Once a runner, always a runner
Posted on Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Wendell Wilson is a bitter man. You might not guess that when meeting the friendly, fit 67-year-old, but he'll tell you pretty quickly if the conversation turns to exercise.
Wilson is a runner who has been forced to walk.
He was in his early 40 s when he became a serious runner. He was spending a vacation visiting family, but he knew he would be returning to a job crisis. He decided to go out for a run.
Running, he said, is the one good thing that came out of a bad employment situation.
Three years later, in 1988, he started to keep track of the miles he ran. That's how he knew when he became a "world runner. "On the morning of Aug. 13, 2006, running in the Blue Ridge Stadium View Run in Independence, Mo., Wilson completed enough miles to circle the earth.
When he moved to Rogers in 2002, after a career as a statistician, Wilson was still running. He's competed in every Frisco Festival Eliminator Run since he moved here.
In January 2004, he came back into town after a few days in Kansas City. He couldn't run in Kansas City because of the snow, but the little bit of snow on the ground in Rogers was melting, so he went out for a run. He took one of his usual routes, a 9. 5-mile loop that returned him to his home in Summit Heights.
Looking back, he knows exactly what he should have done. Coming down the hill as he neared home, he saw a patch of unmelted snow and ice where the road had been shaded by trees all day.
"I should have gone right over it," he said, but instead he tried to stop and that led to a fall, which broke his hip.
After surgery to pin his hip back together, Wilson slowly returned to training. He was able to run in the Eliminator later that year and he rejoined the running group in downtown Rogers.
In 2006, he ran more than 2, 000 miles.
In 2007, he started experiencing hip pain.
An optimist would look at those three years of running after the broken hip and be thankful, Wilson said.
"But I'm bitter," he repeated. But he smiled as he said it.
The doctor told him late in 2007 that blood was no longer circulating to the hip socket that had been repaired. The bone was dead and his condition would continue to deteriorate. He ran the Eliminator one last time in 2007.
In January 2008, Wilson had hip replacement surgery. On his way home from a therapy appointment later that same month, Wilson and his wife stopped at the Adult Wellness Center. He walked two miles on the inside track during his first visit.
Last winter, he walked the inside track with his cane. He was still faster than many of the other walkers, he reported. When he tried a lap or two without the cane, he was told that he limped less without it. That's all he needed to hear to get rid of the cane.
In the spring he took his pulse and discovered it was higher than it had always been. That's how he knew he needed to step up his training. When the warm weather came, he started walking outdoors.
"Walking is pretty boring when you used to be a runner," he said, but his doctors instructions were clear: "Run only if you're getting out of the way of a train," Wilson said.
This year Wilson completed the Eliminator, walking with a time that averaged about 14 minutes a mile. Laughing, he said that he might have seen a train or two on the course.
Ironically, he beat last year's running time of about 15 minutes a mile. At that time he was running very carefully, trying to get a few more miles out of his original hip.
"I wasn't even last," he said, about the 2008 run.
Since he started his walking career, he's earned two medals at 5 Ks, although he admits there's not a lot of competition in his age group. He's found a group to walk with in Bentonville on Wednesday nights.
His advice to potential runners: "Do it, it's a wonderful thing to do. It's a big kick to be a runner."
And while he claims to be bitter, he seems to enjoy walking.
"Up here I'm still a runner," he said, touching his forehead.
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