Thank You, Reverend

""On July 4, 1970, road racing was born in Washington County. Before that day, the local people assumed that a road race was a car race, because no person could possibly run all the way from Perry to Eastport, a distance of 7 miles. But that day the spectators were transfixed by the sight of Ralph Thomas running to victory over the causeways and down into the village to the finish at the local breakwater. They were startled by his marvelous proportions as he ran by; could running help to make an athlete like that? Nobody had ever imagined it before."

These are the words of veteran Machias road racer Deke Talbot. And that day Thomas laid down the law and gave notice to the running world that he would be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.

"No one represents running in Maine any more than Ralph Thomas," said Dave Paul Jr., a 1970s runner and race organizer from Portland. Thomas was a small, powerfully built native Penobscot who ran road races during the 1970s and early ‘80s and was the most loved and admired long distance runner of his day. He was a living legend who won as many hearts as he won road races through his running career that lasted well into his 40s.

During his best years of racing, from his mid-30s through his mid-40s, the talk at road races was not what the weather was or how tough the course was, but whether Thomas would show up. If he did, the race director considered his race a success. Runners and non-runners alike loved to watch him run, and they enjoyed his gentlemanly, unassuming role as one of the greatest road racers of his time. He was soft-spoken and easy-going, but when it came to racing he was as dogged and determined as any runner in Maine history.

A dark, muscular, barrel-chested runner, 5-foot-6 and 145 pounds, Thomas was born on Dec. 27, 1935 and grew up on Indian Island in Old Town. As a youngster he had heard stories about the great Penobscot runner, Andrew Sockalexis. Thomas' older brother, Jack, had been a state champ in both cross country and track. Thomas claims that Jack had the most talent of the two. As a youngster, Ralph remembers running only one road race as a kid, one in Ashland that was put on by Sam Ouellette Sr.
Back in those days, the race in Ashland was the only one in this part of the state, according to UMaine track coach Ed Styrna. The only other annual race back then was the Portland Boys Club 5 Mile Race, which goes back to the early 1930s.

Ralph ran during his freshman and sophomore years in high school, then quit. Years later at the age of 33, he was living in Gardiner. It was 1969. One rainy day in May that year, a road race was held in Gardiner, one of dozens of races that Roland Dyer organized throughout southern and central Maine. The race course, run on a 3-mile loop, passed down Water St just a hundred yards downhill from Thomas' house. He stood on the corner with a few of his friends and watched with interest, even urging on the runners. The runners passed along Water Street five times in a steady rain. Bob Hillgrove won that day and Don Sanborn took second. It was about this time that a local minister, Rev. John Noftel, urged Thomas to take up running again. He obliged.

Progress came quickly. The following May, 1970, Thomas was no longer a spectator at the Joe's Pizza 15-miler in Gardiner. He ran this time and placed 2nd behind Rick Rowley, while beating the previous year's winner, Bob Hillgrove. In July, he drove up to Perry to run in Dale Lincoln's inaugural Perry to Eastport 7 Mile Race. There were two road races that day in Eastport. Thomas won the shorter race, then entered the 7 miler and won that, too, setting a course record that stood for many years.

Also in 1970, Thomas set a State of Maine one-hour track record of 11.25 miles, 114 yards, beating state college cross country champ Billy Wilson and Hillgrove. By the end of the 1970 road-racing season, in which Thomas ran nearly 100 races, Roland Dyer was raving about the Gardiner man. "Ralph Thomas made shambles of the 1970 contest [referring to Dyer’s road racing point system] as he more than doubled the score of second-placer Jerry Crommet," Dyer wrote in his newsletter, The Pine Tree Road Runner. Thomas' point total had surpassed Rick Rowley's record total of 1969. He was now challenging the day's best runners, among them Rowley, Chris Chambers, Walt Renaud, Bob Hillgrove, Lloyd Slocum, Larry Greer and Ken Flanders.
What amazed other runners about Thomas was that he was a man who did hard physical work for a living, typically 14 hours a day. A family man with three children, he worked through the night with his crew, picking up chickens, putting them into crates, loading them on to trucks, and hauling them off for processing. Thomas, who owned his own business, was the only independent contractor in the state. His wife Beverly tok care of the books.

Because of his laborious work, he sometimes was able to train only a few times during the work week. He was forced to do the bulk of his training on weekends, often doing double runs, covering 20 to 25 miles each day. He raced more frequently than any runner of his time, often two races a weekend and sometimes out of state because there just weren’t enough races locally to satisfy his thirst for competing. His family understood. They were proud of him. In New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, he battled the best runners in New England.

On some weekends, when he’d venture out of state, he’d run a race on Saturday, sleep overnight in his car, then run in another on Sunday. He’d then return home and work all night with his crew. On the weekend of Aug 8th, 1973, Thomas drove to Littleton, N.H., and won races on both Saturday and Sunday. In one of them, a 10-miler, he whipped John Dimick by nearly 2 minutes in 51:36. Dimick was a 4:12 miler and a 2:11 marathoner, by far the best distance runner ever from Vermont. It was this kind of performance that quickly earned Thomas high regard in New England running circles.

Thomas' improvement was dramatic. For example, in 1972 he won the Champlain Valley Marathon in Plattsburg, N.Y. in 2:36:37. He returned the following year to hack nine minutes off his time in recording 2:27:40, a course record. In October the same year, he and three other Maine runners drove down to Framingham, Massachusetts and entered the Bay State Marathon. Thomas won in a course record time of 2:27:21 for a two and a half minute victory over Larry Olson. Other Mainers took 4th (Renaud), 6th (Deering), and 12th (Krause), letting Bay Staters know that competition to the north was tougher than they might have thought. After the race, Thomas drove back to Maine and worked all night. The next day in the local Massachusetts newspaper the headline read, "Maine Trucker wins Bay State Marathon." He was truck'n all right.

Thomas nearly always trained at a pace that was comfortable for him, around seven minutes a mile. Such was the case, too, with another very successful masters runner, Walter Renaud of Orono, who won the masters division in the 1972 Boston Marathon (2:32). What made both Renaud and Thomas such strong runners was their volume of running, but especially the type of terrain. Both sought out hilly, demanding cross country routes through the woods on dirt roads, along power lines, and across golf courses. Both avoided track training. Neither was known to have had any serious injuries. Yet both were able to run respectable times at shorter distances. Both runners won the Bangor Labor Day 5 Mile Race, for instance. And one winter when Thomas was about 40, he ran a 4:43 indoor mile on one of the two slowest tracks in the state, Bowdoin's cage.

One of the great assets that Thomas had was great overall body strength. There's no doubt that it made him tire less in a race because when the arms get tired, it contributes to overall fatigue. There were other great runners who were testimony to the benefit of great physical strength, among them Hank Chipman, Bob Winn, Bruce Ellis, and Darrell Seekins.

Over the course of his career Thomas ran more than a dozen sub-2:30 marathons. His best was 2:23:30 for 44th place at Boston in 1975 when he was 39 years old. It was one of two American age-group records he set in the marathon. His other national record was 2:27:21, run when he was 37. He was the oldest man to qualify for the 1976 Olympic marathon trials at age 40, and donations from Maine's runners, raised by Brian Gillespie, helped pay for his trip to Oregon to compete in the Trials. He ran 2:29 in a wind storm. Thomas was ranked by Runners World Magazine as the 6th best marathoner in the country in 1975.

His trademark short, powerful stride made him a good hill runner. He placed second in the 7.6-mile Mt. Washington Race in both 1973 and 1974. One of those years he clocked 1:09:37, just 11 seconds behind the winner, Roland Cormier. His favorite racing distance was 10 miles and one of his greatest goals was to run it under 51 minutes. He came very close. He ran 51:14 when he was 43 years old. For his age, his times were unbelievable. Even when he was a master he competed in the open class, often winning, and the masters "winner" was always given to the next runner in his age group, which frequently was Dick MacDonald of Waterville.

He won, several years in succession, some of Maine's best-known road races. At the Lost Valley 9.2 Mile Race in Auburn, Thomas won four straight years, starting in 1971, and set the course record of 48:02, which was never beaten over the history of the race. In the 1972 race he beat the state college cross country champ, Neil Minor from Bates. Even with Minor's coach, Walt Slovenski, out on the course urging on his star, Thomas, 16 years older than Minor, showed the youngster how it was done. He also won the Portland Elks Midi-Marathon four straight years, beating runners like Hank Pfeifle, Chris Chambers, Tom Derderian, Terry Gallagher and Joe Dahl. He twice won the Bangor Labor Day 5 Mile Race, first in 1971 when he set a course record of 25:43, and again in 1975, at age 39.

In 1973, he undertook one of the most grueling challenges of his life. He and nine others ran in a 10-man, 24-hour relay in Portland. When it was over they had set a New England record and logged the world's 9th best distance ever run, more than 278 miles. Thomas said that it was even tougher than running a marathon.

Like every other runner, he had his bad days. One year in the early 1970s at the Silver Lake Dodge 20-Mile Race, which went from Hopkinton to Newton, Massachusetts, Thomas was running along at about 10 miles into the race, having fallen well back from the lead pack and he was hurting. Up from behind came Rick Krause, who Thomas often trained with. As Krause passed him, Thomas groaned, "I should have taken up lacrosse, I guess."

He was a hero as well in his hometown of Gardiner. When he'd go out for a run, people would wave from their porches and cars. He loved to run through fields and woods where he enjoyed watching deer grazing. In the winter he'd run on the snowmobile trails. Once, while on a run, he passed a house where several small kids were playing in the yard. "Want to race?" one of them yelled. Thomas waved them onto the road and started sprinting. The kids hung with him for about 75 yards and came to a halt, gasping for air, as Thomas continued on waving back at them and laughing. He loved kids, and they looked up to him. There was so much that his fellow runners liked about this unassuming little giant among them. Unlike many other top runners of the day, who had college degrees and easy desk jobs that allowed them time and energy to do all the training they liked,

Thomas was right out of the working class. Not a man with a lot of money, he could not afford to have two pairs of running shoes like many others. He trained and raced in the same pair. And he wasn't into fancy running doodads. He raced in his usual black nylon shorts, still stained with salt from his last workout, and he usually wore his tattered sleeveless T-shirt with holes in it that he probably wore to work, too. This was the Ralph Thomas runners loved. They couldn't picture him any other way, and this is partly what made him the living legend he was.

When a race started, as the top runners in the field would toe the starting line, Thomas would shyly find a place at the back of the pack, making small talk and joking with middle-of-the-packers. "Ralph had something special, a special ability, but he did not see himself as any better than anyone else," said his wife, Beverly. Then once the race started he would work his way through the field until after about a half-mile he was running with the leaders. Then, the real race would start.

Thomas was so respected even among the college runners that Bates coach Walt Slovenski would often invite him to come and run with them in home cross country meets. He always finished near the front and must have been a great inspiration to these young college runners. "His job was very demanding," said Coach Slovenski. "It just tells you about his love of running, that he had the qualities within his own heart and in his own mind that running was important enough to him that regardless of everything else - his family responsibility, his demanding business responsibility - that running was tied in and coordinated with that, to come out as good as it did. The reason we don't have hundreds of Ralph Thomases is that that man had in his mind and in his heart his love of running, his physical makeup, and his doggedness, and it manifested itself into what Ralph became. He is a true gentleman."

Over the years, Thomas won hundreds of trophies which his wife proudly displayed. They filled two full walls of their living room. One day when they had company, a friend sat down on their couch and a full wall of the trophies tumbled down on him. After that, Thomas decided that the trophies had to go! He knew that Brian Gillespie, who was then putting on dozens of races, needed trophies to give out, so he called him and Gillespie drove up and loaded up his trunk."I probably won most of those back," Thomas joked.

As Thomas grew older he seemed only to get better. When he was 44 he took 2nd in the Roland Dyer 10-K in Portland, clocking 34:16; ran a time of 26:31 in the Portland Boys Club 5 Mile Race; beat Ralph Fletcher in a 10-K in Auburn in a time of 34:19; and won one of his favorite races, the Monmouth 15-K, in 50:45. At age 43, he ran 10 miles in 51:14. His lifetime bests included: 24:40 for five miles; 31:17 for 10-K, 1:06:39 for the half marathon, and 2:23:30 for the marathon. He was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1990.

All through Thomas' running career he ran and raced with the frequent pain of arthritis in his knees. The condition grew steadily worse over the years, and finally, in his mid-40s, he decided that enough was enough. He retired from running, but his legend lives on. Thank The Preacher for that!