Stories
The story of
the Stevenson family
I loved running since I was a kid. Although I ran on the high school track team, I was never very good, unlike my little brother Jim who was state champion in the mile and my cousin Bill who was a star runner at Yale. And all of us took after my father who had been a runner as a prep school student.
On my first trip to New York, staying for a few days with Dwight before going to the Cape to work, I ran "home" (82nd Street on the East Side of Manhattan) at night from Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, after watching the Dodgers beat my beloved Cardinals baseball team with a home run by Jackie Robinson in the last of the ninth inning. I vividly recall crossing the Manhatten Bridge, and then holding my elbows out as a I ran to fend off drunken pedestrians in the Bowery, as it was Saturday night.
In the mountains around Rice Peak, I took great delight in running across the great rock slides, pretending to be a mountain goat, from rock to rock, occasionally dislodging one which would start a landslide crashing down the mountain behind me.
I started running again in New Haven as it became a basis for companionship with other guys, my "running buddies", with whom I talked as we jogged. In the days of AIM there was Bob Abramovitz who had helped establish the Hill Health Center and George Johnson from Yale Law School who served as an attorney for one of the Panthers. Later there were the Sleeping Giant Pacers and another group that trained on the Wilbur Cross High School track and ran up East Rock in New Haven.
At a certain point in my late 30s, running in local road races in Connecticut, I had knee problems and was told by my friend Charlie Robbins that I would be better off running barefoot. Charlie ought to know. In the late 70's in the big Connecticut roadrace on Thanksgiving Day in Manchester (5 miles), he won the Masters Division in almost the same time that he had won the race in 1945 And, as always, he ran barefoot. His memoire, sitting on my bookshelf, is my favorite running book!
Charlie was right about running barefoot. My knee problems came from cramps in the knee which had to correct the torque transmitted repeatedly from my feet which rolled a bit each time they struck the ground. By running barefoot, I had a foot plant that was steady; my feet literally gripped the ground each time they landed. Of course I had to build up a thick pad of soft callous on the bottoms of my feet to do this. But as I liked to say, there are four tissues that get injured when you run: tendon and ligament which scar for life; muscle which just develops more blood vessels; and skin which simply grows thicker. Better to take the injury on your skin! One year when I had to take off several months for tendonitis, I was running with friends on the shores of the Black Sea in Georgia and the soles broke loose from my foot and started flapping like a pair of flip-flop shoes. It was rather painful for a few days until the skin grew back to replace them! Another time back in the US I ran ten miles in what started out as a rainstorm and ended as a deep snowstorm and I frost-bit one of my toes. I can still feel it from time to time!
In the next few years, turning 40, I peaked as a runner, always running barefoot. Among my best races were June 14, 1980, in Southington where I won first place for Masters in 29:27 for five miles (a pace of 5:54 minutes/mile) and the 20 kilometer New Haven Road Race on Labor Day 1980 which I ran in 81:11 (a pace of 6:33/mile).
Running through my neighborhood of Fair Haven in the New Haven Road Race
Click on photo to enlarge
During those years I ran with several clubs and groups. First there was the Sleeping Giant Pacers who ran the 10 miles around Sleeping Giant mountain each Sunday morning. It was a very sympathetic group including a Hamden cop, a railroad worker and the girl I ran with, Kathy Gervasi, who held the Connecticut women's marathon record at that point which she had set while several months pregnant. Then came the Abebe Bikila running club, named after the first African runner to become known in the West after winning the 1960 Rome Olymic marathon running barefoot, because he couldn't find shoes that would fit. Most of the members were Afro-American, and I was the only barefoot. Forty years later I continue to wear my Bikila shirt and to run with my fellow Bikila runner, Larry Inge. Then I used to run regularly out of Archie Moore's bar up to the top of East Rock and back with my friend Steve Mick from Yale's public health school and a good runner from Australia who served as our trainer. Once with them I ran 10 miles in deep snow and frostbit one of my toes. It still complains when it gets cold!
In those years I ran dozens of road races and won many trophies in the Master's Division. Now, looking around my office I count about 25 trophies.
Running barefoot made me the envy of certain other runners, such as George Brown who wrote a regular column about running for the Hartford Courant newspaper and once wrote one especially attacking barefoot running. I forget if the following incident occurred before or after his column. We were running in a summer 5 mile race in Bridgeport on a very hot day. Warming up in a field just before the race began I stepped on a rather large piece of glass which lodged completely inside my foot and bled considerable. Not being able to pull it out with my hands, I bent into a pretzel shape and pulled it out with my teeth. George was horrified, and even more so when a few minutes later the starter's gun sounded and I beat him soundly in the race!
 photo in Soviet Georgia in 1980 by Misha Nassberg |
When I was abroad I would run as well, for example in Soviet Georgia where the above photo was taken and on a trip to Novosibirsk in Siberia where I ran in the taiga. In Moscow I kept a map of the city with the streets I had run to the point that I had seen almost every street in the city. Once, running the railroad tracks, I came through a factory and out the front gate backwards. Looking back I saw armed guards - it was a defense plant! Not everyone approved of my barefoot running. See, for example, my story from Moscow and those below from Georgia and Paris.
In Georgia in 1980 I used to run on the road taken by President Shevardnadze on his way to work. One day one of the guards along the route grabbed me and made me squat down behind his guardhouse so that the President would not see a barefoot man. Soon after, to Lindsay's trepidation, a police cruiser pulled over to talk with me. But this time, they simply wanted to know why I ran barefoot. Also, in Georgia, once when I went a conference on the Black Sea after not having run for several months because of injuries, the entire pads of my feet (which were normally quite thick from barefoot running) came loose when I ran on the beach and flapped like a pair of slippers. Actually it was rather painful!
And finally, in Paris when I was at UNESCO and running near the esplanade of Invalides, I was stopped by a woman police officer who accused me of indecent exposure and called the paddy wagon. When they came (and laughed), I got them to let me call Lindsay to come and bring me shoes. She showed up and when asked by the police, she said she didn't really know me.
As I write this at age 71, I have gone back to running again, although limiting myself to running every other day. In 2009, after the New Haven Road Race on Labor Day with its thousands of participants, I never again failed to take either the first or second place trophy for the 70-year old class, bringing my pace down well under 9 minute miles for 4-5 mile races. For a full list from 2008 to 2013, see running 2008-2103. For an update about running from 2014 on, see running2
I love running sandy beaches, dodging the waves, such as the wonderful long beach running north from town in Block Island. And perhaps the most idyllic moment of my life was running at nightfall in a golf course just West of Stockbridge Massachusetts. It was a winter night and the heavy rains of the day had just turned to huge flakes of snow. As I ran through the golf course between the shadowy trees almost hidden by driving snow the only sound was the plash, plash, plash of my feet in water covering the grassy course. I felt as if I were flying, suspended in the air.
I can only compare it to the greatest moments of skin-diving, suspended the warm Caribbean waters among the fish of the coral reef.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme