Local running impresario Creigh Kelley thought his role at Running USA’s annual awards banquet was to entertain the audience and keep the evening’s program on schedule as master of ceremonies.
He knew one of the agenda items was the induction of Dr. Ken Cooper into the Running USA Hall of Champions, and he was thrilled “just to be in the room, much less at the same table” with the doctor whose 1968 book “Aerobics” helped trigger the first running boom.
What Kelley didn’t know was that he would be inducted with Cooper. Everyone else involved in putting on the event, two weeks ago in San Antonio, kept the secret from him until the moment of the announcement in the banquet room.
“I was surprised, stunned,” Kelley said. “I think what I said — shortest acceptance speech I’ll ever make — was, ‘I’m blessed, I’m honored, I’m genuinely surprised and I’m grateful. To be (honored) in front of my peers is over the top, and I thank you.’ “
Running USA is a nonprofit organization of leaders and races in the running movement, in partnership with USA Track & Field, that was founded to promote the sport and enhance the development of American running stars.
There isn’t enough space in this column to list all the things Kelley has done over the past 30 years that made him more than worthy to be honored by the foremost national running organization. He became an avid runner in 1976, during the big bang of the first running boom, when he quit smoking and started running because he was about to become a father.
Soon he was friends with Jeff Galloway, a 1972 Olympian who owned the Atlanta running store where Kelley felt “magic.” Kelley moved from Atlanta to Denver in 1978 to open a Phidippides running store in Marina Square.
Since then he has represented elite athletes as an agent and put on more than 1,000 races across the country. He has served on national committees, announces 25 to 30 races annually, puts on 40 events locally and has been the race director of the Colfax Marathon since 2008.
Kelley is grateful beyond measure to be able to make a living pursuing his passion for running and fitness. I know the feeling.
We agree on something else — the moral imperative we have to spread the word.
“We have so much to do,” Kelley said. “We have a moral obligation to turn this unfit population around and teach them the art of the possible. Children’s (lack of) fitness is a byproduct of our lethargy as adults, but it is our moral obligation as adults to fix this. It’s not the medical community’s responsibility — they just have to deal with what we’re doing that’s bad. We need to turn it into good.”
We see miracles when we work at races and when we run in them. If you’re not inspired by the triumph of the human spirit those events celebrate, there’s something wrong with your heart no EKG can detect.
“I love watching people and the art of the possible, when they discover they can actually do this stuff,” Kelley said. “I see all these people out there who don’t think they’re capable and then they cross the finish line, burst into tears and say, ‘I just changed my life.’ And I’m a little part of that.”
The son of a World War II U.S. Marine, Kelley ran college track at Virginia Military Institute, graduating in 1968, then spent almost five years in the Army, including one in Vietnam. He remembers warming up before the 1976 Peachtree Road Race, his first race since graduating from VMI, and seeing some of the greatest runners in the sport — Lasse Viren, Don Kardong, Frank Shorter, Galloway.
“We had so many iconic, heroic runners then,” Kelley said. “The magic was there.”
The truly heroic struggle now is to reverse the obesity epidemic and spread the gospel of our sport — that running is a means to health, fitness and emotional well-being.
“I love that feeling (in running) of freedom, fresh air, feel good, calm down, get focused, think, come home, take a shower, then go out and want to tell everybody how good you feel,” Kelley said. “I feel terribly sad for people who don’t do that.”
