Facing hip replacement, elite athlete runs ‘final mile’
Paul Greer, who’s been called the Pied Piper of San Diego runners, lived up to his reputation Tuesday evening when he ran his “final mile.”
About 300 San Diego Track Club members and friends followed him as he ran a 6:50-mile around the track.
“They stayed behind me. They were very kind to me,” says Greer, 57. The elite athlete’s 42 years as a track warrior have caught up to him, and he needs to replace a worn-out hip.
So he decided to turn his “final mile” run into an event.
He invited former teammates and coaches to run with him and afterward took the opportunity to publicly thank them for making a huge difference in his life.
But it also was Greer’s way of reinvigorating the local running community and bringing members together to heal after two years of anxiety, depression and stress created by the pandemic.
He presented participants with a medal he designed engraved with the words: “faith, hope and love.”
Greer isn’t retiring from the running scene. He’ll still coach men’s cross country at San Diego City College and teach classes in exercise science, health and kinesiology there.
Although he’ll no longer enter races, he’ll continue to train those who dream of running a marathon.
In 1989, Greer, then 24, ran a mile in under 4 minutes at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. The St. Augustine High alum became only the fourth San Diego County high school graduate to accomplish that feat.
He still holds the 1,500meter track record at San Diego State University, which he attended on a full track and field scholarship. He laughingly attributes his record longevity to SDSU’s discontinuation of its men’s track program in 1992.
That exemplifies one of the endearing qualities of San Diego’s Pied Piper — humility.
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“Paul is understated,” says Tracy Sundlun, cofounder of the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon Series. “He didn’t a make a big deal out of this. ... This was a thank you, not ‘let’s talk with Paul Greer’, not ‘look at me.’”
Greer sent out a few invitations to family, former coaches and fellow runners. Among those who showed up were at least four Olympians: 800-meter Olympic gold medalist Joaquim Carvalho Cruz and long jump Olympic athlete Martha Rae Watson, as well as past Summer Olympics competitors heptathlete Shelia Burrell and race walker Philip Martin Dunn. In 1992, Greer competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials’ 1,500-meter event.
Yet he described himself as awkward and unathletic in high school. Through hard work, he went from not being able to do a jumping jack as a freshman to running the seventh fastest mile in the nation by the time he graduated.
“He might be small in stature,” his former St. Augustine coach, Dan Schaitel, once told the L.A. Times, “but he’s got something very few will ever have — unbridled determination.”
Greer’s competitive spirit wasn’t just on the track. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and he scaled the dangerous slopes of Mount Blanc, the tallest peak in Western Europe. He biked across the Swiss and Italian Alps. He even tried diving with the sharks (in an underwater cage) in San Francisco.
For five years, between 1997 and 2002, Greer celebrated his July 8 birthday by running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
“I’m a thrill seeker,” he admits. Plus he is a big fan of novelist Ernest Hemingway, who romanticizes Pamplona in “The Sun Also Rises.”
Greer curtailed that risk-taking lifestyle, however,
after marrying classical dancer Callie Jean Kuklok a decade ago. “I didn’t want to make her a widow.”
He estimates he’s gone through as many as 250 pairs of running shoes over the years, but, thanks to sponsors, he didn’t have to buy them.
He still has the lucky shoes in which he ran his sub-4-minute mile. “But if you come into my house, you’d never know I was a runner,” says Greer, who keeps his trophies in storage.
He does wear a pin everywhere — a tiny silver cross that testifies to his Christian faith. He says it’s his way of sharing God with others without having to be vocal about it.
One Sunday a month,
the devout Roman Catholic visits the Kearny Mesa Juvenile Justice Facility with a couple of church volunteers to read the gospel and pray.
He timed his hip surgery for June 13 — after Sunday’s annual Rock ’n’ Roll marathon, of course.
He plans to be at Sunday’s race with a bullhorn jumping from mile 1, to mile 8, then to mile 13 and finally to mile 24, to cheer not just his trainees, but all runners.
“He’s all over the place. He has a megaphone, and he’s cheering everyone on,” says Greer’s longtime running partner, Steve Scott. “He exudes motivation.”
Scott, formerly of Leucadia, holds the lifetime world record of sub-4-minute mile races — racking up 137 in a span of 18 years from 1977 to 1994. He credits Greer with helping him put together the Carlsbad 5000 5K in 1986.
“He came from elite runner to training people at all levels — from beginners anxious to run their first half-marathon to more seasoned competitors.”
When I asked Greer what he would like inscribed on his grave stone, he was quick to respond: “Thank you all for making a difference in my life.”