This Cop Does His Legwork : LAPD Veteran Connelly Polices Would-Be Long-Distance Runners

Pat Connelly, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, wants you to run.

Go ahead, make his day.

But, please, put down that TV set and the stereo first. This cop wants you to run his way, using a technique that requires discipline and does not have any allowances for lugging stolen property.

Connelly, 53, of Van Nuys, is just a bit fanatical about the sport of running. His love of sore feet and shortness of breath began in 1954 at Birmingham High, where he became the school’s first All-City Section athlete in both cross-country and track. He qualified for the 1964 Olympic Trials but did not make the Olympic team. He has trained the LAPD’s cross-country team and the Valley-based Basin Blues Running Club for more than two decades.

Is fanatical too strong a word to describe Connelly?

You decide.

“A lot of people have a strong desire to use other things, like dope or alcohol or gambling,” he said. “But once you try running, that becomes the addiction. Maybe running even makes you live longer. I’m not sure. But it does guarantee you a fuller, richer and more complete life. It allows you to handle the daily stress better, to sleep better and eat better and become a better person, a person everyone looks up to, a better neighbor and a better husband or wife or father or mother. Running gives you a gleam in your eye, a bounce in your step. There is nothing like it in the world.”

Whew!

Many people would get winded just reading that paragraph, chests heaving with exhaustion as they try to get off the couch.

And Connelly wants those people, too.

“I challenge the most rank beginners, those who have never run a step, to come and try it,” he said. “After a week or two, you’ll be hooked too. You can get off the couch and run a marathon a year from now. You can do it. And you’ll think it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done.”

Obviously, someone is listening to Connelly.

As the official running coach of the Los Angeles Marathon, coach of the inner-city Students Run LA and the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital Clinic Series, Connelly has been an overwhelming success, teaching his techniques to and motivating more than 2,000 runners, most of whom hope to run in--and finish--the L.A. Marathon on March 3.

Connelly has, single-handedly, sent more people running wildly through the streets than all the bulls in Pamplona. And he doesn’t motivate them with the threat of being gored to death. Connelly’s prod is more gentle--but just as effective.

“I have always been lucky in the fact that when I talk, I motivate people,” he said. “I honestly don’t know why. But after I talk about running, the general reaction among people is that, at the very least, ‘It’s worth a try.’ Once they try it, they generally get hooked on it. All I have to do is talk someone into a 15-minute jog. If I can get them to do that, I will be 90% successful in turning that person into a legitimate runner.

“I guess I’m like a vacuum-cleaner salesman. Once I get my foot in the door, the sale is almost guaranteed.”

The overriding theme in Connelly’s coaching is the use of encouragement and praise.

The man is a nonstop Pat on the back.

“For a lot of people, their first encounter with me might be the first time anyone has ever told them they were OK, that they had some ability at something,” said Connelly, who is a co-founder of the LAPD’s DARE anti-drug abuse campaign and still is heavily involved in it.

“For a lot of them, hearing a little praise, hearing a little encouragement is something brand-new. Some have never heard it before. And they immediately love running because of it. And once I’ve got somebody hooked on running, it is a relationship that will last a long time.”

Technically, Connelly is recognized as one of the elite in the nation. Earlier this year, he won a prestigious Golden Shoe Award from Runner’s World magazine for his training techniques. Connelly said he has spent two decades studying the techniques of dozens of national and international running coaches, adding and subtracting and researching and eventually forming his own program, a complex scheme that involves light jogging, crushing speed workouts and plenty of days with absolutely no running at all, and he talks at length of the “seven gears” that all runners must learn to master.

“I thought I knew how to run,” said Rusty Bauer, 32, of Santa Monica, one of more than 100 students who flock to Connelly’s weekly seminars at Birmingham. “But after working with Pat for a few weeks, I realized I knew nothing about running. I play basketball and other sports and often went out for a three-mile jog, but this is so different. This is real running.”

A novice just a few months ago, Bauer already has felt some of Connelly’s motivational magic.

“I plan to run the L.A. Marathon in the spring,” Bauer said. “I couldn’t have even imagined that a few months ago. I mean, driving 26 miles takes a long, long time.”

Said Connelly, a man with a lot of drive: “Running is a progressive sport. People starting out are amazed at how quickly you can develop. In the first few months, you might be able to start running for one hour without stopping, without getting overly fatigued. And before you know it, you’re running for two hours with the same effort, without feeling any more fatigued. And then, they really start to listen to me.

“I can have all the best running techniques in the world, but if I can’t motivate people to use them, to really work on these techniques, than all the techniques I have developed are worthless. It is the motivation that changes people.”

Bill Halsworth of Santa Clarita will raise a glass to that statement. Well, Halsworth would have raised a glass to that statement three years ago. That was before he found running, before he found Connelly.

That was back when Halsworth’s life was a mess.

“I smoked, I drank way too much, I had a lot of bad habits,” said Halsworth, 49. “With the cigarettes and the alcohol, I had a pretty sorry life. Running has saved me. Pat has saved me. I was obsessed with cigarettes for 25 years and I was obsessed with alcohol for a very long time too.

“Now, I am obsessed with running.”

So complete is Halsworth’s new dedication that last Sunday, in Portland, Ore., the former heavy smoker and heavy drinker hammered through a marathon in a personal best of 3 hours 24 minutes 46 seconds.

And, more importantly, Halsworth qualified to run in the mecca of 26-mile road races, the Boston Marathon, next year.

Just a few days after the race in Portland, in the stifling hot and heavy air on the track at Birmingham, more than 100 of Halsworth’s friends and peers gathered tightly together toward sunset to listen to Connelly during the weekly training seminar.

Suddenly, Halsworth was summoned front and center and Connelly, in a voice laden with pride and respect, boomed, “I have an announcement: Bill Halsworth has qualified for Boston.”

And suddenly, more than 100 pairs of hands clapped in applause and a loud cheer echoed off nearby walls.

Standing amid his peers, his new peers, the ones without the cigarettes dangling from their lips and the glass of whiskey in their hands, Halsworth smiled a wonderful smile.

And as the applause continued for a few more seconds, his eyes shimmered in the soft light.

“Just try running one time,” Connelly said. “It can change your life.”