Jack Foster

Photos courtesy of Tim Chamberlain 

Jack (John Charles) Foster was 32-years-old when he went for his first run. He became one of the world’s best marathon runners in a vintage era and a global legend in the history of masters running. He twice broke the New Zealand marathon record, set a world track record for 20 miles, was twice an Olympian and gained the highest ever New Zealand place (second) in the Commonwealth Games men’s marathon. At 38, he placed third in the Fukuoka Marathon (effectively the world championship at that time), at 40 he was eighth in the Olympics, at 41 he ran a 2:11:18 world over-40 masters record that lasted for sixteen years, at 42 he won Los Angeles, and Honolulu at 43, and at 50 he ran yet another extraordinary world age-group record with 2:20:28. 

Universally liked for his modesty, pragmatic wisdom and quiet good humour, Foster retained a childlike exhilaration in his running that is captured in the short documentary ‘On the Run’, essential viewing for anyone reading this profile (nzonscreen.com/title/on-the-run-1979). That zest was also the theme of a profile by Wayne Munro, ‘A Kid at Heart’ (‘New Zealand Runner’, November 1982), which makes telling use of Foster’s race diaries and off-the-cuff comments.

The freedom of being a runner in New Zealand brought Foster such great joy because it was such an escape from his dour early years in England. Born in working class Liverpool, his childhood coincided with the Depression and World War Two, in an industrial city that was black with the soot of coal fires, suffered the worst bombing outside London and was darkened further by his father’s death from tuberculosis when Foster was seven, just before the war began. His mother also contracted the illness but recovered. With no father to bring income, the war and post-year wars were impoverished and hungry. 

Considered “delicate” and slow to mature, Foster was forbidden to play football or do anything vigorous and, with a sick mother as his only parent, spent much of his childhood alone. As a result, he developed a self-reliance, “enjoying being on my own”, that served him well when he became a long-distance runner. He left school at 14 with no qualifications, yet intelligent and literate enough to later write one of the most engaging short books in running literature, the pithy ‘Tale of the Ancient Marathoner’ (‘Runner’s World’, California, 1974).

For ten years, Foster endured the grim life of a Liverpool factory worker (a tobacco manufactory), finding weekend relief from that dreary confinement when he discovered cycling and began to escape into rural Wales or the Lake District. These were no joy rides, however, as Foster’s biking friends took pride in being “hard men”, riding with “no quarter”, and, if one punctured, simply dumping him and riding on. “We drifted into racing,” Foster wrote, mainly time-trials. He trained hard for eight years. While he described his results as “mediocre”, those rigorous all-day rides, and the intense training for the time-trials, built leg muscle power, cardio-respiratory capacity and overall endurance that were good preparation for running, while sparing his legs from too much teenage pounding.

At 24, in 1956, Foster made the life-changing decision to emigrate to New Zealand, under the “ten pounds migrant” scheme that brought in many talented, though formally unqualified, people. He found clean air, open spaces and a society with less class prejudice or materialistic pressure. He worked in forestry, as a hospital orderly, and as a blacksmith’s mate. And he kept cycling, including a 3,000km trip from Sydney to Adelaide. He went back to England in 1958, to see his mother and marry his long-term girlfriend Belle. Finding that “Britain hadn’t changed a scrap” for the working man, they sailed to New Zealand in 1959, and he became an office worker with the Ministry of Works in Rotorua. They began a family, he gave up cycling, put on some weight and, one day in 1964 at 32, when the family was out for a picnic, he had (in his own words) “the bright idea that I’d have a run”. He returned leg-weary and soaked in sweat to be told by Belle that he had been gone for only seven minutes.

That (according to Jack) was the beginning. A man of deep determination beneath the droll humour, he jogged for 20 minutes every second day on the Springfield golf course and, when he bumped into some local harriers, he found that he could stay with them. He first joined a club pack run in April 1965. He liked “the mad gallops over the hills which cross-country provided” and, in his occasional races, found that “I was still very competitive. A hangover from my cycling days perhaps”. Yet he always denied having the “killer instinct” and ran, he said, for the sense of personal fulfilment and excellence, preferring to be third or fourth in a personal best time rather than win in a slow one. The classic statement of Foster’s competitive attitude was, “To win against me, they had to be prepared to run their tripes out, because I was going to run my tripes out”. (Tripe is cow stomach and was a popular cheap food in working class northern England.)

After two years of increasing commitment to his new sport, mainly in cross country, Foster entered the 1966 Rotorua Marathon. In its second year, it was still a small and mainly local event. He ran far better than he expected, finishing second in 2:27:50 to John Robinson (Tokoroa), with Terry Manners (Napier) third. (Eight years later those three would all place in the top ten as New Zealand’s marathon team in the Commonwealth Games.) He placed ninth in his first New Zealand marathon championship (1967, 2:34:51) and in 1969 brought his best down to 2:23:11, second again at Rotorua. That earned a trip to Toronto for the 1969 Canadian National Exhibition Marathon, where he placed fourth in 2:19:02.

A win at Rotorua in 1970, and second in the New Zealand championship, gave Foster his first major national selection, to the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. In a stellar field and historic race, Foster proved his elite big-race capability by placing fourth in 2:14:44. He had a calm and deep resolve in times of stress that probably went back to his lonely wartime childhood. In little over a year, he then won the Canadian National Exhibition Marathon, placed fourth at the 1970 Fukuoka in a New Zealand record 2:12:17, was third at Athens and third at the 1971 Fukuoka. Also in 1971, he broke the world record for 20 miles on the track, with 1:39:15, setting New Zealand records for 25,000m and 30,000m on the way. Winning Rotorua for the second time, in 1972 with a course record 2:17:51, was one of his best days. “It was excellent conditions for running. I went to the front from the beginning and just ran and ran,” Foster said, quoted in Simon Earle’s ‘Round the Lake: The Story of the Rotorua Marathon’ (2014). He won by 13 minutes. His time has been bettered only three times since 1972. It sealed his selection for the Munich Olympic marathon.

‘An Olympian at 40’ is the opening chapter of Foster’s ‘Tale of the Ancient Marathoner’, a gripping account of the pleasure at racing “on almost even terms with runners little more than half my age”, mixed with the misery of a hot and humid day.  Many great runners failed. Foster stayed with the leaders until Frank Shorter made his decisive move after 16km and then, in words from his own narrative, he laboured, flogged and thumped along, nevertheless moving through to sixth as the stadium came in sight. “But I was knackered. Every stride was a huge effort. Ron Hill and Don McGregor were sweeping past.” Foster finished eighth in 2:16:51. Only Barry Magee and Mike Ryan (both third) have placed higher for New Zealand in the men’s Olympic marathon. It’s not quite the best male Olympic placing by a 40-plus-year-old as Mamo Wolde (Ethiopia), who was third that day, was only one month younger than Foster and Eusebio Guiñez of Argentina placed fifth in 1948 at age 41.  

Foster thought at that point that his Fukuoka 2:12 was his ultimate, that Munich was his last big chance. “But somehow it just never stopped,” he told Munro for ‘New Zealand Runner’ eight years later. Foster won Kyoto and Rotorua in 1973 and, at the end of that year, placed second to John Robinson in the New Zealand championship, earning selection for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. That was the day that confirmed his legendary status. At 41, in a field that included both claimants to the world record, Ron Hill and Derek Clayton, and the world’s 1973 fastest, John Farrington and, in a race that was won by Ian Thompson in arguably a new world record, Foster was a convincing second in 2:11:18.6. When Thompson pushed, “I hung on longest and finished second, no real bad patch this time”, is his unvarnished diary entry. In ‘Tale of the Ancient Marathoner’, his narrative gives a lot of credit to the supportive crowds, “eight or ten deep, and they closed in as I ran past…they cheered wildly…Nothing I experience will ever be quite the same again”. His time beat his own world masters record (his Kyoto 2:14:53) by more than three minutes, and was nine minutes faster than any other 40-plus-year-old had ever run at that date. No wonder it made him a legend. His name was adored by a generation of older runners around the world.

He had no intention of resting on that status. He won the Los Angeles Times marathon in mid-1974 but always said that he had no real love for the marathon. It was cross country he loved best. For three years, he drove down to Wellington to win the unglamorous 20 Mile Gold Cup, including setting an out-of-sight 1:46 course record in The Year of the Big Mud. He forced himself to be a clean-over hurdler in order to beat Bryan Rose (who had an International Cross Country bronze medal in his drawer) in the 1973 Skellerup Steeples in Christchurch. He ran track, too. He turned out in the 1975 New Zealand Masters 10,000m championships in Christchurch, as warm-up for the same event in the New Zealand Games, and ran an extraordinary 29:35.6, which is still the New Zealand M40 record.

Foster’s 1975 cross country year started by contributing to New Zealand’s historic team victory in the World Championships in Morocco (36^th) and ended with third at nationals. He wrapped up that year by becoming the first non-American to win the Honolulu Marathon, with a course record 2:17:24.  He started 1976 equally well, with a commanding win in the Auckland Marathon (2:16:27), but the Montreal Olympics were his greatest disappointment. He had done the best training of his life and was among the leaders past 5km but at 44 he no longer had 2:11 speed. “I felt like crying. My legs were giving me hell,” he wrote in his diary (quoted by Munro). He finished 17^th in 2:17:53.4. That trip meant he missed the Cross Country Nationals but he secured his place in the 1977 World Championships team by winning the New Zealand road championships in October 1976. In Germany, he had his best World Cross, finishing 33^rd as second New Zealander, behind only Euan Robertson.

The last of Foster’s 13 victories at the marathon distance, in 1978, came almost unnoticed, in remote Whyalla in South Australia. In blazing heat, “Foster amazed officials by submerging himself in a 44-gallon drum of water before pressing on,” wrote Simon Earle in his Rotorua Marathon history. By contrast, Foster’s next marathon was in front of the frenzied crowds and global media of New York City, where he placed sixth in 2:17:28. That remained the race’s masters record and best placing by a 40-plus, until John Campbell (New Zealand) surpassed it in 1990 (fifth in 2:14:34). Between those two marathons, the versatile Foster ran second in the 1978 New Zealand Cross Country, on Tauranga race course, repeating at 46 the best placing he had gained ten years earlier.

He had one more chapter to add to the Foster legend. A week after his 50th birthday in May 1982, he broke the world M50 marathon record by two minutes, with 2:20:28, in Auckland. That record stood for nine years. With characteristic self-deprecation, Foster regretted missing his target of 2:20. He ran the last of his 42 marathons by winning the masters division at Honolulu in December 1982.

One of the few things Foster did not succeed at was the life of a high-profile celebrity. When Nike lured him to America in 1979 to be paraded as a commercial spokesperson, he hated the adulation and pressure to please admirers, and he found the acclaimed Pre’s Trail in Eugene, Oregon, less than interesting. “There’s bugger-all of it. It’s about two miles long. Very pleasant. But my running’s really wilderness stuff,” he told Munro. He dreamed about his favourite high ridge of farm and bush southwest of Rotorua. Living off his fame in America was almost as restrictive to Foster’s independent spirit as the Liverpool factory. After four months, he resumed his quiet life in Rotorua, training as he always did “over very hilly country”, and enjoying time with his secret passion, a little red MG sports car that he used to drive to the Whakarewarewa Redwoods Forest for training.

He had to stop running in his mid-fifties because of recurrent calf muscle problems and some disturbance to what he called “the old ticker”, so he got back on his beloved bike for his happy and fully-fit later years. He had always done at least one day a week on the bike, for what later became known as cross-training, simply because he loved to ride, and ride hard. He rode unheralded (and of course won) in New Zealand time-trial championships, commenting after one such occasion, in the Wairarapa, “This is what I like – a hard race and a cup o’ tea with a few mates”. He loved a simple life, yet with his own home, sports car and seven or eight racing bikes in the garage, Foster was living at a level he could not even have dreamed of in Ogden’s tobacco factory in 1950. After retirement from work, with their four children now adult, he and Belle pulled out the tandem and spent two years touring New Zealand.

Foster died on his bike, when he was struck by a car in June 2004, at age 72. He was honoured by international tributes, and an obituary in the American ‘Running Times’ and ‘Runner’s World’. His joy in the freedom of running, his preference to see it simply as “going for a run”, and rejecting formal training systems, struck a chord for a generation. American running writer Joe Henderson, for instance, confessed that he had copied and quoted Foster’s philosophy more times than he could count.

That philosophy was simple and appealing. Foster’s guide to post-race recovery was “Take one easy day for every mile of the race”. Foster on injuries was “If it hurts, don’t run on it”. On the mental stress of being injured, “Think about something else”. On hosing his legs with cold water after every run (long before people discovered ice baths), Foster commented, “If it’s good for race horses, I reckon it’s good for me”. On the psychological uplift from running, “I like the feeling after a run – feeling the glow. Sometimes the glow was a whole fire”. And Foster on the motivation for being a runner was, “I think a really fit person does have a higher-quality life…and gets more for his time here than the unfit, half-alive person. So maybe that is a reason for having a run and a race”.

Written by Roger Robinson