We who were swept up in the running boom of the 1970s for a lifetime of fitness and satisfaction owe a debt of gratitude to the runners and writers who popularized the sport. The four who stand out most prominently in my memory, 37 summers after I first took to the roads, are the running writers Jim Fixx and George Sheehan, and the world-class competitors Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter.
Shorter is often credited with being the father of the running boom due to his winning of Olympic gold at Munich in 1972 in the marathon. October's Runner's World features a lengthy piece on Shorter that tells of his triumphs but also of the physical and psychological abuse that he and his siblings received from their Jekyll-and-Hyde father.
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