A running zealot, Atlantan Jeff Galloway leaves an immeasurable impact

A beautiful aspect of Jeff Galloway’s life is this.

The Atlantan accomplished the achievement of a lifetime at the age of 27, competing for the U.S. Olympic track team in the 10,000 meters at the 1972 Summer Games. (He also could have qualified in the marathon, but at the U.S. trials, he allowed a friend and training partner to finish in third place ahead of him so both could make the team.)

He had an origin story to match. He got his start in running when, as an overweight eighth grader at the Westminster Schools, he started running at his father’s insistence.

But in terms of the legacy he left upon his death Wednesday at the age of 80, his Olympic feats pale when compared with his influence and leadership in helping untold thousands of everyday people experience the joy, community and physical and mental health benefits found in running.

“Literally and figuratively, he covered a lot of miles in his life,” Atlanta Track Club CEO Rich Kenah told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday. “There have been a lot of fast runners — Olympic athletes, winners of races — who have gone on to leverage their relative celebrity to do other things in life. I don’t think there’s an elite distance runner that I can come up with in history that has done more from the sport than Jeff did.”

Galloway sustained a hemorrhagic stroke and died at a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, Galloway’s daughter-in-law Carissa Galloway told The Associated Press.

Galloway’s running accomplishments don’t end with his Olympic berth. In Atlanta, he is recognized as the winner of the first Peachtree Road Race, held in 1970.

“It takes a real nut to get out and run like this,” a 25-year-old Galloway was quoted as saying in an AJC story. “And, I’m a nut.”

But it was his discovery of a training method at that time that changed his life’s course. After college at Wesleyan University, Galloway served in the Navy and then enrolled in graduate school at Florida State to become a teacher. He continued to train. He started later than normal one morning and encountered the stifling Florida panhandle heat.

“Purely for survival, I started taking walking breaks,” Galloway told the AJC in 2008. “I found that if you walk early enough and often enough, you gain control over fatigue and there are almost no injuries.”

Galloway’s trademark run-walk-run technique was born. Intervals could be adjusted, providing any aspiring runner a place to jump in.

Over time, it opened up the sport to perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe even more, people daunted by running long distances, the discomfort or the risk of injury.

He wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books on running, a number of them with wife Barbara, that were translated into at least three foreign languages. One, “Galloway’s Book on Running,” is “probably the bestselling running-coaching book of all time,” according to Runner’s World.

He taught the method in his own training program and camps and opened a chain of running stores (Phidippides), which not only provided expert fittings from trained runners but became hubs for running communities.

In the 1980s, he helped found a corporate 5K in Atlanta (and designed an accompanying training program) that remains in existence.

A husband, father and grandfather, he was a columnist for Runner’s World magazine. He was central to the explosion of the Peachtree, leveraging his Olympic connections to invite world-class distance runners to compete and bring more attention to the race, which has become a civic institution and motivation for hundreds of thousands of Atlantans to improve their health.

According to his website, more than 1 million runners and walkers were impacted by Galloway through his books, running schools and retreats, e-coaching or individual consultations.

After an emergency surgery that the family announced on Facebook on Feb. 20, dozens of people posted video messages of encouragement and thanks to Galloway, testimonies of his impact on their lives.

“I wanted you know that I am one of the thousands that you have helped make running possible due to your run-walk method,” one woman said. “From my very first 5K to the Disney World Marathon, where your pace group pulled me through, your method made the impossible possible for me.”

In a 2008 AJC story, a 62-year-old Galloway estimated that he was spending 270 days a year on the road tending to his many running ventures, including running programs in 60 cities, coaching for advanced runners, corporate running events and retreats and clinics.

“I average more than 100 emails a day, and 80 or 85 of them are from runners wanting help,” he said. “Solving problems, you get a wonderful feeling.”

At one point, one of those he helped was another Atlanta running icon, Bill Thorn, the lone person to finish the first 53 Peachtrees.