Rod Dixon: A Great Pennsylvania/New Zealand Marathoner

Because he ended up moving from the awesome mountain trails of New Zealand to settle in my home town in Pennsylvania, I decided to look up Rod Dixon. People mentioned him living in the area when I was a kid. If you don't know where Nolde Forest is, that's okay - this article about his crack at the 1983 New York Marathon is still interesting as a document of early 80s running history. He won in 2:08:59 by 9 seconds, catching the leader at the end in what is widely considered the greatest finish in the history of the race.

Interesting, and difficult though this is to believe for us in 2014, Dixon was the first non-American to win New York - and no American-born runner has won it since. (And only one American has won it since then, Eritrean-born (and San Diego/Mammoth's own) Meb Keflezighi.)

He also held the course record for Bay to Breakers in 1983, but did something even better in his fun-run in 1985.

Might I just point out with absolutely no patriotic bias, once again we see that the two best places to train in the U.S. are Pennsylvania and California.