up, several things happened that would change everything.
First of all, to my relief, the asthma attacks became a lot less frequent. Also, I read an article that talked about training for a marathon by running no more than 9 miles per workout. Thirdly, I read a book called “Eat to Win” that gave me (bad) ideas about sports nutrition. At the same time, I read a book entitled “Peak Performance”, which was critical to my mastery of the mental side of athletics. Last, and absolutely not least, I picked up my first running fan.
One of my teammates on the basketball team was my good friend John. Though I somehow managed to not know it was his house and therefore didn’t realize the girl in question was his little sister, there was, indeed, a little girl who seemed to enjoy watching me run by. It seemed like every day, at the start of my route, I would see this adorable child smiling and waving at me. John eventually introduced me to Antoinette and we became friends also.
As I mentioned, I had read an article on training for a marathon by running no more than 9 miles. This gave me the idea to gradually ramp up the mileage of 1 run per week, running further than I had ever run before each Saturday. My dad had given me that 7 and 9 mile route, so I used those as the mileage got longer. Eventually, I ran a 7 miler and it was such a proud moment for me. The next Saturday, though, I felt sluggish and tired. The 7 and 9 mile routes split at the end of Tenney Street, where a left on Jewett Street takes you on the 7 mile route and a right takes you on the 9 mile. That loops around to Jackman Street, which takes you back to Jewett St and from there back to my house.
Turning right instead of left was a mighty act of will. I did not want to run those extra miles. I slogged through the distance to get back to Jewett Street, and when I did, I looked left to where I would have been coming from if I had taken the shorter route. Except, I thought bitterly, I would have come through ages ago. In fact, I would have been just about done with my run already.
I thought about Dena. She was pretty, intelligent, athletic and a really nice person. She was also not worth putting myself through this pain I was feeling in my legs, the fatigue I was feeling throughout my body and in my soul. I thought about Aaron. Being like Aaron would have been a dream come true, but it also wasn’t worth the torture I was subjecting myself to. I ran on.
As I continued to run, I felt a weird disconnect. I had lost all my motivations to run, but I didn’t actually stop running. Why not? What was keeping going? Mindless inertia? No, it was something else. In that moment, I realized that Dena wasn’t worth this and Aaron wasn’t either. But I was. I ran on.
Now that I was up to the magical distance of 9 miles, like the article talked about, I felt like I didn’t need to add any more distance. I just kept running 5 miles per day like I had been, with a 9 mile run on Saturdays. Antoinette continued to be outside at just the right time to smile and wave, cheering me on. Soon, it was April. The day of the Boston Marathon was coming, and I hatched a plan to run a half marathon on Marathon Day. Unlike all other days, when I ran later, I started very close to the starting time of the Boston Marathon for the symbolism of it. I started my run right before John and Antoinette’s house, with the idea that she would be there to send me off, and I would run 6.55 miles toward North Andover, turn around and return by the same route. One extra challenge of this route was that there was a very steep hill right after their house, so I would start on a big hill, but at least there would be a nice downhill at the end.
Things Went Wrong 