Sayre Runs to Beat of Own Drummer--It’s Enough to Win

People have been telling Ric Sayre he’s been running his marathons the wrong way. They tell him he doesn’t do enough speed training. They tell him that his ideas about running are cockeyed. Above all, they tell him that the thing to do if he wants to run a decent time is to allow more recovery time between races. That’s the way it’s done, they tell him.

Sayre, a soft-spoken guy who lives in Ashland, Ore., listens politely and then just keeps running the way he knows how. And he keeps winning.

On Sunday, Sayre won the L.A. Marathon in 2 hours 12 minutes 59 seconds, but the hows and whys of his victories continue to be second-guessed.

When Sayre won the Long Beach Marathon Feb. 2 and blithely announced he would run in this race, jaws dropped. It’s not unheard of but it is rare that a runner would attempt two marathons in the span of five weeks. Sayre does it all the time.

When Sayre surged past West German Eberhard Weyel to take the lead after nine brisk miles in Sunday’s race, experts were heard to say, “He’ll never hold this lead.” Sayre ran on, beating back a challenge from Tanzania’s Gidamis Shahanga, who is experienced and wily and capable of finishing fast. Shahanga, who won the L.A. International Marathon in 1984, was second in 2:13:27.

Sayre also finished well ahead of New Zealand’s Rod Dixon, a fast kicker and former winner of the New York Marathon. Dixon was third in 2:14:48.

Pre-race favorite Nancy Ditz of Woodside, Calif., won the women’s race in 2:36:27. Christa Vahlensieck of West Germany was second in 2:36:37 and Magda Ilands of Belgium was third in 2:38:25.

Sayre and Ditz each won $10,000 and a car.

After the race, Sayre was bombarded with questions about his strategy.

“I tend to do well when I race a lot,” he said. “When I ran well in Boston in ‘83, it was my third marathon in 60 days. I tend to recover well between marathons.”

What Sayre did well Sunday was to set a pace and maintain it. He was only four seconds behind Weyel at four miles and pulled away shortly thereafter while running right at a 5-minute mile pace. He averaged a 5:05 pace throughout the race.

Sayre made his move just before the hilly part of the course and, to his delight, no one came with him.

“I was a little surprised,” he said. “I went out and tried to set as comfortable a pace as I could. I didn’t want to expend too much energy early, that’s where the hills were and I didn’t want to get thrashed.”

The race began under cloudy skies, with the temperature at the start 57 degrees. Then a light breeze blew off some of the cloud cover and the sun burned through. Ditz called the resulting rise in temperature “insidious,” but it appeared not to bother Sayre.

Once he gained the lead, he stretched it to four seconds at 11 miles and 27 seconds at 12. Sayre and Weyel were running well ahead of a pack headed by Dixon. Again, observers were predicting Sayre would come back in the latter stages of the race. It never happened.

Shahanga and Dixon picked off Weyel but Sayre continued to pull away.

“When I got safely though 20 miles, I thought I had a chance,” Dixon said. “At 21 miles, I slowed. I think a lot of the runners treated the course with too much respect. I think Ric Sayre was the only guy who said, ‘I’m going to run my own race.’ ”

Dixon also pointed out that Sayre ran in his own kind of shoes. After reading an article in Scientific American about padding in running shoes, Sayre decided to run in lighter, less-protected cross-country racing flats. It’s just another one of those things that Sayre finds works for him, but he doesn’t recommend it for other runners.

Ditz had to fight an unregistered, but well-known, local runner in her race. Leading through 19 miles was Sylvia Mosqueda. Race officials said Mosqueda had not been issued a number and was therefore an “illegal” runner. It is believed that Mosqueda ran the entire race up to the 20-mile point. It was there that Ditz passed Mosqueda when the latter stopped to tie her shoes.

“I could see her at five miles,” Ditz said. “I was beginning to get very anxious about her. It was distracting to have an unregistered runner in front of me. I didn’t want to run in a race that was controversial. But people kept telling me that she was unregistered, so I relaxed.”

Mosqueda, who won the Race Across L.A. 10-mile race in December, attends East Los Angeles College. She apparently dropped out of the race soon after Ditz passed her.

For Vahlensieck and Ilands, the race Sunday was a redemption of sorts. Both women are veterans of a decade in the sport and both have been instrumental in helping raise women’s running to its current status. And both were denied spots on their country’s Olympic team in 1984.

Each was devastated at missing a chance to run in the first ever Olympic marathon for women.

Vahlensieck, a former world record-holder in the marathon, nodded vigorously when asked if it was significant to run in Los Angeles.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Now is our chance. Now we run where we could not run before.”