The Run That Started Everything
Ted didn’t set out to become an endurance athlete. It began almost by accident.
He and Vivian were guests at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, visiting their friend Dr. Michael Cherington. After breakfast one morning, Ted and Michael decided to jog around the hotel’s lake — three quarters of a mile, a pleasant loop, nothing serious.
They felt good.
So they went around again.
And again.
And again.
Michael finally stopped. Ted kept going.
After seven laps, Ted stopped too — not exhausted, but exhilarated. Something had awakened. The next morning his feet were throbbing. He’d run the whole thing in tennis shoes. That pain led to a small but symbolic purchase: Ted bought his first real pair of running shoes.
He had no idea how far those shoes would take him.
The First Marathons — 1979 & 1980
Not long after, several attorneys in Ted’s law office — including his partner Don Lozow — began training for the Denver Marathon. Ted joined them.
His first 26.2 miles lit a fire. He loved the distance, the grind, the test of will. Soon he was chasing improvement. In his next marathon, determined to go faster, he cut back on drinking fluids, taking only occasional sips of water.
Late in the race, Dr. Marvin Schwartz saw Ted weaving down the course and tried to pull him out.
Ted, mild-mannered and gentle — a man who hadn’t been in a fight since he was eight years old — swung at the well-meaning doctor and kept going.
He finished.
Moments later, he was rushed to Denver General Hospital, severely dehydrated and hooked up to an IV.
Lesson learned: drink more — and add electrolytes.
Fifty Miles Around Chicago — 1981
Once a marathon no longer seemed impossible, Ted looked for something bigger.
He found it: a fifty-mile run circling Lake Michigan in Chicago.
He trained for weeks. A friend volunteered to fly in and support him on a used bicycle during the race. On race morning, Ted was ready — the friend was not. Traffic had delayed him. Not willing to be late, Ted took a taxi to the start.
Vivian and their twelve-year-old daughter Elizabeth waited for the friend and the bicycle. Eventually, all three helpers arrived at the lake.
But Ted had already begun — and he was not in a good mood.
The rising sun blazed off the water, so bright it made his sensitive eyes stream. His sunglasses were in Vivian’s car. Normally kind and even-tempered, Ted was furious — at the late friend, at the missing sunglasses, at the whole situation.
He ran fueled by frustration.
Morning chill gave way to warmth; Ted shed layers, later donated to shelters. Then the weather turned again — rain poured down. Vivian’s challenge became keeping Elizabeth dry. When the sun returned, she hung her daughter’s socks on tree branches to dry.
Ted kept running, powered by what Vivian later called “angry energy.”
At the finish, reporters wrapped him in a blanket for interviews. By the next day, Ted and Vivian were speaking again. But Vivian noticed a pattern in later races: the intense, self-imposed pressure Ted carried into events often showed up physically. She gave it a name:
PRS — Pre-Race Syndrome.
The 24-Hour Run — 1983
In June 1983, Ted entered a 24-hour race organized by Sri Chinmoy at Shea Stadium in New York.
The heat and humidity hovered near 100 degrees. To stay cool, Ted grabbed handfuls of ice each time he passed the aid station. He stuffed ice under his hat and clutched it in his hand, tossing the melted chunks away near the end of each mile.
After 75 miles, his right shoulder went numb. The sensation crept down his arm into his hand.
Doctors feared a stroke and pulled him from the race.
Back in Denver, Dr. Michael Cherington — the same friend from that first lake run — diagnosed the real cause: frostbite. Ted had damaged his ulnar nerve from gripping ice for hours on end.
It took six months, but feeling and movement returned. The nerve healed. Dr. Cherington later wrote up Ted’s case for a neurological journal, noting the irony: frostbite… in 100-degree heat.
Back Home
After the ordeal, Ted’s cousin Ron Gutmann drove him to the airport. Ted flew home to Denver and slipped into a family celebration just in time for his father-in-law Herman Sheldon’s birthday party — as if running for 24 hours straight were just another item on the calendar.
For Ted, in a way, it was.
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