No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes. – Don Kardong, co-owner of The Human Race, Spokane Washington

BRS – Santa Monica by Jeff Johnson

The problem with “The Oregon Runner” store https://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=65081 may have been timing.  I opened a similar store in Santa Monica in 1967, and there was never any temptation to “upscale” it.  There were neither enough product or enough customers.  1967 was too early.

The store rent, as I recall, was $110/month.  It seems to me I spent $400 total on decorations and furnishings.  Maybe not that much.  The decorations were 1968 Mexico Olympic posters from T&FN, two of them, one pink, one lime green, about $5/per.  Furniture amounted to things I picked off the side of the street, but in West LA, there are pretty nifty items on the street.  Think Brentwood, Bel Air.  Photographs were all around the “showroom” in 80-cent Woolworth 8×10 frames.  The shoe models—there were only four , and one never sold—were displayed on a piece of 4’x8’ Masonite pegboard, painted a glossy black.  

The space had been a beauty parlor before BRS, and there were can-lights already in the ceiling which shown down on our mirror black pegboard.  The two training shoes were white with blue trim, the single racing flat was all white, the one spiked shoe was maroon suede with white trim.   I had brought my personal running library to the store, we had entry blanks there for every race from San Diego to Ventura and east to San Bernardino.  A room divider about two-thirds down the store separated the inventory from the showroom.  Someone had slapped together a solid packing table (not me) since our business was primarily mail order.  (That was probably a HUGE advantage, too.  We didn’t rely on run-in customers, though we had a few of those, too.  But more than 95% of sales were mail-order.)  My desk, phone and typewriter took up some space in front. so I could see customers when they walked in.  

Some customers would just come to read my books, or the few running magazines of the day, to look at the pictures of “local heroes” (often themselves) on our wall, or just BS about running.  Claudette Groenendahl didn’t work there. probably a good thing.   I could better concentrate on the job.  In fact, no one worked there but me, except for Ray Hasegawa, who put in a few weeks to help pack shoes for shipping during the Spring track sales blitz from the East.

We were not tempted to “upsell” the customers because we had no other products.  We got a couple of dozen cotton running shorts once from Champion, but that was it   I got some TIGER t-shirts screened in Garden Grove with the TIGER logo, but those weren’t for sale.  They were given away to the winners of any local road race or big meet on the track if the winning athlete had been wearing TIGER.  Another reason we didn’t upscale was because there was no place to upscale TO.  I don’t remember there being any malls out there to tempt me, nor was our run-in business ever going to be big enough to support any upscaled rent.  There was no running “boom” then, not even a hint of it.  Women didn’t run yet.  The entire storefront idea was to stop people from showing up at my apartment in a neighboring beach town at all hours of the day or night.

Actually, our overhead was so low, BRS-Santa Monica couldn’t miss.  The Oregon Runner had handicaps that we never had: pressure to upscale to places that would cost more and strangle the run-ins, no supporting income from mail-order, too many on staff, and Claudette Groenendahl.  That was too much to overcome.

Athletic Attic

Athletic Attic was a pioneering specialty sportswear and running shoe chain co-founded in 1973 in Gainesville, Florida, by former University of Florida track coach Jimmy Carnes and Olympic miler Marty Liquori. It was one of the first dedicated athletic footwear stores in the United States. Think running shoes.

Carnes and Liquori conceived the idea after visiting specialized footwear shops in Munich, Germany, during the 1972 Olympics. Think Adidas and Puma. The original store opened in the upstairs space of Pinner’s Shoe Store in the Westgate Regency Shopping Center.  

“Shortly after I moved to Gainesville, I noticed a lot of people jogging,” Liquori said. “They were thinking we were just going to sell running shoes to the few runners that we knew in town. That was right after Frank Shorter had won the Olympic Marathon. Running took off. After two or three years, we started franchising it.”

At the peak of the running craze, Athletic Attic had some 300 stores in the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand with over $40 million in annual revenue.

Jack’s Athletic Supply by Jack Leydig

I actually started Jack’s Athletic Supply in January, 1977, primarily as a printed apparel store (out of my home) for school track and cross country teams and road races. Before that. I worked for Starting Line Sports, an offshoot of Runner’s World Magazine.  After coming back from the Montreal Olympics (which I drove to with my then girlfriend Judy Gumbs) I decided to break off mostly from Starting Line and then kept my business going until April 2025.  Always a one-man business by word of mouth sales (never listed in phonebook or Internet).  Unusual in that regards, I am sure.  I never thought I wasn’t going to survive and had seven years of a million dollars plus in sales.  The hard part was quitting (sort of).

Running Gator Company by Roy Benson

As you are learning, Jimmy [Carnes]and Marty [Liquori] were the founders and original partners of the Athletic Attic.  I was not involved. However, before they opened The Athletic Attic Store, Jimmy and I, (as his University of Florida Assistant Head Track and XC coach) started a business we called the Running Gator Company.  It was simply a Blue Ribbon Sports dealership that sold Tiger shoes for Phil Knight.

We started the business sometime early in the academic year of 1970-71 as a “store without walls,” using the track equipment room to stash our inventory.  After operating the RGC on the side for a year and a half, I decided to take a year off to join a Peace Corps program called the Sports Corps.  When it was time for me to head to the Philippines to help them prepare for the Munich Olympics, Jimmy and I decided we should just sell our little BRS dealership. So, couple of  Florida Track Club runners bought our stock of Tiger shoes and some accounts receivables for $1.00.

I came back to UF from Munich and learned Blue Ribbon Sports had turned into Nike and was shocked to find that our buyers had a Sears garden shed full of Swooshes. Many years later, as he proudly held up a prototype of a shoe with a fat, heavy-looking, check-mark design on the side, Jeff Johnson reminded me I had once told him, “That will never sell.”

Phidippides by Benji Durden

I worked in founder Jeff Galloway’s first Atlanta store and then in his warehouse, as he started franchising stores and later in one of those franchised stories. 

Jeff was not really a businessman. His store at Ansley Mall succeeded mostly because of Kitty, his mom. She was really the store manager, keeping the books and paying the bills. He probably did get better access from the shoe companies by being a celebrity runner.

Lee Fidler and I worked at the Ansley store early in the late ’70s and would run from the store most afternoons. We were always dressed to run since that was pretty much what was expected by our customers. One day a guy browsing the shoes grabbed a couple pairs of shoes and ran out the door. Lee and I went after him as he tried to escape across the parking lot. We quickly caught up to him and ran alongside. He dodged and tried sprinting away from us, basically playing keep away. Lee told him we could keep it all day, if he wanted. Eventually, we wore him out, he dropped the shoes and we let him run off.

Working for Jeff was difficult at times since we were also competitors. He was a good salesman. I’ve joked that he could sell snow to an Eskimo. His brother came into the store one day, barefoot, and saw Lee and me prepping for our afternoon run and asked if he could join us. We had never met him and had no idea if he could keep up with us. But since he was a Galloway, we decided to risk it since it was just an easy 5 mile. Because he was barefoot, Jeff sold him a pair of shoes at 10% off.

BRRC by the Rodgers Bros.

CHARLIE:  1977, I got a call from Bill. He said, ‘I want to open a running store.’ My response – steeped in the 1960s world-view on distance running occupied by very few fellow runner-types, ‘Bill, do you think we can do business?’

Bill saw into the future, I saw the present, which was occupied by very few fellow runners. But the running boom was about to become explosive. Bill had a lot to do with the boom as did Frank Shorter. Of course, Boston – because of the Boston marathon – was a place to be.

Our staff was composed of all manner of runners, from turtles like me to some real speedsters. This helped, as turtles learned from experienced people. Because of Bill, people came to the store. It was enjoyable getting into conversations with all manner of people from company presidents to Harvard scientists to carpenters,  The best part of it all was meeting people who to this day are friends.

BILL: I opened the Bill Rodgers Running Center in 1977 with money my former wife Ellen and I had saved. We had both been teachers but my good friend Tommy Leonard who lived near the 22-Mile Mark of the Boston Marathon have been telling me I should open a Runners retail store near Boston College which was at about the top of Heartbreak Hill. Finally made that move and retired from my teaching career. Too much conflict with travel to races around the country and then later around the world and come back as a teacher after having missed a few days of work. Smart move.

I contacted my brother Charlie in Connecticut where we both grew up. He had been a drug and alcohol counselor doing Selective Service obligation as a conscience objector during the Vietnam war. He took over as manager. We hired our lifetime friend and former Newington High School track and cross country teammate Jason Kehoe to be assistant manager. Our first day of business we did $127. Friends like Bob Sevene, of course. Joan Samuelson. to some degree before her Olympic gold medal win in Los Angeles in 1984. Russell McCarter, another Bentley College athlete coached by Bob Sevene, joined our group and helped build the shelving for the store.

It was a downstairs Basement Store I didn’t want to name it ‘athletic attic’ or some other name as we would have had to pay a franchise fee, so I just put my name on the store. I had won Boston and New York by then, so hopefully that helped. It was great fun but a lot of hard work as well for Charlie, Jason and the other employees.

We finally closed our store after thirty-some years; we had difficulty dealing with the “technical sides” of business. People would come in and look at shoes and then just leave to try to find a better price someplace different. Anyway, things were changing very fast, we were getting older and finally closed our doors. It’s kind of a sad feeling as we had been around for a long, long time. I made a lot of friends. We hope we did some good,

Don Kardong’s The Human Race in The Lilac City

I asked Don to write the Foreword to my award-winning collection When Running Was Young & So Were We. Available today from the big running store in the clouds, Jeff Bezos’ – speaking of turtles – Amazon.

An excerpt:

The first contact I ever had with Jack was when he wrote a nasty letter to the running store I co-owned. I don’t remember Jack’s exact words, but it was something to the effect of, “How are your customers ever going to buy my magazine when you have it buried under a bunch of other magazines?”

This was a curious comment for a number of reasons. For one, since our store was hundreds of miles distant from where Jack lived, it made it seem like the guy had dispatched spies to the handful of running stores then in existence to monitor the placement of the magazine he co-owned, Running. For another, it suggested the only thing that was keeping his magazine from hitting the big-time was bad rack placement.

So, let me just say this. As much as I admired the magazine’s focus on high-level content, I can assure you that with optimum placement, a good month at our store might have resulted in the sale of three Running magazines. Be that as it may, I moved the magazines to a more prominent spot on the rack.

That was 1978 maybe, Bloomsday weekend probably. Turns out, Don – and everybody else working at The Human Race – was reading Running for free. By 1980, Don was a writer for Running. On the payroll, as it were. So, there’s that.

Don Kardong sold his downtown running shoe store The Human Race in 1986. And lived happily ever after.

Fleet Feet

That first Sacramento store carried Running magazine. Enough said.

Found what follows on Facebook.

In 1976, friends and school teachers Sally Edwards and Elizabeth Jansen decided to open a running store in Sacramento, CA. At the time, less than a handful of such stores existed. But all of them were owned by men. It was unheard of for two entrepreneurial women to open a retail sports store in the mid-70s and yet, against all the odds, they did it.

“We both decided that we didn’t want to teach and we were looking to do something else,” says Jansen.

So, why not start a shoe business? The pair were already into sports and shoes; but not so much to the culture around them.

“We were young women, and so we weren’t supposed to be successful in that field at all,” Jansen says.

Yet they persisted. When they did open shop, it was in a decaying Victorian house in the poorest neighborhood in Sacramento (today it sits in the middle of midtown).

“We started the whole company on $2000,” says Edwards, “because we were 28 years old and we didn’t have any money!”

With no credit, the pair managed to order $20k worth of shoes—all one brand. According to Edwards, if they sold just 5 pairs per day, they counted it a victory. That’s because 5 pairs made them $100, and $100 was their break-even point.

Eventually 5 pairs of shoes turned into 8, to 10, to 20. As business grew, they opened more shoe accounts and word of Fleet Feet spread.

They built a racing team, hosted events and started acquiring a regular customer base that not only came to shop at the Victorian house on J Street, but also to run and hang out.

Because of the persistence and dedication of these women, Fleet Feet is the success it is today!

Thought strikes.

Suspect it was Sally Edwards and Laurel James got me thinking a non-Olympian could maybe open a running store himself.

And was I mad?

Frank Shorter Sports as told by Frank Shorter

One of the reasons for starting my businesses, in 1977, was that I wanted to go to my sports federation and said, “Look, I want to start a business, I’m going to capitalize it, I’m going to run it, why can’t I put my name on it? I’m not endorsing it. I’m putting my name on a business that’s mine!”

I opened a running shop on the mall, and that then became the clothing company Frank Shorter Sportswear. Eventually, a few years later, people in Boulder, particularly my law associates, Bob Stone in particular, we worked, and Steve Bosley—and I have to back up here, because when I got into business, Steve Bosley, with whom I later started the Bolder Boulder, became my banker, financing my businesses, and the linkup came through Joe French, who was the running lawyer in town.

The running store did very well. And the reason to start it was, one, put my name on it and two, to give athletes who could not earn money, they couldn’t earn money in races until we came up with an idea in 1981. So, for four years, athletes like Mary [Decker] Slaney, would come and work in my store and have a swing shift. Stan Mavis, who went on to start Pearl Izumi, Tim Cronin, who now does the commentary for the Bolder Boulder, went on and had an incredible career in business. And other people—again, just one fellow who came out to work for the clothing company, for instance. And then they sort of, after athletes could earn prize money, they were not as interested in working in the store.

The stores lasted till about 1984. And then I just sort of closed them down and liquidated them.

Source: Oral History With Frank Shorter (Boulder Public Library)

Tom Fleming, John Vitale and Garry Bjorklund also had stores. To name but a few more.

Slower athletes could also make a life – a store’s and their own. Just not me, boo hoo.

After 38 Years, Yankee Runner Steps Into Retirement

By Dave Rogers for the Newburyport News. August 2, 2018 

NEWBURYPORT – Over the course of 58 years, Rick Bayko of West Newbury has run around the Earth about four times.

And for the last 38 years, he’s run the Yankee Runner shop on Pleasant Street. But on Saturday, the doors will be closing for the final time as the 70-year-old Newburyport native retires. 

“I’ve probably been ready for a few years,” Bayko said this week. 

Bayko opened Yankee Runner in 1980 on Liberty Street, where he stayed for about two and a half years. From there, he moved to State Street where the Port Tavern now operates. He ran the shop there for five years before moving to its current and final location, 49 Pleasant St. 

While there were plenty of times that a long run —he used to average about 60 miles per week — tired him to the point of exhaustion, operating Yankee Runner never became tiresome, he said. 

“I can’t remember one day when I woke up and dreaded coming into work,” Bayko said. 

These days, he runs about 20 miles a week and supplements his running on a rowing machine — all to keep his cardiovascular system in peak shape.

Bayko said he got into running while a member of the Newburyport High School baseball team. His coach insisted he and his teammates run each day to stay in shape. While he was a middling baseball player, he excelled at running and that fall joined the school’s cross-country team. He’s been running ever since.

Between 1966 and 1987, he ran the Boston Marathon 12 times. He’s also run marathons in Russia, Greece, New York and New Hampshire, and taken home countless medals and trophies – many of which can be seen at Yankee Runner.

Aside from the Boston Marathon, his second favorite race is the Yankee Homecoming 10K. Bayko ran in the 5K race Tuesday, noting he was battling some injuries that kept him from entering the longer race.

“It was very slow and painful but I was glad to do it,” he said.

Over the years, Bayko has gone through hundreds, if not more, pairs of running shoes. He rotates among 12 pairs that he switches daily. Shoes, he said, have come a long way since he started, with modern shoes cushioned far better than before. The cushion has helped preserve his body and kept him on the road longer.

“You’ve got to use the equipment to know how to sell it,” he said of his footwear.

Aside from new technology helping his footwear, there have been advances in clothing that prevent chaffing. With the advent of global positioning satellites, he’s been able to better monitor how many miles he covers and show where he is on his route.

There’s also a heartbeat monitor that helps give him a sense of how his body is doing “just because I am a numbers geek,” Bayko said.

As for why people should take up running, Bayko had a hard time answering.

“That’s the million-dollar question because no one can answer that,” he said.

For him, running became a way to challenge and push himself. He enjoyed seeing tangible proof of his progress and competing with runners he saw at many of the same races.

“It eventually just gets to feel good on its own,” Bayko said.

Asked what he plans to do with his spare time, Bayko said he would continue running but also spend time traveling, learn how to play guitar without banging on it, do some landscaping and basically take better care of his body.

“Bottom line, I feel really blessed I found a job that I really liked doing,” he said.

The Arcata Jogg’n Shoppe Celebrates Its 50th Birthday

By Dezmond Remington  for Lost Coast Outpost. November 19, 2024

If you have less than an hour to buy a new pair of running shoes, do not ask the guy in the Jogg’n Shoppe any questions about the photos on the wall, the shirts hanging in the windows, or the running paraphernalia scattered around the store, because that hour will be sacrificed to a long discussion about the characters and races that make up Humboldt’s distance running history. But it is an interesting history, full of tales of all-consuming rivalries and legendary training logs. The Jogg’n Shoppe has been around for all of it.

The Jogg’n Shoppe celebrated its 50th birthday last week. Founded in 1974 by Humboldt State cross-country coach Jim Hunt and Arcata High School coach Chuck Ehlers, it’s currently owned by Mike Williams, who ran for HSU back when Hunt was still a coach. The shop is old enough that some of the first shoes Hunt sold were made by Blue Ribbon Sports — the company Bill Bowerman founded that would later become Nike. 

Williams, 63, first worked at the Jogg’n Shoppe in the 1980s, when he ran for HSU. In 2002, he became a part-owner of the Eureka location, which closed in 2005. He’s been the sole operator of the store since. At its peak during the mid-1970s, the store had locations in Arcata, Eureka, Fortuna and Brookings, Ore., though that only lasted for a couple years. Now, only the Arcata location is still open.  

“It all happened at a perfect time,” Williams said. “The running boom was going on after the ’72 Olympics with Frank Shorter and [Steve] Prefontaine — that just kind of fueled that fire.”

Distance running exploded in popularity in the early 1970s nationally, but Humboldt was also home to a large pool of talented runners. HSU was second at the Division III national championships three times during the ’70s and won the Division II championships when they moved up in 1980. Williams has an encyclopedic knowledge of the dozens of personal records set and races run during this time period, and asking him about local legends like 2:15 marathoner Bill Scobey or 1992 Olympic Trials winner Mark Conover will elicit from him stories of the days when the Trinidad-Clam Beach run fielded 2,300 competitors from around California and even the smaller community races had sub-30 minute 10K talent. 

Races in Humboldt aren’t as fast as they once were, but the local running community has found a home in the Jogg’n Shoppe. Running clubs meet out front and Williams helps organize local races. For its 50th anniversary, Williams hosted over 100 people in the store last week. Nike representatives from Oakland came bearing gifts. Williams thinks the store provides services beyond simply selling running equipment.

“It’s getting people motivated whether they’re walkers or runners, just getting people outside and doing something, and when people get together for events, not only competition, it’s feeding off the good vibes, the community thing,” Williams said. “The club, everyone who shows up for that is so upbeat and into it…a lot of the old guys, they can’t run but they still meet and walk and they love it! They’re sitting there chitting and chatting. My dad dealt with depression, pretty severe sometimes, when he became a runner and got part of that group — man, it changed my dad’s life. It really did. He got a new group of buddies, like a new family.” 

Williams will likely retire within the next few years, but there are several different parties interested in buying the store. 

“I would love to keep going,” Williams said. “I think it can. The internet changed everything obviously, but it can make it. … It’ll keep going, there’s no doubt about it.” 

“Having a shop, it’s a place where people can meet. A lot of people come in and yak with me. It’s just fun talking to people. A lot of people, they come in and go, ‘I’m too slow for racing.’ Oh! Walkers, everybody’s welcome … Don’t worry about the times, just go out there and participate.”