1975 – A Spot on the Second Row

Woody Harrell

There are days when everything just seems to fall in place. For me, Monday, April 21, 1975, was one such day, although there was a good bit of worrying on my part as it was unfolding.

After the debacle that was my first Boston race, I bounced back pretty quickly. Six weeks later I was out of the army and, aided by the GI Bill, heading back to grad school to resume life as a "professional student." Six months later, I cut over 20 minutes off my previous best, good enough for tenth place in the first marathon ever run in the nation’s capital.

I decided to skip Boston in ’74 and concentrate on the AAU Championship, held in early June at the Yonkers NY Raceway. Most of that race was run in the rain, and as the marathon course was laid out to include four loops of the half mile standardbred harness racing dirt surface, there was quite a bite of sloppy track involved. I don’t know which I enjoyed more, knocking another five minutes off my marathon PR, or the honor of competing on the same track where Seabiscuit and automobile driver Barney Oldfield had previously raced.