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RUNNING, NOT HIDING:
LEGENDARY KENYAN TRACK STAR KNOWS RECORD-SETTING FAME, ALCOHOLIC DESPAIR

Published on February 3, 2008
COLUMN: BOB PADECKY

Henry Rono is not a human being. He is a six-part mini-series, a book-of-the-month
selection for an entire year, a roller coaster that has never stopped rolling. For a
while there, despair was his only companion, after the global spotlight was his best
friend. He once was the best of us and he once was the worst of us. Rono has fallen
and gotten back on his feet so many times, he doesn't walk on the ground. He walks on
a trampoline. And if you feel exhausted just getting through this paragraph, imagine
how worn out Rono might look.

Actually, all things considered, Rono didn't look like old, wet cardboard Saturday
morning at the Cardinal Newman High track. He was in town to promote his autobiography,
signing copies at the Heart and Sole shoe store in Santa Rosa, running a couple of miles
with the high school kids around Newman's track. Turning rumor on its ear, in other words.

Rono, 55, is clean and sober, been that way for five years now. His legs looked trim,
his smile unforced. While the kids pushed that last 50 yards so that one day they could
say with a giggle they beat the great Rono, one of the best five distance runners of all
time took the moment with aplomb. Rono has seen real defeat, not this, and handling it
with a grin was another piece of evidence that his days of a skycap, car washer, parking
valet, janitor, working for a dollar a day for a place to sleep, those days are over.

``I've had to learn things the hard way,'' Rono said.

How many lifetimes can one person experience in 55 years? Rono has that one maxed out.

How resilient is the human spirit? Rono's face is on the poster of that one.

A child born into Kenyan poverty, an international track trailblazer at 24, an athletic
legend at 26, living on the street at 40, working at a car wash at 43, a schoolteacher at
50, Rono waded through most of that with alcohol.

``It was my way of escaping,'' Rono said of his 26-year battle with alcoholism.

From what? Let us count the ways. The stress of an African country kid dropped into modern
America, of a quiet kid becoming a global celebrity because he could run like the wind, of
getting pulled from meets as he was used as an athletic pawn by the Kenyan government, of
Kenya boycotting two Olympics in Rono's prime, of his Kenyan farm overrun and his two
workers killed in tribal warfare in 1992, of being so scared to return to his homeland that
he hasn't been to Kenya since 1988.

Yes, Rono admitted, he knows he dealt with all that poorly. Yes, despite all that, he
thrived for a while. Of his most remarkable story, this is the perfect place to start.

``Beer, cheeseburgers and French fries,'' said Rono. That's the food he trained on in 1978
to do what no man has ever done before or since. In the span of 81 days, as a Washington
State runner, Rono set the world record in the 3,000 meters, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters
and 3,000 meter steeplechase. He did that in four cities, three countries and ...

``I was running alone,'' Rono said. He broke the 10,000-meter record by 8 seconds, the
5,000 by 4.5 seconds, the 3,000 by 3 seconds and the steeplechase by 2.6 seconds.

In Oslo, Norway, when he set the 5,000 mark, Rono had been on a bender the night before.
The morning of the race he felt the hangover, ran for 90 minutes, sweated out the beer,
came back and slept for two hours -- then set the record.

I just shook my head when he told the story.

``Yes, I know, I know,'' said Rono, shaking his head, too.

``What if you hadn't drunk? And ate properly?''

``I would have set records that still would be standing,'' Rono said.

That's no exaggeration. His steeplechase and 3,000 lasted 11 years, the 10,000 six years.

How did it feel to be Henry Rono at his best? Remember, only names like Emil Zatopek of
Czechoslovakia, Finland's Lassie Viren and Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie belong in Rono's class.

``My running was effortless,'' he said. ``It was like flowing. I just went along, switching
gears when I had to, keep switching up and then I would hit fifth gear. You know how you
hear about some people running and it's torture or they are in pain? I didn't know any of
that. It was freedom to me.''

The only time, for a long time, as it turned. Rono started drinking -- get this -- because
he said his body had a difficult time metabolizing the American diet. In Kenya, he would
have rice for lunch and ``ugali,'' a corn meal-based food that might include potatoes or
spinach.

``I would have a hard time digesting,'' Rono said of American food, especially the college
student's staple of burgers and fries.

``So I would drink before I would eat. Then I would be able to eat the food.''

Soon Rono would drink without eating. And then he would run -- sweat out the alcohol --
before competing.

``I was wearing out my body,'' he said. ``I had to drink a lot in order to go to sleep.''

And for most of the '80s and the '90s he wore out his friends, whatever good will his
running had established.

He was in-and-out of 17 rehabilitation centers. He went to the Nike headquarters in
Portland -- the shoe company that once paid him $70,000 to run in the early '80s, and that
was big money back then -- and asked for a job. Nike refused.

``All I wanted to be was a janitor for them,'' Rono said. ``I wasn't asking for much. But
they didn't want people to see Henry Rono working as a janitor for them.''

The ``lowest, saddest'' point came when he was mugged outside a Boston bar. Thieves stole
his money. Too drunk to resist, he was beaten. While living outside a shelter in Portland,
Rono and was too drunk to notice somebody had stripped him of a warm, heavy jacket he was
wearing. That wasn't fun, either.

Five years ago, he said, he put an end to the madness. He stopped drinking. While working
as a skycap in Albuquerque, N.M., he took night classes and earned a teaching credential.
Now he works as a special-education teacher there. And he's a private coach for five runners.
He's lost 50 pounds in the past 19 months and, at 172 pounds, wants to shed an additional
20 so he can attempt to break the 50-and-over mile record.

The roller coaster now is traveling upside for Rono. He says he is eating better than ever.
He is willing to talk to anyone about alcoholism, running, losing weight or dusting yourself
off to get back on your feet.

``I had to learn the right way to get a natural high,'' Rono said.

The answer, he said, lies from within, not from without.

Easy to say, not so easy to do.

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You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.

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