    The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-474 – Frank Shorter  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4474.mp3] Link  MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -  Chris’ other show à  Intro: Hello my long suffering friends.  How are you?  Well it’s been a busy two weeks since the last time we chatted.  And I truly missed.  I get lonely.  I worry.  Where have you been?  How do we know you’re not dead in a ditch? Today I’m going to mess with the format again.  I managed to write a really funny piece about varmints that I’m going to perform for you, but it came out at 2000 + words so I’m going to push that after the interview, skip section one and use the intro here to talk about our guest. Frank Shorter.  Yes that Frank Shorter.  It was one of those interviews where I was hopelessly overwhelmed by content and just did my best to touch on a couple fun things with him.  But, the rich tapestry of Frank’s life does not fit easily into a 20 minute conversation – so I’m going to fill in some of the blanks here. Frank was born, ironically in Munich Germany, where he would eventually return to win the Gold Medal in the marathon at the 1972 Olympics.  His Father was a physician in the army.  Frank grew up in a troubled home in upstate New York.  He started running to get away from an abusive father.  Running gave him the freedom we all know and love.  To get him away from his father, his mother arranged to have him sent to a prep school in Massachusetts where he was given the space to expand his running talents.  He went on to run at Yale for his undergraduate and won a number of NCAA titles.  He moved on to Gainesville Florida to study for his law degree – all the while training and racing at an elite level.  The thing about Franks journey in the 70’s was that he showed up at all the marathon runner hotspots with all the legends.  He trained with that famous Florida track club with Jeff Galloway and crew.  He was in Oregon with Prefontaine.  Frank taught Steve how to Ski.  Frank was with Steve before he was killed.  Frank won the elite Fukuoka Marathon . He was the #1 ranked marathon runner in the USA for 5 straight years and in the world for 3. He won the gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972.  You may not remember 1972, but this was the Olympics where the world learned about terrorism.  A crew of Palestinians broke into athlete’s village and held the Israeli Olympic team hostage, murdering some of them. Frank was sleeping on the balcony and heard the gunshots.  Coming full circle, Frank was right there on Boylston Street in Boston in 2013 when the bombs went off.  He won the silver medal in the 1976 games losing to an unknow East German athlete, who most likely was a drug cheat.  Frank has become instrumental in removing drugs from the Olympics – a battle that still rages. Through all this he trained himself with an uncanny mixture of speedwor

Episode 4-474 – Frank Shorter

Get Started

Download the App