Me and Bart

Thursday night I was sitting in Immediate Care as the nurse took my pulse, blood pressure, and temperature. I tried to choke back my coughing and ended up gasping for air in a desperate and embarrassing attempt to conceal the fact that I was actually sick. “You have a temperature,” she said. “I’m training for a marathon,” I said. “You need to rest,” she said. I gulped and asked her for how long. Four to six days was her reply. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. I’ll be fine, I thought. “Rest, only brisk walking for 20 minutes or less until you feel better,” she said in a stern, but concerned voice. “But,” I nearly wailed, “I’m supposed to run with Bart Yasso on Saturday!” “Who?” She half-heartedly inquired as she wrote out a note for work. “You know,” I said, “Bart. Yasso. The Mayor of Running, practically the coolest runner alive.” “Oh,” she mumbled, “You’ll just have to tell Mr. Yasso to take a rain check.”

Most of you, runners that you are, probably know who Bart Yasso is and would be as perturbed as I was that someone else didn’t. But, if you don’t, here’s a brief introduction. Yasso joined Runner’s World in 1987 to develop the groundbreaking Runner’s World Race Sponsorship Program, creating a vehicle for Runner’s World to work with over 7,000 races representing 4 million runners per year. He was also inducted into the Running USA Hall of Champions in 2007 in recognition of his contribution, impact, and dedication to our sport. He has been dubbed the “Mayor of Running,” and is one of the best-know figures in road racing.

Yasso also invented the Yasso 800s, a marathon-training schedule used by thousands of beginner, intermediate, and advanced runners around the world. He is one of the few people to have completed races on all seven continents, cumulating in over 1,000 competitive races, from the Antarctica marathon to the Mt. Kilimanjaro marathon. In 1987, Yasso won the U.S. National Biathlon Long Course Championship and won the Smoky Mountain Marathon in 1998. He has also completed the Ironman five times and the Badwater 146 through Death Valley. He has also cycled, unsupported and by himself, across the country twice.

He is also the author of My Life on the Run, an autobiography of sorts allowing us a glimpse into the wit and wisdom of a road racing icon. I must admit, before reading his book, I new little about Yasso, but he became my hero overnight. He has inspired me as a runner, writer, and as a person. His sentiments echoed my own, as he overcame life challenges, including battling a debilitating illness, “But then I started running. And when I started running, I started dreaming. It couldn’t be helped. The mind works as hard as the body does during exercise. It knows its role during those lonely interludes – to inspire, analyze, and fantasize.” I suddenly felt as if I had reconnected with a kindred spirit I didn’t know I had been missing when Bart wrote, “Running may be the connective tissue, but the true essence of the sport is passage to a bigger world. So open the door and run through. Just don’t be surprised if you arrived in a place you only dreamed existed.”

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