In his running career, Talbot has run over 60,000 miles, and as he notes: ‘This is amazing only in that I kept count.” The other noteworthy achievement is the breadth of experience, and the friends, that running has given him. “For the decades of the 1970s and 1980s,” he says, “I had no claim to fame other than Being There when it all happened, a Forrest Gump of the running boom.” In his various travels Talbot ran with and was befriended by Frank Shorter, Jeff Galloway, Walt Stack and Joan Benoit, and simply ran with, and was soundly trounced by, Bill Rodgers, Hal Higdon and Amby Burfoot, among many others. Interwoven through it all is his love of running writers, especially, he says, “when they are not writing about running. When George Sheehan speaks on Santayana’s philosophy, or Bernd Heinrich writes about sitting in a tree, watching a deer, this is as sublime as it gets.” He also admits that much of the enjoyment of going to races is to trade wits and observations with the likes of Dick Goodie, Denny Morrill, Dale Lincoln or Skip Howard. “Running,” he says, “is lubricant for thought.” Talbot grew up in basketball-mad East Machias, Maine, a seventh-generation Downeaster, and only began running in a formal program at age 15. In his first year of cross country, the Washington Academy Raiders won the state Class S championship, but Deke was forced to the sidelines by a foot infection. From that point on, he was determined to get in the action, win or not, and it was usually not. Talbot lettered in cross-country at Mount Hermon (Mass.) and became cross country captain two years in a row at Bowdoin College, where he participated in a state college championship title and the IC4A Championship race at Van Courtlandt Park in New York his senior year. He quips: “I was not really the captain of a good team, I was an also-ran on great one.” Just before his senior year at Bowdoin, Talbot had the privilege of meeting and running with members of the 1972 Olympic team for a week while the team trained on campus before heading to Munich. “I became very familiar with many of them, especially Frank Shorter and Jeff Galloway,” he noted, “sharing their locker room and the cooler full of Cokes. But pride will have a fall. One day I ventured out on the track with them for a speed workout. I wasn’t counting on the stands being full of spectators. They kept all their speed to themselves, and didn’t share any of it with me.” After graduation from Bowdoin, Talbot went to the University of Maine Law School in Portland, where he was one of the regulars of the Portland road-race circuit along with Ralph Thomas, Bob Hillgrove, Chris Chambers, Ken Flanders, Dick Goodie, Jerry Crommett, Gene Coffin and many others. In the summers he returned Downcast to race against the likes of Rick Krause, Dale Lincoln, Steven Carle, Roger Young, Bill Pike and Mike Francis, staying sharp and humble at the same time. Following graduation from law school, Talbot underwent a series of experiences which sharpened the sense that he had stories to tell. Immediately after taking the bar exam, Deke traveled to a running camp set in the mountains of southwestern Utah, run by Oregon cross county coach Rich Heywood. “It was the ultimate decompression chamber,” he said, “one day I’m sweating in a stuffy Portland apartment, studying for the bar exam, and practically the next day I’m at 10,000 feet, overlooking Cedar Breaks National Monument with a view of 50 miles in any direction!” Following his return to Machias, Talbot entered his father’s law practice where, as he puts it, “It took me about 25 years to realize that I was being paid to write.” In the meantime, he began to write for fun and submit articles first to Rick Krause’s Maine Runner and Rick Bayko’s Yankee Runner, and later for Bob Booker’s Maine Running. The first catalyst was a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Greece to run a race over the Marathon-to-Athens course, which Talbot ran in 2:41:37, finishing in 22nd place and as first American, and rubbing shoulders with the irrepressible Walt Stack. Later, Talbot would take up with the just-as-irrepressible Lawson Noyes, Bill Gayton, Phil Soule, Rock Green and Kim Beaulieu of the Maine Rowdies, and write articles about the footloose, footsore absurdity of the 50-miler. He also gave travelogues about marathons in Boston, Bermuda, Prince Edward Island, and Virginia Beach. Talbot also took a turn at fiction, giving installments in Maine Running about a mythical Downeast runner named Barney Beal in The Shoemaker’s Tale, which earned an honorable mention from Amby Burfoot, editor of Runner’s World. Talbot admitted, though, that “Barney and I just lost touch with each other, and I DNF’d. His story is still out there to be told.” Talbot was one of the stalwart members of the American Cancer Society 24-hour relay run in the Portland Stadium in 1977, along with Joan Benoit, Dick Goodie, Robin Emery, Jim Doane, Bob Scholl and others, and also participated in the Maine Rowdies 400-mile Fort Kent to Kittery relay to benefit the Pineland Center, earning a slot in the coveted “County Rowdy” contingent of the relay for four consecutive years. He also served as president of the Central Maine Striders in 1980. After years of adventure, Deke Talbot married Nancy Manchester and settled in East Machias, where they live with their two children, Ally and Matt, and their pet cockatiel, Kuku. After years of overdistance, Talbot contents himself with five miles of training per week and an occasional 5-K race “in the 20 to 21 minute range.” He reports that he is in “. . . a 15-year rest cycle. I ran a 10-K this spring and met up with Robin Emery, and she was glad to see I wasn’t dead. That’s all part of my plan, to lay low until my kids are in college. Then you 65-and-overs can start worrying about me.” Talbot admits that he doesn’t feel worthy of induction into the Maine Running Hall of Fame, but if there is merit, it will have to be “with the pen, not with the feet.” Deke Talbot’s personal records include:
1,000 yards, 2:28.4, MMA Invitational, Castine, 1972; Mile, 4:37.6,
UMO Invitational, Orono, 1972; 2-mile, 9:49.2, Bowdoin Intrasquad
Meet, Brunswick, 1970; 3 miles, 15:39, AAU Championship, Brunswick,
1973; 5-K, 15:44, Roland Dyer Memorial, Riverside, 1974; 5 miles,
26:06, Portland Boys’ Club, Portland, 1975 (short course); 10-K,
33:15, Roland Dyer Memorial, Riverside, 1975;
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