Santa Ana’s Story-the barefoot character… There was nothing ordinary about Santa Ana’s Dale Story. He came to Santa Ana CC with the national prep mile record of 4:11.0 and proceeded to leave with the state two-mile title. But it was at Oregon State where he became one of those memorable characters in our sport by running barefoot and winning the 1961 NCAA Cross Country Championships in frigid conditions and then setting a NCAA 5000 record in a barefoot 14:03.5 (May, 1962-Fresno). But there is more to Story’s story.
    Bob Covey, for 42-years the head track and field and cross country coach at Bakersfield College remembers Story from his days serving as a graduate assistant for Sam Bell at Oregon State.
       “I met Dale when I was at OSU. He was amazing. He always ran without shoes, even on dirt and rock roads. I never saw him in sweats except maybe before a competition. He would come to a winter workout in his shorts and singlet, no shoes, and warm up around the track, stop at the frozen steeplechase pit, jump in breaking the ice, then throw the water over himself yelling how good it felt.
       “Story would go on what he called survival runs in the winter. He would wear his usual workout clothes, nothing more, take a knife and a container of matches. He would run up into the mountains, build small wind and weather protectors from limbs and pine
 needles, build a rabbit trap, catch a rabbit or something, skin it with his knife then cook and eat it. He called this a “survival run weekend.” The temperatures would get down well below 30 degrees and he would just tough it out.”

Hail Haile… The argument about who is our sport’s most versatile male distance runner may have been settled at the recent Berlin marathon as Ethiopia’s legendary Haile Gebrselassie set a new world record of 2:04.26 despite being alone the last six miles. Haile won back-to-back Olympic 10k races in 1996 and 2000, set world records at 5 and 10k distances and won the world indoor 1500 in 1999. Convinced?