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SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELLMax Bayne moved here in 1964 and helped establish the Suncoast Runners Club.
ST. PETERSBURG - In 1982, crowds cheered as Max Bayne ran from Tampa Stadium to Al Lang Field; he was 81.
"People make running out to be difficult, and it isn't," said the marathoner, who always smiled when he spoke. "You don't think about running. It's about as natural as winking your eye."
After arriving here in 1964, Bayne entered marathons and helped establish the Suncoast Runners Club at age 63. "He ran in every race in the area," said former Evening Independent journalist Merritt Ashmore, 55. "Bayne was a fixture."
Bayne shattered age records for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). At age 83, he finished the New York Marathon. He was male runner of the year in his age group in 1984. One year later, Bayne died in a bicycle accident.
"I'm not going to live forever," said Bayne, who is honored every January at Fort De Soto by the Max Bayne Half-Marathon. "But my idea . . . is not to hang onto life. It's being able to do the things you enjoy."
On May 29, 1901, Max Paul Bayne was born outside Berlin, Germany. He later labored almost 14 hours daily as a baker. When Germans actually needed a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in 1926, Bayne came to Chicago. He remained unemployed nearly six years.
"In the Depression, you just lived from one day to the next," said Bayne, who later served as a baker and then a lithographer for nearly 40 years.
When Bayne came to St. Petersburg in 1964, jogging was already running his life. "I had to do something," said Bayne, married with two sons. "I was not in very good shape."
Running daily from September 1969 to January 1970, Bayne totaled 450 miles. He completed a six-month trek around the YMCA's gym floor in 1970 at age 68 that totaled 1,000 miles. The organization honored him with a plaque.
While visiting Germany in 1981 at age 80, Bayne completed the Berlin Marathon - 26 miles, 385 yards. "He showed humility, but he knew what he had accomplished," said Bob Chick, 64, former Independent sports editor.
In the 1982 British-American Marathon, Bayne jogged from Tampa to St. Petersburg in 5 hours, 2 minutes. The St. Petersburg Times described Bayne as a man with a thick German accent, who had Mayo Clinic physicals every two years and ran like a steamroller in jogging shorts.
"Bayne was a very determined man," said Royston Dillon, 53, Suncoast Runners Club president (1984-1985). "A lot of passion and willpower. Nothing ever stood in his way. He always looked at his feet while running. Never looked up."
Bayne ran amid violent storms while others sought refuge and finish lines were removed. "There was never a race that was too long or too short, too hot or too cold, that he was unable to finish," wrote the Suncoast Runners Club, which Bayne helped establish in the mid-1970s.
At the YMCA in the early 1980s, Bayne taught physical training. "Exercises, jogging and weightlifting," said Max Hadrika, 71, YMCA director (1973-1989). "He pushed them to their limits."
"That was probably his legacy," Chick said of Bayne. "He influenced many people of his generation to exercise."
In the 1984 New York Marathon, Bayne was the oldest finisher of 17,000 runners. He finished second to world champion Paul Spangler in 1985's Clearwater 10-kilometer National TAC Masters.
On Dec. 8, 1985, Bayne was riding his bicycle on 28th Street N when a car struck him from behind. Despite critical injuries, Bayne attempted to mount his bicycle and talked of running in the upcoming Tampa-St. Petersburg Marathon.
Bayne died later that day at Bayfront Medical Center. He was 84.
"I still see him prodding along and people cheering," Ashmore said. "The running scene lost one of the best."
- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com