Friday, April 16, 1976
University Daily Kansan
3
Ryun finds ...
From page one
has run 3:51.0), but I had a Kip Keino,
"Ryan run
"In some respects, my career was a very unique one. From the very beginning it was predicted I would burn myself out. That was from the very beginning."
"I peaked earlier than most people. I was under a program that demanded—and I expected of myself—a lot, and I was able to accomplish."
Training under his high school and college coach, Bob Timmons, Ryan did accomplish many things. He was a *3:51.1*, 800-yard run (1:44.9) and 1,500-meter run (3:51.1), as well as in several relay and indoor events.
COULD RYUN HAVE done any better if he had trained in a warmer, more hospitable, climate, such as in southern California?
According to Ryun, probably not.
"There's a great deal of significance to having been here instead of in California in the sense that here you're in an isolated place, where there weren't as many distractions.
"I'm not saying the weather isn't a factor—it would have been nice to have been somewhere else—but I know that having worked under Timmy (coach Bob Timm) with the program—and having been in this part of the country—contributed to my career."
WHAT WAS WORTHHILE about training on lonely Kansas roads in temperatures ranging from below freezing to above steaming?
"It gave me the solitude that was necessary," Ryun said. "People have asked me, 'Don't you get weary of the loneliness of the long distance runner?' Heck, that's not loneliness. That's the only time a person can leave home to enjoy nature. Ryan has made his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. in recent years, but he still appreciates the Kansas of his youth.
"IN CALIFORNIA, YOU had to wade through city traffic. But here, you're almost immediately in the country. It's an altogether different situation."
Ryun left the impression he hasn't had any regrets. Despite his heartbreakfall in the Munich 1,500 meter preliminary, and the Munich 7,400 meter with Kuno and the 7,800 foot altitude of Moscow City, he sounded as if he had accepted even his greatest disappointments.
"A PERSON COULD look back at my career and make some valid criticisms, but I don't feel a bitterness at this point. I wouldn't change anything that happened to me in the past good times, the bad times—have given me the perspective I have now as a person.
To just take the good and never the bad,
that you give us a true impression of what life's all about.
Consequently, when you ask Ryun which
Photo courtesy of UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Ryun finishes in first as usual-in 1969 Relays
races and records he most fondly recalls you get an elusive answer. Each one has its own reasons.
**KNOW YOU FIND that hard to accept.** he said, as he leaned on a desk in the track of your vehicle, "I know people scratch their heads and say, 'Wow, he can't even pick it.'"
"Each one has a special significance and has a special place in my heart. There were several times when I wanted to be bold as others, but if I were to look back at each of them, each has a meaning."
Ryun gave an example.
"I CAN LOOK BACK AT at my first (Relays), when I was a high school
sophomore. I was given the anchor leg, and I ran a 1:55. But what was significant about that was that I went out in 52 seconds (for a car) over the very fast, and we won the two-mile relay.
"One of the races I enjoyed the most—not that it was any more significant than the others—was the (KU) freshman mule relay, which that surprized everyone, including myself.
"I just went out as fast as I could. I wasn't a quarter miler, but from that point on I was. And I started to catch them. I figured it must have been a good time, but not a great time. It was beyond my comfort prebination. So that was really fun. I really enjoyed that one."
HOWEVER, RYUN'S CAREER was marked by many unenjoyable races as well, especially late in his career. On the ITA first year to win a race after his first year, 1973.
Toward the end of his racing career, he even began to enjoy training more than racing, he said.
"At first I remailed dreaded training, but then I began to really like it because of the people who were involved. There was a very human element there, and I enjoyed working with the other fellows, the spirit of camaraderie," Ryan said.
And Ryun admitted his lack of success in recent years was more a result of his dying illness than of an inability to perform.
"THERE'S SUCH AN ELEMENT ON intense desire, concentration and putting your heart into it, that's needed to make racing successful," he said. "I could probably look back at some of the races in the past couple of years, and you could probably assume that they were a result of a poor performance.
"But, more than anything else, they were a result of not really having my heart in it." So when Ryun, a deeply religious man of 29, heard God speak to him in prayer soon after the Salt Lake City meet, he knew his career had come to an end.
WHEN RYUW WON Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year Award in 1986—becoming the youngest athlete ever to receive the honor—the citation stated:
"For all his signal triumphs, Ryun, like (Roger) Bannister, recognizes that sport is only one aspect of life, that while the success one aims at and achieves in sport is not the only thing he acquires, the unlaugh, it not the be-all and all-of living. There are other things to do."
Said Ryan last month, "I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking back and thinking those were the best times of my life. As I ask my family grow, I see that the best times of my life—and the most productive times of my life—are in front of me."
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