Walking the Line for Gold

Having gone on strike several weeks ago, many screenwriters are bored to death with the tedium of walking a picket line.

Not Richard Oliver.

“I’m working on my technique,” he explains.

For Oliver, walking is not an obligation. It’s an avocation.

Oliver, a 51-year-old Studio City resident, started walking long distances regularly six years ago. He had just quit smoking and needed something to offset the anticipated weight gain.

Back problems ruled out jogging. The last time he had run seriously was in high school and he can never remember finishing better than third. So he opted for the more leisurely pace.

But there is walking, and there is walking , as Oliver soon learned.

“I had read some books on the subject and I could see I was keeping up a pretty good pace,” he says. “But I knew there was a sport of race walking and I wanted to do it correctly.”

So, in 1983, responding to an ad in a department store, Oliver joined the Walkers Club of Los Angeles. What had been a comfortable morning activity around the block became a competitive activity that has taken him around the world.

Oliver competed in his third Los Angeles Marathon last month and walked away with his first gold medal, winning the walking competition for men over the age of 50 with a time of 4 hours, 27 minutes, 18 seconds. He had been fourth his first year in the L. A. event, then took a silver medal in 1987.

In 1986, Oliver went to Puerto Rico for the Pan Am Masters competition--track and field for the over-40 set from throughout the Western Hemisphere--and won a 20K walking event in his age division with a time of 2:00:01.

Last year in Eugene, Ore., Oliver won National Masters walking championships for his age division at 20K (1:53:22) and 5K (26:32) distances. He also went to Melbourne, Australia, for the World Veterans Games where, as the first American across the finish line in the 20K walking event, he led the United States to a bronze medal in the 50-55 age-group team competition. Oliver finished in 1:52:32.

In all, Oliver competed in 24 races in 1987, collecting a first or second in nearly two-thirds of them.

“Race walking,” Oliver says, “requires the use of your total body. You must make everything work together. It’s not easy. It takes a while to learn. The important thing is not to tense up because that can affect your style.”

There is a right and a wrong way to walk--something that is as natural as breathing for most people.

“I’ve improved so much,” Oliver says. “I remember in my first race ever, a 5K at UCLA, I finished in 32 minutes, 35 seconds. Now I’m down to a 25:52.

“We’ll get together now for a workout,” he says of his club, “and one of us will ask, ‘How long do you want to go as a warm-up, two, three miles?’ I have to laugh. Before I got into this, I never would have thought of two or three miles as a warm-up. I would have figured that would be it .”

Oliver has watched the Walkers Club grow since he joined. From a base of 85, the membership has grown to 300, with about 80 of those involved in competition.

Among the members is Panorama City’s Jill Latham, who recently walked her way to the West Coast University 50-Mile TAC district championship, completing the distance in 10:37:16. She also finished second among walking women age 50 and older in the 1988 L. A. Marathon with a time of 4:58:43. Latham then broke the national 20K walking record for 51-year-old women in a Long Beach race with a 2:09:04 clocking.

Walkers Club members also include many former joggers who have slowed down because of wear and tear on their legs and even a former cyclist who decided he preferred a safer sport.

It is fairly difficult to incur an injury walking--unless you work out in a pit bull neighborhood.

About two-thirds of the Walkers Club consists of women. Members range in age from 16 to 80, including an octogenarian who used to regularly hit the track.

The appeal and application of race walking are universal. After all, what other sport can you practice while manning a picket line?