Meet the five runners who are about to take on their 44th Falmouth Road Race
The "Falmouth Five" have conquered the 7-mile course every year since its beginning in 1973, and they have no plans on retiring their running shoes any time soon.
The streets of Woods Hole and Falmouth will be flooded with 12,800 runners on Sunday morning for the 44th Falmouth Road Race.
But of those participants, only five have actually completed the 7-mile course all 43 — soon to be 44 — times, and they call themselves the “Falmouth Five.”
Mike Bennett, 85, Tom Brannelly, 74, Don DeLinks Sr., 78, Ron Pokraka, 76, and Brian Salzber, 73, weren’t friends before signing up for the first Falmouth Road Race in 1973, nor did they share similar backgrounds or motivations for wanting to run. But now the Five are forever linked in a group that has at least one similarity: They believe choosing to not run the race just isn’t an option.
“I like to tell people I know what it means when the tail wags the dog because the race certainly determines what you are going to be doing each summer,” Brannelly said.
Road race fans sit on the roof of the Landfall Restaurant in Woods Hole before the start of the 34th Falmouth Road Race in 2006.
The first Falmouth Road Race was held on a Wednesday afternoon to celebrate race founder Tommy Leonard’s 40th birthday and raise funds for the Falmouth High girls’ track team. Leonard designed the course to be seven miles—the distance from the Captain Kidd in Woods Hole to Brothers 4, Tommy’s workplace, in Falmouth Heights—and he spread information about what would become the “little race that could” by word of mouth—mainly his own.
“I was having drinks at the Brothers 4, I mentioned I had just completed my first race on Earth Day, and the bartender Tommy said, ‘Well we have this race coming up, why don’t you run?'” Bennett said. “And here I am.”
I know what it means when the tail wags the dog because the race certainly determines what you are going to be doing each summer.
Salzberg said he remembers the first race had the “best weather ever”: rain, wind, and temperatures in the mid-50s.
“No one overheated that year,” Bennett added, “which has not been the case in years since.”
The course was open to traffic and there were no water stations, traffic cones, police fencing, mile markers, or directional arrows. Runners, mostly Falmouth residents, were told the course route before the start time, and it was assumed they wouldn’t get lost. At the end of the race, soaked runners crowded into the pub and partied till midnight.
“I can see so clearly in my mind after that first race, at Brothers 4, Johnny Kelley—who was I think 65 then — standing around at the party while all of us are in running clothes, still wet,” Salzberg said, “but there he was spiffed up in a Hawaiian shirt jitterbugging with his wife.”
That day was the start of what would become an unbreakable summer tradition.
The second-ever Falmouth Road Race was also just as memorable for the Five: It was the year an amateur runner named Bill Rodgers won the race—and then went on to win four Boston Marathons. But it was the addition of DeLinks’s then 5-year-old son to the mix that same year that made the race the most memorable for the crew—and he’s run alongside his father every year since.
“We’ve made a lot of great memories together,” DeLinks said. “That’s what it’s all about, the memories.”
The Five didn’t start to get officially recognized for their accomplishments until the race’s 10th anniversary party when the men finally realized how exclusive a group they’d become: There were less than 10 runners total, including Kelley, who had run the race every year since its start. All their names fit on a single sheet cake.
Salzberg, Bennett, DeLinks, and Pokraka holding up their cake at the road race’s 10th anniversary celebration in 1983.
As other runners began to fall away over the next decade, the organizers also began honoring the then “Falmouth Six” by giving them seeded numbers so they’d be allowed to start at the front of the race with the elite runners. To this day, even though most of them now walk the course, they still start at the front of the pack.
It wasn’t until Kelley, a two-time Boston Marathon champion, stopped running the race after 25 years that the group officially became the Falmouth Five. That same year, they started two more traditions: a post-race party at Pokraka’s house and a Monday night dinner with Leonard at the Captain Kidd that all, sans Brannelly, attended. Both traditions live on to this day.
“It’s a unique and special group, and we are very much aware of it because we all want to be the last,” Brannelly said. “No one wants to be the next to stop. We all want to be the last; we want to be the Falmouth One instead of the Falmouth Four, Three, or Two so I assume that, aside from the others’ camaraderie, that is a great force in going through all this.”
But it hasn’t always been easy to stay in the race.
One year, Bennett said he was scheduled to be in Tokyo for a conference during the race, so he decided to fly back to run and then hop back on a plane later that day.
No one wants to be the next to stop.
Health has also been a factor for the Five.
A few weeks after the road race in 2003, Salzberg was told he had a benign brain tumor the size of a lemon. The tumor was successfully removed and within a month he was back lacing up his sneakers, making sure he would be ready for the next year’s race. In 2008, he damaged ligaments in his foot and completed the race on crutches, and, in 2010, the tumor returned.
Salzberg was told by his doctor that he wouldn’t be able to compete in the race because it would be too soon after his surgery, but he was adamant so he walked the course while wearing a heart monitor issued by his doctor.
Salzberg isn’t the only one who’s dealt with health issues. Pokraka used two canes to complete the course after having hip surgery in 2002, and this year Brannelly said he is dealing with achilles tendinitis.
“When you’re my age, not many people can run seven miles or even walk seven miles, so I’m proud I’m still healthy enough and able to do it,” DeLinks said.
Though their speed and agility has changed with age, one thing definitely hasn’t: their desire to keep running.
“As I said even five years ago, I’m hoping when I die I would have run that Falmouth Road Race that year and probably will have,” Salzberg said. “I’m looking forward to the 50th in six more years. [Bennett] will be 91 then, and I expect he’ll still be running.”
“It’s been a good run, pun intended,” Brannelly added. “I’d like to keep doing it as long as I can.”
The Falmouth Road Race start on August 18, 1978.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com