The Michiana Runners Association was lucky to have Dick Beardsley at this year's Sunburst Marathon. No matter what you admire him for (the record breaking 1982 Boston Marathon, recovery from years of addiction to prescription pain medication, or the founding of his own nonprofit organization), Dick remains an inspiration for anyone looking to take control of his or her life. We asked Dick some questions about his running career and his ideas on the sport as a therapeutic addiction of its own.
How did your running career begin?
I got started running back in my Junior year of high
school. I thought if I earned a varsity
jacket, I could get a date with a girl. First I went out for football. That didn’t last an hour, and I thought “Man,
there’s not a girl alive worth doing this for!”
Then I went out for Cross Country, and the first day we did the “Around
the Block” run. Turns out that “around
the block” meant a three mile run, and I had to walk the last mile. By the time I got back to the high school my
coach and teammates had all went home, but I had already fallen in love with
the sport.
I ran my first marathon in 1977 up in Wisconsin. I didn’t know how to train for one, but I
just ran it and finished. Two years
later I was back home milking cows, and then one day before I went out to do my
milking, I was flipping through a running magazine and saw an article about
what it took to qualify for the 1980 Olympic trials. I was about 13 minutes short of that so I
figured I’d give it a shot. I had always
wondered how good of a runner I could become.
I moved to the twin
cities and started training. I didn’t
have a dime in my pocket, and ran in running shoes held together with duck tape. Long story short, a few weeks later I heard
about a big sporting convention coming to Minneapolis, and figured I’d go to
see if I could get a shoe sponsorship. I
walked out of there that day with a free pair of New Balance 620’s. About ten days later, I got a big box of New
Balance shoes, clothing, and everything.
I started crying immediately. I was
so happy that, for once, someone besides me believed in what I was trying to
do. I’m still with them today, more so
with promotions and speaking, but they’ve been wonderful to me, and it’s just
been a thrill.
You’re most famous with the 1982 “Duel in the Sun” against
Alberto Salazar. Can you tell us the
story in your own words?
That day it’s still so vivid in my mind. It was a real warm day, and I remember
standing at that starting line, looking at the runners around me. I see Alberto Salazar, who was the world
record holder at the time, and Bill Rodgers, who had won Boston four times. When the gun went off, Salazar and I went
through the first mile in four minutes thirty seconds. For the first 3 miles, I felt so bad I nearly
dropped out. Around 5-6 miles I started
feeling better, and by 17 miles it was down to Alberto and me. My coach told me, if you’re in that lead path
when you hit the hills, run as fast as you can up the hills, and even faster
down the hills. He thought it was going
to be Salazar, which it was , so I did everything I could for those 4 miles trying
to shake him, but I couldn’t get him off.
When I got to the bottom of the hill, he was still on my shoulder. At that point I couldn’t even feel my legs,
and the thought of running 5 more miles at that pace was too much. Finally with about 900 meters to go, I had
the biggest lead I had. It was maybe 6-7
yards on him, and I thought “Dick, you’ve got to throw in a hard surge now and
break open the gap even more”. But as I
got about 2 strides in with that surge, I got the biggest charlie horse in my
right hamstring, and I literally couldn’t run.
I remember jumping up in the air, grabbing my hamstring and Alberto went
flying by me. He got close to a hundred
meter lead on me. The crowds that day
were just massive and there was no crowd control, so as they moved by to let me
through, my right leg came down into this big pothole, and I almost fell
down. As I fell it jerked my right leg
from the pothole, and it actually popped the knot out of my hamstring. I got my stride back, but then we were down
to about 60 meters to go. I started pumping
my arms and lifting my legs. When I see the video, I’m coming out of the
corner flying, and I’m 5 meters behind him at that point. I ended up getting outkicked at the end.
We were both
fortunate that day to break the American record and the Boston course record,
but he beat me by about 2 seconds. I
didn’t win it, but it was one of those races that, even though I didn’t win it
and I was disappointed right away, at the end of the day I’ve never been more
pleased with an outcome. It would’ve
been to just give up the lead and let Alberto win, but I didn’t do that. I learned a lot about myself on that day that
enabled me to get through a lot more difficult times in my life after that.
Alberto and I were just back to Boston for the 30th
anniversary. You can’t talk about
Alberto in that race without talking about me in that race, and vice versa. After that, Alberto and I have been sort of
glued at the hip. The best part of that
race is that Alberto and I have become really close friends.
How did your life change after the 82 Boston race?
After that race, I just had turned 26, and I’d been running
a lot of marathons, 3-4 a year, under 2:12 range. I remember a few older runners warned me that
I should be careful, that marathons have a way of catching up with you after a
while. But when you’re a young runner
like that you think you can run through a brick wall. I wasn’t taking enough rest time after all of
these marathons. After Boston I had committed
to the Grandma marathon up in Minnesota, but after that I didn’t take a good enough
recovery, and my left Achilles had some pain.
I thought I could run through it.
A year and a half later I ended up having to have reconstruction surgery
on it. The doctor told me, “Dick, you
can’t think about running for 6 months”, but the Olympic trials were coming up,
so I started to train again. Back then I
just put that pain the back of my head, and trained hard again. My Achilles finally snapped, which kept me
off the Olympic team in '84. I was out of
running for 2 years. They
had to completely rebuild the whole Achilles.
I finally got back to where I could run again, but I just never could
get back to that level again.
After that I retired from competitive running, so I moved
back to the Minnesota dairy farm, and a few months after that I made an almost
fatal mistake. I wasn’t careful around
some moving machinery and got caught in some farm equipment. They thought they would have to amputate my
left leg, but luckily they were able to save it. Eventually I got back to running and milking
cows. A couple of years later, a lady
ran a stop sign and ran into my car, which put me right back in the hospital. After that I was running up in North Dakota
and got hit by a truck out on a run one day.
I was put on heavy painkillers for each of these hospitalizations and
surgeries, and that’s when things changed.
I never drank, I never smoked, I never did any drugs, but I got addicted
to these pain killers. For a while there
my whole world revolved around two things: taking the drugs, and making sure I
didn’t get caught.
I had never been in any trouble in my life, and now here I
was forging prescriptions, a felony and I could’ve gone to prison for. It got to the point in August 96, when I was
taking a cocktail of Valium, Percocet and Demerol, all very highly addictive
drugs. I was taking upwards of 80 pills
a day. I was probably a few days within
going to sleep and never waking up.
Thankfully, I eventually got caught forging a prescription. I knew I was in a lot of trouble but I was so
blessed and thankful that there was a chance to get better. I was giving 5 years of probation and I got
into a treatment program, and I thank the Lord I’ve had 15 plus years of
sobriety now. That was a part of my life
that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
How did your addiction change your life at the time?
In that mixed up
foggy world, I thought everything was fine.
I wasn’t really running much because of my back surgery, but I thought
my family life was fine when in reality it was anything but. I don’t use this as an excuse, but my Dad was
dying of Cancer, and financially things weren’t going well. I didn’t need them for the pain in
my back anymore, but I started taking them for all this other stuff.
The thing is, when you get to that point, you can justify
every pill you take. I justified each
pill because of my back surgery, or because my Dad was dying of cancer. Those pills will make me feel better. You justify every single minute of your
day. But really you are just multiplying
everything. It’s a vicious, vicious
cycle.
It still haunts me today to think about what I put my family
through. When I got caught, it made
national news because of the runner I once was, and was front page news in the
little town I’m from. My son, being in grade school, had to deal
with other kids calling his dad a “drug dealer”. When I look back on that, what I put my
family through was unforgivable.
I share that experience at treatment centers and
schools. I tell everyone, “If it can
happen to me, it can happen to anybody”.
How does your personal experience translate to the goals of the Dick Beardsley Foundation?
Prescription abuse is the fastest form of drug abuse out
there today. Again, you get in a car
accident of surgery, most people, no big deal, they get off of it. But if they aren’t disposed of properly, next
thing you know kids are stealing the drugs out of their parent’s medicine
cabinets. We try to raise
awareness about this and other kinds of addictions.
In my 15 years out of sobriety, people look at alcoholics or
people addicted to drugs in a whole different light. For heart disease of cancer, people will jump
over a bridge. But when you tell people
about addictions, they look at you like you’re a lowlife. Somebody with an addiction, you can’t see
that like you can see a sick person. Part
of the whole thing is just trying to educate people. When they learn about it, they can kind of
come to accept it and then finally do something about it.
Did you ever have any role models when you were going though
your addiction?
Through my addiction, my biggest role model, who unfortunately
passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease, was my drug counselor. She was an alcoholic and a drug addict. She saved my life. She knew when to give me a
kick in the pants and when to give me a hug.
The first weeks of treatment, your mind is going every which way. Part of you doesn’t think you need to be
there. She was so valuable for me to be
able to talk to. She was definitely a
person who, even though she’s been gone now for a couple of years, I still
admire.
How does running tie into this idea of recovery?
To be a runner takes a huge commitment, and a lot of
dedication. It’s the same with getting
over an addiction. I was in a 12 step
program. One of the things that they
suggest early on is to do some sort of an activity to get a natural form of endorphins. I’ve always loved to run, but when I go for
my runs, 99 percent of time I go by myself.
I love that hour because it gives me a chance to talk to God, talk to
myself. In over 30 years, I’ve never
gotten bored with the sport. I’ve never
run with music, never have and never will.
I love hearing the sounds of nature, seeing the sun come up, seeing the
world come alive in the morning. My
running today is very therapeutic for me, both physically and mentally. I’m 56 years old now and I still love to
compete even though I’m WAY slower than I was years ago, but I hope to keep
running. If I live to be 100 I still
hope I’m running at that age.
I’m probably addicted to running. Virtually nothing stops me from a run. There are many times I’ll have a 5 o clock 6
flight in the morning, but I’ll get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get my run
in because I LOVE the way it makes me feel.
I like what it does for me. It’s
my time. I love people, and I’m around a
lot of people all the time, but I also love the time that I have by
myself. It lets my mind filter things.
What is the greatest lesson you've learned from your experience?
Making mistakes aren’t so bad if you learn from them. If you learn from a mistake and make sure it
doesn’t happen again, and then pass on your wisdom from mistakes, then in the
end it’s not so bad that it happened.
I never hide the fact about my addiction. People can ask me anything about it and I
will answer them honestly. It’s part of
who I am and part of who I will be. Why try
to hide it is what I can share will keep somebody else from going down that
path. It would be selfish of me not to
share it.
I thank God every single day that I get out
there and run. Sometimes I feel sorry
for people that don’t run. I get so much
enjoyment from it, that I can’t even begin to tell you.
