Keeping up with the Spences

Steve & Neeley Spence running the country roads near Shippensburg

The latest edition of Running Times has a great article on Steve Spence, the 3rd place finisher in the 1991 World Champs marathon.   The article talks about Steve’s career, the budding career of his daughter Neely, and about Steve as a person and the current head track and cross country coach at Shippensburg University.  

This article hits especially close to home, as I had the privelage of running  for Coach Bob Walker at Shippensburg during this time period.  As a result, I got to know Spence a bit, and have some great, great memories:

• I recall Neely walking around at age 2 in her bare feet, while the entire Ship team stretched on the track before a workout.  
• I have memories of Spence’s two dogs, Kashi & Sumi, doing long runs with us on South mountain, just outside of Chambersburg, PA.  
• I’ll never forget Spence’s wife, Kirsten, dragging a number of us freshman through some mid-week runs remindinig us to “listen to our bodies” and to “eat well.”  
• I even Spence getting dropped in a 5xmile workout that he ran with D2 National Champ Randy Lowe, who was on the Ship team at the time.   Back then, I didn’t appreciate the fact that Spence was likely dead tired from logging 140 mile weeks and was probably just transitioning from overdistance to speed phase of his training.  I simply remember thinking Randy Lowe was one bad-ass runner.
• I remember the day that Spence first returned to campus, following his 3rd place finish at the Tokyo world champs.  He came in drinking a vanilla milk shake from McDonald’s…something he NEVER did while training (or when Kirstin was around ).  That memory of Steve walking in Heiges Field House sticks vividly in my mind…an indicator of the impact and excitemnt surrounding Steve’s Tokyo race.  We were all in awe and disbelief…the guy who shows up to run with us sometimes is the third best marathoner in THE WORLD.
• I distinctly remember the day Runners World showed up at campus to take pictures of Spence along with the rest of the Ship team…and we all became “famous” because our mugs were in a running magazine.

You don’t have to have run at Ship to appreciate this article.  Any runner should be able to enjoy it, as there are some great quotes in it.  One of my favorite, is from Spence’s training partner (as he readied for the 92 Olympic Trials), Steve Taylor hitting home the importance of having a single-minded focus on training:

But, honestly, the best part of the article is the depiction of Steve Spence as a quiet, humble, what you see is what you get kind of person…because that’s exactly what he is and what he’ll always be.  A fellow ship coach (who was on the Ship track team while I was there) had this to say about him:

I couldn’t have chosen better words to describe Spence.  Steve has “no idea” how big of an impact he had on my life…and, I was the slowest runner on the Ship team my freshman year (more into partying and having fun, than I was into running fast times).  But, Spence took time and worked with me in the gym to lengthen my stride…he ran by me often in the early miles of our long runs in the mountains and would often command his dogs to “stay with me” during the run, as a way to encourage me and bring me along. 

I appreciated Spence at the time, but as I’ve gotten older I appreciate him even more.  As I’ve been fortunate to find a certain level of success in my career, in my family, and in life — I stop and check myself, reminding myself to keep working hard and keeping my ego in check, thinking of Spence and his own humility and work ethic. 

Then I stop and think about the hundreds of runners (the runners on the Ship team with me during those years, the runners who have been coached by him since, his own children, etc.) who must have had similar expereinces, and all I can think is “wow, third in the world champs is an amazing feat…but, having that big of an impact on so many people is even more amazing.” 

Thanks Steve, for the impact you had on me and so many others.  And, thanks Running Times for publishing a great article.