As someone who walks a pretty good walk, I appreciate those who run a distance over our roadways.
I marvel at the way distance runners can cover a marathon's 26 miles while averaging less than 5 minutes a mile.
When my eldest son was running cross-country in high school, my wife and I made it a point to attend every meet. Being a sports reporter, I supplied newspaper coverage, even after he finished his four years as a harrier.
Truth is, runners get very little press compared with the more "major" sports that usually grab the headlines. The runners certainly put in their time and energy and deserve every ounce of respect that they receive — and then some.
That said, today's piece is about three extraordinary distance runners.
The first was a Polish guy in my neighborhood named Sigmund Podlozny. He could run from here to China if you let him.
"Siggy" was a fixture at road races. He ran 6 miles back and forth to work daily at Western Electric and never missed a day in 30 years. Rain. Ice. Snow. It didn't matter to this Haverhill running machine. Come weekends, he didn't rest. He ran races, the longer the better.
Fate caught up with Siggy. One day while en route, he was struck down by an errant driver.
What bothered me tremendously was the aftermath. A day after his funeral, every trophy the guy owned was put out to trash. Good thing I came along when I did. Into my car they all went and down to the Handicapped Bowling League where they were eventually recycled.
Siggy would have been proud of that. He had a disability, too. He had just one arm. The other was covered by a prosthetic with a metal hook where a hand would be.
This happened about two decades ago, but he has never faded from my memory.
If you were ever at an Armenian Youth Federation Olympics back in the 1980s, you would have seen some of these best distance duels between Mike Walukevich, a former Haverhill High star and police officer, and his Worcester counterpart Rich Ovian.
Walukevich died a decade or so ago in a Jet Ski accident off Plum Island; Ovian met tragedy four months ago. He had just completed a run and was coming out of a pizza shop across from his home when he was struck by a driver speeding around the corner.
Whether Ovian ever runs again remains to be seen. After months of therapy, he's still facing a year's rehab time with a slogan etched in his mind from his college running days "no pain, no gain."
There was no finer runner in his day at Timberlane Regional High School, Plaistow, N.H., than Mark Kimball during the 1970s. He broke just about every distance record going. Some of them still stand.
I recall covering a 10K road race (6.2 miles) in which Kimball obliterated the field and came across minutes ahead of everyone else. Instead of halting at the tape, he continued running. The run was nothing more than a training session for him.
"What about your trophy?' an official yelled out.
"Give it to the first kid who finishes," he shouted back.
Kimball also suffered the results of a collision with a car. He was running along the shoulder of a road when struck down.
It's too soon to tell what the future holds for his getting back on the road.
I'm not writing about this to send shockwaves to joggers but to pay homage to them all. True, we can all be like Ovian be struck while crossing the street. It's not something we think about as fitness buffs. If we did, we'd all be hiding in the safest place in the world: under the bed.
A good person usually dies when someone else goes wrong. As for running accidents, they seem to occur under the most peculiar circumstances. The next time you're behind the wheel and see a runner on the road, please be careful.
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Tom Vartabedian is a retired Haverhill Gazette reporter and photographer who contributes this weekly column.
