By the 1970’s, Northern Arizona joined the rapid growth in popularity of cross-country and alpine skiing and other adventure sports that were taking place nationwide. Soon after, the Alpineer shop opened in Flagstaff, as the first full service climbing and Nordic skiing equipment store, and in subsequent years provided guiding and backcountry skiing instruction. – David W. Lovejoy , Leland R. Dexter , and Kevin Tatsugawa, CHALLENGES TO AN AVALANCHE CENTER IN A TIME OF SEASONAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY: A CASE STUDY.
Running IS an ‘adventure sport.’ At least it was the way I did it.
Got a query from somebody claiming to be a representative of the Arizona Daily Sun. That’s a highly respected publication, so I was immediately suspicious. Guy said he wanted to ask me about the early days in Flagstaff. You know, like when running was young and so were we.
What was your favorite run during your Flagstaff years?
My first thought is, please be more specific.
While a student at NAU, I took note of the location of the 1974 AAU National Championships. Yonkers, New York, the home of my bride, who hadn’t seen her Italian parents in a whole entire year. She was easy to convince a vacation trip east might be best for everybody. Geez, her mom could cook.
If you mean a route, I remember a quick six-miler around town we did when the guys would get me up from my sleeping bag on the floor of the Alpineer – a renowned mountaineering and rock climbing hub – at 0700. Closest thing we had to a running store.
I used to chase Dr. E.C. “Ned” Frederick and his Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Cosmo, all over Lake Mary Meadows. Come deep winter, we’d leave the dog home – basically for his own safety, as I recollect – and when spring came around, he was out of shape. Cosmo was fun.
I bought a new 14′ x 72′ trailer and moved it into a park just west of town. Where we had water trucked in; winter, we hooked up car batteries to the house current.
I liked to run up to the observatory and back home. Work to the top hard first, reward yourself with the downhill. There were times you could almost imagine yourself being fast.
Some weekends, I might run into town, to the bakery, and pick up some tasty treats. Then run home. You can safely eat many apple fritters when you are young and logging big miles. Miss those fritters. Miss those miles, too. More so.
How did you meet your SISU STRIDER running pals and are you still in touch with them?
Ned and I met when I had just laced up my training shoes in the college gym. I can visualize lockers that didn’t reach the ceiling and I hollered “Anybody want to go for a run.”
“I would,” came a nearby voice. It was Ned. Don’t remember where we ran but it was good run we had, I can tell you that. Probably spared him any tales of my running exploits once he mentioned he had run a mile in 4:15 or so.
Scott Baxter? The store was right near Ned’s office and who knows? I do remember we were very in the moment. Always good with one another. Which now a half century later we understand it was a few excited boys who wanted to start a club and share the fun with others.
Lost touch with Scott again, Ned and I can find each other still. Most humbly, back in the day, we were a good trio. I don’t recall a discouraging word.
Hoping Scott sees this and sends me a sign of life.
Do you remember how many members joined SISU?
I’d like to say twenty-five. No idea really. Many slow professors, who were having a great time. This might be a good time to mention my first wife Patricia. She would be the likely person to ask. Cannot imagine she wasn’t the person who did the typing and mailing. Maybe Pam, still Mrs. Frederick.
The SISU STRIDERS, being a fairly prestigious club, certainly you can be assured everybody was clamoring to join. For you kids under sixty, ten bucks in 1973 is worth $72.03 today.
Did you have any favorite hangouts/bars/restaurants?
The Alpineer, the rock & ice climbing store co-owned by Scott Baxter. My last semester at NAU I slept on the floor there.
Fondest race memory?
Funny. I interview runners and ask questions like ‘favorite race memory.’ Always have had poor recall, but I took notes and I like this description.
December 23. [1974] Monday. (161.5 lbs.) 4:20 p.m. 13 degrees! Snowing with approximately four inches on the ground. Ran 10.0 really tough miles. Not fast, of course, but worked hard nonetheless. Icicles on my moustache, icicles hanging off my sideburns and the hair on the back of my neck. Had to stop once to open one eye, when the lashes had frozen together. I love a run like this, he said – in retrospect. Tomorrow I turn 28.
So, I am up six pounds a half century later. [FULL DISCLOSURE: I gained and lost sixty-five pounds in the interim. But that’s another story. Two stories.]
There was the time I was racing the Tucson Marathon – Top Twenty – and there was a gas shortage, so I had two NAU professors trying to keep me and a support vehicle hydrated and fueled up.
Won a couple of points for the Sisu Striders at the Intramural Indoor Championships with a 9:14 RACE WALK. Hips still hurt just thinking about it.
What was your first Flagstaff run? How did the elevation feel?
I ran every day, while 6’3″ tall, driving across the USA in a packed ’72 VW bug. Real hot in Kansas. Imagine I was stiff and achey, staying in a motel east of downtown, so I would’ve pitter-pattered a half dozen miles. Or two. We have the records. There was a French restaurant nearby and I had sweetbreads. That I remember.
Seems Dr. Frederick discerned I didn’t appear as impacted as most by the elevation. Felt a distinct pride to be doing the work I was doing AND at altitude.
The scary part is the approach to Flagstaff. From the east, you’ve been driving forever and you notice there are NO trees and you remember you love trees and you have never actually been here and can you trust Architectural Digest and please God, let Flagstaff have trees.
Have you been back to Flagstaff since leaving?
Seems like I came back in ’76 for the Pioneer Run.
Was there a favorite trail run back in the day?
Fifty+ years ago, the forest roads were wilderness enough for me. We did occasionally go up the mountain where we managed to find a plateau for higher-altitude repeats.
Ned and I got lost in a box canyon once and ended up with a 17-mile day we weren’t expecting.
What were your impressions of Buffalo Park?
Zero memory. There was the time we pulled a not normally seen in North America goat out of a fence. And an extinct game park was mentioned.
From Ned Frederick
I’m not remembering names of any favorite trails but I remember running a lot of trails. We lived in the Coconino National Forest in a trailer miles off Lake Mary Road and I can recall several loops into Elk Meadows. Lots of miles on those trails with our dogs. Also, when we lived in the Museum of N. Arizona in ’76 & ’77, I remember Ft. Valley road trails leading up into the mountains as being very challenging and a regular loop. I also recall regularly running a trail through a canyon that ran east and southeast from the campus with Danny Blackgoat.
Not much else I can put a name to. Funny how I can recall the trail and surroundings but not names. Maybe they didn’t have official names? Besides the Alpineer, there was Ron’s (I think that was the name) where we would go for coffee and a lunch … not far from campus or the Alpineer.
From Nat White
I still have my Sisu Striders cotton T shirt.
Interesting to read the reminiscences. Connecting some points; Elks Meadows, isn’t that off the old road in back of Lower lake Mary where the Cook family enclave was? I remember the father, Dick Cook, organized some group runs out that gravel road. He also built canoes and organized a canoe race on Lower Lake Mary. [Reasonably confident, a few Cooks were Sisu Striders.]
The Canyon in back of NAU is most certainly the Sinclair Wash which was also a RR bed and is now a FUTS trail that divides north and south campus. Lone Tree was a gravel road in the 70’s with no housing or school.
I remember the old house that was the Alpineer and having meetings there. The coffee shop was Macy’s and I think the name dates back to the 70’s.
I ran in a race on old 66 that started at Belmont, went west and returned to the start in the 70’s. Belmont was just an intersection with a forest road going north (still there) and the N.A. Depot to the south. I remember the course as being flat and boring.
‘Trail’ names that I remember and uses as did a few runners that did that kind of running in no order of popularity was Humphrey, Shultz Pass road and Old Bookbank loop, Weatherford, Freidlen Prarie Rd, Mt Elden trail, Waterline Road, 515 on Observatory Mesa, Lone tree (dirt road) was popular for a few NAU faculty, but not Lake Mary Road. Lake Mary Road was a narrow oil paved road that was the main logging road into the sawmill which is now Sawmill Apartments and the police facilities. The heavy trucks would come barreling down the road. The road side leaving town was relatively smooth, the lane coming into town served the heavy log loads was grooved so deep you could track your car without steering. I know it well as I drove it many times to the observatories.
JDW: I distinctly remember training on a paved road, zero shoulder. Felt like I almost got hit by a logging truck. And there was a guy between me and the truck – it was Ned. He seemed unfazed but I was probably too freaked out to notice. The way he remembers it – “As I recall, that truck turned around and made another run at the ‘hippie joggers.’”
Trail names weren’t a biggy, seems to me. Just remembered, we came up with a numerical system for our complaints, ’cause we got tired of the same old stories. Ned didn’t have to hear about my knee every day.
Flagstaff. NAU. I was only there for two fully-packed years. Realized later in life, I should have stayed.