My friend Jim Grelle lived one segment of his life as an international celebrity who could run one mile faster than all but three or four other young men on planet Earth. At one time he held the world record for breaking four minutes in the mile more times than any other runner. He was not only swift of foot but swift with spotting what was funny in this field of dreams we all share.
While in college he often raced in shoes his coach Bill Bowerman had constructed, searching for a perfect blend of lightness and durability. Bowerman's experimental creations would never win a blue ribbon for sleek beauty and in fact some of them were laughingly ugly with odd ends of material sticking out and glue smears leaving strange birthmarks. Once in a race the runner next to Jim at the starting line looked down at jim's shoes and said to him, "What the (expletive) are those things?" "Those things," Jim replied, "are what will get me back here before you do."
Jim's racing years were the adventures we lesser mortals fantasize about. Performing before thousands in cities around the world. He and his Oregon teammate Bill Dellinger were entered in a meet in Rio de Janeiro and the day after their events they went to the beach before their evening flight home. As will happen on a sunny beach in Rio the two athletes encountered the girls from Ipanema who invited them to chat and in the course of the afternoon one of the girls asked the boys which of them was fastest. Both claimed that honor and so the girls said there must be a race to determine the truth. One of them drew a line in the sand and said they should race to the water where the first runner in would be declared champion.
One of the girls had a scarf with which she started the race and off they went. Now these two Olympians raced all over the world for fan approval (and some discreet folding currency), but this was for the approval of the girls from Ipanema. As they neared the water Dellinger saw Grelle was a step ahead and he made a mighty leap for the water. Don't look. His speed propelled him skidding stomach-first on the wet, hard packed sand, well short of the water, and it removed skin.
End of the sand castle with the girls from Ipanema. All the way home on the airplane, Dellinger rode with both hands pulling his shirt away from his body. Grelle's compassionate commiseration didn't help the second placer.
