April 4, 2023
Dr. Tom Osler died this past week. He was a mid-century pioneer in long distance running and a friend of those who worked for the development of the sport in it's infancy.
Tom was a good marathoner, not a great one. While a professor of mathematics at Glassboro State University in New Jersey, he wrote extensively on the history of long distance running and was a frequent contributor to the RRCA newsletter "Long Distance Log". He also conserved every issue of that journal and saw to it that they were digitized for posterity.
About 1978 or 1979, when I was a grad student at the Human Performance Lab at Ball State University, Tom came to us to do a 72 hour run/walk and let us measure what went on in his body during those three days. We got to learn a bit about him in those fun filled times. That learning was not just from a physiological point of view but also we learned a bit about his character, humor, and intensity.
The sites where he ran those 72 hours were side by side. The first was an indoor fieldhouse with a 220 yard dirt track where he ran at night. That track is no longer there. It's roof collapsed under the weight of a snow fall. A new Human Performance Laboratory has taken its place. The second 'track' outdoors was a half mile loop of asphalt next to the indoor track. It resembled a modern bike path in today's world. Tom planned to run and walk in 8-hour segments during the 72 hours. He would take a one-hour nap on a training table after each 8-hour segment. One of our duties was to wake him up at the end of his nap. We never had to wake him up, when we went to the door to knock, he was already on his feet coming out of the room. In the video below you will see two of the grad students, Joyce Urish and then Mike Sherman running beside Tom collecting expired air in a gas bag. He usually ate on the trail or track.
At the beginning of the run we all went to the outdoor trail to give him a send off. Somebody gave him a 'to your marks' command as we waited in anticipation for him to start the run. We were somewhat flabbergasted when he started off by walking. This had to be part of his strategy to be able to go that long. But it was a shock to our much shorter-distance minds. I don't recall what the mix of running and walking were in terms of time and/or distance.
We worked in shifts to provide support. We could go home and, study, watch TV, sleep, and eat ribs from QL's barbeque, in East Muncie, but Tom was truly the Ever Ready Bunny who just kept ticking. In those three days I think he made close to 200 miles but I don't remember the exact distance.
He developed a fairly serious blister during the run, and it is the only time I remember him expressing any sort of pain, when we provided some amateur first aid treatment.
During our time with him I remember him talking about the huge popularity of pedestrian racing in the late nineteenth century. And then fifty years later when marathoning was still a relatively obscure sport, he said that if you put your mind to it, you could personally know every marathoner in the US.
He said that some of his Sunday morning training runs of 50 miles involved leaving home before dawn and running to the beach, meeting his wife and children there and spending the rest of the day together. I asked if his wife had any peculiar hobbies to match his. He said "Yes, belly dancing."
I also remember Tom's generosity. A week or so after he went back to New Jersey, we all received a copy of one of his books.
George Brose
LINK TO:
72 Hour Run by Tom Osler at Ball State Human Performance Lab
filmed by David Elger, grad student at the time was NAIA marathon champ in 1975 for U. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2:28:07. He also has had sub three hour marathons over a span of 39 years.
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Tom was a memorable character. We tested him numerous times and he always stayed with Judy and me. During his first attempts at competitive running he chose to start with the Boston Marathon. His plan was to run with the leaders as long as he could. Consequently, it took him six races before he finally finished his first marathon. Ed Winrow always ranked Tom as one of the 10 best ultra-marathoners of the late 1960s.
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