Johnny Miles
1926, 1929
 In
1916, when Johnny Miles was eleven years old, his father went
to war and Johnny went to work in the coal mines of Cape
Breton Island. Each afternoon he hurried out of school to
catch the three o'clock shift, worked until eleven at night,
then went home to sleep. In the morning he got up for school
at nine, attended classes, and in the afternoon returned again
to the mines. His salary was thirty-five cents a day. The
situation was unusual, even in the tough Nova Scotia economy
of the war years. Not many children Johnny's age descended
daily into the dank collieries to toil alongside adults.
Johnny was there only because his father had written the mine
manager from France, giving consent.
(a)
The family had little choice.
The money the elder Miles mailed home from overseas would not
support his wife and four children, pay the upkeep on the
family home at Sydney Mines and meet the payments due for a
piano he had purchased for his young daughter
(b).
As the eldest child it fell to
Johnny to help out. He spent three years in the mines as a
young boy and held tour mining jobs. The first was a surface
job, cleaning the lamps miners wore in the pits. He shined the
shades with rags, blew grit out of the filters and poured
enough oil into the compact tanks to last twelve hours.
When Johnny went underground it
was to take on the depressing job of trapping, the opening and
closing of swing doors at junctures in the mine shaft to let
coal trains pass. The doors were necessary to prevent an
accumulation of gas, and potential explosions. at the mine
face. Trapping meant endless hours alone in the dark waiting
for the rumble of the trains. The principal sounds in between
were the cupping of water and the rustle of rats.
At meal time Johnny would draw
a sandwich out of a lunch pail his mother had packed and,
holding it in the tips of his thumb and index finger' eat in
the gloom. The sandwich was held carefully because his hands
were always black and there was no place to wash. The final
soiled bit between his fingers he pitched to the rats.
They were always looking for food. Whenever there was a person
around they knew that sooner or later you were going to eat
and that they would get a morsel,'' Miles recalls.
Later he drove a horse, hauling
coal from the face to the main shaft where it was pulled to
the surface by an endless rope. Horses taken into the mines
returned only for slaughter at the end of their work days.
Underground stables were constructed to house them.
''All the feed came down in big
cars, oats, hay and bran, and there were trains of water cars,
filled on the surface and brought down to the horses each day,
fresh.''
As he grew stronger Miles was
outfitted with a backpack to carry machine picks from the mine
face to the surface for resharpening. A loaded pack weighed
too much to hoist onto his shoulders so it was filled by
others, then off he trudged, stooping the whole time to avoid
striking his head on the low ceiling.
Each Saturday Johnny picked up
an envelope containing his pay. Occasionally there was the
pleasant surprise of two envelopes, the second containing
retroactive pay from a new contract settlement negotiated by
the miners' union. Whatever he received Johnny took home to
his mother. She gave him back a quarter but it was money he
rarely spent. '"Before the week was over I knew I'd have to
hand it back because she'd need it for something.''
He managed to save a dollar and
open a savings account, proud that it put him in possession of
a bank book. ''In the bank book was a dollar and that dollar
was mine.'' But a crisis arose one week when there was a delay
in the arrival of the miners' pay and his mother asked him to
return the money. Johnny protested but to no avail. Resigning
himself to the inevitable he set off to the bank. consoling
himself in the fact that his deposit would at least have
earned some interest in the interim. Instead he got a rude
introduction to the economics of the chartered banks.
"I only got back ninety-eight
cents. They charged me two cents for the transaction.''
Johnny escaped from the mines
when his father returned from overseas in 1919. Basking in the
luxury of having no obligations but school, he took an
interest in one of his father's lifelong pursuits, physical
conditioning. After classes he worked out on weights the elder
Miles had used as a boxer, later extending his routine to
include a skipping rope and arm and leg exercises. He did not
develop an interest in running until the spring of 1922 when
he learned that a three-mile race would be held on the May 24
holiday at Sydney. What intrigued him were the prizes. To the
first twelve finishers would go an assortment of fishing rods,
reels, jackknives, silver cups and other articles that put a
gleam in his schoolboy's eye.
''I had about four weeks to
train. I just went out on the road to see how far I could run.
I knew the race was three miles. So I ran a few hundred yards
and got winded and had to walk for a while. Then I'd run
another fifty yards and get winded and walk some more. And I
kept that up until I could finally run a mile. Then I
increased it to a mile and a half, two miles and finally
three. I could do that much and not get out of breath.''
Seventy-five runners showed up
for the race. Johnny finished thirteenth, one place short of
an award.
''I was disappointed I didn't
get a prize but on the other hand I was consoled that there
were seventy-five in the race and I wasn't last. That gave me
some confidence.''
Miles ran his second race at
North Sydney on July 1, 1922. The prizes were similar but
there was the added attraction of a hundred-pound bag of
flour. A merchant offered it to the first runner past his
door. Miles, who had been training steadily since May, planned
his tactics coldly. At the crack of the gun he bolted for the
store, ready to collapse on the doorstep if necessary to be
there first. He won the flour and managed to hold on for third
place overall in the race. That netted him another prize, a
small wooden desk lamp, and set the stage for his first racing
victory. With his family present to cheer him on, Johnny won a
three-mile race the following month in his hometown of Sydney
Mines. His father, all smiles as he crossed the finish line,
subsequently became his coach.
Behind the Miles house was an
open space just large enough to map out a running track an
eighth of a mile around. Johnny ran laps while his father held
a stopwatch. As his son developed ever keener interest in his
new sport the elder Miles saw potential and offered
encouragement.
Someone in the family produced
a copy of the training principles of Alf Shrubb, the renowned
British runner.
''He told how to train and what
his success was. It was the Bible for my early training,''
says Miles.
Using the book as a guide the
elder Miles put Johnny through what would be recognized today
as a form of interval training, one slow lap, another at
medium effort and a third at full speed, continuing the cycle
for several repetitions.
He also forced Johnny to learn
an accurate sense of pace by guessing lap times as he ran,
circling the track until he could shout them out to the
second. There were sprinting drills as well, to avoid getting
beaten in the home stretch of races, and endless miles on the
Cape Breton roads to build up stamina. For variety in the
winter Johnny laced on speed skates and glided over the frozen
expanse of Little Pond.
The effort paid off. Johnny
quickly became a runner to be reckoned with in Cape Breton
athletic circles, a regular winner in local races. But his
first big racing triumph did not come until 1925 when he
travelled to Halifax for a race billed as the Canadian
five-mile championship. To the surprise of many, himself
included, he trounced the field.
On his return to Cape Breton,
while walking from the train station to his home, Johnny met
the manager of the Canadian Co-operative Store in Sydney
Mines. Johnny had applied at the store for work as a teamster,
wanting to escape the polluted mine pits to which he had
returned, but there had been no reply.
"How did you get along?'' the
manager inquired.
"I won," Johnny said.
The manager looked surprised.
''Well," he said after a pause,
"I'll see you in my office in the morning at nine o'clock."
Work as a teamster was a
welcome change for Miles. Each morning he left the store with
a horse and wagon (a sled in winter) piled high with
groceries, sacks of sugar and flour, and bags of feed for
livestock and poultry. Deliveries took him as far as ten miles
into the countryside beyond Sydney Mines. Often he was so late
getting home that it interfered with his training. So he
devised a set of overlength reins and ran home behind the
wagon.
"The horse knew when all the
weight was gone and you turned around that he was going home
to a warm barn with oats and hay. So away we'd go
lickety-split. People thought I was crazy, you know, because I
didn't have any running clothes on. I just had work clothes
and heavy boots.''
The sight grew odder when
Johnny's route took him past the mine where his father worked
as an underground surveyor after leaving the army.
Occasionally they travelled home together. With the elder
Miles driving the horse and Johnny trotting alongside
neighbors gazing out country windows assumed the boy was being
punished for untold sins.
Miles' parents realized after
his victory in Halifax that their son was gifted with unusual
athletic abilities and their interest in his training was
shared. His mother kept watch on Johnny's eating and sleeping
habits as closely as his father attended to his training
methods. The biggest race in Nova Scotia was the Halifax
Herald Modified Marathon, a ten-mile race each Thanksgiving
through the environs of the Nova Scotia capital, and with its
approach in 1925 the elder Miles made his son an offer.
''If you can win this race," he
said, "I'll sponsor you to Boston for the marathon in April.''
Johnny's eyes lit up.
''That's a deal," he said.
''That's a deal.
Johnny ran the Herald race on
October 17, 1925, two weeks before his twentieth birthday. The
course was wet and sloppy but, spurred by visions of faraway
Boston and anxious to please his parents who followed in a
car, Johnny ran like the wind. The decisive moment came toward
the end of the race when Johnny found himself battling for the
lead with Ronald O'Toole, a fleet Newfoundlander who was among
the favorites. At South and Barrington streets Johnny cut
across the corner while O'Toole stayed on the sidewalk to
avoid the muck. The manoeuvre gave Johnny the edge and he
sprinted to the finish a winner in 53:48 3/5, a course record.
To prepare for Boston Johnny
increased training from his usual thirty miles a week to more
than a hundred miles, a level his father thought necessary to
compete with the runners in the world's most famous footrace.
Johnny liked to run on the highways and byways around Sydney
Mines but the arrival of winter reduced him to the streetcar
line, the only thoroughfare kept open. He ran twice a day over
the eight-mile section—five to seven miles before work and
ten, sometimes fifteen, afterward. Each Saturday afternoon,
when the store closed at two o'clock, he would log a single
extended run of twenty to twenty-two miles. Neighbors grew
used to the sight of him scurrying purposefully back and
forth.
Even with the arrival of winter
Johnny continued to wear shorts when possible, using a mixture
of olive oil and wintergreen on his legs to ward off the cold.
One day after a storm, the way plowed just wide enough to let
a horse-drawn cutter through, Johnny glanced ahead and saw a
large black dog sitting in the road. He tried to ease past the
animal but it lunged at him anyway, teeth catching an exposed
leg. The bite drew blood but was not serious, something Johnny
attributed to the slippery concoction on his skin. But once
home he began to worry about the possibility of rabies. His
parents advised him to report the incident and he called the
chief of police.
"Where did it happen?" the
chief demanded.
Johnny supplied a description
of the dog and details of the attack.
''I'll send Big MacGregor down
to investigate,'' the chief promised.
MacGregor was a towering Sydney
Mines constable who evidently took his work seriously. Some
hours later the telephone rang at the Miles home.
"I don't think you'll have any
more trouble,'' the chief told Johnny.
MacGregor went down and saw
tour dogs that answered to the description. He didn't know
which one it was so he shot all four of them.''
Johnny kept track of runners
elsewhere through the sports pages of the Cape Breton Post,
the newspaper that was delivered daily to the Miles household.
Once, following the 1924 Olympics in Paris, the Post published
a photograph of Albin Stenroos, the Finnish runner who had won
the Olympic marathon. Johnny clipped out the picture and
tucked it in his wallet, occasionally drawing it out as he
made his delivery rounds and gazing at it in wonder.
He was my idol,'' Miles
recalls.
As the winter of 1926
progressed the elder Miles flipped through the calendar and
circled a day in mid-March. the date when Johnny would put his
training to the test by running a full marathon trial.
"I have to have some idea that
you can go the distance. and how fast," his father said.
They measured off the course
together, a bit more than three trips back and forth on the
streetcar line. When the day arrived it snowed, a typical late
winter storm on the island, but Johnny ran anyway, so
determined to meet the challenge that he never once paused,
even for a drink. The elder Miles waited with a stopwatch as
Johnny finished the course, the time registering two hours and
forty minutes. Back home, Johnny sat in the kitchen and drank
cup after cup of tea.
''I didn't feel tired. I felt
that I could have kept on and on.''
As the Boston Marathon
approached the elder Miles drew two hundred and fifty dollars
from his bank account, a substantial sum, and booked rail
passage to Boston for himself, his wife and son. The mayor,
Michael Dwyer, called Johnny into City Hall to wish him well.
"No matter how tired you get,''
Dwyer said, ''always remember that you can make one more step.
That may be the step that gets you over."
Johnny and his parents found
lodging at a modest boarding house in Boston, arriving about a
week in advance of the race. Johnny slept in a cramped room
heated by a small gas stove.
He knew he would be facing the
formidable Clarence DeMar at Boston, the marathon winner for
three consecutive years and tour times overall. DeMar held the
Boston course record of 2:29:40 1/5 which was also the world
marathon record of the day. But he had no idea until he read
the Boston newspapers that Albin Stenroos had come from
Finland t'or the race. The fanfare over DeMar and Stenroos
rivalled that leading up to a great heavyweight fight. Johnny
scarcely knew what to make of it.
The marathon would be his first
and he would be running against the two best-known distance
runners of the time.
The elder Miles obtained a map
of the course from the BAA, and members of the Cape Breton
Club of Boston, helpful since the family had arrived, gave
Johnny and his father a ride out to the marathon starting
point, now established near the town of Hopkinton.
The elder Miles wanted Johnny
to see the course and, taking all afternoon, they walked the
twenty-six miles back to Boston. Worried that darkness might
fall and confuse the way they did so without stopping,
Johnny's stomach growling with hunger by the time they reached
the boarding house. The excursion dispelled stories of the
Newton Hills and their frightening inclines. Johnny was used
to steeper grades in Cape Breton. But he was not used to
walking. The outing left him stiffer than he had been in
months.
Johnny trained on the home
cooked food that all Cape Bretoners ate: potatoes, vegetables,
butter, milk, cheese, bread and lots of meat. His father
thought meat provided energy. The night before the marathon he
cooked his son a steak and wrapped it up with some dry toast
tor the next day, adding a thermos of hot tea as they departed
in the morning for Hopkinton. The runners congregated at a
farm house that was alive with the bustle of race preparations
and the activity of doctors putting the one hundred and
eighty-eight athletes in the field through mandatory
examinations. 'You're all right, you're fit," Johnny was told.
Outside, with an hour and a
half to wait before the noon start, Johnny sat on a curb and
ate his steak while his father repeated instructions for the
race. The strategy was simple. He wanted Johnny to stick with
DeMar or Stenroos, whichever of the two famed runners happened
to be in the lead.
Johnny, a maple leaf containing
the letters "NS'' bobbing on his sleeveless racing shirt, did
exactly as he was told. DeMar and Stenroos ran close together
for the first five miles of the race with Johnny close behind.
Then Stenroos surprised him by breaking away from DeMar. With
more than twenty miles to go Johnny was reluctant to follow,
especially since DeMar showed no inclination to chase the Finn
so early in the race. ''DeMar knows what he's doing,'' Johnny
thought, holding back. ''Stenroos will come back sooner or
later.'' But a tew miles later, with Stenroos still pulling
away and DeMar still showing no sign of pursuit, Johnny took
off, leaving the lion-hearted Melrose runner to the mysteries
of whatever strategy he had in mind.
While DeMar languished behind,
Johnny overtook Stenroos, tucking in so close behind his
Finnish idol that at times he could have reached out and
touched him with a hand. Johnny tailed Stenroos all the way to
the Newton Hills while crowds, estimated at a record half
million, lined the marathon route to cheer the runners
through.
''I just had these little
tennis sneakers on and I was running very quietly,'' Miles
says. "With the noise of people yelling and so on I figured
Stenroos doesn't even know I'm here."
Going through the hills Johnny
detected a slight change in Stenroos' pace, the gap between
them narrowing without apparent effort. Johnny felt a flash of
panic, wondering what a Cape Breton delivery boy should do
when he found himself on the shoulder of an Olympic champion.
Ascending the last and toughest of the hills he pulled exactly
even with his idol for the first time and stole a look at his
face. What he saw came as a shock.
"The eyes looked sunken and
glassy. There were lines in his face and he looked tired. Geez,
I thought, I've got him!"
Johnny took over the lead,
bewildered at his bravado in doing so and raced for downtown
Boston, head spinning as spectators roared in surprise. At any
moment he expected the bubble to burst and Stenroos, or DeMar,
to go sweeping by.
But neither did. And as he wore
down the distance to the finish, reporters following in press
vehicles began to sense an historic sports upset, an unknown
from nowhere toppling the giants of his sport. They shouted
wisecracks and encouragement.
"It's the salt herring you're
after,'' one called out. "That's what's keeping you up here.
He thinks we got fish in the back of this car."
A couple of miles from the end
a car from the BAA pulled alongside and an of ficial leaned
from the door, looking Johnny straight in the eye.
''You've got it, kid," he said.
''You've got it.''
Johnny's triumph electrified
Boston.
He swept across the finishing
line on Exeter Street in 2:25:40 2/5, shattering DeMar's
course and world record by four minutes and a fifth of a
second (c). Stenroos held
on for second, exactly four minutes behind, and DeMar
struggled home third in 2:32:15, amazed at what Miles had
done.
''That boy ran the best
marathon since that Indian in 1907,'' DeMar said.
Johnny was the toast of Boston.
The Canadian Club took the Miles family from the boarding
house and placed them in a suite of rooms at the Hotel
Bellevue. Johnny was honored by the Cape Breton Club and the
Intercolonial Club. The Boston Post bannered the story of his
victory across the top of the front page — ''Unknown Kid
Smashes Record in Greatest of All Marathons" — and filled its
columns to overflowing with details of how it happened. So
entranced was The Post that it arranged a two-day itinerary
and sent Johnny on a tour of personal appearances and speaking
engagements about the city.
Johnny rode at the head of a
five-car cavalcade, a motorcycle escort whisking the
procession through red lights and stop signs as though he were
a touring president. Dignitaries lined up to shake his hand
and tens of thousands turned out to catch a glimpse of the
fairy tale boy who had caused such a stir. Johnny spoke to
school children, visited a prison, answered questions on radio
and even preached a sermon, his gospel message leaving an
audience of three thousand spellbound at the Tremont Temple.
"Since Monday I have had a
wonderful time,'' Johnny said. "I have met your prominent men,
your governor, your high officials, visited historic places
and been greeted by crowds of people. But this is the greatest
honor I have received, the one of which I am most proud, to be
here with you in God's own house, in the fellowship of those
assembled to do God's work.
"There is no secret to this
marathon game. You must think clean, live clean, obey the laws
of nature and of God. You may fool the people for a time if
you don't obey these rules, but you won't fool God, and if you
don't live clean you will ultimately have to pay, both here
and in the life hereafter.'' (47)
The celebrity was as heady for
Johnny's parents as their champion son but through it all the
elder Miles felt a tinge of embarrassment, the result of some
advice he had once given Johnny on buying clothes. Johnny had
insisted on buying an expensive suit at the Canadian
Cooperative Store while his father thought a cheaper one would
have done as well.
"I only paid twenty-two dollars
and fifty cents for mine,'' he told Johnny. ''It looks equally
as good as yours.''
Now he wished he had held his
tongue, even that he had had Johnny's foresight. The reason
was the length of his pants. In the excitement at the BAA
Clubhouse following Johnny's victory the trouser legs of the
elder Miles had gotten soaked by a spraying shower nozzle.
When they dried they shrank half way to his knees.
''He had to take his pocket
knife out and cut the thread on the cuff and turn it down,''
Miles remembers. ''Then it still wasn't enough and he had to
loosen his braces and let them down. And then the crotch was
hanging down. I said, 'See? Now what did I tell you about the
quality of my clothes?'''
When Johnny and his parents
finally left Boston, The Post sent a reporter, Bill
Cunningham, along to record the homecoming, Post readers still
being enchanted with the marathon hero and its editors
unwilling to let the story die.
Cunningham found lots to write
about. Johnny's train was welcomed by throngs at railway
stations all along the route. At Moncton, New Brunswick, the
mayor saluted Johnny at a rail platform ceremony and a bouquet
of roses was presented to his mother. In Nova Scotia, he was
taken from the train at Truro and carried shoulder high down
Inglis Street to the Stanley Hotel where the family stayed
overnight as guests of the town. A crowd gathered and Johnny
spoke from an overhead balcony as though he were the pope,
announcing that he would run the marathon two years hence at
the Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Other receptions followed at
Stellarton. New Glasgow and Antigonish (48).
Crossing the Strait of Canso
into Cape Breton Island the journey became the stuff of
legend. Crowds grew larger, cheers louder, speeches
increasingly effusive. Adjective was piled on adjective until
it became unclear whether Johnny had won a footrace or
conquered a foreign land. So many tried to board the train as
it neared Sydney Mines, all intent on being part of Johnny's
extravagant homecoming, that the conductor gave up collecting
fares.
At Sydney Mines the scene was
all that might have been imagined, crowds, bands, fireworks, a
parade through town on the town's new fire engine. The
electric company installed special lights around the Miles
home and placed others at the entrance to the harbour. School
children were given candy and ice-cream.
Later came banquets and
receptions in Johnny's honor, more gifts, unending praise. He
told and retold the story of the marathon and his belief that
clean living had led him to victory. Back on the delivery
route customers welcomed him into their homes and fed him to
keep him strong.
"They'd make me drink these
eggnogs until they'd be coming out of my ears. Well, gee, you
know I couldn't insult them. I had to try and drink it.''
Victory had come so easily for
Johnny that no one, himself included for that matter, saw any
good reason why he should not return to Boston in 1927 and
repeat his mighty deed. All it would take was the same careful
training and preparation. But to make certain of victory again
the elder Miles devised a secret weapon for Johnny. The idea
had come to him as he sat with Johnny in the Miles kitchen
talking of Boston in the months before the 1927 race.
Getting out a pair of Johnny's
ninety-eight-cent running sneakers he placed them on a set of
scales, noting the weight at nine ounces each. Then he picked
up a straight razor and began shaving down the soles with long
clean cuts. When each sole was pared to four ounces he
stopped, exhaling a satisfied sigh. The soles were thin as
paper but when Johnny held them in his hand they felt light as
feathers. His father calculated that the reduced weight would
cut his time by several minutes over the course of twenty-six
miles.
"Winning would be a cinch,''
Miles recalls. ''Nothing to it, just a walkaway. That was the
way it was figured out. I never wore them until the day of the
race.''
The elder Miles took personal
charge of the miracle shoes, swearing Johnny to silence. News
of this engineering breakthrough was not to leak out until
Johnny sprang it on the world with another historic marathon
at Boston. The shoes went unwrapped until he laced them on at
Hopkinton on Patriot's Day.
The first thing he noticed was,
indeed, how light they felt. The second was the creeping feel
of heat coming though the filmy soles. The 1927 Boston
Marathon turned out to be another scorcher, the sun pouring
down from a clear blue sky. By noon the new surface of black
tar macadam on the road leading out of Hopkinton was beginning
to bubble. When the gun sounded it sent Johnny to the disaster
of his life.
"Before I got three miles the
blood was coming through my sneakers, these little canvas
shoes. I lost the toenails on both feet, big blisters coming
up under each one of them. I tried to pull my toes up because
the sock was pulling on the nails. Then the top of the toes
skinned off and blistered. My feet were just a mass of
blood.''
At seven miles Johnny dropped
out.
Humiliation descended in quick
and savage fashion. The newspapers, which had sung his praises
so highly a year earlier, wrote him off as a flash in the pan
and a quitter. Bill Cunningham turned on him viciously. John
L. Sullivan, the boxer, persisted in the ring until his face
was cut to ribbons and Johnny should have displayed similar
class, Cunningham wrote.
"Johnny Miles — the great
Johnny Miles the crowd was all waiting for — let go without
even a fight. That isn't the way champions perform. That isn't
the way championships pass. Miles should have finished the
race if he had to crawl across the line on his hands and knees
after the hour of midnight with his bleeding feet wrapped in
newspapers. Good losing is as much a part of the code as good
winning. The loser who walks off the field is some part of a
thief. He robs his opponent of legitimate victory and the full
measure of glory that goes with one.''
There were no parades or
cheering throngs for Johnny Miles in 1927. ''We've learned a
bitter lesson," his father said.
Stung and bewildered Johnny
returned to Cape Breton, hurting inside from all the people he
knew he had disappointed. So raw were his feet that he was
unable for a while to return to the roads and bury the
nightmare in his daily runs. The nails fell off one by one as
he waited for them to heal, and as he made the rounds in the
delivery wagon there was the added burden of explaining what
went wrong. He yearned to return to Boston and make amends but
the day he would be able to do so was two long years away.
Meanwhile, he traveled to
Hamilton, Ontario, in July, 1927, to run the Canadian marathon
trial for the Amsterdam Olympics the following year. He made
the team and was urged by the coach to remain in Hamilton and
take advantage of the city's training facilities.
"lf I stay in Hamilton I'll
have to have a job," he said.
"Why don't you go down to
International Harvester?'' the coach suggested. ''They're
taking on people right now."
Hired as a laborer, Johnny
remained forty-three years, rising from menial duties on the
shop floor to the level of senior management. The one time he
contemplated leaving the company was the year after he joined,
when he thought his absence for the Olympics would mean giving
up his job. The company granted him special leave.
Like Boston, although not as
cruelly, the Amsterdam Olympics were a disappointment for
Johnny. He ran seventeenth in a field of sixty-eight
marathoners, his time an uninspiring 2:43:32. He thought the
absence of his father, who could not afford to make the trip,
was a factor.
"For a race like that you've
got to be keyed up, fine-honed, not just the body but the
mind. I didn't have my mind on my work. If my dad had been
there he'd have said, 'Now listen kid. Never mind these
palaces. Never mind the Kaiser. You're here for a purpose.
Stick to that and we'll see all these things afterward.'''
Johnny missed the 1928 Boston
Marathon because of the Olympics, the wisdom among Canadian
coaches being that he should not run both, and when he went
back to Boston in 1929, having done little to distinguish
himself for three long years, he was the object of
considerable skepticism. Critics tended to write him off as a
one-shot wonder but he retained respect among fellow runners.
No one could dismiss the fact that he had covered the Boston
course faster than any other runner in the history of the
race. Opponents kept a close eye on him as the race began.
''They were around me like a
bunch of flies around honey, just seesawing back and forth.
After a while I figured I'm going to get away from this. I'm
going to put on some speed and break right away."
The 1929 Boston Marathon field
included an impressive array of the day's top runners —
Clarence DeMar, again the defending champion, having won
Boston an unprecedented six times in all, Karl Koski, Jimmy
Hennigan and Whitey Michelsen. Miles' early bid to take
control of the race prompted a hasty discussion of strategy
among his rivals. One at a time they decided to move up and
test him, and as each caught and tried to pass him Johnny
answered with a burst of speed. Gradually, as the miles swept
away, it became apparent that no one was going to deny Johnny
on this day.
''Whitey Michelsen was the last
one up. He went back and said to DeMar, 'He's got plenty.'
Clarence told me this himself afterward, otherwise I would
never have known. So that was the end of that. I kept going
and won the race.''
He swept to victory in 2:33:08,
(d) well off his 1926
time, but the triumph the sweetest of his life. The blight was
washed from his name at last. Even Bill Cunningham-took back
his terrible words, coming to Johnny personally to apologize.
He also confessed that never in his journalism career had
readers turned on him so furiously as they had after his
printed outburst against Johnny in 1927. If Johnny's pleasure
in redeeming himself was surpassed by anyone else, it was his
parents, especially his father. As the architect of his son's
career the elder Miles felt as vindicated as Johnny. His
mother was also relieved.
"The greatest pleasure my
mother and dad had in their whole lifetime, I'm sure, was
following me around from race to race. My mother, certainly,
because she was one of these humble persons. Her whole
interest was centred around her family. She wasn't a person
that would quarrel with anybody. She was a very peaceful soul.
Never got away from home very much, being alone all those
years with my father in the army. A little excitement like
this really put years on her life."
Back in Hamilton, his new home,
Johnny was given a reception at city hall. Among those
attending was Bill Worth, general manager of the fibre and
twine division at International Harvester headquarters in
Chicago. Worth joined the chorus of praise that was heaped
upon Johnny, telling all present how honored the company was
to have a champion athlete on its staff. But he also said
something else that had a critical bearing on Johnny's life.
"I remember it because I
memorized it. He said, 'If Miles puts as much time and energy
into the interest of the International Harvester Company as he
puts into his running, he could have a future.' That's exactly
what he said. The reason that I remember it is that I came
home that night and kept repeating it in my mind. I didn't
sleep very much. Effectively, I quit running that night.''
A couple of highlights remained
before Johnny abandoned competition entirely. One was a
third-place finish at the British Empire Games, held in 1930
at Hamilton, and the other was the chance two years later to
run again in the Olympic Games, the 1932 Olympiad at Los
Angeles. He finished fourteenth in Los Angeles, timed in
2:50:32, and put his running career behind him. A doctor
advised him to quit running gradually, rather than abruptly,
so he tapered off slowly and then stored his running shoes
away.
By this time Johnny had met and
was about to marry Bess Connon, (e)
the cheerful, hospitable partner with whom he would spend his
life, and he had also decided to accept Bill Worth's challenge
to carve out a successful career at International Harvester.
From his beginnings as a laborer, Johnny became first a
management trainee, then a foreman, chief inspector and
assistant superintendent. In 1947 he was asked to join the
company's foreign operations division and moved to France,
where he and Bess spent six years while Johnny supervised
construction of a plant outside Paris. When they returned it
was to Chicago and a job that would have made Bill Worth
proud. For the last seventeen years of his career Johnny
managed the fibre and twine division at International
Harvester headquarters.
When he retired Johnny returned
to Canada and a high-rise apartment that he and Bess occupy
atop Hamilton Mountain. From their balcony Johnny could look
down on Ivor Wynne Stadium, where he ran for Canada in the
1930 British Empire Games, and just beyond is the storied
shoreline of Hamilton Harbour and the course Around the Bay.
On a clear day Toronto is visible in the distance, its dark
office towers poking up from the blue horizon of Lake Ontario.
The apartment gleams from the
care of Bess' housekeeping, except for one room, a comfortable
corner where Johnny keeps the many reminders of his days as a
champion marathoner. A cabinet glitters with cups and
trophies: a wall is lined with photos and citations, and there
is a painting of Johnny as he was in 1926 at Boston, a red
maple leaf on his chest. There are scrapbooks too, yellow with
age, and a table is filled with running magazines and
correspondence. Bess has long since resigned herself to the
clutter.
Johnny has never been tempted
to return seriously to running but fitness has always been
part of his life. He worked out for years with the Hamilton
police force and was a frequent visitor at a local gymnasium
during the years he spent in France. In Chicago, he was a
member of the Chicago Health Club and he still plays golf,
pedals a stationary bicycle and skis cross-country in the
winter.
Each spring Johnny makes a
pilgrimage to Nova Scotia for a special race, the Johnny Miles
Marathon, run over hilly northern Nova Scotia roads around New
Glasgow. Patrons of the race have included Edward Schreyer,
the Govennor-General of Canada. In the spring of 1983 Johnny
was summoned to Ottawa by Schreyer to receive the Order of
Canada the country's highest civilian honor. The order is one
of many awards given to Johnny in recognition of his athletic
achievements. He is also a member of Canada's Sports Hall of
Fame.
In 1979 Johnny went back to
Boston for the fiftieth anniversary of his comeback victory of
1929, the race that proved the skeptics wrong and won him a
place among the handful of athletes to triumph more than once
over the legendary Boston course. He and Bess were guests of
the BAA and the occasion was marked by a small presentation.
Johnny stood on the platform at the finish line in front of
the Prudential Centre and watched Bill Rodgers race to his
third Boston victory in 2:09:27, a new course and American
record.
Johnny took as much pleasure
from the moment as did Rodgers. They posed together for
photographs, a fitting touch since each in his time had
brought high new standards of excellence to the race.
Afterward, reporters gathered to ask the inevitable question:
how fast might Johnny have nun in his heyday given all the
advantages of modern marathon specialists like Rodgers? Johnny
had often wondered himself and was tempted for a moment to
play the game. He paused, then drew his sturdy frame forward
to the microphone and said simply:
"Bill Rodgers is one of the
finest people I've ever had the privilege to meet. I'd never
say a word that might reflect on all that he has done.''
Footnotes
(a)
Portions of this chapter are drawn from an interview with
Johnny Miles at his home in Hamilton, Ontario, on September
15, 1981.
(b) John William and Eliza (Kendall) Miles came to Canada from
Britain where their endest son, John C. Miles. was born
October 30. 1905. The family settled in Sydney Mines.
(c) The Boston course was
thought to have been lengthened in 1924 to 26 miles, 385
yards, the standard marathon distance accepted by the
International Olympic Committee. Stenroos thought a mistake
must have been made for Miles to have run so fast a time and
the course was remeasured by the BAA. It was found to be one
hundred and seventy-six yards short, exactly one tenth of a
mile, a distance that would have added about thirty-five
seconds to Miles time. The length was corrected in 1927.
(d) The time was the
fastest by four seconds of the three marathons run over the
Boston course since the course was corrected to the full
marathon length prior to the 1927 race.
(e) Born December 1, 1908,
at Hamilton, a daughter of Alexander and Annie Connon. |
