Kiernan’s Goals in Long Run : Marathoner Puts Racing First

Irish marathon runner Jerry Kiernan vividly remembers earning $8,000 for his third-place finish in the Houston Marathon Jan. 19, 1986.

“It certainly kept the proverbial wolf from the door for a few months,” said Kiernan, who has a wife and two young sons to support.

Four months before the race in Houston, Kiernan had taken a leave from his position as an elementary school teacher in order to devote himself entirely to running.

One month after starting his leave, Kiernan suffered a pulled hamstring that sidelined him until the Houston marathon three months later. Running at three-quarter strength, he finished third.

“How I did it, I don’t know,” Kiernan said. “Competitively, there is nothing like running when you need the money. That’s when you’re really hungry. When you really have to succeed.”

In Saturday’s Holiday Bowl Channel 10 Marathon in San Diego, Kiernan is one of the favorites. The winner of the race, which starts in Balboa Park, will receive $4,000 and a new convertible.

“It’s pretty tough to make a living as a runner,” Kiernan said. “If

you’re lucky and avoid injuries and pick the right races, one can make a reasonable living out of it.”

Kiernan, 34, left a $20,000-a-year teaching job in Ireland, which he says is reasonable money back home. Now, he says earning about $40,000 would be a good year for him and would enable him to easily meet his expenses. But earning $40,000 means more than winning a major marathon and finishing in the top three in another major marathon.

He has done both this year. He earned $25,000 for winning the New Jersey Waterfront Marathon in April and $8,000 for finishing second in last month’s Columbus (Ohio) Marathon.

Now, if only he could get an endorsement contract with a shoe company.

He has impressive credentials. He has run eight marathons in less than 2 hours 14 minutes. He was ninth in the 1984 Olympic marathon in Los Angeles (2:12:19), and he won the 1985 America’s Finest City Half-Marathon in San Diego.

Despite his success, Kiernan’s commercial claim to fame is a recent advertisement for a beer company in Ireland.

“I suppose the shoe companies perceive me as doing most of my running back in Ireland,” said Kiernan, who lives eight months of the year in Dublin and spends much of the rest of the year training in San Diego, which he says is his second home. “They wouldn’t have a big market in Ireland, so it wouldn’t be an economically sensible move for them to give me money.

“My contention is that I run out here as often as anybody. I run two, three marathons a year out here. I also have a pretty high profile. However, if I was to do well here Saturday, it might change somebody’s mind.”

His performance and earnings Saturday also will help influence his decision about whether to run for Ireland in the 1988 Olympic Games.

“We’re really talking about me being able to afford it,” Kiernan said. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently.”

To get back into the Olympic spirit, Kiernan plans to visit the Coliseum next week. That’s where the ’84 Olympic marathon concluded.

“I want to relive the whole thing,” said Kiernan. “Maybe get back some clear memories of it. One thing I do remember is I was way, way back early on. I was a minute behind at the halfway point, but I could them (leaders) up front. I could see the TV camera just in front of them.

“And mindful of the way TV is done in the States, where the emphasis is on the leaders and to hell with everybody else, I said that unless I get up there, unless I’m up there with the leading group, the folks back home won’t know whether I ran the Olympic marathon or not.”

At the 18 3/4-mile mark, Kiernan caught the leaders and took the lead with six miles to go.

“I thought I was going to win a medal,” Kiernan said.

Then he cramped at the 21 1/2-mile mark and ended up finishing ninth.

“For about three miles I was really on a high because I knew my mother and father at home and wife and kids would be going absolutely bananas,” Kiernan said. “It was with willpower I suppressed waving at them because I find that people who wave on television are . . . are . . . well, I don’t think much of them.”

Kiernan got on television back home, where he is respected, if not exactly understood.

“To me, there’s almost no greater feeling than to be out running and feeling like a well-oiled machine. Some people would say running is kind of a daft sport,” said Kiernan, who has been enamored with running since he watched the 1964 Olympics. “But there, I’m in a minority. Some people would say running is kind of a daft sport. You see, Gaelic football and Gaelic games are the things back home. If I was to play Gaelic football, let’s say at the same level I run, I would be deified. But I don’t.

“Where I come from, from Kerry (in the southwest part of the country), that’s a real Gaelic football enclave. They reckon if you play football in Kerry, no matter how big a thug you are, you’ve got half a foot into the gates of heaven. But I run. I’m different. As a result, I perhaps wouldn’t get the amount of attention that perhaps my deserts merit.”

Kiernan’s most devoted, but also most fickle, fans are the second-graders at Saint Brigid’s National School in Foxrock, a suburb of Dublin. That’s where Kiernan taught a class of 30 students before taking a “career break” two years ago.

“As far as they’re concerned, unless their teacher wins a race, he’s not really that great,” Kiernan said. “They have a very childlike attitude toward things. For me to finish second or third in a major marathon out here wouldn’t be near as wonderful a performance, let’s say, as me winning a very, very low key 5-K race. They have no conception of the importance or prestige of races.”

Kiernan teaches physical education at Saint Brigid’s, but his favorite subjects to teach are nature studies, history and geography. He had been teaching for 15 years, but he didn’t realize how much he would miss teaching and the children until he took his break two years ago.

“There have been occasions when I’ve been to places in America and when they’ve heard I’m a teacher, they’ve brought me along to a school and I’ve stood in front of the class and spoke to the kids,” Kiernan said. “There are times when I realize that I miss teaching and I actually like it. It’s very easy for me to forget at this stage what’s it’s all about, but there’s nothing really like kids.”

That is, except running. Kiernan hopes to be able to take two more years off from teaching before returning to the classroom. While devoting himself entirely to his sport, Kiernan certainly puts in his miles.

He finished second in the Columbus Marathon last month with a time of 2:14:12. Then he came to San Diego, where he has trained on and off since 1984. He and his family live in a house he rents on the bayside in Mission Beach. He runs at Fiesta Island, going 60 to 70 miles his first week there, 115 miles the next week, followed by 110 miles, 100 miles and about 60 miles this week. And now he plans to run his second competitive marathon in five weeks.

“It’s unconventional,” Kiernan said. “It’s a little unusual, but there have been so many myths about the marathon that you can’t do this and can’t do that. I hope if I win Saturday it will disprove another one of these theories.”

If Kiernan wins Saturday with a good time on what is considered to be a fast course, he also hopes finally to get that elusive shoe contract. Kiernan did not know exactly how much money he would receive if he got a shoe contract, but he believes getting one would change his life.

“It would afford me a chance to be able to not take chances and run marathons when I’m not real sharp and am just recovering from injuries,” Kiernan said. “It would afford me to approach the whole thing in a much more relaxed frame of mind.”