IT WAS A BUTTE OF A RACE
By Janet Heinonen

So you think the Donald Street hill is bad?

Well, you should have been around for the forerunner of the Butte to Butte. Now that was really a BUTTE.

As you gasp the rarified air midway up Donald Street, and peer ahead anxiously for the one-mile mark and the promise of a free-wheeling run down Fox Hollow, consider for a moment a run UP Spencer Butte. That’s where this whole Fourth of July road run business started. This year’s Butte to Butte race marks the twenty-nineth running of the annual event, but the race might be better classified as "Son of Storm the Butte."

"Storm the Butte," the brainchild of two Eugene runners, Geoff Hollister and Tom Ratliffe, was short-lived. Blaine Newnham, formerly of The Register-Guard described that 1973 race as "having no route, only a destination." The run up Spencer Butte was estimated at one mile with a vertical rise of 900 feet. Newnham pointed out that by comparison, the vertical rise on the main ski run at Mt. Bachelor is 1200 feet. "The winner will be mountain climber, runner and crazy," he predicted. Hollister and Ratliffe expected about a hundred rash souls to show up for the race. Instead, 423 registered, causing something of a traffic jam at the top.

Bud Withers of The Register-Guard wrote that the "idea was to traverse the treachery that leads up the front side of the Butte, get stamped at the top, then clamber down the back side as fast as possible. For the hardy, or foolhardy, there was the alternative of attacking the thing vertically."

Lines formed on top of the Butte (where runners could enjoy a scenic view of the Willamette Valley while coming to a halt at the halfway point of the race.) The first one to make the descent back to the parking lot at the base of the Butte was Bruce Kime, newly graduated form Churchill High School. He was given an estimated time of 15:00 minutes.

One of the runners he beat to the finish was Olympian Kenny Moore who remembers leisurely running up the Butte and suddenly realizing poison oak was brushing against his legs. When Moore reached the base of the Butte, he kept on running, jumped in his car and headed to his parents’ house and "soaped in the shower for half an hour." "I was madder than hell at Hollister," says Moore of his good friend and former University of Oregon track teammate. "And there were legitimate environmental complaints about the race too." Local citizens weren’t enormously pleased with the idea of 400 crazed runners storming up and down the serene Butte. With environment in mind, "Storm the Butte" quickly became a "first and last annual" race. The next year, a new race was founded and it became the first running of the popular "Butte to Butte."

Now you think your quads hurt after you barrel down Fox Hollow in an effort to make up for the snail’s-pace first mile up Donald? Well, you should have been there for the first two miles of Butte to Butte in ’74. That downhill was a real screamer. For some reason, Moore returned in 1974 to test Hollister’s new brainchild. ("We were so naïve in those days," says Moore of the running population.) This time the course started at Spencer Butte Park, shot two miles downhill on Willamette Street, then followed flat Pearl and High Streets into Skinner Butte Park for the finish. Tom Heinonen remembers measuring the course, by then 10-Kilometers: "The first mile was so steep and roughly graveled that I feared for my life riding a bike down it (to measure it). It wasn’t possible to get a very accurate measurement with the calibrated revolution counter, that first mile must have been very short."

Heinonen was with the lead group when the runner passed the mile mark. "The timer called out ‘4:51’ and that seemed awfully slow. Later it turned out that his clock had read 3:51 but he didn’t believe it, so he added a minute," said Heinonen.

"It was downhill from the start and it was an incredible noise we made pounding," recalls Moore, who that year had been tagged the race favorite among the 250 runners. Known as the consummate downhill racer, he felt obligated to live up to his reputation.: "I warmed up on top, ‘thinking if I can run in control downhill, that’s my only chance against (Mike) Manley,’ who was obviously more fit, having just been first or second in the AAU steeplechase that year. If I had a strength, I had to use it."

The lanky two-time Olympic marathoner passed the two-mile post halfway down the Willamette Street hill, opposite the Sunset Hill Cemetery, in the improbable time of 8:15. "I had no choice. We either braked or rolled. I rolled", said Moore.

"Coming off the hills I had maybe a 15-second lead; I was out free and clear. I wobbled across town…it was such a relief not to run downhill. I looked back (at Manley) and he probably would have caught me but he had an upset stomach."

Moore reached the finish line in an impressive 28:32, then "paid dearly" for his efforts.

He wasn’t alone. The torturous downhill mile had taken its toll. "The next day I couldn’t run. I was out for six weeks at least, with a strain or tear of my diaphragm. I couldn’t breath properly until it healed."

Sore quads, bruised toes, black toenail and shooting shoulder pains plagued the road racing community for days and weeks after the first running of the Butte to Butte. One of the lead runners, Russ Pate, was married a few days after the race. Many of the guests and members of the wedding party also had run the race and there were more than a few who had to walk backwards down the stairs in the church.

Moore summarized the race: "It was bucolic, but inhumane."

Trying to find a less torturous route, Hollister made some major changes in the 1975 Butte to Butte. The race started at Spencer Butte Junior High this time and featured a hard climb up Donald Street between 39^th and 37^th. Paul Geis, who would make the U.S. Olympic team the next summer was tops in the field of 300-plus, winning in 30:25.

The ’75 course eventually gave way to the course you will run this year. By 1977 the field had increased to 1,000 runners. The race was an evening event in these early years, with tardy finishers arriving in time to see the fireworks at nearby Autzen Stadum. Thunder and lightning, as well as fireworks, marked the finish one year.

The switch to a morning start time was practical in that it helped avoid the traffic jams that surround Autzen for the fireworks show. However, many runners found themselves rather inconvenienced when a Southern Pacific freight train barged through the race course at Fifth and High Street, less than a half-mile from the finish. Runners piled up as the railroad guard gate came down. Some didn’t wait for it to rise again as they dashed across the tracks after the train passed. The pack behind became a madhouse of would-be sprinters, trying to make up for lost time.

These problems seem to have sorted themselves out, and with a field of 3,000 or more expected for this year’s Butte to Butte, the biggest problem for most of us will be getting across the starting line in one piece. From then on it’s a tough climb up Donald, a relaxed cruise down Fox Hollow, then an evenly paced run down Hilyard and High to the finish…Unless a fire truck tries to enter the finish chutes at the same time as the lead runners, as happened in 1982.

Some day, everything will go right. Now the course is certified as an accurate 10 kilometer distance and the finish line is one of the best operated around the country.

But Kenny Moore will continue to blame Geoff Hollister for the wonderful, eccentric race.

"Butte to Butte in the beginning was deeply flawed. It took far too long to experiment itself into shape. I blame Hollister and I’ve always blamed him, for taking too long to get it right," chuckles Moore. But what a race!!!!

Flaws and all, the Butte to Butte is well-loved and is run by Eugene’s people who make it a popular race.