By Bill Higgins
It was the summer of 1975, August.
The Boston Red Sox were cruisin’ in the American League East, atop the standings, led by the Gold Dust Twins, Fred Lynn and Jim Rice. The unforgettable season would end in a historic World Series, won in seven scintillating games by Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. It remains memorable and has stood the test of time.
Full disclosure: I was a very young sportswriter for the Cape Cod Times covering the games at Fenway Park. To mark the magnitude of the moment, I once wore a spongy polyester leisure suit to a game, complete with a brightly colored silk shirt, flared collars and all. A sight to behold!
But I digress. That’s a story for another day.
In August of 1975, I had upgraded my car from a beat-up VW Bug to a Toyota Corolla, and the radio—most likely tuned to WRKO-AM, 680 on the dial—was playing tunes from Captain & Tennille (“Love Will Keep Us Together”), James Taylor (“How Sweet It Is”) and Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds (“Fallin’ In Love”).
Ah, yes, the Summer of ’75…50 years ago. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would fall in love with this curious event in Falmouth called a road race. My love for it all has kept us together for 50 consecutive years (and counting, hopefully).
Indeed, the Falmouth Road Race…how sweet it is.
And now a siren song is calling once more, beckoning me to the bridge. I will be there again for the 51st year in a row.
The 53rd renewal of the ASICS Falmouth Road Race is Sunday, August 17. Many of the world’s best distance runners will convene on Water Street at the Tommy Leonard Start Line (named in honor of the race’s irrepressible founding father) adjacent to the Eel Pond Drawbridge.
Then they’re off! With a supporting cast of some 11,000 other runners and upward of 50,000 spectators, it’s a red-hot, seven-mile sprint to the finish in Falmouth Heights.
Another chapter is about to unfold. Six decades and 51 years later, my romance with the road endures.
The first Falmouth Road Race was in 1973. The story has been often told and written; a rainy Wednesday afternoon on Leonard’s 40th birthday, it was billed as a “marathon,” but in fact it was a quirky seven miles, the bar-to-bar distance between the Captain Kidd and the Brothers 4. There were less than 100 entrants, college runner David Duba won, and everyone celebrated after with Schlitz beer and bologna sandwiches.
I wasn’t there in 1973. My excuse? I didn’t get hired at the newspaper until a month after the race. I missed the second one, too, in 1974. Maybe I was at the more-important Cape Cod Baseball League playoffs. Published reports had “Will Rogers” (but actually Bill Rodgers) winning as he upstaged Olympic track star Marty Liquori. Rodgers’ first-place prize was a blender and his car was towed. As Rodgers recounted in Paul Clerici’s fine 2015 book, “A History of the Falmouth Road Race”: “I parked on a side street in Falmouth Heights. Tommy (Leonard) went to the race people and they paid for it.”
Everything changed for me, personally and professionally, in 1975. My part-time position in the sports department was upgraded to full time. The Cape League baseball playoffs were still front and center and worthy of more-experienced writers. Since I was still a cub reporter, I was assigned to this Falmouth Road Race thing, which couldn’t be ignored any longer.
Fine by me.
That was the year Tommy Leonard’s dream came true. Three years earlier he was a bartender at the Brothers 4 when the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics came on the TV. He shut off the taps, stopped dispensing drinks and poured out his emotional heart, enthralled watching a mustachioed American named Frank Shorter win the marathon gold medal.
Tommy, a Boston Marathoner, was smitten. After his shift, and probably after a few pints, too, he became misty-eyed listening to Roberta Flack sing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” on the jukebox.
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic,” he wondered, “if we could get Frank Shorter to run a race on Cape Cod?”
And he did. And Tommy got me, as well. Shorter came to Falmouth in 1975 to challenge “Boston Billy” Rodgers, not only the defending Falmouth champion, but now well known in road racing circles and the reigning Boston Marathon champ, having won a few months earlier.
That started it all. Shorter, Rodgers and me. Since 1975 I’ve been to every Falmouth Road Race, mostly as a journalist, but about a dozen times as a runner/jogger/shuffler. Like the postman, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night” has kept me from my appointed rounds. (And remarkably and fortunately, not illness nor any personal family issues, either).
After three years of writing, in 1978 I got caught up in the running boom. I bought a copy of Jim Fixx’s “Complete Book of Running,” with that red cover image of sinewy legs in sockless red Onitsuka Tiger racing flats.
I wasn’t really a runner, just a no-hit, weak-armed, washed-up former high school baseball player. But I was all in. Watching the race was like being a kid staring through the window of a candy store. The only way to sample and savor the sweets was to go inside, so I got in good enough shape to slog seven miles, side by side with my brother Jim, to the finish.
I ran two more, in ’79 and ’80, and then took a 29-year hiatus, ostensibly telling myself I had professional responsibilities to report on race day. That was partially true. But, in fact, I got lazy and out of shape, putting on 50 to 60 (and maybe more) pounds.
I kept writing about Falmouth every summer, fulfilling my newspaper duties. I was always inspired, but also often ashamed at my lack of motivation and fitness. Walking back from the Heights when my work was done, seeing 12-minutes-, 13-minutes-per-mile joggers grinding through the final miles—and finishing—was humbling.
Finally, in 2008, I was prodded to get back in the game. Thank you, Rich, Karen, family and friends. You know who you are and I will be forever grateful. I committed to run again, shed 60-plus pounds and was on the starting line in 2009. Bookended by pals Peter and Bill, I made it to the finish line.
I’ve run several more since, including the 40th in 2012, the 50th in 2022 with beloved brother Jim, and in 2023 to honor him after he suddenly passed away from a rare brain disease. Last year was a celebration with my daughter, Sabrina, and Gina, my daughter-in-law.
Yes, it’s been a long road. Mementoes? Oh yeah, I have many trinkets and T-shirts, coffee cups and keychains, posters, pictures and magazines. I could probably open a flea market. But what I treasure are memories.
In the mind’s eye, the images from 50 years click rapidly like a flipbook of photos in a kaleidoscope of bursting colors. There’s a framed aerial photograph on my den wall of an iconic Falmouth scene, the seemingly endless ribbon of runners winding around Nobska Light. For those who have been there, no explanation is necessary; for those who haven’t, none will suffice.
The soundtrack (now, I guess, it’s a playlist) of Falmouth is a sweet symphony of sweat playing in my head: Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty,” Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind,” the Eagles’ “The Long Run” and that vintage rock & roller from appropriately more than 50 years ago, Neil Young: “We’ve been through some things together/With trunks of memories still to come/We found things to do in stormy weather/Long may you run.”
Falmouth, simply, is in my heart…and soul…and soles.
Indeed. And I have miles to go before I sleep. Of course.
Bill Higgins is the retired sports editor of the Cape Cod Times. He has written about the Falmouth Road Race every year since 1975 and has run the race about a dozen times. He can be reached at bhiggins54@gmail.com