What if Everyone Were a Runner?
Summer Reading with Pennsylvania’s Bart Yasso

by Melissa Field

Non-runners are a fickle group.  We all hope they are impressed with fast times and long distances but they are often thoroughly unimpressed and, let’s face it, maybe even a bit disinterested.  I have been known to exhaust many a non-running friend with footage of Steve Prefontaine.  When said subjected friend does not respond with admiration and amazement for Pre’s pure guts running, I wonder where I’ve gone wrong.  Non-runners may never understand our passion, but can’t they at least think we’re cool sometimes?

Then I discovered a trick: Bart Yasso.

If you’re looking to impress non-runners, mention a race from his extensive resume.  You can casually mention that he ran the Badwater Ultra 146 through California’s Death Valley.  Yes, 146 miles.  Yes, highs around 134 degrees.  And really, that’s all you need to say.  Non-runners will sit in stunned silence.  And for that brief moment, your sport is the best; you’re hardcore, you rock by association, and you can smugly ask what the heroes of other sports have been up to while Yasso’s shoes were melting beneath the California sun. 

Bart Yasso has been called the “Mayor of Running”.  He has competed in over 1,000 races on all seven continents.  There is, in fact, a marathon in Antarctica and he ran it.  You probably know him best as the Chief Running Officer of Runner’s World magazine.  A title he has used to unpretentiously and tirelessly promote the sport we all love. 
Yasso is well known because he knows runners.  He remembers not only the names, but the PRs of countless runners across the country.  And if you think adventure racing makes him contrary to the average runner, think again.  Yasso’s book, My Life on the Run: The Wit, Wisdom, and Insights of a Road Racing Icon, is so relatable, funny, and absorbing you might find yourself wishing you knew him personally. 

Yasso is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and now lives in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, home to Runner’s World.  He was not a born athlete and spent his younger years battling vices like drugs and alcohol before his older brother challenged him to a 10k road race.  He didn’t beat his brother on that day but he did place well overall, and his placement inspired him to try again.  He read-up on running, trained, and asked his brother for a rematch.  This time he won. 

One year later, he ran his first marathon.  Several years later, he qualified for Boston at the 1981 Philadelphia marathon.  “I had purpose, and I embraced it with the gratefulness of a drowning man being thrown a life preserver,” Yasso writes.  He continued to run and knock minutes off his racing times.  He also started competing in duathlons and in 1987 won the US Biathlon Association Long Course Championship at Harriman State Park.  As luck would have it, this win attracted the attention of Runner’s World magazine right around the time they moved into the Lehigh Valley and were searching for a liaison between the magazine and the running community.

Yasso got the job.  This is where the book gets good, and I’ve never been one to spoil a good story.  This story includes tales of insurmountable obstacles, outrageous adventures, and even a little nudity.  This book will make you proud to be a runner. 

“I know I feel more like myself when I run, even if it’s only a few miles, or at least I feel like the self I like best”, Yasso says.  Running connected Yasso to a wider world.  It helped him celebrate life, form lifelong friendships, fall in love, cope with adversity and pain, and travel the world.  If a passion for running can do these things—if it brings us closer to our own best self—then we should continue to share it with non-runners, continue to encourage and support each other, and continue to live what we love. 

Yasso would have it no other way.  He makes runners look cool, but he also makes us realize that cool is more than an impressive performance—cool is being an advocate for a better life.  As he explains, “As runners, we each have the duty to accept the role as mentor to a slower runner or a new runner or someone who doesn’t think he or she can walk around the block, let alone finish a 5k.  Remember, we are not members of a snooty, nose-in-the-air fraternity.  We are runners!  So let’s spread the message.  Can you imagine how grand this planet would be if everyone were a runner?  Obesity? Not a problem?  Depression?  Never heard of it.  Sluggishness?  Get the hell out.” 

So with the hope of Bart Yasso and in the words of Neil Young…