MILES OF MEMORIES
Fifty years after winning the first edition of the race, Green trains other elite runners
A half-century ago this week, a 24-year-old Danny Green was still recovering from — and, truth to tell, regretting — his first marathon. Against his better judgment, he had entered the Galveston race in December 1971 as a favor to his friend and teammate, University of Houston All-American and future Olympian Leonard Hilton, a former champion on the island who asked for his help in a supporting role.
It proved to be a predictably miserable experience.
“I was a sprinter who’d become a 400/800-meter guy,” Green said. “The marathon was completely out my realm. But me, the sucker, I let him talk me into it. We started fast, running a (half-marathon) pace. I set a personal best through six miles. So you can guess what that did to me for the last seven miles. We were out in the middle of nowhere. In those days, there were no water stops, no aid stations. Nothing. Just lots of pastures and cows.”
Still, despite one final indignity, a nasty bout of diarrhea, Green willed himself across the finish line, then headed straight to the hotel to clean up. There he found Hilton, looking fresh as a daisy.
“I asked Leonard how he’d done,” Green said. “He told me, ‘Oh, I dropped out, Danny. Wasn’t feeling good.’ ”
“Leonard,” Green replied, “I’m gonna kick your butt.”
The irony, of course, is the young man from Pearland, who originally had walked on to the UH team himself as a sprinter, would become a marathoner — and a good one, too. The challenge intrigued him, and, just a year after his Galveston ordeal, Green won Houston’s inaugural marathon, run on a multi-lap Memorial Park course before mostly friends and family members. His 2:32:08, some 23 minutes slower than the world record at the time, turned no heads, but it was huge personal accomplishment and one he can still draw upon today.
The Chevron Houston Marathon Committee hasn’t forgotten Green, who’s now 74. It fittingly chose him to be the honorary starter for the 50th-anniversary race Sunday. After his historic victory, he completed 14 more Houston races, with fifth- and 13th-place finishes in the mix.
He will, of course, stick around long after the start to cheer on the runners, a goodly number of whom he has personally worked with and befriended. Two years ago, before the pandemic turned the Houston race into a virtual competition, he trained Wilkerson Given, who became the fastest American in the 2020 Houston Marathon, beating his previous personal best by 12 minutes in the process.
Although Green might be long retired from competition — also from coaching in the public schools after what can only be described as a storied 33-year chapter at The Woodlands High School, during which he won multiple state championships — he’s hardly slowing down. Under his Team Green umbrella, he works with what he calls “the complete gamut” of athletes and would-be athletes of every age and ability level, sharing what he has learned from his own decades of experiences and from two totemic coaching mentors, Al Lawrence and Joe Vigil.
Lawrence, the affable Australian transplant known to almost everyone in Houston’s running community before he passed away in 2017, became Green’s coach the day he first showed up for a UH practice, hoping to earn a scholarship. He ultimately did. It was Lawrence who convinced him to tackle the longer distances because he was better suited for them. It was Lawrence who stayed in Green’s ear in the days leading up to his historic marathon victory.
“With Al’s guidance,” Green said, “I won every AAU Gulf Coast Championship race from the 30-minute run to the marathon except for the 25K, and I got second it that one. My success illustrates what a great man and coach Al was. He gave me a thirst for running, and he taught me how to coach.”
Vigil? A towering figure in the annals of American running after 19 NAIA national championships and 14 coach of the year awards in 28 years at Adams State University in Colorado, he also became a mentor and sounding board for Green, who sought him out at a seminar, asked for an audience and wound up getting a four-hour, one-on-one, face-to-face strategy-planning session with him.
“Dr. Joe was the most gracious and giving coach I have ever been around,” Green said. “If I was asking athletes to give me their time, it was incumbent upon me to learn as much as a I possibly could. If I had questions, I knew where I could go to get the answers.”
Thus, Green was channeling Lawrence and Vigil when he began working with Tiffany Moran several years ago. When they met, she had gotten involved with a CrossFit group after having never participated in any sports growing up in The Woodlands. Green loved Moran’s “childlike” enthusiasm and tireless work ethic. While their collaboration was put on hold when she became pregnant with her now-4-year-old son Samuel — she also has a daughter, Kayla, who’s 12 — Moran is back in full training mode.
And, at the age of 35, aiming high. How high? Her goal is to qualify for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon trials. Toward that end, Moran will tackle her first marathon Sunday morning, targeting a three-hour finish. Well, OK, that’s the pie-in-the-sky objective. She’ll admits she’ll be overjoyed with a 3:15, and Green absolutely believes it’s doable. That matters hugely.
“I wasn’t used to people building up my self-esteem,” Moran said. “But from my first meeting with Dan, he made me believe I could reach for the stars. I found that I came alive in a way I’d never felt before. He fostered and protected my talent, showing me I was special, after I’d never thought I was special in any way. Coming from such a large family (19 adopted children including her, plus three other siblings), sometimes it felt like you were just a number in a crowd.”
Moran couldn’t complete four miles at a nine-minute pace before Green told her she could and began gently pushing her to do it. She was soon turning sub-eight-minute miles over 10-mile runs before the pregnancy hiatus. By the time she completed her second half-marathon last fall, she would average 6:22 over the 13.1 miles.
“I still ask myself,” she admitted, “‘Is this real? Can I really be this good?’ ”
Given her growth as a runner of late, it’s not preposterous to think she can do a marathon in 2:37, the new Trials qualifying time.
“Dan’s program is amazing,” Moran said. “What I love about him is how he sought out experts, putting himself in their proximity and becoming their friends. He’s not afraid to ask advice. And he likes to say that everybody is born with some level of talent. The other part is mental strength, and he helps bring that out in people. He did it in me.”
Green, to be sure, thinks the world of Moran, having come to know her as a wife, a mom and an elite athlete.
“I really take my hat off to Tiffany,” he said. “She does a hell of a job taking care of all aspects of her life.”
Moran, whose husband Chris will be waiting at the finish for her Sunday alongside Green, has another important guiding force, one that’s equal parts athletic and spiritual. The Morans’ pastor at WoodsEdge Community Church in Spring is Jeff Wells. At the age of 21 in 1976, Wells won the fifth Houston Marathon in 2:17:46, more than 17 minutes faster than any of the race’s four champions who preceded him.
Moran admitted she’s certain to be emotional when she finishes, regardless of her time.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Moran said. “After all, no matter what, it’s going to be my personal best. I’ll be running with really talented athletes — and in the footsteps of both Dan and Jeff.”
Hopefully, she won’t feel as wasted as Green did after his debut marathon in Galveston. But even if she does, he’ll quickly remind her how he would feel after his triumphant second one at Memorial Park.
“I wasn’t feeling it early in the race,” Green said of that December day. “My friend Clyde Villemez Jr. (who had won that Galveston Marathon a year earlier) was leading and looking strong. But with about two loops to go, my wife at the time let me know he wasn’t looking good, and I suddenly started feeling better. Every time I’d see Al, I’d be getting closer. I caught and passed Clyde at the 25-mile mark. Al was there right there, encouraging me, motivating me.”
Come Sunday, five decades on, Moran can count on the same from Green.