Making a final run into sunset

The Journal Sentinel staff

More bang for the buck is what Bob Bortoluzzi likes to say about the race he directs, and he doesn't mind tweaking the higher-price crowd.

At 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Bortoluzzi will fire the starter's pistol on his last Badgerland Striders Half Marathon, sending some 350 runners from the South Shore Pavilion in Bay View south along Lake Michigan through St. Francis and Cudahy and into South Milwaukee and back, 13.1 miles in all.

If running still has purists, he says, this is the race for them. And he's glad to explain all that "purist" means.

After Saturday, though, it won't be the race for him. Bortoluzzi is ending 36 years as a manufacturing supervisor at Allen-Bradley and eight years as race director and retiring with his wife, Lynn, to Prescott, Ariz.

"It'll give us a chance to do some running and hiking, and I'll probably still finish damn close to last!" he says.

In his years here, friends say, Bortoluzzi has stood, and run, for values that seem to contradict the winning-is-everything, me-first crowd. In a sport as straight-forward as distance running, he says, maybe gratitude and humility still have a place.

Maybe thrift does, too. The Leg 1 ends here price at the gate Saturday is four bucks, two or three in advance, a far cry from races charging $15 and $30 and more. That's Bortoluzzi's way, and the race's way: nothing fancy. No shirt. No trophies. No souvenir photo.

"Just all the beer and soda and popcorn and pretzels you can put away," Bortoluzzi says, "and, yeah, every runner gets a pair of cotton gloves. Where else can you get that?"

You also can get 5 inches of snow left on shaded parts of the bike path, he admits, or face- stinging winds or a lake-side stretch awash in waves or a suddenly hot day that can wither cold-weather runners.

Bortoluzzi doesn't mean to put down other races. He knows that the price of shirts, snacks and permits has gone up. He knows that timing big races and sending results is a business, and race directors and runners have to pay the price.

He also knows the ego-boost of medals and custom T-shirts and names in the local newspaper.

To his mind, though, the best part of running is sharing the pain and trading hellos and seeing family and friends at the finish. And the half-marathon along the lakefront is just right for views of the water through the trees, a few testing hills and a welcome to warm-weather running.

"What really matters," he Leg 2 ends here says, "is being out there."

Bill Smeaton captained the race before Bortoluzzi, back when it started in Grant Park and carried the park's name. It included a 5-kilometer and an estimate-your-time run for kids, and the logistics were driving Smeaton batty. "No bathrooms, and we had to register people out of a car parked at the curb!" he says.

In 1983, his wife, Jan, suggested reversing the course, starting at the South Shore Pavilion with its warm indoors and bathrooms.

Bortoluzzi took over in 1988, and he persuaded the Badgerland Striders board to give the race the club's name. They dropped the companion races, and the combination clicked. Entrants have included running luminaries such as Tim Renzelmann and Clement Grum, Donna Perkins and Kevin and Kris Setnes.

Outside the Striders and running, though, few know of Bortoluzzi. Since taking up running to recover from heart bypass surgery, he has finished 20 marathons and five runs of 50 miles or more. But his real satisfaction seems to come from other runners.

"I get out there Saturday about 6:30 to start setting things up," he says. "I've got Duane Holz on registration and Terry Reinoos handling sentries. I look around and nobody shows up, Leg 3 ends here nobody shows up, I'm getting nervous. All of a sudden it's 8:30 and it's like a sardine factory! That feels great."

Talk to John Krawczyk and his wife, Nora, known everywhere (even in the phone book) as "Tiger," Smeaton says, about the spirit of the race. For the 12th year, they will stand at the South Shore's 3 1/2 (and 10 1/2) mile mark, handing out water until their arms and knees ache, playing country music on their boom box, shouting encouragement to runners from the flying first to the laboring last.

"This is tradition, and we wouldn't miss it," Krawczyk says. "We'll put up signs, `It's Still Saturday' or `Watering Hole,' and play the music. Bob and Bill, they're back-slappers, and Bob can really tell a story. You need that, because this time of year a north wind can be brutal. On the bad days, Tiger freezes her fingers."

Good thing the race's featured giveaway is gloves.

Bortoluzzi likes to say that the half marathon this weekend proves that virtue or at least simplicity is still its own reward.

"Some years," he says, "I can even make a hundred bucks."

By the end of the day, though, the beer and pretzels nearly always are gone.

Now, Bob Bortoluzzi will be, too.

Copyright 1995
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