Where Are They Now: Doris Heritage, former long distance runner
Check-in time was 6 a.m. for hip-replacement surgery at Swedish Medical Center. At 4:30, Doris Heritage prepped for this by going on a final five-mile run, accompanied by four friends.
They toured Alki Point in the June darkness, starting and finishing on the road leading to Heritage's hillside home. They ran through Schmitz Park, around the West Seattle High School track, on a neighborhood loop.
"That was the last time," Heritage said. "I felt so blessed these people would want to come do that with me."
At her doctors' urging, this small, slender person -- considered the world's greatest female distance runner in her prime -- gave up her athletic calling in 2004, her new left hip unable to handle any pounding.
This month, Heritage, 65, will take the running disconnect yet another step, retiring after four decades of coaching track and cross country at her alma mater, Seattle Pacific.
By loose estimates, she walks away from the sport after running more than 20,000 miles, a personal odometer that started turning over nonstop when she was 8 or 9 while growing up in Gig Harbor.
- Running great Doris Heritage, 65, shown next to a photo of herself in 1966, retires this month after four decades of coaching at Seattle Pacific. She won 14 U.S. track titles and five world cross country titles in her own days as a runner. lessRunning great Doris Heritage, 65, shown next to a photo of herself in 1966, retires this month after four decades of coaching at Seattle Pacific. She won 14 U.S. track titles and five world cross country titles ... morePhoto: Kristine Paulsen/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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"I always liked getting up early and feeding the chickens and rabbits and then running down the beach," she said, not letting arthritic feet slow her in any way.
As Doris Severtson, she enrolled at Seattle Pacific thinking she was a long jumper and wouldn't stay at the school long. Falcons men's track coach Ken Foreman convinced her she was a distance runner with unlimited promise, and except for a couple of junior high teaching jobs, she never strayed far from the place.
Running consumed her to hypnotizing levels. Known as Doris Brown after marrying an SPU classmate, she held every world record for the women from the 440-yard dash to the mile at one point. She won the first five women's world cross country championships, collecting the first one in Wales. She won 14 national titles. She qualified for the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. She left her footprints all over Seattle.
From residences in Shoreline and West Seattle, she used to run to SPU, run with her athletes during their afternoon workouts and run home. The commuting alone was 12 miles each way, or just shy of a marathon daily.
On Sundays, she used to run from home to the First Free Methodist church on campus, stopping to change clothes in her office before attending the service.
Heritage switched jobs as a junior high physical education teacher, from Kellogg to Butler, because her first principal gave her an ultimatum about her running.
"He told me I had to be a runner or a teacher, because 'people see you in a meet on TV and they're never going to vote for the levy,' " she recalled.
Heritage often ran with one of her two Dobermans alongside her. She named the first one Lasse Viren, after the Finnish male runner and four-time Olympic gold medalist, and the other Zola Budd, after the South African female runner who competed barefoot and set world records.
"Lasse could do all the running I did and all the running the team did," she said. "Zola Budd would eat hamburgers and wasn't quite as trim."
Heritage used to get off flights at Sea-Tac, change into her running clothes, place her street clothes in a locker and run home, then drive back to the airport in her car and retrieve her belongings.
"Some of the students' parents probably wondered about me if they were watching what I was doing," she said.
Taking laps around Green Lake, Heritage encountered men who weren't eager to share the recreation space with a serious-minded female runner. They threw balls at her or pushed her in the lake.
She was married to her second husband, Ralph Heritage, at Lower Woodland Park. A biathlon served as the reception.
On her 5-foot, 3 1/2-inch frame, her weight has never ventured outside 105 to 111 pounds since becoming an adult. Her body fat has nearly doubled with aging -- everyone should have this problem -- increasing from 5.5 percent to 10.
"I've always been fit," Heritage said. "I've always had good heredity."
If there was a void in her running career, an Olympic medal eluded her. In 1960, she finished second in the 800 meters at the U.S. trials, and just one American advanced. Four years later, she finished fourth in the same event, one spot shy of making it again.
Heritage finally secured a berth in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, holding the top 800 time in the world and coming off her best year of competition. She stumbled and finished fifth.
"I had reason to believe I would get a medal, but I wasn't used to running with bodies all around me," she said. "Coming off the last turn, I had a collision. It wasn't a good time to have that happen."
Heritage qualified in the 1,500 meters, a new women's event and a longer race better suited for her talents, for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. She suffered worse luck. Marching onto the track for her event, she didn't see a movable curb sticking out, one used to extend the high jump pit and not properly restored to a closed position, and stepped on it.
"I tore my peroneal tendon and broke five bones in my foot," missing out on the competition, she said.
Heritage would recover and run for three more decades. She returned to the Olympics as a distance coach and liaison. She was inducted into the USATF and the national distance halls of fame.
As she pushes away from SPU, she is forced to walk or ride a bike for exercise. It's not the same. She once envisioned retirement as a way to run more, not less. She says she's coping. There are drawbacks.
"I feel like not running has aged me considerably," she allowed.
Not only that, Heritage has all this free time on her hands at 4:30 a.m.