Bob Keefer from The Register-Guard and I sat down and talked before the race.   His article came out the next day.

Racing for a goal

The founder of Runner’s World adds Eugene to his project

by Bob Keefer

Half a century ago, when he was a high school cross country runner in Kansas, Bob Anderson couldn’t find out, even from his coach, how best to train for a marathon.

So the 14-year-old boy sat down and wrote letters to people around the country. In a short time, he had accumulated so much information he had an idea.

“I’m going to start a magazine,” he told a friend.

Within two years, Runner’s World magazine was born.

On Sunday morning at Alton Baker Park, Anderson lined up in running shorts and shoes, wearing bib No. 1 on his bright red shirt, at the start of the Oregon Track Club’s annual race called The 10-Miler. He was here in town — his first visit to Eugene in more than three decades — to promote his latest project.

Anderson is celebrating 50 years of running by running in 50 road races, going for a cumulative distance of more than 350 miles — and trying to do it all at better than a 7-minute-per-mile pace.

“For a 64-year-old guy that’s like a 28-year-old running 10 miles in 54:25,” he said Sunday morning as he prepped for the race.

Continued on their website

Last minutes thoughts from Barry before I started my warmup.

I started out easy for me.  I normally like to bank the first mile of any race.  I hit the first mile at 6:39.  Normally I would have liked to have been 6:25 or so.  Mixing it up...and my legs really did not feel fresh.   I finished in 69:19 which is 82.35% age-graded.  According to the age-graded tables this would be like a 28-year-old male finishing in 53:54.  Or a 28-year-old female running 60:20.  Photos by Catherine Cross   (The article appeared in the Register-Guard but not the actual edition pictured.)

Our trip to Eugene Oregon was everything we thought it would be and more.  We arrived very late Thursday Sept 27th.  The next morning we met up with Joe Henderson at his house.  Joe was my editor of Runner's World magazine from 1970 to 1977.  Before that he started writing for me when I called the magazine Distance Running News.  After 1977 he was our West Coast Editor and we published articles in every issue.  Don't know why, but we had not hang out much for 35 years.  We spent most of Friday with Joe and had lunch with his wife Barbara.  They really work well together.

Joe and Barbara at their house.  We talked about so many things and like always Joe has so much to say.  We captured it all for our movie.

There is so much history between Joe and I.  There were only a few marathons when we first started working together.  The Boston Marathon had less than 1000 runners.  Things have changed....

Joe and I looking at Pre's Trail map after lunch.

After lunch we went over to the Pre trail.  Steve Prefontaine was a world class runner in the '70s.  There has been a least two major movies made about his life.  On May 30, 1975 he crashed his car and was killed.  He died way too young.  There were so much more he wanted to do.  But his legend lives on.  Joe currently has a calf problem but we walked some of the trail dedicated to Pre.

I got so inspired that I just had to run on Pre's trail.  Even through I would be racing on Sunday I just couldn't hold myself back.  I am sure I was running sub 6:45 pace.

Then we visited Pre's Rock where he crashed his car.  Chills ran up and down my spine just being there.  Even after 37 years runners come here and leave race numbers, shoes and other things.  As we were packing up everything to leave I saw a woman in her garden near by.  I asked her if she was living there the night of the crash.  She was living there and in fact her husband was the first on the scene.  She called 911.   She shared some information with us that we had not heard before...

Thanks Joe for spending most of Friday with us.  It was a total pleasure...