Harold 'Bean' Stringfellow:
A little-known running legend
Heroes of running days gone by abound. Some demonstrated remarkable speed and stamina, yet remained practically unknown. In the annals of competitive Wisconsin running, I discovered a fellow who gives us all something to strive for. Harold Stringfellow nicknamed "Bean" because he reminded people of a string bean hailed from Chetek, Wisconsin.
Area residents say Harold started running before it became hip and fashionable. Many of us like to
think of ourselves as being on the cutting edge. Harold didn't really care one way or the other. He would go for long runs (really long, up to 35 miles a day) wearing cutoff overalls in the summer or a heavy wool sweater and full-length overalls in the winter. Perhaps in downtown Chetek during the late '60s there just wasn't much else to choose from. But in some old photos of Stringfellow I spied evidence that this guy meant business. On his feet he wore the venerable state-of the-art New
Balance Trackster IIs.
Personally, I was in high school in the middle to late '60s and trying to master the intricacies of racing the 440 (we ran yards back in those days). Every once in a while some high-mileage guy would come by practice wearing the strangest shoes I had ever seen. This was several years before Nike was even founded. Most of us ran in the Adidas Italia, a white kangaroo leather shoe with green stripes that was actually closer to an indoor soccer shoe than a running
shoe. The few high-mileage guys of the day, however, ran in New Balance Trackster IIs. These were white leather shoes with a red New Balance logo and yoke over the midfoot. The soles were what really got me. A black deep-rippled sole that flexed everywhere. By today's standards they more closely resemble what might be worn by a college football player on Astro Turf.
Perhaps the Stringfellow's cut-off overalls, scraggly beard and floppy socks obscuring his Trackster IIs were all meant
to disguise a real competitor.
Yet back then, I was only beginning to understand that there were different types of races, some of which took place on roads. There weren't many of the latter and nearly all of them were on the East Coast. In looking through old files of race results, it seems that old Bean Stringfellow had discovered road racing as well. He first pops up in the results of the 1965 Boston Marathon which was won by Japan's Morio Shigematsu. If you look very closely at a
file photo of the 1966 Boston race, you can just make out the top of Harold's overalls and his bushy beard as he ran behind Roberta Gibb, the first woman to ever run Boston. Harold looked to be running easily and records show he improved upon his 1965 time by a solid 20 minutes.
As a product of the same era, I thought I would see if any of the high-mileage guys I knew back then could recall old Bean. One former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse runner recalled meeting him while on
vacation in northern Wisconsin near Chetek. This fellow was completing a run in the national forest when he heard someone coming up behind him. It was Stringfellow in his usual overalls and New Balance shoes. The two ran together for about four miles at a sub six-minute pace.
Pounding down the trail, Stringfellow didn't say much but seemed friendly. When asked how far he was running, Bean described the 12-mile loop and said he was finishing his third lap. The fellow from La Crosse said
he thought to himself, "Yeah right. Thirty-six miles at this pace. I don't think so." So my acquaintance asked Stringfellow if he wanted to run the next day. He replied that he had some carpentry work to attend to at 8 a.m., but he would gladly run at 5 a.m. The fellow from La Crosse was stunned the next day when he and Harold pounded 90 minutes at the same sub six-minute pace before Stringfellow politely excused himself, saying he had to pick it up for the next hour or he wouldn't
get his entire run completed before he had to go to work. It seems that Stringfellow's first two Boston experiences only fueled his desire to run faster.
Running veteran Larry Johnson competed in track and cross country at St. Cloud State in Minnesota. After graduating, Larry moved to Madison to attend graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is still active in the Masters racing scene.
I asked him if he had any recollection of Stringfellow. Johnson actually
remembered running against him in some open college cross-country meets. Stringfellow, as Johnson recalled, always finished near the front but rarely won the races outright. Seems he could run fast for an amazingly long time but never developed much of a kick in those days. I should contact an old college teammate of Johnson's, it was suggested. Ron Guilfoil of Edina, Minnesota, turned out, to have a wealth of information about Stringfellow. After completing his college education and not
quite ready to start life as a full-fledged grown-up, Guilfoil decided he wanted to be a "running bum" for a year or two while hoping to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters in 1972. He and Stringfellow became friends. Guilfoil moved up to northern Wisconsin, and lived in a trailer on land owned by Stringfellow's parents.
Like Guilfoil, Stringfellow had enormous potential. But the latter runner was never coached. He just ran because he liked it. He liked the
freedom it gave him. He loved being able to cruise through the nearby national forest land at his top speed. But in races he would usually lose out to runners who had received knowledgeable coaching. Bean had become enamored with racing and strived to become more competitive. So Guilfoil would become the linchpin to Stringfellow's racing success. Guilfoil shared what he had learned from his college and high school coaches. Together the two men embarked on a training regimen designed to get
them to the 1972 Olympic Trials. Some of the workouts, as Guilfoil remembered them, sounded mythical in their intensity.
Finishing his Olympic dreams, a severe Achilles tendon injury sidelined Guilfoil. Subsequently, he became Bean's coach. They followed some of Arthur Lydiard's high-mileage advice and coupled that with the incredible interval training prescribed by Emile Zatopek. Stringfellow built up his training base until he was running 180 to 220 miles per week, sometimes running
two 20 milers in a day. He did much of his base building in the forest. Even then, he and Guilfoil recognized the benefit of training on soft surfaces. From time to time, however, Stringfellow would run on the roads.
On the local high school cinder track, the workouts were nothing short of epic. Guilfoil figured that to have a shot at winning an Olympic medal, Stringfellow would have to be able to sustain sub-4:30 per mile pace for all 25 laps of the 10,000. Bean leapt at the chance to
train on the track. It was all new to him. Two that stuck in Guilfoil's memory were three sets of 30 quarters all run between 60 and 63 seconds, and 15 times 1 mile at 4:30 pace with only two minutes rest in between.
On the surface, it seemed that Stringfellow was destined for greatness. But things don't always work out as planned. Even though Bean was amazingly fit, no one outside of Chetek, Wisconsin, really knew who he was. He had trouble getting invitations to run in the big track
meets of the day. Traveling from Chetek to Los Angeles or even Des Moines, Iowa, for the Drake Relays was expensive and difficult. The AAU didn't make it any easier. Stringfellow never did run an Olympic Trials qualifying time. But he did have some success on the road. He managed to race in New England a few times, twice finishing second in the John J. Kelly Road Race, an 11.4-mile event held in July in Connecticut. His best result came in 1975. After hanging with Bill Rodgers for the better
part of 21 miles, Harold got gapped on Heartbreak Hill and finished seventh.
Later, as the '70s drew to a close, more and more people joined the running craze. Fueled by Frank Shorter's Olympic success and Bill Rodgers' domination in the marathon, people all over the country put on running shoes and jumped into races. Nike was on the map. Road races sprung up everywhere. Suddenly running was hip and trendy. None of this sat too well with Stringfellow, however. He loved to run and loved
to run hard. Racing was OK, but it was not what motivated him. Bean ran a few more road races in the late '70s. The mimeographed results of the 1978 Vilas Freezeroo, a long-defunct mid-February 10K race through the UW Arboretum, lists H. Stringfellow in ninth place with a time of 34:26. I ran that race and I just can't remember if I saw a bearded fellow in overalls up ahead of me or not.
So it goes. the race results don't really matter in the end. Harold "Bean" Stringfellow
and other unknowns like him ran primarily because they loved to run. Maybe you, dear reader, see in this tale something of yourself and why you got started in the sport. But if you can't relate to Bean's incredible story, there may be a good reason. Read this story again, but only the first letter of each paragraph. That should tell you all you need to know about Harold Stringfellow who, nevertheless, exists to some degree in all of us. Good running to you.
Tom Kaufman of Madison,
Wisconsin, has run more than 40 marathons in his more than 38 years of running. He teaches high school phy-ed and coaches high school track and cross-country as well as community and masters athletes. He has a masters degree in physical education with a specialization in exercise physiology.
|
