Marathon man Norman still running
Don Norman started running when he was 16 and he hasn’t stopped since. He truly is Fayette County’s marathon man.
“I was always running around as a kid,” Norman stated. “I played baseball, football, whatever sport there was. You were always active. Jack Henck was the legendary track coach at Brownsville. I had all kinds of stories about him, everybody wanted to get on the good side with him, because then you didn’t have to take gym class. He told me, ‘You won’t last two weeks in my track program.’
“It was sort of a challenge because I wanted to play football, so I wanted to go out for track to stay in shape for football. I went to practice the first day and I thought I had signed up for the military. For the first two weeks we did nothing but situps and pushups and suicide sprints in the gym. I didn’t even see a track; little did I know that Brownsville didn’t even have a track. We practiced and our meets were on the track at California University of Pennsylvania. I thought, ‘What did I get myself into?’ I didn’t think it was a good idea, but I decided to stick with it.”
Norman became a top distance runner for Henck. Running the two-mile event at first and later the mile, the 800 and the two-mile relay.
“The first year, I ran the two mile along with Sam Taylor. That was the first time I ever ran two miles in my life. I ran 12:05 for two miles in a time trial and finished second and made the team. In 1974, I dropped my time down to 10:38 and was the No. 2 two-miler on the team. We didn’t have cross country at Brownsville, and I gave up the other sports and concentrated on track.
“I won a few events, but the next year as a junior without cross country, I didn’t have the edge on anybody. My junior year I broke the school record in the two-mile run and ran in four events that year. My senior year I got serious and formed my own cross country team to go to the county meet. We finished dead last, but I finished second behind a runner from Laurel Highlands.”
Norman had a pretty good track season as a senior in 1976. He finished seventh in the mile at the WPIAL track meet and broke the school record that season. He lowered his school record in the two mile to 9:41.
“Looking back, I was satisfied with what I did at Brownsville.”
When he graduated in 1976 Norman went to college for a semester at California University of Pennsylvania and ran track for one semester at West Virginia in 1978.
Norman developed his own running regimen after that.
“I just started training. I found Brent Hawkins from Uniontown and started training with him,” Norman said. “I started the Fayette Striders Running Club and gave then their name in 1977. It was a lot of fun and we had up to 200 members at one time.”
Norman met legendary Uniontown miler Joe Thomas in 1978 and they became good friends.
“We were a tight knit group,” Norman opined. “Joe Thomas would do anything for you and he was a big influence on the local track scene.”
Norman set his sights on running the marathon.
“I got into training with Brent Hawkins,” Norman explained. “We had another elite club called the West Virginia Track Club. Carl Hatfield had that and it was sponsored by Adidas. We ran competitive road races around the country. I didn’t get there over night. It took steady training after high school when I was 16 until I hit my peak at 26.”
Norman had some big highlights in his career. In 1985, he ran 2:11:08 and won the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minn. At that time, it was the fastest time run by an American in two years. He started to hit his stride in 1981 when he won the Great Race in Pittsburgh.
“I met some elite runners,” Norman stated. “That really helped with training and getting financing from shoe companies. Guys like Bill Rodgers, Greg Meyer and eventually George Malley, who was the American record holder in the steeplechase. Randy Thomas was the head coach at Boston College, so I was training with world class athletes. I signed on with Saucony and that gave me travel money and shoes. When I started training with Malley, I signed on with New Balance.”
Some other highlights included running three New York City Marathons, including a fourth-place finish in 1985. He ran the U.S. Olympic trials in 1984, where he took a fall and lost out. He ran the Pittsburgh Marathon for a few years, his best Pittsburgh finish was fourth.
“I was ranked four times in the Top Ten by Track and Field News,” Norman said. “I was ranked second, fourth, seventh and ninth in 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989.
“Grandma’s was always a good win,” Norman said. “Finishing fourth in New York was good considering I stopped four times along the way. I won the Charlotte Marathon in 1984 and broke the course record there, and that stood until 1992. Finishing sixth in the US Olympic Trials in 1988 was a thrill.”
Norman’s status as an elite runner started to come to an end in 1990 when the runners from Kenya started to move in and his performance slipped in 1989 because of an injury, and New Balance cut his stipend. At that point he was still running, but without a shoe sponsor. He made some prize money, but called it quits in 1995 when he became a financial adviser for Edward Jones.
At the age of 54, Norman still runs up to 50 miles a week and runs in some master’s competitions. He does consulting work on various road races around the country and works for CBCInnovis, a credit service. He is single and resides in Pittsburgh.
“It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of good people,” Norman said. “I’m planning on running some fall races, just to see if I can break some age group records.”
Norman was inducted into the Pittsburgh Marathon Hall of Fame in 2010.