I saw Bud Deacon for the first time on the outdoor track at UNC in the sweltering heat and humidity of a late August day in Chapel Hill. It was the early 1980s, when he was in his late 60s, and he seemed to be lapping most everyone.
I had begun competing in 10K runs, training by doing cross-country runs and, occasionally running on the oval track. I ran a little that day, maybe a half mile, then slowed to a stop and caught my breath.
But this sleek and muscular man just kept on. Ever the journalist even before I got paid for it, I was determined to find out not only how this sinewy, older man did it, but why. So I got into a jog with him as he slowed down nearing the end of his run. As we walked a lap, I began gathering his story.
He was a Master athlete: In such competition, athletes, beginning at age 40, compete in five-year age groups. In the summer of 1980, Deacon had competed in the North American Masters Track and Field Championship. “In the thin dry air of Mexico City, I ran and won the 440, 880 and 1500 meters,” he told me in the impromptu interview on the track. “In the 440, you suffer all the way, but it’s a short distance and you see what you can do.
“In the 880, you’re afraid you are going to die, and in the 1500 meters, you’re afraid you won’t.”
He admitted to being record-conscious, but he said his greatest pride in the Masters is that he competed in all categories: sprint, hurdle and vault, track and field events. He confessed to some Olympic frustrations; he missed qualifying as a pole vaulter in 1932 and 1936, and in 1940, he qualified for the Games, but they were cancelled during wartime.
Did he compete for glory (medals), for health or for both?
“Naturally, you want to better your personal marks and beat the competition,” he told me. “But those who don’t do distance are glory-seeking. A discus thrower or shot putter is just going after the medals, if he doesn’t also run some distance.”
He told me a simple diet of whole grains, fruits and vegetables plus a rigorous training regimen had worked for him: 330 and 440 intervals for two days, followed by a less rigorous day of running. He’d vault, high jump and do hurdles three times a week. He learned that running long distances of five to eight miles early in the six-month competition season promoted endurance later on. That coupled wth 440-interval training conditioned him to compete in those two-day Masters events.
“In the meets, 90 percent of participants never win, but that’s not important,” he said. “If a person breaks his own record, he feels better than the guy who just coasts around the track.”
Competition isn’t essential to aerobic training, Deacon said. “People who run three miles two or three times a week and push a little to feel it accomplish adequate exercise for the cardiovascular system,” he said. “By pushing it a little, they can stay just as healthy as those who exert more. … I’m proof that anybody can do that.”
And the off-season? Don’t ask Mrs. Deacon. She watched as he tore up the front yard of their Oregon ranch home, creating a sawdust pit for broad jump and high jump practice. He fashioned a makeshift track in his barn for sprinting, hurdling and vaulting, even when outdoor training in winter was out of the question. When he wasn’t training, he’d go for a walk in a nearby pasture; within minutes a small herd of llamas would surround him. He raised them, admiring them for their hardiness.
Mrs. Deacon said in an interview for a national publication that her husband had nothing left to prove to her; nothing could match the incident in Honolulu shortly after he began running at 60. A man had snatched her purse and took off. “Bud took off after him through traffic,” she said. “He caught the man within about 300 yards and got my purse back. That meant more to me than all of Bud’s medals and records.”
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