An Interview with

Tom Bulger

By Jack Rightmyer

A year ago, when everything shutdown because of the pandemic, Tom Bulger, a retired Professor of English from Siena College, found he suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. 

“I started writing again, and I went back and began looking through some of my old articles I had written for The Pace Setter, the magazine for the Hudson-Mohawk Road Runners Club. Some of the articles were pretty good, and it reminded me of some old running friends and old races I had run back in the 80s and 90s. It was like reliving the golden age of distance running in our area and in the country itself.”

He decided to collect many of these old stories and a few more he had recently written into a book titled “A Runner’s Memories, Dreams and Reflections.” (Troy Book Makers), which can be found in most area bookstores.

Tom came to running late in 1980 when he was 28 years old. Up to that point he had played basketball every day since his Catholic Central High School days. As a graduate student at the University of Rochester he tore his rotator cuff. “My doctor said the only exercise I could do was run. I always liked to run. My basketball hero was John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics, and he was always running during games. That’s the way I tried to play, and at Rochester the players used to call me ‘The Runner.’”

He had run the Troy Turkey Trot a few times during his basketball days, but he had never done any serious training for it. “I still remember my first race there. I had no idea what I was doing. I ran in Converse sneakers, basketball shorts and a sweatshirt, but it was fun to be around so many runners. I grew up in Troy so I knew a lot of people running that day.”

Now that he could no longer play basketball, he began running every day. “I instinctively knew this was a positive thing for me. It was a stressful time in my life because I was writing my dissertation, and my advisors at Rochester were being very difficult. I could feel myself at times getting very depressed, but the running kept me going.”

Another problem was that he had no idea how to train. “Every day I would run six miles as fast as I could. One day Lee Wilcox, who worked at RPI at the time, caught up to me on a run and asked what I was doing. I told him I was training for a marathon, and he said what I was doing was all wrong. He said I needed some rest days, easy days to recuperate. He also offered to give me some books on how to train, which I took him up on.”

Tom laughs at the myth of the loneliness of the long-distance runner. He found running to be the complete opposite of a lonely sport for intensely driven individuals. “Lee eventually invited me to join his running group of RPI teachers and administrators, and that’s what really got me hooked. I’ve also run with other people from Troy and with some people at Siena College. I’m not much of a phone talker, but when you’re out running for two hours people tell some endlessly entertaining stories. These were also some very smart people, and I was learning a lot from them.”

The best friends Tom has ever had were people he met through running. “Most runners have common characteristics. We’re usually disciplined people who have a drive to excel. Runners respect the effort other runners put in. My running friends became my “band of brothers” and through the years I’ve seen how all of them deal so well with the struggles of life. They’ve learned how to deal with adversity because of all the hard training and racing, and they never give up.”

In looking over many of the articles he had published in The Pace Setter he once again realized how strong the quality of racing was in this area back in that golden age. “We didn’t know as much about training then as we do now, and no one was afraid of getting hurt so we ran hard in every race and we trained very hard with long runs and hill workouts. By doing the work we all became faster. The competition in this area was intense in every race. A 50th place finish in one of the 1980s Stockade-athon 15K road races would easily place in the top 10 today. A lot of us back then were beating ourselves into the ground, and many runners today are training more moderately, and often they mix in biking and swimming.”

The Capital Region continues to be a place that develops great distance runners. “Since the 1980s our area has developed an extremely high level of good runners. The high school runners and area school teams are often near the top in the entire nation, and I attribute that to all the coaches who were good area runners themselves. They know how to train young runners the right way.”

Two of Tom’s favorite race memories were the 1982 New York City Marathon, and the cover of his new book shows him crossing the finish line that day with a time of 2:29:57, and the 1980 Berkshire Marathon where he broke 2:50 to qualify for his first Boston Marathon. “At the New York City Marathon, I ran with the legendary Grete Waitz for eight miles – a lot of people back home remember seeing me on national TV. In that Berkshire Marathon I had trained so hard to qualify, the race finished on a high school track, and I knew I was going to do it so I just started sprinting.”

He felt so good at the end of that race because he had reached that elusive goal. He even cried tears of joy at the finish line. “Those feelings were so intense. That was when life seemed bleak because of these difficult Rochester advisors, but I knew they couldn’t take my time away.”

Once he learned how to train his times came way down. A few of his PRs are: 2:06 (800 meters); 4:32 (mile); 15:06 (5K); 31:47 (10K); 49:26 (15K) and 2:28:27 at the 1986 Mohawk Hudson River Marathon. He completed 20 marathons and 17 of them were under 2:45.

“I can’t run anymore because of a back operation I had in 1994. I caught several infections, endured an eight-day coma with spinal meningitis, and spent six straight months in hospitals”

He jogged and ran slowly after that, but for the past 10 years he has not run at all. “I also gave up biking after my second hip replacement, but every weekend on Saturday and Sunday I meet some old running friends on Mohawk Hudson Bike-Hike Trail in Niskayuna, and go on a nice walk with them.”

Reading all these stories brought back such great memories, but he also feels a bit sad that he can’t do it anymore. “But whenever I feel that self-pity creep in, I think about my friend Bill Robinson of Cohoes, who recently died. Bill was a running rival of mine. We had many duals through the years, but on March 6, 1990, he was hit by an errant vehicle while on a training run that left him a quadriplegic. Bill stuck with the running community even though he couldn’t walk. He came to races. He cheered us on, and he never complained.”

Jack Rightmyer (jackxc@nycap.rr.com) was a longtime cross-country coach at Bethlehem High School and today is an Adjunct English Professor at Siena College. He has written two books “A Funny Thing About Teaching” and “It’s Not About Winning.”