Collector's Items; Tom Schepers, Pro Advice for College Runners

There is a story today on Runners' World's website about a buried shoe on the late Bill Bowerman's property in Oregon.  Bowerman was not only the coach at the University of Oregon but the inventor of Nike's Waffle trainer, among other vintage running shoes.

A 1971 road race with Bruce Mortenson(1), Bob Fitts(56), Ron Daws(32),
Tom Hoffman(black shades and white shoes at the front of the pack), and Bill Andberg
(white hair over Hoffman's left shoulder)

As the RW story details, the shoe is believed to be one of Bowerman's early prototypes for the Waffle Trainer.  This shoe was called the "moon shoe" because of the tread pattern it left looked like that left by the astronauts' footwear when they walked on the moon.  The shoe sold to a collector for $1500.  Not unusual as back several decades ago, those who had saved a variety of Nike shoes discovered that these "vintage' products were in great demand in Japan where a shoe originally bought for $20 or $30 were being sold for hundreds of dollars to Japanese collectors/runners.

Minnesota has a connection to Bowerman's shoes as Bruce Mortenson got a pair of the early waffle racers that were given to Nike affiliated athletes for the 1972 Olympic Trials in Eugene.  That pair of shoes is on display, along with Bruce's Oregon jersey(he won an NCAA steeplechase championship while attending the U of O and writer Kenny Moore was his roommate) at the Eden Prairie TC Running shop.  Bruce's Blue Ribbon Sports Tiger racing flats that he wore running the Boston Marathon are also on display, as well as a University of Kansas warm up suit purported to have been made for team member Wilt Chamberlain.

A tour of the store is a veritable history lesson of some of the moments in the sport's past.

RW also has an obit on Minnesotan Tom Schepers HERE.  Schepers was a Vietnam vet who ran across the country in 2000 to raise money for the National WWII Memorial. St Paul Pioneer Press obit HERE.

Pro advice for college runners--Dani Stack and Hassan Mead among the contributors in Running Times article HERE.