Bill Squires Marathon Guru Billy Whelan The 1979 Boston Marathon saw one of the greatest team

performances in any race at that distance. Four out of the top ten spots were taken by members of the Greater Boston Track Club. The 10th place runner was GBTC member Dick Mahoney, who was a mailman at the time. The GBTC man who won the race, setting a course and American record time, was Bill Rodgers. Five years earlier, Rodgers was virtually unknown in the running world. The coach who had taken this club of amateurs to such heights was Bill Squires. Taking nobodies and turning them into somebodies is what Squires has been doing his entire life. Squires has coached Olympians in the 10,000m and the marathon. He has coached dozens of national champion teams and individuals on the cross country trails, the roads and the track. The famous Arthur Lydiard, whom Runner's World called the "All Time best running coach", said "Once Americans ruled the world of marathoning. That's when Bill Squires was coaching a group of runners in the Boston area. His group was what the Kenyans are today totally dominating races around the country." Squires has an athletic build hiding behind some added weight from years of aging. The 78-year-old says he still tries to run most days of the week, despite suffering a small stroke in 2009. His brilliantly pale blue eyes command attention. He speaks passionately and somewhat authoritatively. However, his speech usually moves in circles and goes on tangents - a question about his first coaching opportunity revolved around his top secret operations in the Army. Conversation tends to become a messy and cluttered, not unlike the state of his home in Melrose, MA. Squires was raised as a child in nearby Arlington, where he participated in a number of sports, showing the most promise in track & field, Squires said that his high school coach was the main reason he decided to become a coach himself. He attended college at Notre Dame and was a three time All-American miler. After college, Squires joined the army. At the age of 38 he was honorably discharged. He had dreams of moving to the warmth of California and working running shoe companies. However, with a wife and a baby girl, Squires thought it best to settle down, and found a job at Wakefield High School in Massachusetts where he eventually became the cross country coach. "They were terrible," Squires said with a chuckle about the cross country team. Nevertheless, Squires took a group of kids who were annually the worst in the state and made them state champions in his first year. Squires won five state championships during his tenure at Wakefield. He had them work together, racing in packs, and he had them believing in themselves and in one another. "We put our faith in him, and it worked," said Bruce Lehane, who ran under Squires at Boston State College in the late Sixties. Squires moved on to Boston State after Wakefield, and described the contingent there as a bunch of "tough ass kids." At Boston State, Squires produced 19 N.A.I.A All-Americans, including Lehane. While coaching at Boston State, Squires was asked by Jack McDonald, a miler at Boston College, to help form a club for post collegiate runners. In 1973, with Squires at the helm, McDonald and eight other athletes started GBTC. "For some reason at that time, guys just wanted to continue competing after college," said Tom Derderian, who is a coach with GBTC

and ran under Squires in the mid 70's. Derderian said that one of his favorite Squires sayings is "Get the horses together and let them run," and that that was exemplary of the philosophy behind GBTC. "Simulator workouts' were something that Squires developed that helped make GBTC a marathon powerhouse. They were designed to mimic how a runner would feel at certain stages of the race, on the course. The most famous of these are the workouts that would consist of interval training on the BC track or the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, then repeats up Heartbreak HIll on the Boston Marathon course. Derderian also said that Squires personality fit perfectly with the group. "If he had been one of those old school, militant training structure guys [GBTC] wouldn't have worked." Squires knew exactly where the line was between training hard and training too hard. Derderian recounted a workout when one runner kept pushing the pace. After one of the repetitions, Squires gave him a Burger King crown lying on the ground, proclaiming him "the workout king." Squires knew that coaches often had to act as voices of moderation to make sure top performances came in races, not training sessions. Squires said that initially, all the GBTC runners wanted to do was be competitive regionally, but he had bigger ambitions. "Frick regionally," he said. Squires said that when he said he wanted to compete all over the nation "they looked at me like I was a wacko." In the days of amateurism it was very difficult to get money for or through running. GBTC would hold an October road race called the Freedom Trail, that was completely sponsored by Labatt's beer. Also, the police force volunteered to be there, enabling GBTC to keep all of the profits and have the ability to travel to meets around the country. Squires reiterated that you need to have some kind of drive. You need to dream big to go to those meets. Of his most successful runners, Squires said, "They believed they had the ability. They were tough. They were hungry." He said that top U.S runners today all have silver spoons in their mouths. He would go on to say that in the 70's, runners were tougher. "The toughness can be administered by the coach," qualified Squires. But he said that his runners had a belief in themselves and in their training that he doesn't see in top athletes today. Squires still coaches today. His athletes--two Americans and one Canadian-- contact him over the phone while they chase the Olympic Trials standards for their events. He plans on retiring from coaching after the 2012 Olympics. His legacy lives on in the numerous amount of people he has coached that have gone on to coach at the collegiate and professional levels. "He had a huge influence on me becoming a coach," said Lehane, the Cross Country and Track & Field coach at Boston University, as well as co-author of the training book "Speed With Endurance" with Bill Squires. Squires has just recently finished writing his memoir, but he still has the fire for the sport. "Give me 12 marathoners and I'd have the best group in the U.S."