DON KARDONG – RRCA PRESIDENT (1996-2000) How did you begin running? I started running due to the collusion of my
high school basketball and cross country coaches. Up until my sophomore year, my sport of choice was basketball. In the fall of 1964, though, I ran a pretty good two-mile in PE class. The PE instructor, Larry Eason, was also the cross country coach, and he asked the basketball coach to persuade me to run cross country — although I didn’t figure out that they had conspired until about 20 years later. All I knew was that the basketball coach approached me one day and asked what I was doing to get in shape for basketball. “I don’t know,” I responded. “What should I be doing?” “How about turning out for cross county,” he said. The rest is history, and so was my basketball career.
Who provided “inspiration” for your running? I don’t remember when I
first watched Billy Mills win the Olympic 10,000, but I realized later that the way he won that race was forever etched in my mind. He was an inspiration then, and he still is. There were other great runners of that era that I admired, like Gerry Lindgren, Jim Ryun, Peter Snell, Bob Schul. And for the marathon, it was Abebe Bikila. When I watched him win in Rome running barefoot, I was amazed. After I had run the marathon myself, I was simply incredulous that Bikila had be able to do it barefoot. And his demeanor, too, was inspiring. His style was smooth, effortless, regal.
How did you become involved in the RRCA? I helped start the Lilac
Bloomsday Run in 1977, and at that time I don’t think I had ever heard of the RRCA. But the next year we got into a big sanctioning dispute with our local AAU, and I started calling around for help. Everybody I talked to sent me to the same place—the RRCA, and specifically RRCA president Jeff Darman. Jeff was a pit bull when it came to fighting the athletic establishment, and he gave us advice that really put the AAU back on their heels. The AAU had insisted that they sanction our event and that participants all had to buy AAU cards. But they also had a clause in their bylaws that said that if everyone in an event was a member of the same club, sanctioning wasn’t required. So Jeff suggested we let all 5,000 runners in the 1978 Lilac Bloomsday Run be members of the new Bloomsday Road Runners Club. Jeff’s support helped make me a dedicated RRCA person. Jeff and the RRCA continued to fight for athletes’ rights in the years that followed, and I was glad to join the fray.
What were the biggest challenges facing American running & the RRCA then, particularly “grass roots” running? In those days most of the big challenges facing grass roots running in the U.S. were organizational. Events
were all doubling in size from one year to the next, and no one anywhere had any experience dealing with races with thousands of runners. How do you register, manage, and time them all? At the same time events were moving into downtown areas, so the challenge was to provide a safe experience while still doing all the things runners expected. It was really challenging, but also an extremely exciting time for running, which suddenly moved to the forefront of popular culture.
How big (# of clubs/members) was the RRCA when you were President? When I started there were just under 600 clubs and 150,000 members. At the end of my four-year tenure, we had 670 clubs and 190,000 individual members.
Who provided guidance to your Presidency? Well, certainly the Board and National Office. In addition, I always
relied on RRCA stalwarts like Jeff Darman and Phil Stewart for advice. And Carl Sniffen, who preceded me as president, was exceptionally good at the job. I always felt I could get good advice from him.
What do you believe were the biggest accomplishments during your tenure? The accomplishments during
my tenure were due to a lot of hard work by a lot of people, including volunteers and staff. The number of clubs and individual members grew significantly. Use of the website for both marketing and communications increased, and the coaching certification program was introduced. We launched National Run to Work Day, redesigned FootNotes, updated and reprinted the RRCA Handbook, reinstituted the children’s running grants for member clubs, and expanded the Roads Scholar Program. We also developed partnerships with Avon Running, Active.com and Frank Shorter Sports. I also think we responded well to budgetary challenges due to loss of funding from USATF and the substantial increase in the premium we paid for liability insurance.
Do you have any “words of wisdom” for its current leadership? The RRCA went through a rough period a few years
ago, but I think the current leadership has made great strides in re-organizing and re-invigorating the organization. My advice is to continue that effort, and continue to try to position the RRCA as the spokesperson (if an organization can be a “person”) for grass roots running in the United States. The other thing I’d encourage is that leaders always try to keep things fun. That’s not easy, because the RRCA has to operate as a business and handle sometimes contentious issues. But at the end of the day, those helping keep the RRCA going have to feel that, no matter how hard they’re working, that the underlying mission is important and that it’s fun and rewarding advancing that mission.
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