by Adolfo Salgueiro | Jan 24, 2023 | Article, Opinion, Personal, Reflection
By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro
I still can’t believe that it has been 40 years since my first marathon. Four decades since that unforgettable January 22nd of 1983 inside the old Orange Bowl Stadium in Miami. 14,610 days have passed since that unprepared 17-year-old higschooler crossed a finish line that became the gift that kept on giving.
Since I can remember, I wanted to run a marathon. Not sure why. Maybe because I read about the athletics exploits of Abebe Bikila, Emil Zatopek or contemporaries like Frank Shorter and Bill Rogers. Who knows? Somehow, I always loved the extremes. I started running when I was 12 or 13 while living in Caracas, Venezuela, and at 15, ran my first 10K race. Then, a couple of months after turning 17, my dad told me he was running the Orange Bowl Marathon in January 1983, and if I trained, he would take me to Miami. Maybe I just wanted the trip and a few days off school, or it could have been a legitimate attraction for the physical challenge. Regardless, what I know is that 6 weeks later I was lining up at the foot of the iconic home of the Miami Dolphins, who eight days later were taking on the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl.
The Miami Orange Bowl stadium (1937-2008) seated 72,319, hosted 5 Super Bowls and was home of the Miami Dolphins from (1966-1986)
I’ve written before about that race. So, on this anniversary I don’t want to reminisce about that particular day, but on what the race has meant to me throughout my life. Last year, on the 39th anniversary of the marathon, I wrote a memoir about that day because I didn’t want details to be forgotten. If you would like to read more about it, please click here. I also wrote a post about getting my finisher’s medal 37 years later, back in 2020. If you want to read about it, please click here.
After that magical morning, 40 years ago, even if I never ran another step in my life, I was a marathoner. It is a label that sticks forever. It doesn’t fade away with time, or by forgetting the exact date and finishing time, or by never wearing a pair of running shorts again.
I kept running for a handful of years after my first marathon. By the time I turned 21 I had four under my belt, with a couple of them in the 3:30 range. I ran through my first three years of college and even had escalated disagreemtns with my girlfriend, who at times was fed up with not going out with our friends on Saturday nights because I had a Sunday morning long run. Many a time I had to put my foot down and state that I would drop her before my training. Today I would have handled it in a different way, but that was then.
As I have mentioned in other writings, as I was training to go sub-3 in 1986, I had a devastating non-running injury on my left knee that left me on the sidelines. It was such a demoralizing blow that I stopped running for decades. While not running I discovered the pleasures of sleeping in on weekends. I didn’t want to have the same issues with new girlfriends, so I went out partying on Saturday nights, and on Friday nights, too. I focused on getting my career in sports journalism started, graduating from college and all the stuff “normal” people do when they don’t need to wake up early to run long next day. The day I turned 18, I went to bed at 8PM because I was running 30Km (19 miles) next day as part of my training for the NYC Marathon. What a weirdo!
There is not much to be found online about the 1983 Orange Bowl Marathon. Surprisingly I found this cotton race shirt in eBay for “just” $149,99. Thanks, I’ll pass.
Yet, somewhere deep inside, I always knew I had one more marathon in me. Just one, to remind myself I could still do it, or to fool myself into thinking I was still as good as when I was a teenager, or to revisit old glories, or to show my young son what you can accomplish when you work hard towards a difficult goal. Whatever it was, I still wanted to hit the asphalt and take that 26.2 trip once more. Just once.
But sometimes you cross paths with the wrong people and they clip your wings. At 39, after a 2nd knee surgery in July 2004, I told the doctor I still had one more marathon in me and asked if he thought my knee could take it. He told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t and couldn’t. I was stupid enough to take his word for it.
But one day, out of the blue I started walking for hours at a time, feeling good about it and experiencing the runner’s high once again. I found racewalking and then racewalked four half marathons, transitioning to the 26.2 at the 2012 Philadelphia Marathon. Three years and two more marathons later I realized that I just took the doctor’s word and did not run because he said so, not because I tried and failed. So, I got my running restarted and ran my first marathon since 1985, in 2017. Five years, four marathons and an open-heart surgery later, I am still running and looking towards my next 26.2-mile adventure.
The Marathon Training Academy podcast runs a great tag line: “You have what it takes to run a marathon and change your life”. I certainly had what it took to run it again, and my life hasn’t been the same since I completed that 2017 NYC Marathon after I became a runner for the 2nd time; nor since I racewalked the Philadelphia Marathon in 2012 after a 26 year hiatus, nor after that magical morning at the Orange Bowl Stadium, 40 years ago, this week, when my lifetime love affair with the mythical 26.2 monster got started.
by Adolfo Salgueiro | Jan 18, 2022 | Article, Personal, Reflection
Orange Bowl 1983
By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro
I’ve written about my first marathon in bits and pieces throughout this blog, but I’ve never written anywhere about my entire recollection of that 1983 Orange Bowl Marathon. This upcoming January 22nd will be the 39th anniversary of my race. So, before my memories keep fading away, I better put all I can recall into paper (or digital format).
I was a 17-year-old high school senior living in Caracas, Venezuela. I always kept active by running, practicing karate, baseball, soccer, tennis, hiking, swimming, biking and whatever came along. Running a marathon was a goal somewhere on the backburner, but, thanks to my dad, I got the chance to fulfill it earlier than expected.
I believe we arrived in Miami the day before the Saturday race. We stayed in a hotel in downtown and went to a spacious hotel ballroom nearby, to pick up our bibs. I remember being blown away by the technology of the day, when my bib was printed before my eyes, instead of being ready ahead of time. I don’t recall an expo, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I read, maybe in that day’s Miami Herald, that none other than the legendary Bill Rodgers was the favorite to win.
This is the only picture I have from the race, but it is one of the best running pictures ever taken of me. Check out the detail of the untied shoe with no socks, to which I make reference, later in the post.
I also recall my dad buying me a Casio stopwatch, so I could keep track of my marathon time. I had that Casio for years. I don’t remember how I lost it or when it broke, but I’ve seen it in pictures from the early 90s.
On race morning we met with the Venezuelan runners, most of them where my dad’s buddies, at the hotel lobby. The one thing I vividly remember was asking for a coffee at the hotel bar and getting a gigantic cup of black, diluted, disgusting American coffee. At home, a small cup of good coffee with a generous amount of milk would start off the day.
One of the runners had rented a sports car and somehow, more people than was safe crammed inside for a short drive to the majestic (at lease in my eyes) Orange Bowl Stadium. This is where the Miami Dolphins, who were playing the Super Bowl next week, held their home games.
Before time chips, you had to present yourself and your bib to the organizers, so they knew you were at the starting line. Somehow, we could not find the registration table. We were looking for it like crazy until we realized this was going to be based on the honor system.
I recall nothing about the starting gun, crossing the starting line or conversations along the way. I do remember, though, my dad constantly reining me in because I was going too fast. He also reminded me to take water every so often, as the humidity was exceedingly high.
My dad has one indelible memory of the race. After a rainy patch along the way, we found ourselves running next to a woman with a drenched, white outfit that left nothing to the imagination. At 17 and with raging hormones, I couldn’t but get distracted by the magnificent side show. My dad had to bring me back to the race at hand. There is no marathon talk in my household where this story doesn’t come up.
The course had two in-and-out segments (Coral Way and Coconut Grove). Both times, as we were going in, the pack led by Bill Rodgers, was coming out. For a 17-year-old kid from Caracas, seeing the legendary Bill Rodgers, running in the same race within a few meters from each other, was the highlight of the event. It was the equivalent of participating in the same Monaco Gran Prix with Niki Lauda or playing in Veterans Stadium, side-by-side with Mike Schmidt. It was that improbable.
Sometime during the Covid lockdown of 2020, my friend Starr Davis invited me to participate on a Zoom call with Rodgers. At the end, I had the chance to asked him what he remembered form the 1983 Orange Bowl. Surprisingly, he recalled a lot. Starr recorded the interaction with her cellphone. I invite you to check the video, which I have included right here.
Most of my memories of the 1983 Orange Bowl Marathon are from the last 7.2 kilometers (4.5 miles). I recall them vividly because I suffered miserably. My dad and I agreed to run together for 35 kilometers (21.8 miles), and from there, each one would run his own race. By kilometer 35.1 he had already left me in the dust. I slowed down and started walking. I was drenched, tired, hungry, and questioning what the fuck was I doing there, instead of being at home in Caracas, maybe getting ready to play baseball with my buddies.
At one point, it had to be closer to the end, I took my shoes off and started walking on my socks. The shoes were heavy, and I considered just tossing them to the side, but then I thought of my dad getting upset, as they were the shoes he let me borrow, so I decided to keep them. Wise choice.
A friend of my dad, the late Jose Ortega, saw me close to the end and ran a bit with me with words of encouragement. I promised him I would finish so I discarded my socks, put on the shoes, which I did not tie, and started running. The next memory I have is of my dad and some Venezuelan runners at the entrance of the stadium, cheering me on. As I hit the grass, I started sprinting like crazy. To this day I can’t figure out how my shoes didn’t fly off my feet. Check them in the accompanying picture. Not only untied, but open at the top.
37 years later, I got my hands on a medal from the race
I lifted my arms as I crossed the finish line and, one way or another, I found my dad and collapsed. My first thought was: “When are we doing the next one?”
I knew my time was around 4:11 but I did not know for sure. I wouldn’t find until months later when I got my finisher’s certificate in the mail, that my official time was 4:11:11. I also got a proof of one picture in case I wanted to order it. It is the only image I have from the entire experience. Thank God is one of the best pictures ever taken of me running.
In those days, medals were not ubiquitous or for everybody, and I did not get one. In September 2020 I found one on eBay and jumped on it. If you care to read about the 37-year medal saga you can check the blog post I wrote about it by clicking here.
Sorry if this blogpost ran longer than usual, but I am trying to recall as much as I can. Yes, I could have waited until next year, the 40th anniversary, but by then, I may forget something else. And I can always repost.
by Adolfo Salgueiro | Sep 22, 2020 | Opinion, Reflection
By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro
In today’s blogpost I am going to go personal, as something super cool just happened to me a couple of weeks ago. So cool, that I am still trying to figure out if it actually happened. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but amazing, nevertheless.
As many of my friends know, as well as readers who have taken the time to read My Running Story page in my website, I started running when I was very young. At 17 I ran my very first marathon. That race was an amazing experience that, almost four decades later, I still cherish and one of the coolest ones from my teenage years. There are not many high schoolers with a full marathon under their soles.
At 17, a senior in high school, and just a few yards away of finishing my very first full marathon
On January 22nd, 1983, my dad and I lined up at the foot of the old Orange Bowl Stadium for a 7AM start of the Orange Bowl Marathon. I remember a humid and rainy day in Miami and Bill Rodgers as the favorite to win. Our plan was to run the first 35K (about 22 miles) together and then every man was on his own. We cross paths with Rodgers twice during in-an-outs at Coral Way and Coconut Grove. Then, at mile 22 my dad left me in the dust and finished in 3:55. After walking a few painful and humbling miles, I triumphally crossed the finish line in 4:11:11. What a thrill to fall on my dad’s arms a few feet after and ask him: “When do we do this again”. But I digress.
The point of this story is that back in 1983, getting a medal worth its place in an art gallery was not the norm. New York was famous for handing medals to every finisher. My dad had one from the previous year. The Orange Bowl offered medals to the first 500 or 1000 finishers, I don’t recall precisely. What I do recall is that I did not get one. I have finished eight more marathons and despite some beautiful medals to represent my achievements, there was always a hole in my collection. A hole that may never be filled.
Until now.
On September 2, I was at my computer and for some reason the thought of the 1983 Orange Bowl Marathon and my lack of medal, crossed my mind. So I did a Google search and, to my most absolute astonishing surprise, there was one for sale in eBay for $15.99 plus $2 for shipping. I could not believe my eyes. The elusive medal was somewhere out there. I have never even seen one. But from my race shirt I recognized the logo and that was it. Just a few clicks away. Calling my name. Winking at me. I could not let the opportunity go. I purchased it right away.
The times I thought about the missing piece in my collection, I entertained finding a nice shell in the beach, hang it in a string, and call it my Orange Bowl 1983 memento. But it never went beyond a passing thought. The absence in the collection persisted.
On September 9, 2020, 37 years, 7 months, and 18 days after I crossed the line of my first marathon, the package arrived. I finally had the medal in my hands. A plain, cheap, worn out piece of metal. Maybe an inch and a half in diameter and not even attached to a string or lace. Not the prettiest puppy in the litter, but MY medal. The representation of MY achievement on that day, from when I was still a senior in high school.
This medal doesn’t fill a hole in my soul, just a hole in my medal collection. With nine marathon finishes I have done better times, travel to other states and countries, ran in some of the biggest races in the world, and accumulated countless stories. How I got my medal 13,746 days later, has just been added to the memories.
