Creepers, Floaters And Squirmers

Chris McCarthy once took movies of a walker wearing one white shoe and one black shoe. He concluded that the white shoe was easier to spot than the black shoe, thus more likely to catch the judge's eye. Since he now functions as a race-walking judge, it is a case of chickens coming home to roost. McCarthy notices that some walkers not only use black shoes, but darken the white side stripes with dye. "When I see a walker with white shoes that have been dyed black," says McCarthy, "I just watch him a little closer."

The race walker not only must survive the icy stares of judges, but while on training walks he suffers the taunts of small boys and the lunges of hostile animals. Joggers and long-distance runners face the same problem, but walkers provide slower-moving targets. In their training walks through parks and along city streets they will be moving two to four minutes per mile slower than a runner. Following a recent national championship in Chicago, several walkers gathered at Chris McCarthy's house. Ron Laird pointed to his thigh, where a two-inch scar served as a trophy of a battle lost to a German shepherd. Immediately the other walkers in the room rolled up their pants legs to exhibit similar scars. While training in California before the 1964 Olympics, Bruce MacDonald was attacked by two dogs; while he fought off one the other bit him from behind. MacDonald ascended the nearest porch to get medical help. The people inside the house took one look at him, standing there in shorts and a painter's cap (to ward off the sun), with sweat streaming from his back, and refused to let him in. In a national championship near San Diego, Jim Hanley and Bob Bixby were walking together when a large dog started running across an open field toward them. Hanley coolly watched the dog's approach and said to his companion, "If the dog gets within 50 yards of us, you have my permission to break stride and run."

Hanley has had more than his share of problems. One time while he was race walking near UCLA, someone leaned out of a fraternity house window and shot him in the behind with a BB gun. (It probably took great skill to hit that elusive a target.) Hanley occasionally mixes some running with his walk training. One cold winter morning, wearing three T shirts and a heavy black sweat suit, he was running past a local church when he saw three police cars parked in front. The church had just been burglarized. One of the policemen ordered him to halt, but Hanley had a ski hat pulled down over his ears and couldn't hear him. Hanley looked around in time to see a policeman sprinting after him, gun drawn. Hanley stopped and raised his hands. "On the head!" snapped the policeman, but Hanley didn't know what he meant. Within seconds Hanley had been grabbed from behind and kicked in the stomach. Eventually, another policeman reported having seen Hanley running toward the church, as well as away from it. When one of Hanley's race-walking rivals heard of the incident, he proved unsympathetic. "That'll teach you to run," he said.

Hanley received the ultimate comeuppance, however, while training near the Los Angeles Coliseum just before a U.S.-British Commonwealth meet. A small Negro boy ran up to him and said, "Hey, can I have your autograph?"

"But I'm not on the Olympic team," protested Hanley.

"Then walk on, son," said the boy.

Chris McCarthy, who has been studying for a Ph. D. in political science at the University of Chicago for about 15 years, says that the type of heckling race walkers receive varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. He claims to have made a sociological study of ethnic heckling. While training for the Olympic team, he frequently would walk from his home on Chicago's South Side to Evanston far to the north and in so doing pass through a variety of ethnic neighborhoods. He claims that the bums on West Madison Street (Chicago's Skid Row) act most friendly. In the Latin American neighborhoods the people whistle. In lower-middle-class areas—particularly one stretch of lakefront he calls "Boob Beach"—the walkers attract insults, obscenities and sometimes rocks. In Evanston and along North Michigan Avenue the people are very polite about their laughter. They raise their hands to their mouths to hide smiles, or wait until after the walkers pass before turning to stare. McCarthy and Ron Laird used to train together and often one or the other would walk 50 yards to the rear to sample the reactions. They encountered the most hostility southwest of Chicago near Santa Fe Speedway, an auto racing track. "The people would drive across the center line of the highway trying to brush us," says McCarthy.

McCarthy often walked through the slums of Chicago's South Side. In the early '60s Negroes averted their eyes as though unwilling to acknowledge the presence of white walkers acting like fools in their shorts and funny hats. Within the past few years, however, the attitude of the ghetto residents has hardened. Now they stare angrily at the walkers as though they no longer belong in their neighborhood. One two-mile McCarthy walking course circles through Jackson Park and crosses a bridge from which Negroes frequently fish. Toward the end of one workout McCarthy crossed this bridge for perhaps the eighth time and was told by one of the fishermen, "The next time around, Whitey, we're going to get you." McCarthy hasn't used that course since.

Another day McCarthy went on a training walk to Evanston with Jim Clinton, a University of Chicago divinity student. They passed Oak Street Beach, where two teen-age girls standing under a tree giggled as they went by. As the two walkers continued northward they got caught in a thunderstorm, and on the way home passed Oak Street Beach again. The tree under which the girls had been standing had been split by lightning. "See, that'll teach them to laugh at us," shouted McCarthy triumphantly. Clinton was horrified. "Chris," he said, "they were only smiling."

Most long-distance runners are individualists and race walkers tend to be even more individualistic. It takes a certain amount of well, mettle, to strip to your shorts and swivel-hip down the boulevard before the eyes of people who would get into an automobile to go two blocks to the drugstore for cigarettes. Many walkers avoid the public's gaze as much as possible. Jack Mortland does almost all his training on a nine-lap-to-the-mile asphalt track that Jack Blackburn's father built in his Worthington, Ohio backyard. Other walkers train on regular running tracks, where runners offer sympathy. Elliott Denman used to solve his need for indoor training facilities on rainy days by practicing in a New York subway tunnel. While living in Norristown, Pa., Ron Laird trained winters in the tunnels connecting the buildings of a state mental hospital.