Jack turns 82 this month. This also marks 60 years for him in the sport of running. His impact on the sport is immeasurable and he’s still running, coaching and teaching full-time.
He reflects on the last 60 years in Running Times:
In 1955 in the Army, in Korea, I entered and placed well in a military triathlon with pistol shooting, swimming and running, so that was my first-ever run, and I was pretty slow. I won the shoot and swim and got last in the run.
I transferred to San Antonio to train for modern pentathlon, which included horseback riding, fencing, pistol shooting, swimming and running. During those six years, I managed two Olympic medals and one world championship medal.
I always wanted to learn to run better, so I studied a year at a sport school in Stockholm and did my Ph.D. dissertation on the sport of running. At the University of Wisconsin, and while in Sweden, I had a couple of the world’s best exercise physiologists to learn about training from— Per-Olof Astrand and Bruno Balke.