Watson finds will to go the distance

Chris Yemma

In 67 years, Corona del Mar resident Don Watson has traveled many

miles on foot.

Call him Forrest Gump if you will, but Watson just likes to run.

“I want to die with my boots on,” said Watson, borrowing an old

Marine saying. “I don’t want to die in bed, I want to die running.”

Fighting the rain, bad knees, wind, cold weather, and 3,133 other

runners in the half-marathon event of the recent OC Marathon Dec. 5,

Watson finished first in the age 65-69 division and 241st overall.

His time of one hour, 40 minutes and change, was faster than the

first finisher in the 60-64 division (Patrick Wickens, 1:41:47), in a

race that Watson decided to compete in at the last moment.

Watson’s previous competition was in 2001 -- a half-marathon event

in Irvine, but he hasn’t ran competitively since then. His last full

marathon was 14 years ago in Sacramento, where he gummed up his knees

in a mostly downhill race, he said.

But now, Watson is back. The OC Marathon sparked a new interest

and desire for him to run competitively and, now, he is on a new

training regimen that provides a balance between running and

resistance training.

“It has been kind of dry for me for a long time, so [the OC

Marathon] was really special,” he said. “My objective now is to run

[full] marathons.”

Watson has been running since a fairly young age. He started his

junior year in high school out in Pittsburgh, running cross country

for the school. He placed fifth in the state of Pennsylvania his

senior season (1954) and went on to run his freshman year at USC.

But after one year at USC, something happened. He lost the love of

the jog.

“I lettered my freshman year at USC,” Watson said. “But it took so

much out of me that I quit and didn’t start running again until I was

37.”

During the in-between years, Watson graduated from USC with a

bachelor’s degree in finance, an MBA in urban land economics and went

on to start a clothing business.

It wasn’t until 18 years later that he donned the running shoes

again. After training for a couple of years, he competed in his first

marathon -- a qualifying race for the famed Boston Marathon. He

qualified for Boston and ended up running it twice, in 1979 and again

in 1980. He placed 17th in his age division in 1980.

And now, a little more than 20 years later, he’s still running.

“I was really stoked about [the OC Marathon],” he said. “I beat

the next guy in my group by more than 20 minutes. I also beat the

guys in the class below me.”

Just how long can he keep it up?

As he said earlier: “I want to die with my boots on.”