Running News Daily

Mike Fanelli Remembering Mark Conover

As you have most likely heard, our dear friend Mark Conover made his way to heaven last night (April 6, 2022). 

Like you, I knew that it was coming...but frankly, that doesn't make it any easier to reckon with. I've been physically ill since hearing the news early this morning.

It has taken me all day long to muster up the oooommmppph to write a little something about him...and I hope that doing so provides a cathartic effect....for all of us.

We first knew each others as competitors at the same distances in the same Far Western Conference in the early eighties. Scratch that...we ran in the same track races in different colored uniforms, but on my very best day I couldn't hold a candle to Mark.

Post-collegiately, I was working as the running promotions guy at Reebok and Mark was one of our sponsored athletes...as you will note from his red, white, and blue striped uni from that career highlight.

In 1988, as a young journalist in the sport, I was commissioned to cover the 1988 Olympic Marathon Trials. I am pretty sure that I got the job because no one else wanted to go from California to Hoboken, New Jersey where they were being held.

There, I got to ride the press truck and at times, our vehicle was bogged down in the tiny rutted streets so much so that we nearly impeded the runners...we could practically reach out and touch them.

That, and I was absolutely flabbergasted to see Mark running right up front alongside the heavyweight, Ed Eyestone.

It took everything I could rally to show impartiality, while inside I was clearly wildly rooting for my buddy in the sweat socks.

Once in Seoul, South Korea for those 1988 Games,  I made a point of being in the stadium early morning to catch the marathon start, and had devised a plan to take subways to different spots on the course to cheer my head off for Mark, my brother Gary, and Pete Pfitzinger. It was SO cool to watch a Lumberjack pal racing against the best in the world in the ultimate marathon of all...the Olympic Games.

Back stateside, Mark and I shared more deeply personal trials and tribulations. In particular, both of our Dads passed within close proximity to one another, and we kinda' talked each other through some of that.

But while all of the above speaks to our history together, I wanted to share with you how we very first became actual pals.

It was 1981, and us San Francisco State Gator tracksters made the bus trip up to Humboldt State to compete in their famed 'Bowl' for a dual meet competition.

Of course, Mark and I were entered in the same event, the 5,000 meters...and if I recall, he already had THE leading time in NCAA Dll at that point in the season.

I purposely lined up right next to him, the lone purple clad runner in a sea of green.

When the starter called us to our marks and raised his pistol, I nudged Mark and pointed to his shoes and said, 'your spikes, they're untied" (they weren't).

The gun fires a thousandth of a second later and I am off in a hurry and into an immediate lead while Mark is still inspecting his footwear.

A lead that lasted PERHAPS 180 yards before King Conover came shuffling on by, and left both me and the rest of the field in his wake.

Forty years later, EVERY time we saw one another, that 'incident' crept into the conversation...and always always always, still cracked us both up.

Mark Conover was a unique, cool, witty, down-to-earth cat on SO many levels.

I am honored to have known him and called him my friend.

Rest in forever peace my man.

(04/11/2022) Views: 1,760 ⚡AMP
by Mike Fanelli