Dec. 21, 2023
This is the first time I've posted a second obituary on someone, but it just came from Bob Darling and I believe it is worth the time to read it. Nice work by Sam Whiting of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mike Fanelli, Bay Area distance runner, coach and storyteller of track, dies at 67
Mike Fanelli, seen running in Ross in 2012, was a distance runner, track coach and historian of the sport.
Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle
The morning after Mike Fanelli was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain tumor, he went out at sunrise, as always, and did his daily run of four miles on the country roads of Sonoma County.
He had a goal to meet, and on that day, Oct. 2, 2023, one year into a brutal treatment that often left him nauseous and weak from chemo, Fanelli met it. He crossed the 115,000-mile mark, which is the equivalent of running around the world four times. Each mile was carefully logged in the running diary he’d started while on the cross country team in high school.
His last entry was Nov. 10, a quarter mile on the treadmill. Fanelli died Nov. 25 at his home in Asti, south of Cloverdale. He was 67.
“Nobody worked harder than Michael at everything he did,” said his wife, Renay Weissberger Fanelli. “His focus on running formed the foundation for how he lived his entire life, which was with passion.”
More than a hobbyist, he won the San Francisco Pacific Rim Marathon twice in the 1980s. When 26.2 miles became too short to hold his interest, he co-founded his own road race, the Hunter S. Thompson Fear & Loathing 50, along the route of San Francisco’s 49-mile Scenic Drive and ending atop Twin Peaks.
Fanelli won the inaugural race in 1985 in a tie. He expanded from there to ultramarathons of 100 miles, his maximum racing distance.
“I’ve always been intrigued by the limits of human potential, both physical and mental,” he told the Chronicle in 2011 when he was 56 and closing in on the 100,000 mile mark. “To this end I have been my own lab rat.”
Fanelli knew how to keep himself going. Every night he dumped a 3-pound bag of Epsom salts into a hot bath to soothe his muscles enough to let him start all over again the next day at 5:30 a.m. with a 5-mile run that started at his San Anselmo home and looped around the base of Mount Tamalpais, often paced by his pet Vizsla, Baci. When Baci died, a new Vizsla, named River, ran beside him.
Fanelli used the daily run to think through deals in his career as a residential real estate agent.
“I can do a lot of my very best thinking when I’m running,” he said. “I’m creating solutions to difficult transactions I’m working on. It’s a great way to start the day.”
Even at age 50 he could break the 5-minute mark for a mile. But his best event was the 10,000 meters, which is just over six miles. While running for San Francisco State University, he broke the school record in that event in 1981, and his time of 31 minutes, 6 seconds still stands.
On Fanelli’s 50th birthday, his wife surprised him by establishing a track and cross country scholarship in his name at his alma mater. It took 14 years with 100 contributors chipping in, but that scholarship is endowed in perpetuity.
Fanelli was inducted into the San Francisco State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011, and in 2019 an annual meet was renamed the Mike Fanelli Track Classic.
“Mike was always willing to talk running and coaching,” said Tom Lyon, head cross country coach at S.F. State. “I find myself still using his advice for training, and especially competing, with my athletes.”
One thing Fanelli taught by example was sportsmanship. In 1978, he won the Bridge to Bridge race, 8.1 miles from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. But when presented the trophy, he graciously turned it over to Benton Hart of Modesto, who finished second.
“This guy should get the trophy,” Fanelli said, according to a story in the Napa Register. “He was ahead of me by at least 200 yards. He took a wrong turn before the finish. I’ve run this course before so I knew where to go.”
Michael Joseph Fanelli was born May 1, 1956, in Philadelphia and grew up in suburban Ardsley, Pa. His dad, Nick, was a tool- and die-maker for car parts and a member of the United Auto Workers union.
Nick’s hobby was running, which he did in the Ardsley Cemetery. A definitive impression was left on his son when he brought a black-and-white TV into the garage for nonstop viewing of track and field events at the 1968 Olympic Summer games from Mexico City, where world records were broken in the thin air.
Soon after, Mike was running alongside his father in the cemetery to prepare for the high school cross-country team at Bishop McDevitt, a coed Catholic high school. His first race was noted in his diary in October 1970. After that he noted not only his races, but also his training runs.
“Every single day that he ran, which was almost every day of his life, he wrote in his log,” said his younger sister, Mary Fanelli Lund, of Bend, Ore. “Years later when kids would ask him for tips, he’d say, ‘Keep a log, that way you can compare your times and gauge your improvement.’ ”
After graduating from high school in 1974, Fanelli joined the U.S. Marine Corps on a two-year stint. He celebrated his release from active duty by hitchhiking to San Francisco. He worked as a shoe company rep, traveling to track meets worldwide. He also drove a Super Shuttle van at SFO. To get his workout in, he’d get up at 4:30 a.m.
It was never too early in the morning or too late in the evening for Fanelli to think about or talk about or curate memorabilia about running. To this end, he started his own museum, which he called “the Track and Field Garage,” first at his home in San Anselmo and later in a separate outbuilding at his home in Sonoma.
He had thousands of artifacts, ranging from the program from the highly politicized USA vs. USSR track meet at a sold-out Stanford Stadium in 1962 to a complete set of “Track & Field News” going back to 1948. Also included were one or two vintage running shoes from among the 400 pairs he’d burned through in training.
That collection will now be merged with that of Jack Pfeifer, a fellow Marine, to form the Pfeifer-Fanelli Collection in Lake Oswego, Ore.
“I am honored to look after Mike’s collection and preserve it for all time,” said Pfeifer, a track statistician and historian. “He loved the history of the sport and liked to tell his friends about it.”
This was mostly done on Facebook, where Fanelli described himself as “a cultural storyteller of the sport.” He regularly posted snippets of distance running trivia on his Facebook page and was always willing to dispense advice. He had the credentials, having been head coach of the Impala Racing Team, an all-female club that has been around for 50 years and trains Tuesday evenings at Kezar Stadium. Fanelli guided a dozen Impalas all the way to the Olympic Trials.
“Mike had a profound influence on an entire generation of runners,” said Diana Fitzpatrick of Larkspur, who tried out for the Olympic marathon in 1992, 1996 and 2000, finishing in the top 20. “He never lost sight of the importance of coaching everyone on the team, including non-elite runners and age-group runners.”
One of these was his future wife, Renay Weissberger, whom he met in 1996. She was living in Manhattan and had come to Boston to support a friend who was running the 100th Boston Marathon. At a pre-race event at a runners’ hangout called the Eliot Lounge, she walked by Fanelli, who remarked to a friend, “There’s somebody I could marry.”
Fanelli ran his usual five miles on their wedding day of June 7, 1997. On the first day of their honeymoon in Rome, the newlyweds ran together, and they kept that tradition up through 26 years of marriage.
In addition to the scholarship and race named for Fanelli at San Francisco State, he is memorialized by the Hunter S. Thompson Fear & Loathing 50, which was held in tribute on Dec. 9. What started in 1985 with 11 runners has grown to 105.
“Mike would have been flattered that so many runners showed up to run his gonzo creation and to honor his legacy,” said longtime friend and ultra-marathoner John Medinger.
Reach Sam Whiting: swhiting@sfchronicle.com
Sam Whiting has been a staff writer at The San Francisco Chronicle since 1988. He started as a feature writer in the People section, which was anchored by Herb Caen's column, and has written about people ever since. He is a general assignment reporter with a focus on writing feature-length obituaries. He lives in San Francisco and walks three miles a day on the steep city streets.
He can be reached at swhiting@sfchronicle.com.
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