The Past is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past.
Book Reviews
By Paul O’Shea
How She Did It: Stories, Advice, and Secrets to Success
from 50 Legendary Distance Runners
By Molly Huddle and Sara Slattery
329 pages, Rodale Books, $18.99
1972: Pre, UO track, Nike shoes, and my life with them all
By Steve Bence with Bob Welch
244 pages, SB4 Press, $19.95
How She Did It: Stories, Advice, and Secrets to Success
William Faulkner’s belief that we never fully relinquish the past resonates in two new books.
One brings to life the careers of fifty of the finest national and international women runners of
the past forty years, showing that the pursuit of excellence is never quenched even as athletes
set new records. The second is the memoir of a Nike lifer who served his benefactor for four
decades, working with some of our sport’s iconic figures.
How She Did It
In their new book, Molly Huddle and Sara Slattery team up to oversee a kind of master class for
young runners. They asked fifty prominent distance runners to share what they know about
confronting physical and mental issues. Each of the Nifty Fifty gets her own platform in these
first-person accounts. Major titles earned are listed, along with high school, college, and
professional PRs. Huddle-Slattery know many of the contributors as competitors and training
partners.
Did It is categorized by decades beginning with the Nineteen Sixties. Kathrine Switzer is one of
the early running pioneers. Then come the Eighties highlighted by an entry from Joan Benoit
Samuelson. The Nineties give us contributions from Lynn Jennings and Sonia O’Sullivan. In the
early Two Thousands we hear from Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe. The second decade of the
Millennium gives us the most contributions, some twenty five, typified by Sally Kipyegon and
Jenny Simpson.
Molly Huddle has been among our nation’s notables since high school when she won multiple
New York state track and cross country titles. At the University of Notre Dame she was a ten-
time All American in track and cross country. She set American records at five thousand and
ten thousand meters and is a two-time Olympian. Huddle has a closet full of U.S championship
memorabilia for honors ranging from the five thousand to the marathon. On the track and over
the roads she has won 28 national titles.
Sara Slattery is also highly respected. In 1999 she broke the Foot Locker Curse, which asserts
that high school girls who win that acclaimed race, rarely attain the top of the sport in later
years. As a junior competitor she won a national three thousand meter title, then went on to a
solid career at one of the premier university running programs where she was a two-time NCAA
champion and ten-time All American at the University of Colorado. In 2005 she won the Pan
American ten thousand meters. Currently, she is head men’s and women’s cross country coach
at Grand Canyon University.
The book might well have also been titled, How They Handled It. Areas that the two explore are
physical health and injury prevention, hormonal health, sound nutrition, and mental health and
sports psychology.
The idea for this book came from a 2019 workout Huddle and Slattery took together in
Scottsdale, Arizona, and a New York Times article about Mary Cain and the difficulties she
endured working with coach Alberto Salazar.
How She Did It demonstrates that because the past is never dead, its high achievers can provide
useful advice for those who follow.
1972
Open the book 1972 and you’ll find an informal snapshot of three men. On the left, a three-
piece-suited Jim Ryun, 25. In the foreground, an animated Steve Prefontaine, 21. Behind them,
a somber Phil Knight, 34. They may have been chatting about a recent time trial, the opening of
a new restaurant in town, or whether runners might someday be persuaded to buy specially
designed running shoes.
That’s the scene Steve Bence photographed when he walked into Bill Dellinger’s office on a
September day in 1971, looking to join the University of Oregon running teams. The setting
brought together the co-founder of the Nike empire, two of its brightest stars, and the
photographer who would end up as one of the company’s longest serving employees--and the
author of this memoir. It was Steve Bence’s first day in Eugene.
Nineteen seventy-two is the story of Bence’s early life as a solid high school and national class
university runner, and forty-four years with the company. Only four of the nearly half a million
Nike alums would serve longer than Bence before he retired.
Steve Bence has written a brisk, engaging take on his years as Bowerman walk-on, Prefontaine
chum, and Knight workhorse. The first half covers his high school and collegiate running career.
The book’s second half focuses on his lengthy business service where he played a key role,
ending as Program Director in Footwear Sourcing and Manufacturing.
Bence is the principal author with contributions from Bob Welch, former Eugene,
Oregon Register-Guard columnist, and author of more than two dozen books. Their book’s
striking cover shows a drenched Bence, glistening from the rain, powering down the track.
Born in Tennessee, starting kindergarten in Japan, Bence ultimately graduated high school in
Spain. He was in a different school in each of his last three years of high school. Over the pre-
collegiate years, he lived in ten cities.
Though he played other sports as a youngster, his running talent emerged when he won the
proverbial middle school PE mile. He quickly made new friends as his Air Force father moved
around the world as military assignments dictated. Despite successes in Spain and Germany, a
1:55 high school PR failed to attract scholarship interest from the upmarket track schools in the
United States. Vern Wolfe, Southern California’s head coach was blunt. “Your time in Southern
California is a dime a dozen.”
He walked on at Oregon and became one of Bill Bowerman’s more successful non-scholarship
creations, though he ultimately did receive a scholarship. In a few years, Bence grew to be one
of Steve Prefontaine’s closest friends and a half-miler who PR’d at 1:47.7, sixth in the NCAAs,
earning All-America honors.
A horrific accident on the track in l975, Bence’s senior year, essentially ended his career.
Running a leg on the mile relay at the Pac-8 Championships, he dove forward to make the
baton exchange, missed, and landed on his face. He had broken his jaw. A cut on his face took
seventeen stitches. Before the NCAAs he was able to drink only fluids for two weeks and
flamed out.
The passages about Pre and his shocking death are moving. Bence learned the news from an
early morning call from an unidentified classmate who had heard the news on a local radio
station. Bence called local radio station KUGN, and Pre’s death was confirmed. Bence had last
seen Pre just hours before at a party held for a group of Finns who came to the States to run in
a meet organized by the multi-purposed Prefontaine.
1972 contains some 39 photos that range from the Ryun-Pre-Knight opener to a poignant study
of Bence and Pre a few hours before Pre’s death. This portrait, taken by a Sports Illustrated
photographer (the inimitable Kenny Moore was also covering the meet for the magazine)
shows a comforting Steve Prefontaine consoling an iron jawed Bence whose face shows the
result of the fall.
Decades later, Bence was interviewed by Doug Wilson of ESPN, on why Pre was so influential
and interesting. “It wasn’t so much about what he did or his times or his place. It was how he
went about competing and living his life that inspired people. His secret was more than just the
immense talent that he was born with—it was his persistence, consistency, and his ability to
avoid serious sickness or injury.”
When his Duck running career ends, Bence makes a life changing decision. While interviewing
for a job as a math teacher in the local school system, his good friend Mark Feig (a 3:58 Duck
miler) suggests instead that he join the local Nike store in downtown Eugene where he also
worked. Math’s loss was Manufacturing’s gain.
The author is diligent in acknowledging the help of others, some of whom read drafts of the
text. Thus, there are a few surprising errors: the l972 Olympic 800 winner is given once as Lasse
Viren, then correctly as Dave Wottle. Another: Bence writes that Alberto Salazar almost died
after winning the Boston Marathon. Salazar’s brush with death was at the l978 Falmouth Road
Race when he had a temperature of 107 and received the last rites of the Catholic Church. The
name of Nike’s brilliant advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy, is misspelled. Bence says his
first day in Eugene was in 1972, then 1971.
The major themes are Bence’s travels with an Air Force father and middle distance early
success, his athletic and social achievements at the University of Oregon, and long career in
manufacturing with the athletic shoe kingdom. There’s inside trivia about the Prefontaine
film Without Limits, for which Bence served as a consultant because of his close relationship to
the irascible Pre, recognized by Kenny Moore who was writing the script. Two other
Prefontaine films were also made, one a documentary.
If you are fully vaxxed with memorabilia about Nike, Bowerman, Pre, Shoe Guy, and Al Sal, and
don’t require another booster, wait for a fourth film. If you need to know more about the years
between Knight’s first company, Blue Ribbon Sports and the new Hayward Field, swoosh over
to your favorite independent bookstore for 1972. Don’t ponder. Just do it.
Paul O’Shea writes from his home in Fairfax, Virginia.
Writing on the plane of a Kenny Moore. Only one who lived then could fully capture the Zeitgeist of the time like Paul did. Marvelous piece. Kudos, Paul.
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