An LI Tradition: Hitting the Road

PEOPLE ON Long Island have been running for a very long time. They've run from hostile enemies in Colonial times and from British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. They've run from storms and hurricanes and coastal floods. They've run away from the city; and they've run to catch trains to get them back into the city. In recent decades, they've run for health, fitness -- and fun.

Today, running is one of largest participatory sports on Long Island. There are road races held in Nassau and Suffolk counties on almost every weekend of the year. There are running clubs in many towns and runners in almost every park and on every high school track, seven days a week.

Still, while it might seem like a thoroughly 20th century phenomenon, the roots of today's distance running are . . . well, distant. Walking and running were major spectator sports in the 19th century; and Long Island was the site of some of the most important races. At horse racing tracks like the Fashion course in what is now Corona, Queens, and the Union course in Woodhaven, top competitors from the United States and Great Britain raced around the track, while spectators bet on the outcome. Sports historian John Cumming of Central Michigan University believes that the first championship race in the United States was held on the Union course in June, 1835. Organizers had offered $1,300 to the runner who could cover 10 miles in under an hour. Before an estimated crowd of 16,000 fans, one Henry Stannard went the distance in 59 minutes, 48 seconds. Reportedly, Stannard was fortified at mile six by the 1830s version of a sports drink -- brandy and water.

Long Island was also home to many long-distance solo ramblers in the 1800s -- poet Walt Whitman, of course, being the most famous. But the best of the 19th century ``pedestrians'' was Stephen Pharaoh, an American Indian said to be a lineal descendant of the great Long Island sachem Wyandanch. Pharaoh, who was also known as Stephen Talkhouse, supposedly walked 25 miles -- practically a marathon -- on a regular basis. He once walked more than 100 miles from Brooklyn to his home in Montauk and, according to historian Carol Traynor, also won a pedestrian race from Boston to Chicago.

Fast forward a century: Long Island has changed from rural backwater to bustling suburbia. Inspired by Dr. Ken Cooper's 1968 bestseller ``Aerobics'' and Frank Shorter's victory in the 1972 Olympic marathon, adults begin to run, many for the first time since basic training or high school gym classes. One of them was Mike Polansky, an attorney for Grumman who decided to get in shape for his 30th birthday and began running laps on the Plainview High School track near his house. He was joined there by like-minded white collar professionals. Eventually they were running 10 miles -- around the track. ``No one ran on the roads then,'' recalled Polansky. ``We were afraid to do that.''

Nina Kuscsik wasn't. Kuscsik was a Huntington housewife who had read Cooper's book and -- after getting a flat on her bike, decided that running was a cheaper and easier route to fitness. She began jogging through her neighborhood. ```People thought I was crazy,'' recalled Kuscsik. ``I was stopped by the police a couple of times. They couldn't imagine why a woman would be running alone through the streets.'' In 1972, Kuscsik became the first official woman finisher of the Boston Marathon. She also won two New York City Marathons and later, became a leader in the women's running movement that led to the first women's Olympic Marathon in 1984.

Kuscsik wasn't the only Long Islander who excelled at the marathon distance (26.2 miles). Gary Muhrcke trained by running 10 miles back and forth between his home in Freeport and Far Rockaway, where he worked as a New York City fireman. He, too, got strange looks. But his training paid off. In 1970, Muhrcke won the first New York City Marathon in Central Park. Still, he hardly got a ticker tape parade in Freeport. ``Nobody even seemed to know there was a marathon,'' recalled Muhrcke.

That changed in 1976, when the NYC Marathon expanded to five boroughs. Over the next two years, the so-called `Running Boom'' really exploded throughout the country. A number of major Long Island races still held today, were run for the first time in 1977-78, including The Great Cow Harbor 10K in Northport, the five-mile Port Washington Thanksgiving Day Race, the Plainview 10K (Now the Run for Aspire), the Shelter Island 10K and the Rockville Center 10K. Also in 1978, an event had been run under various names since its inception as the Earth Day Marathon in 1970, was held for the first time as the Long Island Marathon, in Eisenhower Park. ``That was a key event,'' said Huntington's Aldo Scandurra, a founder of both the New York and Long Island Road Runners Clubs. ``It was the first race that brought the entire Long Island running community together.'' (In 1984, Long Island Marathon organizers added a half marathon, which is now one of the country's largest 13.1 mile races).

The winner of the first Long Island Marathon -- and also of the first Cow Harbor 10K -- was Lou Calvano of Carle Place, who went on to compete in the 1980 Olympic Trials Marathon. Calvano was one of a cadre of talented marathoners who emerged on Long Island out of the 1970s running boom, and began to dominate the sport locally in the 1980s. The best was a lanky Ronkonkoma native with an odd, rocking gait named Pat Petersen. Petersen was the most consistent American performer in the New York City Marathon in the mid-1980s, finishing in the top five three times. In London in 1990, Petersen set a U.S. marathon record (2:10:04) that stood for seven years. (He came out of retirement last May to win the Long Island Half Marathon).

Long Island continues to produce top quality distance runners. In 1996, for example, three Long Island women -- Regina Ronan of Northport and twins Jeanne and Karen Peterson of Massapequa -- qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon. The majority of runners today, however, don't have the talent of a Petersen, a Kuscsik or even a Stephen Talkhouse. Still, the estimated 5,000 Long Islanders who run at least one road race a year represent one of the most cohesive and visible sports communities on Long Island. ``There is a sense of community among Long Island runners,'' said Polansky, now the president of the 1,500-member strong Plainview-Old Bethpage Road Runners Club.

``We all do the same things, in the same places, every weekend . . . some just a little faster than others.`