Frank Shorter, attorney from Boulder, Colorado, and Olympic marathon victor, came to Falmouth to run against Bill Rodgers, special education teacher from Boston and record-breaking Boston Marathon victor, in the third Falmouth road race on Sunday.
“Realistically,” said Shorter the evening before, “the race is a contest between him and me.”
Shorter and Rodgers ran the newly lengthened 7-mile, 708-yard course in 33:24 and 33:39 minutes. Third was Scott Graham of the Greater Boston Track Club, well back at 35:25, followed by the rest of the 752 finishers.
Rodgers’s winning time last year was 34:16.
Race day dawned gray and clammy. A slight drizzle continued into the afternoon. Conditions were less than favorable, a strong head wind hitting runners along the Vineyard Sound shore.
At 10:30 Sunday morning, the Canty Recreation Building parking lot was congested with runners. In the building latecomers were registering.
There were runners of all ages, all sizes and both sexes. Runners with shorts and T-shirts bearing the name of a track club, track clubs, sneaker manufacturers, track shoes of vibrant blue, red, yellow, some with sneakers. Some were jogging in the lot; others sat inside the building and waited.
Rented buses took the runners to Woods Hole in shifts. The officials went in the Falmouth Recreation Department van.
Minutes past noon the last busload arrived in Woods Hole.
Water Street looked like Rio at Carnival time or Paris on Bastille Day. People lined the sidewalks. Spectators hung out of windows. A large group was seated atop the tower-like roof behind the Fishmonger Café.
The drawbridge was raised to allow sailboats to pass through the Eel Pond channel, and some runners were briefly stranded on the wrong side of the bridge.
Policemen Ahmed Mustafa and Michel Morgan were poised on their police motorcycles, ready to lead the race.
With 160 last-minute entries, starters filled Water Street in Woods Hole from the Eel Pond drawbridge toward the MBL. There were 810 who left the mark with the starting gun.
It was surprising how fast the runners took off at the gun, as if a spring had suddenly been released and the whole mass sent hurtling forward.
Only 58 or so would not finish the course. More than 400 ran it in less than 55 minutes. By 1:30 most of the runners were in.
Like a stampede, they hurtled up Water Street towards Church Street. By the first turn, 10 or so had separated from themselves from the rest of the pack.
By Nobska Light, it was clear that Shorter’s assessment of the night before was not boast. Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers were out front alone.
Surf Drive becomes a sort of long, straight causeway where it runs between Vineyard Sound and Salt Pond. Here the cabana occupants were spectators all along one side of the road, and people had parked their cars on the other side to watch. It was about the halfway mark in the race. Nobska was visible in a blue haze, and spectators with binoculars saw the runners round the lighthouse.
Seen through the haze and distance, it was still an impressive sight. For long minutes the road poured a congested mass of runners down the slope, a torrent and an avalanche of runners. It took 10 minutes for the main mass to pass by the lighthouse.
When the escorting vehicles had passed, with bullhorn blaring its running commentary, and the front runners, the long stretch of road began to fill up. Runners passed in bunches. Then they simply flowed along in a long, irregular line, which flowed past more and more slowly. The walkers began to appear. Then more walkers. The line became thinner. Finally an occasional walker or runner, or a pair or three or four together, would drag slowly past.
Finally they were all gone. A police cruiser brought up the rear.
It had taken about an hour for the road race to go past.
Rodgers held the lead for three miles, posting 4:45, 4:42 and 4:44 times at the mile marks.
Shorter was in the lead at the four-mile mark on Surf Drive, between Mill Road and Bywater Court. His time for the fourth mile was 4:49. The crowd was larger now and would get bigger along the rest of the route.
Larry R. Newman in the official truck leading the runners called through his bullhorn, “Ladies and gentleman, the third annual Falmouth Road Race: In the lead, Frank Shorter of the Florida track club, 1972 Olympic Marathon champion. Give them a big hand.”
Between the fourth and fifth mile marks, rounding from Clinton into Scranton Avenue, Shorter began to stride. The course flattened out before him. A track man, he has been training for speed and posted the fastest US time in the 10,000 meters this year. This is about 6¼ miles. He broke the race open there.
Later, he told the Enterprise, “The first half of the course was harder, but he made it easier for me.” And he nodded toward Rodgers, who was standing next to him on the Brothers Four porch.
“In running,” he explained. “You have to make a commitment.”
More than four miles into the race, Shorter made his decision.
Several times, he glanced over his shoulder at Rodgers, once at Clinton Avenue and Scranton Avenue, once at the six-mile mark.
By the time he turned onto Grand Avenue his lead had grown to 10 seconds. He fairly flew up the hill in long graceful strides, his small wiry body stretching smoothly into his run.
Shorter shook off the exhaustion of his grueling victory and waited for Rodgers around the corner from the finish line. He refused to acknowledge photographers’ requests for pictures until he had shaken hands with Rodgers.
The two runners, who are strong possibilities to represent the United States in the Olympics next year, jogged slowly toward the far end of the Heights ball filed, followed by friends, fans and reporters.
After the first 100, the runners began to approach the finish line in bunches. Two and three runners would stage an individual battle near the end.
Some looked dazed.
From the finish line at Grand Avenue South and Central Park Avenue came cheers of the large crowd, estimated by some at 4,000, as others of the 752 finishers crossed the line.
By the 55-minute mark, the line of finishers was backed up to the Casino parking lot, the crowd had surged over forward to close over the finish line and several AAU officials moved up several dozen yards to stop approaching runners.
“The race is all over. You’re all down,” they told the runners. “Get in line.”
Handing out official place cards were Tamara Hennemuth and Johanna Forman of Falmouth Track Club.
The throng applauded all finishers but saved loudest cheers for familiar faces—Richard A. Sherman, Falmouth recreation director, Tommy Leonard, race promoter, John A. Kelly, the 67-year-old marathoner from East Dennis.
Bob Hall, who wore the number 1,000 and raced the whole course in a wheelchair, finished a strong 222nd.
Later, sitting in his wheelchair, his long sandy hair held back by a head band, the 23-year-old Belmont resident said the race was harder than he thought. “I was hoping to set a record, but the hills hurt me in the beginning. The roads banked even when flat, and that hurt.”
Until most of the runners had come in, that large throng stayed to cheer them on.
When it was over, there was food and drink at the Brothers Four. At one time, a bar employee said he believed as many as a thousand were inside. It seemed like more. The food line stretched from the kitchen in the back through the 50’s room, through the hall and into the front hall. Wait was too long for some.
In about an hour and a half 1,500 glasses of beer were dispensed and uncounted bowls of chowder.
The stars of the race, Shorter and Rodgers, were not there. After talking with reporters on the ball field lawn, the two runners went back to Woods Hole, jogging in reverse the course they had just run.