John Litzenberg’s Olympic Dream: How Far Can You Run in 15 Years?

While the Paris Olympics had most of us enthralled as it unfolded across our TV screens, John Litzenberg, Head Track & Field Coach at Sonoma Valley High School, had a uniquely personal and tactile interest in the games.

That’s because 40 years ago, on the eve of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when John was 14-years old, he got to carry the Olympic torch as part of the cross-country relay that delivered the sacred flame to L.A.

The memory is somewhat timeworn but he thinks he carried the torch for something between a quarter and a half mile, part of the way along Seventh Street East in Sonoma. “The handle was made of wood, it was kind of heavy,” he remembers, “and I kept telling myself, ‘don’t drop it, don’t drop it.’ I’m left-handed, I carried it in my right hand, and at one point they had to relight it. My understanding,” he adds, “is that it was the torch Rafer Johnson used to light the flame at the Los Angeles Coliseum.” Johnson was the legendary decathalon gold medal winner at the 1960 Olympics.

How does a 14-year-old boy get to carry the Olympic torch? John’s not sure how he was chosen – “It might have been through school, or what was then called The Boys Club.” – but he was already emerging as one of the Valley’s most promising young runners.

John began training when he was nine years old. “My dad used to do a four-mile run around the Sonoma Golf Course, so I would run with him.” And the family house was just over the back fence from the Altimira Middle School track, so before long John would hop the fence and run 16 laps to get his daily four miles.

The training paid off and as an Altimira student he won almost every race he entered and set a seventh grade mile record of 5:21 that stood for years. His one loss was a second place finish, and the following year he won that race, 1600 meters, in 4:54.

His running career blossomed during the heart of the 1980s running boom and John’s ever-evolving prowess on the track got a shot of Olympic adrenalin when mile distance legend Steve Scott came to Sonoma Valley to boost a fundraising drive for a new track. Scott, a two-time Olympian who held the American mile record, of 3:47.69 for 25 years, ran laps with local students, including John. “He was doing four-lap progressions at a sub-five-minute pace. I think I did a 4:30 with him. He was really a great guy.”

Running with Scott helped stoke the fire of John’s Olympic ambitions. “The Olympics was my dream,” he says.

John’s distinguished track and cross country history at SVHS, his speed and consistent winning record, caught the attention of Columbia University in New York, which offered him a guaranteed scholarship covering half of all his university costs. 

The Ivy League was good to John and, by the time of his senior year at Columbia, he was established as the number-one rated cross country runner on the team. It was during that time, says John, that “I would literally dream of coaching at Sonoma Valley High School.”

Along the way John also became a more than respectable marathon runner, finishing the 1995 Napa Marathon in two hours, 39 minutes; then a year later he ran the Boston Marathon in 2:41, placing “somewhere in the first 300 of 38,000 runners.” John’s best marathon was an impressive  2:37 time; but the distance between 2:37 and a competitive time in 1995 – the always fast Chicago marathon was won that year in 2:11:18 – was a chasm. The current men’s world marathon record is 2 hours and 35 seconds, set by Kenyan athlete Kelvin Kiptum at the 2023 Chicago Marathon. John has also run the New York Marathon and the Avenue of the Giants redwood route in Northern California. Amidst his other shorter races, John says he still does at least one marathon each year.

So while it is clear by now that one dream – to compete in the Olympics – is not going to happen, another, even more meaningful dream has come true. After returning from Columbia, John began coaching the SVHS Cross Country team and carved out a well-respected and secure position at his alma mater. And last year he was named head coach of the entire Track and Field Department.

Now 54 years old, John continues to race in the Master’s category, almost always wins his age group and sometimes wins outright. And he trains every day. That’s EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which requires some explanation.

Some time ago, John decided to see if he could run every day for a year. So he did. At the end of that year he saw no reason to stop. So he continued running every day – winter, spring, summer, fall – rain, sun, heat and cold. Every day. Or night. And that was 15 years ago. That’s right. John Litzenberg has run every single day for 15 years. He’s now in year 16, which began on August 4, right smack in the middle of the Olympic games. He says he averages 10 miles a day. Do the math and you come up with 54,750 miles, which is twice around the Earth’s circumference at the Equator, followed by a quick jog from Montreal to Vancouver, BC, and then a short trot from Vancouver down to Tijuana. Runners tend to be healthy and live a long time. In another 15 years he’ll only be 70. Imagine how much farther John Litzenberg will run.

Story by David Bolling