Mark Bauman jokes that he wasn’t missed at Flint Community College’s next track and field meet.
“My leg speed’s not that great,” he said.
It’s hard to imagine a coach encouraging one of his current runners to do a 26.2-mile race during the season, but Paul Griffin had no reservations about taking Bauman with him to the 1970 Boston Marathon.
In those days, one of the ways to gain entry into the world’s most prestigious annual marathon was to have a letter from a coach.
As Bauman discovered, he was much better suited for running long distances than racing the mile on the track.
Bauman’s love affair with the marathon and its most iconic race began that day. He’s been back every year since then, putting together a streak of 50 consecutive Boston Marathon finishes that ranks second all-time to the active 52-year streak
assembled by Ben Beach of Bethesda, Md.
These days, the goal for the 69-year-old Bauman is to reach the finish line in time to record an official finish. The
standard is six hours after the final runner crosses the start line.
Back in 1975, Bauman ran his fastest marathon ever by covering the point-to-point course from Hopkinton to Boston in
2 hours, 30 minutes and 32 seconds.
“The three months before, I did over 400 miles a month and was running really well,” Bauman said. “It was a great day.
I was young at 25.”
Bauman’s marathon times were much faster, comparatively speaking, to his track times. The fastest he ran on the track
was 4:52.9 for the mile and 10:26 for two miles. He ran at Murray State in Kentucky after his time at Flint Community College.
“It was my lack of speed for the shorter distances, so it was something I could enjoy doing and not struggle like I was
doing in the shorter races,” he said.
It’s hard to find many people who have been running for 50 years, let alone who are healthy enough to run a marathon
every year for a half century. In addition to Boston, Bauman has run every Detroit Free Press Marathon since it began in
1978. He also has run every Crim 10-mile and Volkslaufe 20-kilometer race.
Many of Bauman’s contemporaries when he was in his prime are no longer running. Bauman hasn’t been immune from
injury or health issues over the years, but has always made his way to Boston to run the marathon.
“It’s been a lot of luck, actually, to be able to keep something like that going,” he said. “Everything’s got to fall into place.”
What is it about Boston that keeps him coming back?
“It’s the crowd support,” he said. “It’s a cool event. It’s a point-to-point course. You get the challenge of the hills in there.
In the early years, there were a lot of people from the Flint area going out; it was a group thing. A bunch of us went
out and for many years we all stayed in a bed and breakfast together. A lot of us trained together.”
Bauman started running during his junior year at Flint Ainsworth High School.
“My older brother, Doug, thought cross country would be a good sport for me to try out at Ainsworth,” he said. “It was an
enjoyable thing to do, being around other people doing the same thing. I made some friends and kept running through the
summer with friends.”
Bauman is a member of the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame’s 40th class in large part because of his longevity at
Boston, but he could arguably be inducted with a Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to the Flint-area running
and walking community.
In the 1970s, he helped start the Riverbend Striders, a running club that is still active. Bauman has been organizing
races in the Flint area for more than 40 years, benefiting thousands of runners and walkers through the decades. He’s been
a group leader in the Crim Training Program since its inception in the mid-1990s.
He has also served the community as owner of Bauman’s Running & Walking Shop since the early 1970s, getting his
start by selling shoes out of the back of his truck.
“It’s being involved with a lot of good people, people who are trying to make themselves a little better, do something
to make themselves feel better,” Bauman said. “The experience of being around people accomplishing goals, like in the
Crim Training Program, maybe the first time somebody went five miles, maybe not in a race but in a training run, or helping
them train for their first Crim or running with someone when they ran their personal record for some distance. Those are
experiences I can’t have anymore, but I can get some of it to rub off onto me when I’m around other people doing that.”
