RON RUNS THE WORLD RAGGED
Ron Clarke insists that he runs for fun—and if he does, he has had a lot of fun this summer, much of it at the expense of the people who update track and field books. An also-ran in Tokyo, where he was a pre-Olympic favorite in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, the tall Australian accountant with the Rolls-Royce stride set out in June to correct a few false impressions. Sensational is a pusilanimous word to describe what happened next.
On a 51-day tour of the U.S. and Europe, just completed, Clarke ran 17 races, won 13 (twice he took on France's red-hot Michel Jazy at shorter distances to get competition), obliterated four world records (two of them twice) and established an entirely new school of philosophy about distance running. "Watching Clarke set his record in Oslo," said Billy Mills, who beat Clarke in Tokyo, "makes one understand that there is a revolution going on."
The 28-year-old Clarke launched his uprising in Los Angeles on June 5 when he ran three miles in 13:00.4 and 5,000 meters in 13:25.8. The old 5,000-meter record of 13:35 had belonged for eight years to Russia's Vladimir Kuts (see box at right), before Clarke clipped it a couple of times himself in January and February while warming up for his grand tour. As it turned out, Los Angeles was a form of warmup, too.
On June 16, while most of trackdom's attention was concentrated on France, where Jazy was gloriously assaulting the one-and two-mile distances, Clarke set a new 10,000-meter record of 28:14. Three weeks later in London (there was some business to be conducted for his firm back home, which accounts for the gap between records), Clarke improved his three-mile world record by eight seconds in a performance that Britons hailed as a "feat way out in front of Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile." If that impressed them they should have been in Oslo, Norway, four nights later.
The weather was comfortably cool but the track only moderately fast when Clarke and two others, Jim Hogan of Ireland and Claus Boersen of Denmark, jogged up to the starting line for the 10,000-meter run. Clarke immediately jumped well out in front of the other two, perhaps prompted by his prerace announcement that he intended to set some world records. Running alone and paced only by the cheers of 21,000 Norwegians, not a word of which he could understand, Clarke sped past the blinking timers stationed at the six-mile mark in 26:47, lowering a 17-day-old record (set by Billy Mills and Gerry Lindgren at the National AAU championships in San Diego) by a thumping 24.6 seconds. At the end of another 376 yards Clarke burst through the 10,000-meter tape in 27:39.4, reducing his own world record for that distance by an even more astonishing 34.6 seconds.
The significance of this series of performances is inescapable: Ron Clarke has discovered a new approach to long-distance running. He trains hard, of course—three workouts a day that cover approximately 22 miles—but the training is meaningless to him if he cannot compete constantly. As a result, Clarke has been able to prove that a runner can train hard and often, race hard and often and keep improving. A distance runner, Clarke believes, does not need to reach a climactic peak and then tail off like a bird with a broken wing. He has proved that where world distance-running records are concerned there is no foreseeable limit. Clarke, in fact, shrugs off the recent performances that have made the rest of the track world goggle-eyed.
"Other people just haven't tried hard enough," he says. "A lot of them can run as fast as I do. I'm no freak. In two years quite a few fellows will be running fast races without causing a sensation."
Clarke, who is swarthy, dark-haired and intense, would love to convince people that for him training and racing are nothing but a delightful hobby.
"I eat and live like ordinary people," Clarke says. "I make no sacrifices. For me, training and competition are recreation. Most people think we runners are more dedicated than we really are."
Seems simple enough. Run 22 miles a day, race twice a week and whistle while you work. Then stand back and watch the records come clattering down.
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PHOTO
Moving at top speed, Clarke heads toward two more records in a single race in Oslo, Norway.