|
|
Houston Marathon Beginnings
Influenced by his father, who founded the Atlantic City Marathon in 1959, and using experience from organizing road races in Northern California, Texas and Ohio, Pete League founded the Houston Marathon in 1972. Pete currently lives in Austin with his wife, Lynn.
 When I came to Houston in the early 1970’s, there were only a very few road races in the area. To the best of my recollection, there was a two-mile affair in McGregor Park, a half-hour run on the track at Rice University, and the Galveston Marathon. That was it.
In June of 1972, I became chair of the long-distance running committee of the Gulf Area Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which was the governing body of the sport at that time, like the USATF today. I set out to develop a program of distance running events, with the goal of having a race at each of the championship distances: 5 km, 10 km, 15 km, 20 km, 30km, one-hour, cross-country and marathon.
To help get the marathon started, I asked Fred Johnson, a stockbroker and runner, to help me identify a sponsor for the race. Fred came up with a contact at the Igloo Corporation, and Igloo became the first Houston Marathon sponsor, providing us with enough cash to get the race going and with an Igloo cooler for every finisher.
The first Houston Marathon was held on the last Saturday of 1972, on a course that consisted of five five-mile loops in Memorial Park and a finishing mile and 385 yards. The start was on Crestwood Drive and the finish was at a point just to the east of the old tennis center. A hand-made “digital clock” gave runners five-mile split times. It was a heavy cardboard sign with the hour and minutes being changed by hand as time progressed, and the seconds were called out by the volunteers operating the clock. A complete set of results, including every runner’s five-mile split times, was printed and distributed at the end of the race. Danny Green won this inaugural race, and we had a total of about 75 finishers. We managed the whole event with only a handful of volunteers and police assistance in the form of one lone motorcycle officer.
Inspired by my memories of running the Boston Marathon in 1960, we arranged to have a beef stew dinner for all finishers after the race. While the Boston Marathon holds their dinner in the Lenox Hotel, we had ours in the church hall of Saint Theresa Catholic Church. Some of the original volunteers who helped dish out the beef stew that day are still regular volunteers and supporters of the Houston Marathon.
|
Why are you running on January 18, 2009?
|