Jim Brewer:
John Bunce and I came to KU in the same year, 1970.
John was coming off a post-doc at Penn, where he had taken up running. In the fall of 1971, I began, on occasion, to go to Robinson with him. We would dress out, jog to the Lawrence High track, run a mile or so, and run back. I don't know how much of it I did, but not nearly as much as John.
Phil Montgomery, Ed Rutter, and I were friends and colleagues in the math department at the time. Phil and I played darts regularly and I began to tease him about running with John and me. He'd always say, "Maybe, tomorrow." After a couple of months, he shocked me one day by saying, "Let's go." He and Rutter and I ran in the fieldhouse on the (then) dirt track.
I began to get more serious because while in an argument wilth Rutter about Jim Ryun, I had said,"How hard can it be to run a 5:00-minute mile?" I remember in late 1971 or early 1972, Phil, Ed, and I ran a timed mile indoors in between 6:15 and 6:30. ( I did eventually run a mile in 4:42, but that was in 1976.) Several other people joined us shortly thereafter, and we had twenty or more in the group, around ten from the math department. It was so heavily math-department loaded that some outsiders actually thought I gave the guys individual workout assignments! Fred was among them.
One of my favorite stories from this period occured in the winter of 1972 or 1973. We were running indoors. That group included Fred, a few others, and myself. We were going along and this guy catches up with us and starts chattering away. After a few laps, he takes off and starts trying to lap us. I said to Fred, "Who is that guy?" Fred said that he's seen him before and he's pretty fast. Pretty soon the guy DOES catch us again. I fancied myself the fastest guy in our group, and when he started that crap again, I went with him. We went hard for three or four laps and he finally stopped without passing me. It was Mike Ott.
That spring, there was a faculty half-mile race in the stadium. Our group thought one of us would win, but Mike won in 2:13.8 to my 2:15. From that point on, Mike was one of our group. But we all knew that Grover Everett of chemistry was the best runner on campus, even if he didn't run "publicly." We finally got him to join us, but how, you'll have to ask him.