Dick Beardsley

Dick Beardsley (born March 21, 1956 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American long-distance runner. He was raised in a small farming community just outside of St. Paul, Minnesota. He grew-up on a dairy farm, which was owned by his parents.

He is, currently, the third fastest American born man in the marathon discipline. The world-class marathon competitor of the 1980s was a two-time Olympic qualifier runner and was joint winner of the first London Marathon in 2:11:48 (29 March 1981) together with Inge Simonsen (Norway), in which 7750 athletes took part.

His record time at Grandma's Marathon still stands after more than 25 years. Beardsley placed second on the heels of Alberto Salazar in the 1982 Boston Marathon.

In 1995 he founded the annual Dick Beardsley Half Marathon of Detroit Lakes. The most recent of these events was on September 8, 2007 (Dick Beardsley 1/2 Marathon, 5K Run, 5K Health Walk & Kids 1K). Besides running the roads around the Detroit Lakes or the sugar sand beach, Beardsley is an experienced and accomplished speaker.

Spring of 2007 saw the doors open on the new Dick Beardsley Running Company in Fargo, North Dakota.

Beardsley is one of the subjects of the 2006 book Duel in the Sun by John Brant. His autobiography, Staying the Course, was published in 2002 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Early running

Beardsley's running career began inauspiciously in a tiny farming community west of the Twin Cities. Shy by nature, Dick noticed that one way to break the ice with girls was to wear a high school letterman jacket. He hauled all 130 pounds of himself to the football coach, where he lasted one practice. He changed his focus to running, where he wasn't as likely to be killed, and although enthusiastic, was far from top dog on the cross-country team. However, the coach did let him run enough meets to qualify for a letterman jacket. Beardsley ran in college, but the farming life enticed him and he dropped out after three years to save enough money to get married. Beardsley ran his first marathon in 2:47:14 at the 1977 Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Hurley, Wisconsin. In subsequent marathons, he steadily lowered his times: 2:33:22, 2:33:06, and 2:31:50.

Elite running career

In 1980, seeing that the qualification time for the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon was 2:21:56, a mere 10 minutes faster than his best time, Beardsley entered the Manitoba Marathon in Canada and made the Trials by 2 seconds. At the Trials he ran 2:16:01 for 16th place, continuing a streak of PRs (personal records) that eventually spanned 46 months and 13 marathons. He was so encouraged that he decided to try running full-time for the next four years with the hopes of making the 1984 U.S. marathon team. It was the height of the 1980s running boom, and running shoe companies were looking for the next Bill Rodgers. Beardsley managed to secure backing from New Balance, which signed him for $500 a month and all the shoes he could wear out. Now a professional runner, Beardsley took 10th place at the 1980 Nike/OTC Marathon in Eugene with 2:15:11. Six weeks later he took 9th place at New York with 2:13:55. In January 1981, Beardsley took 2nd place at the Houston Marathon with a 2:12:48 PR and less than a month later took 3rd at Beppu in 2:12:41. Eight weeks later, Beardsley ran the first-ever London Marathon in 2:11:48 (another PR), tying for first place with Norway's Inge Simonson. Three months later, Dick ran what he considers his breakthrough marathon, a 2:09:37 win at Grandma's. In the wake of his successes at London and Grandma's, New Balance doubled his stipend to $1,000 per month. Beardsley was thrilled. His PR spree ended, however, when he took second in the '81 Stockholm Marathon (2:16) and the '82 Houston Marathon (2:12). Then came Boston '82 and Dick's famous "Duel in the Sun" with Alberto Salazar, where he ran 2:08:54 and once again took second - this time by a mere 2 seconds. Two months later he again won Grandma's in 2:14:49, but came out of the race with Achilles tendon problems; the injury persisted and later in the year he managed to take only 30th place at New York with a 2:18:12. Beardsley had the tendon surgically repaired in 1983 and hoped to recover by getting a "bye" into the 1984 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon, but he was turned down. He went into training and reinjured the tendon in a futile attempt to qualify for the Trials at the Los Angeles Marathon in early 1984. The tendon was operated on again, and Beardsley took several years off from competitive marathoning to build his dairy farm and his fishing guide business. But the call of an Olympic team surfaced again in 1986, and Beardsley returned to training, qualifying for the Trials with a 2:16:20 at Napa in March of 1987. The '88 Trials were disappointing (45th place in 2:27:21).

Accident

In November 1989, Beardsley was using an auger on the back of a truck to lift corn into a crib. Somehow he became entangled in the auger and it began to tear him apart. Before he lost consciousness, he managed to stop the machine. "To this day, I still don't remember how I did it," Beardsley recalls. "I busted all the ribs on my right side, my right arm, mangled my left leg, and beat up my head pretty badly. I was crawling on my belly toward the house when my wife found me. I was laid up for five months." Dick recuperated enough to continue working on the farm and even to hobble through an occasional run. Then, in July of 1992 he and his wife, Mary, were blind-sided by another driver, and Beardsley spent 15 days in the hospital with an injured back and neck. In January 1993, while on a run during a snowstorm in Fargo, Beardsley was hit by a truck, which put him back in the hospital for two weeks. A month later, again in a fierce snowstorm, he rolled his Bronco "a bunch of times." Again, Beardsley injured his back and neck. In January 1994, Beardsley underwent his first back operation. He was operated on again in March to remove some of the hardware the surgeons had installed and then had a third back operation in October. A year later he had knee surgery.

Addiction and recovery

With each hospital stay, Beardsley was prescribed pain medications. As his tolerance to the medications increased, he was prescribed more and more pain pills. He suffered a litany of disasters and he persevered, but at a price. "I knew I was addicted," Beardsley recalls. "But at the same time I was in denial." Then he received a call from his father, whom he learned was dying of pancreatic cancer. It was too much for Beardsley to handle. He wanted to visit his father, but he was low on his prescription pain medication and his doctor was out of town. He had a prescription in his wallet so he doctored it, photocopied it, and forged a signature, photocopied it again and forged a signature. By the end of the day Beardsley had collected pain pills from nearly a half-dozen pharmacies. "At the end of the day I had 240 pills," he said. He suffered his father's death while his addiction spun out of control. "My whole world revolved around pain medication," he told the journalist Paul Kenney in 1997. Then, on September 30, 1996, he was caught. "It saved my life," Beardsley recalls. "Getting caught put the brakes on my downward spiral." After nine days in a Fargo psychiatric unit, prescribed methadone, outpatient treatment, going cold turkey on the methadone, and more outpatient treatment, Beardsley emerged in June 1997 free of drugs.

Current running

Since that fateful time in 1996, Beardsley has turned his life around. In spite of a series of accidents that would have put a mere mortal into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Beardsley has managed to restart his running program. He jogged the 2000 Napa Valley Marathon in 3:23:05, and he trained in 2001 to try to break 3:00 at Grandma's to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his breakthrough performance there. He succeeded, running a fine 2:55:39. Dick called this Grandma's his "biggest triumph." Today, Beardsley is enjoying his running more than ever. He completed five marathons in both 2002 and 2003. He also returned to Boston to run in 2002, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his "Duel in the Sun" with Alberto Salazar. In March 2004, Beardsley ran a 2:43:58 at Napa, his best times since before his farm accident. Beardsley is also once again a member of Team New Balance. Dick continues to work as compelling speaker at races, schools, corporations, and non-profits all over North America. In 2002, the University of Minnesota Press published his autobiography, Staying the Course. In 2002, Dick also received the Minnesota Meeting & Events Assoc. "Best Speaker Award." His ventures include a marathon running camp, held each September at Rainbow Resort in Waubun, MN. Spring of 2007 saw the doors open on the new Dick Beardsley Running Company in Fargo, North Dakota.

Beardsley's Foundation

The Foundation educates people about the benefits of living an active and healthy lifestyle. Initially the Foundation focuses its efforts on children and young adults. It will reach these people by having speakers visit schools. As child obesity is becoming a larger problem, the Foundation believes it is important to educate children at an early age about the benefits of exercising. The Foundation's speakers will take under consideration the fact that different children have different needs and opportunities, but intends to focus a great deal of its resources and expertise on the benefits of running and being outdoors.

The Foundation will also have speakers visit schools and companies to educate people, both children and adults, about the danger of using drugs. Dick Beardsley will use his own life experiences as an example of how easy it can be to become addicted to drugs, and how hard it can be to get out of such addiction.

The Foundation's goal when having speakers speaking about chemical dependency is two tier. First, the Foundation wants to educate people about the warning signs of chemical dependency, the different ways a person can treat his or her chemical dependency, and how a person may receive help. The Foundation's speakers will focus on real life experience and examples to make the education easy to absorb. Second, the Foundation wants to start a dialog, to make people more comfortable and less afraid to discuss the subject matter of chemical abuse. The Foundation believes that once people are able to more openly talk about the problem of chemical abuse, it will be easier to deal with the problem and work towards curing people.

External links

• Personal website
• Dick Beardsley Foundation
• Dick Beardsley Running Company
• Beardsley Runs (Detroit Lakes, Minnesota)