Last spring, a pre-dawn chill pimpled my buns with goose bumps as one tightly locked gate after another denied me entry to the East High School running track.
A hostile sign stood like a bar bouncer, on the encircling fence warning that I was trespassing on school property. I turned away, dejected, and ran a few laps in City Park, a poor substitute for a fast track workout that I had planned. These days all Denver High School tracks are closed to the public as referenced by Yesenia Robles’s June 5, 2010, Denver Post article, “New DPS track policy hobbles runners.” A gate to my past is slammed shut, chained, and locked. I was a teen in 1959 when the cinder running track at Andrew Jackson High School was the only unpaved piece of New York City for miles around. “Cinder” was a mannerly name for red dirt that coated shoes and legs after a running workout. Those dirty legs were a source of pride among neighborhood boys because they marked the athletes in training.
That cinder track was where many young teens tested the speed of skinny legs on long, otherwise boring summer afternoons. I was among those kids striding in the red dust and dreaming of speed. But I was among the slowest.
In high school I was too slow to make the track team, frustrated by fleet footed classmates like Vincent Matthews, a pacesetter on the 1962 team. During those novice track workouts Vincent left me in the red dust: a tall brown ghost with such speed that eyes could not focus on long legs and large feet that blurred past as if propelled by feathered wings. Vincent, along with three buddies earned gold medals, fame, and infamy in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic games. Without that cinder track where would Vincent have developed his talent?
At the time I felt impotent running with those track stars, so I devised a plan to at least look like a runner: I purchased a school letter from another Andrew Jackson classmate. Nothing can arouse adolescent virility and self-confidence better than a school letter on your jacket.
Elliot Gordon, having lettered in swimming, tennis, and chess didn’t even have room on his jacket for all of his letters. When I secretly asked him to sell me one of his “J’s he jumped at the chance. Five dollars, expensive in 1962, secured the letter but did not buy Elliot’s silence. He shook my hand, collected his money and immediately told every person he met about “Warren the loser”.
Overnight I became famous among Andrew Jackson’s 800 sophomores for dishonesty, not for athletics. Thoroughly ashamed, I returned to that dusty cinder track and worked even harder, but I never did qualify for the track team. I also never wore the contraband school letter. It sits today in mothballs.
Wesleyan University, the same institution that nurtured our mayor Hickenloper and our senator Michael Bennett, seemed to promise a fresh, honest start for me as a college freshman.
Running up to the 1966 Cross-Country team try-outs I met classmate Bill Rodgers and upperclassmen Amby Burfoot and Jeff Galloway. I had never heard of them. Today they are legends of distance running, among the fastest in the world. I had completed only two laps when the cinder track proclaimed the dusty truth “there is no place for you on this dream team.”
Sadly, I was not going to earn a letter “W” nor was I going to buy one. So I plodded around the cinder track at Wesleyan, which was open to everyone, for the solitary joy of keeping fit. Still I would sometimes have the favor to breathe Rodgers and Burfoot dust because the track was home turf to both elite and fitness runners.
Vincent Matthews competed again in the 1972 Olympic games then he tapered off from elite running. Rodgers, Burfoot and Galloway still workout on paved and cinder tracks, inspiring young runners.
Forty-five years later I still run at the back of the pack collecting only legitimate medals and ribbons. The Andrew Jackson High School track in New York is still open for neighborhood use. I only hope that young future Olympians from Denver, the 2018 versions of Matthews, Burfoot, Rodgers, and Galloway will find an open track in Denver to develop their talents.
Warren T. Johnson (tecolote@earthlink.net) is a triathlete and family physician in Brighton. He was a member of The Denver Post’s 2008 Colorado Voices panel. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
