Run Dick, Run John

(July 1998 RW)

"Marathon College" convened for a single weekend at the Napa Valley Marathon. The idea were Rich Benyo's, and the underwriting came from the Sutter Home Winery to mark the race's 20th running.

Most of the "faculty" gathered Saturday morning for an Authors' Breakfast. Six of us had written books.

Two other "professors" of marathoning who weren't authors should be. They have the best stories to tell.

You've read in these pages about both John Keston and Dick Beardsley in the past year or so. Those reports weren't pleasant.

John, a near-three-hour marathoner after his 70th birthday, broke his hip last fall in a bike accident (December 1997 RC). Dick, still America's third-fastest marathon man, ran afoul of drug-abuse laws (February 1997 RC).

Now I would see them again for the first time since their falls. What I would see concerned me. Would John lean heavily on a cane? Would Dick be wasted by his struggles?

I needn't have worried. These two are as good at recovering as they have been at running.

Arriving at the Napa Valley Marriott, I walked past the hotel's exercise room and glimpsed what looked like a 50-year-old's legs at work. I followed them upward to see the 73-year-old face of John Keston.

He saw me and said, "Look at this." He traced his finger along an eight-inch surgical scar that disappeared under his running shorts.

"This leg is coming along well," he said. "I've started doing some jogging, but now my 'good' knee is acting up. My doctor drained fluid from it this week."

He jumped off the leg-lift machine and bounced a few times on the repaired side to show how far he'd come. Then he walked down the hallway without a limp.

Dick Beardsley's case was more serious. Surgery couldn't fix what troubled him.

A series of accidents had mangled a leg and his back. He took pain-killers for these problems, then needed more to get the same level of relief -- until the drugs took control of him.

In December 1996 Dick was caught forging prescriptions. Because he was only using the drugs himself, not selling, and had no prior trouble with the law, he received five years' probation, treatment for his addiction and orders to perform community service.

To my relief, Dick walked into the hotel lobby looking much as I'd remember him. He sounded that way too.

His "Fargo" accent was the least of it. He laughed and joked as before, and talked more openly than ever before.

"This is my one-year anniversary of being drug-free," he said. "Getting caught was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me." The arrest embarrassed him enormously as it made national news, but it forced him to face the problem instead of hiding it.

Dick now works off his community-service requirement by speaking to groups of kids and addicts. "I would do this even without being told," he said. Talking about his problem is his best therapy.

On Sunday morning Dick Beardsley, still Napa's record-holder, didn't appear at the starting line but ran alone for about twice the three or four miles that his leg and back usually let him cover. John Keston sang the National Anthem, then ran-walked the nine miles of the course while seranading the marathoners.

Their distances weren't long. But look at how far Dick and John have come since you last visited them on these pages.

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