by john@activeness.net
Craig Virgin is one of the top distance runners in U.S. history. But unlike the late Steve Prefontaine — the runner who preceded him and whose James Dean persona has given him a cult-like following — Virgin is a down to earth, likable guy who developed his hearty Midwestern work ethic growing up on his family’s farm in southwestern Illinois. Could that be why he never has gotten the attention he deserves?The pain mortal runners feel never seemed to affect Craig Virgin. When he was training and racing at his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, it was like the sensory neurons transmitting the signals for pain didn’t quite reach his brain.
Virgin’s aggressive racing style was to charge upfront, dare other runners to chase him, and then, if they did happen to follow, surge so hard again that they would wish they hadn’t. He knew one speed: all out, to the brink of collapse.
“I was young and felt bullet-proof,” he says. “At the time I thought I could accomplish anything I put my mind to.”
The list of what he did accomplish is long enough to stretch the 23 miles from downtown St. Louis to Virgin’s hometown of Lebanon in southwestern Illinois.
Virgin, now 50 years old — it’s amazing how quickly time spins by — won five Illinois State High School Championships in both cross country and track and still holds state meet records of 13:50.6 for three miles in cross country and 8:42.6 for the two-mile track event. In June 1973, his 8:40.9 time broke the legendary Steve Prefontaine’s former national high school record.
His storied college career at the University of Illinois included winning nine Big Ten Championships, an NCAA Championship, and, in 1976, qualifying for his first U.S. Olympic Team.
Virgin’s post-collegiate racing career included being a three-time U.S. Track & Field Champion, setting multiple American records, qualifying as a three-time U.S. Olympian in the 10,000-meter run, and becoming a two-time World Cross Country Champion. His cross country wins in Paris in 1980 and Madrid in 1981 remain the only victories for an American man in that renowned event.
Over a four-day span in the spring of 1979, a 23-year-old Virgin won the 10,000-meter race at the Penn Relays with a time under 28 minutes, drove to New York City and beat Bill Rodgers with a new American 10-mile record time of 46:32.7 in a Central Park road race, and then flew back to St. Louis, where the next morning he won the downtown Famous-Barr 10K with a 30:28.
His career personal bests include a 13:19 5K, a 27:29 10K, and a 2:10:26 marathon (second at Boston in 1981).
In 2001, Virgin was elected into the U.S. Distance Running Hall of Fame in Utica, New York. But his induction nearly was posthumous.
Virgin running the 10,000-meter race at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.THE ACCIDENTAbout nine years ago, on the evening of January 29, 1997, Virgin was driving over an interstate overpass that he had traversed hundreds of times before. He was heading from his home in Lebanon to KSDK-TV Channel 5 in downtown St. Louis to pick up a dub tape of his work broadcasting at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. It should have been a quick, easy one-hour roundtrip.
He remembers the thunderous explosion of steel and glass and crawling out of his decimated car. He later learned that a woman — uninsured and mentally ill — driving the wrong way on I-64 in East St. Louis had slammed head-on into his 1989 silver-green Nissan 240 SX sport coupe at 70 miles per hour.
Virgin’s seat belt, high fitness level, and a little luck saved his life that night. “A few inches one way or the other and I would have been crushed,” he says. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong lady. It was just a nightmare.”
His injuries included two broken ankles, a severely bruised heart that brought on arrhythmia, torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders, cartilage damage in both knees, a broken nose, and other injuries to his face and hand.
The blunt force trauma alone could easily have killed him. “When my body suddenly stopped all my internal organs slammed up against my sternum and rib cage,” Virgin says. “I was fortunate they didn’t tear or hemorrhage.”
It took a full four years for all his injuries to make themselves known. Virgin and his doctors approached his treatment like triage, dealing with the most severe ailments first and then treating the others as he got more active and they began to surface.
SwimBikeRun St. Louis web site emperor and publishing magnate Matt Cazalas poses with Virgin as the two ponder race strategies for their 50-54-year-old age group. THE CONSTANT REHABBERSince 1997, Virgin has undergone a dozen surgeries and persevered through nine years of grueling physical therapy. He’s eternally indebted to his orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Richard Lehman of the U.S. Center for Sports Medicine in Kirkwood, and to his physical therapist, Scott Van Nest of the Sports Medicine and Training Center in Webster Groves.
Today, Virgin aims for 40-60 minutes of aerobic activity a day — three to five miles of running along with one session on either the elliptical trainer or a bike — in addition to three weekly weightlifting sessions.
Two years ago, Virgin slipped on black ice outside the Lebanon office of Front Runner, his sports marketing and promotions company. The fall exploited lingering damage from the car accident, completely rupturing and detaching the quadriceps muscle in his right leg — a devastating injury for an athlete.
“My quadriceps muscle had to be surgically repaired and reattached,” he says. “I was in a cast for two months, from my ankle to my thigh, which literally was a pain in the butt!”
Things were so bad just a year ago that Virgin only was able to shuffle through one or two miles of running at a time — and even then he had to stop several times. “I feared I’d never be able to really run again or even walk without a limp,” he says. “I’ve worked as hard to come back from this detached quad as I ever did to make three Olympic teams or win two World Championships.”
Virgin attributes re-thinking his rehab plan and incorporating cross-training on the elliptical trainer and bike — indoors on a Schwinn Aerodyne or outside on a mountain bike — to his dramatic improvement over the past year.
His commitment is obvious. The first night I called Virgin for an interview, he cut our discussion short because he was headed to the O’Fallon YMCA to use the elliptical trainer. The next afternoon, as we continued to talk, he was dressed in sweats and on his way out the door for a run.
“I will never again be 100 percent,” he concedes. “I’m just trying to see if I can one day reach the 80 to 90th percentile range. If I can level off at 30 to 40 miles a week, I can achieve everything I now want out of running. Considering what the doctors have told me several times since my accident, I consider myself quite fortunate to be running at all. I’m very grateful.”
After the surgery to repair his right quadriceps in 2004, Virgin propped his cast up on a chair and pedaled the exercise bike with his left leg. “I had to do something,” he says. “I was going nuts!”
Act like you've been there before: John and Jan often pose with three-time Olympians/World Champions. Yes, the Activeness blog opens all sorts of doors. Right before this picture was snapped, Blue Devil Jan engaged in a silent staredown with a guy wearing a North Carolina Tar Heels sweatshirt.THE NATURAL AND A DIRT PATHAs a high school freshman, Virgin knew after his first week of running that he had been born with a gift.
Lebanon High School couldn’t afford a track, but behind the school was a grass field bordered by a dirt path that was one-third of a mile around. On August 3, 1969 — the day after his 14th birthday and the first day of cross country practice — Virgin lapped the entire varsity team during his first five-mile run on that ad hoc track.
Virgin, who is 5’-10”, had played baseball and basketball growing up but never considered competitive running. “I wasn’t much of a basketball player but I tried to compensate by out-hustling everyone,” he remembers. “My eighth-grade basketball coach, Rich Neal, spotted my ability and called my father to tell him I should give cross country a try.”
His coach at Lebanon High School, Hank Feldt, had just two years of previous experience coaching cross country. “We learned together,” says Virgin. “He used to say, ‘I could barely get into clinics when you were a freshman and by your senior year I was being called on as an expert.’ But he never used or abused my talents for his own gain and he definitely helped launch me in the right direction. Hank and I still have a good relationship today.”
In the winter, between cross country and track seasons, Feldt coached basketball. This meant Virgin had to learn to coach himself through these months. “I knew that if I wanted to dedicate myself to running and reach my ultimate potential, I had to study the sport, create a well-rounded training program, and then put myself through the workouts alone,” he says. “As a result, I matured very quickly in the sport.”
The first winter he was training himself, Virgin clocked a 4:24 mile and a 9:05 two-mile run at indoor track meets at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. “It helped that I made progress and got reinforcement in the first few months,” he says. “I felt like I was headed in the right direction.”
Though he was relatively naïve about the nuances of training for distance running and his body was still raw, Virgin feels like he somehow managed to tap into his full potential during high school.
“My approach wasn’t sophisticated,” he admits. “I would just go out and run as hard as I could.”
Virgin challenged himself to the point that he would nearly keel over after each race. “But I kept getting stronger and stronger,” he says. “Eventually I was able to hold that pace for the entire race and not run out of gas.”
CHASING PREGrowing up as a young distance runner in Lebanon in the early 1970s, Virgin idolized runners Steve Prefontaine and Frank Shorter.
The recent movies about Prefontaine’s life have introduced many Americans to the legend of the brash young runner who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated at age 19 and who, along with Shorter, is credited with catalyzing this country’s running boom in the 1970s.
But the runner who broke more of the popular Prefontaine’s records than anyone while coming up through the ranks is Virgin. Prefontaine, in fact, only ran one event — the 5,000 meters — faster than Virgin over his high school career.
“I tried to emulate his aggressive racing style but not his personal life,” Virgin says. “I believed in having fun but Pre took it to an extreme.”
Prefontaine had a well-earned reputation as a tough competitor with a wild temper and an aggressive personality. “I heard firsthand from runners who raced against him that he would insult them on the starting line,” Virgin says. “He played a lot of mind games with his opponents and tried to use his mystique to intimidate people.”
That never was Virgin’s style. “I tried to psyche guys out by being nice to them!” he says with a laugh.
On May 30, 1975, the 24-year-old Prefontaine died in a one-car accident in Eugene, Oregon. His MGB British sports car convertible flipped over and landed on him, crushing his chest and, ironically, suffocating the athlete with one of the world’s best-performing oxygen delivery systems.
Seeking to experience the Prefontaine mystique, Virgin lived and trained in Eugene for 10 months in 1977-1978 as a charter member of Athletics West, the first Nike-sponsored track team.
While living there he visited the scene of the accident several times and tried to imagine exactly what happened and how Prefontaine must have felt during his final few seconds alive. “I do believe that someone or something was in the road to cause that accident,” Virgin says. “Pre was too familiar with that road to lose control.”
Virgin remembers exactly what he was doing when he heard the news of Prefontaine’s tragic death. “I was 19 years old and in Wichita, Kansas, for a track meet at Wichita State University called the USTFF National Championships,” he says. “I got up that morning at the dorm and went down to get a paper and eat breakfast and everybody in the cafeteria was talking about Pre’s accident. It cast a huge pall over the weekend. With Pre gone, several of us felt a lot more responsibility because we knew we would have to take up the slack and become leaders in American distance running.“
THAT GOLF COURSE WOULD BE A GREAT PLACE FOR A RUNOver his career Virgin had success racing distances from the mile to the marathon.
Though he was the American record holder and came close to world records in the 10,000 meters on the track and the 10K on the road, he says the road 10Ks, while obviously the same distance as the 10,000-meter track race, were much easier.
“People don’t realize the high level of concentration it takes to run 25 fast, competitive laps on a track,” Virgin explains. “The 10,000-meter is the longest race on the track in regular competition. You are running very hard, battling the wind, and trying to stay mentally sharp.”
A 10K road race, on the other hand, with its long straight-aways, turns, hills, and terrain changes, is much more like cross country — the sport that always was and remains his favorite form of running. “It was my first experience in organized, competitive running during high school,” Virgin says. “And then I conquered racing cross country at the college, national, and international levels and was fortunate enough to win the World Championships twice.”
These days Virgin’s achy ankles and knees hurt him when he runs on rough ground, so he doesn’t seek out many trails. But he says he still can’t drive past a golf course and see all that pretty grass without thinking, “What a waste — and what a great place for a four-to-six-mile run.”
BATTLING THROUGH ADVERSITYIn 1992, Virgin retired at age 36 to run for political office. Soon after that, he started having frequent abdominal pain. Doctors eventually discovered that his right kidney was losing function. It was removed on April 1, 1993.
Remarkably, Virgin was born with congenital urological disease and almost died as a child. When he was five years old, reconstructive surgery on his bladder failed. Doctors weren’t optimistic that he would live to be a teenager. But Dr. William Mellick, a urologist at Cardinal Glennon Hospital in St. Louis, took over his case and basically kept Virgin alive for eight years until he was able to have life-saving reconstructive urological surgery.
Virgin also battled nagging physical injuries over the last portion of his career. Trying to maintain a consistent level of training and a high mileage base for more than 20 years as a distance runner is extremely difficult, he notes. “I had some imbalances and chronic inflammation in my left knee. I had a couple of surgeries in the mid-80s but was never the same runner.”
Virgin wasn’t an ultra-high mileage runner: He averaged 90–105 miles a week except when ramping up for a marathon. But if he had it all to do over again, he says he would have raced less, backed off a bit in some races, and built cross-training into his training regimen.
MIDWESTERN PRIDEVirgin retired from competitive racing in 1992, which means a whole generation of runners from across St. Louis and the Metro East don’t know that one of the best distance runners in U.S. history grew up listening to Jack Buck and Harry Caray call Cardinals games on his AM pocket radio and dreaming of playing second base for the Redbirds.
He lives in a renovated old building in historic downtown Lebanon, just a block from his office, and dreams of building a home out in the country so he can take in the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets from the hilltops north of Lebanon, where he began his running career 36 years ago.
Virgin is proud of his southwestern Illinois heritage. Throughout most of his career he stayed in the Midwest and did a substantial amount of his training in and around Lebanon.
What about the bitter winter cold and the stifling summer heat and humidity?
“It’s sad that there still is no indoor track in the area for runners to do a quality workout when the weather is bad,” Virgin says. “That said, I always told people if you could succeed here then you were always going to be headed to a better place. Suffering through the cold and heat here becomes part of the training effect. It improves your endurance and mental toughness.”
But Virgin doesn’t claim to miss training and racing in the poor conditions. “The other day it was five degrees and I went out later in the day and ran three to four miles,” he says. “I have to admit I was glad I didn’t have to go 10 or 15 that day!”
Virgin wants young runners to know they can succeed at national or international levels while based in the Midwest. “If young men or women in this area have a gift and dedicate themselves to achieving their ultimate potential and they have perseverance, it can happen,” he says. “They can achieve excellence. I know it’s possible because I did it. And over the last 20 years, many of our country’s best distance runners have come from the Midwest.”
Overall, Virgin is encouraged by the state of American distance running. “After about 10 or 12 years in the doldrums during the late-1980s and 90s, I’ve noticed a real resurgence at all levels of U.S. distance running in the last several years,” he says. “And I’m happy that four of the guys who have contributed to this comeback — twins Jorge and Ed Torres, Donald Sage, and Stephen Pifer from Edwardsville — are from Illinois.”
GOALS: WRITE THEM DOWN AND PIN THEM UPWhen Virgin gives motivational speeches to young athletes, he emphasizes the importance of setting goals, writing them down, and keeping that list of goals in sight.
“In high school I would sit down in August just as school was about to start and write down my goals for each event of the year,” he says. “Those goals would go up on a cardboard poster hanging on my bedroom wall. When winter hit and my alarm went off at 6:20 in the morning and I was wondering why in the world I would leave my nice warm bed for an icy cold workout, I would look up at those goals on the wall and that would confirm why I was making the sacrifice.”
Everyone from high school runners seeking to improve in cross country to 40-year-old age-groupers trying to break 40 minutes for a 10K should follow the same approach, Virgin says. “Commit yourself to a goal, decide what it will take to get there, write it down, and then keep it in front of you as constant reminder of your mission.”
It’s also important to be confident, Virgin stresses. “You have to have the confidence that if you set a goal and follow a good training plan, you will be able to go out and capitalize on that training and succeed. Everyone who reaches the top of a sport has to have an inner confidence that he or she can do great things.”
Just don’t confuse confidence with arrogance. “Look what happened to Bode Miller at the Olympics,” Virgin says. “He passed that line from being confident to cocky and then, for whatever reason, had his lunch handed to him in Turin as one of the major disappointments on the American team. You can be confident and maintain a healthy outlook on life without turning into an arrogant jerk. But it’s a real balancing act that almost every successful athlete has to face.”
Virgin reminds athletes who seek him out for coaching advice that the key is a balanced lifestyle. They need to define their priorities in terms of how training fits in with a career, school, family, and other activities. “Certainly it’s harder for people balancing all these demands to achieve their true potential but it can be done,” he says.
If you do manage to realize your potential, enjoy it, urges Virgin. “All of us face the reality that no matter how good we are, younger guys will eventually come along that we’ll struggle to drop,” he says. “And then one day, if we hang around long enough, they’ll drop us. Everybody has a life cycle in sport. Those who do reach the top better realize they won’t be there forever and take advantage of it while they can.”
FRONT RUNNERVirgin’s sports marketing and promotions company, Front Runner, is in its 26th year of business. In 1992, he took a year off to campaign in an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Illinois State Senate. He also does freelance TV and radio commentary, personal coaching, and sports-themed motivational speaking for companies and schools.
Back in 1980 when he started Front Runner, athletes would forfeit their Olympic eligibility if they accepted direct income. But Virgin and fellow runners Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Marty Liquori were pioneers in figuring out how track and field athletes could making a living from their sport while still retaining their international eligibility.
Virgin worked around the rules by starting his own sports marketing and promotions consulting firm. Races or sponsors would hire the company for certain business services and then pay his corporation, which, in turn, reimbursed his training expenses and paid him a salary. At the time, this was a revolutionary concept.
These days, though he prefers to help other race directors design and promote their races, Virgin does serve as the race director for two area events.
The St. Clair County Law Day 5K and 1K Youth Fun Run is on April 29 in downtown Belleville. “We’re celebrating our fifth anniversary so we’re going to have lots of good refreshments, entertainment, a climbing wall, and a bouncing mattress for kids,” he says. “We’re trying to make it a fitness festival that’s fun for everybody.”
Virgin also helps organize the annual Ivory Crockett Run “4” Webster, which takes place in early October in downtown Webster Groves.
HEY, THAT GUY WHO JUST ZOOMED PAST ME LOOKED LIKE CRAIG VIRGINAfter enjoying his initial foray into mountain biking last summer, Virgin hopes to explore that more this year. He likes cycling’s sensation of speed and noticed that it helped him improve as a runner while putting less trauma on his joints. Friends have promised to break him in on a serious road bike.
Virgin was gifted with an abnormally high aerobic ability. A test called the VO2 Max, which measures the maximum amount of oxygen the lungs can process during high-intensity exercise, routinely tested him in Lance Armstrong’s rarified air: 84-88 milliliters per kilogram of body weight. If you are athletic and healthy, yours is probably about 40 ml. Elite athletes might have a VO2 Max in the 70s.
“I do think my VO2 Max would hold me in good stead if I was racing on a bike and my joints weren’t being punished like they are with running,” he says.
Depending on how much free time he has, Virgin may start to train seriously on the bike and possibly even take in a few competitions. “Don’t be shocked if you see me out there,” he says. “It fulfills my need for speed and makes me feel fit. And it sure beats the hell out of doing 18 holes on the golf course!”
Another of his near-term goals is to complete a 10K race in a respectable time and without being in a tremendous amount of pain. “I have no aspirations beyond that,” he says. “But that would make me very happy.”
Running clearly is part of who Virgin is — not just what he did. It’s a significant portion of his self-identity. “I like the way I feel when I am fit,” he says. “I enjoy the whole process and the daily commitment.”
During his professional racing days, Virgin’s life revolved around his two or three daily workouts. He was able to train so hard for all those years because he approached making the commitment to succeed as a world-class athlete and warrior as a lifestyle, not a sacrifice.
“I loved it,” he says. “And what I’ve lived through over the past nine years has helped me realize that I still love it. Running helps me find out who I am and what I’m made of. It’s not just a sport — it’s a passion.”
Labels: running
Since the February issue of Runner's World has a guy's abs on the cover instead of the usual beautiful woman runner/model (gratuitous sample to the left), this month I actually opened the magazine. A couple of interesting items:
