By Bill Higgins
It was on the eve of the 28th Falmouth Road Race, in the summer of 2000, and 57-year-old Brian Salzberg was driving along the seven-mile course from Woods Hole to Falmouth Heights.
His long gray beard, speckled with some original brown whiskers, rippled in the sun as he approached the one-mile mark, cresting the hill at Nobska Light. He slowed to admire the scenic expanse of Vineyard Sound.
“It’s always inspiring to see the finish line from here,” Salzberg said that day 25 years ago, gazing across the waves to the Heights in the distance.
Some things never change. The lighthouse remains an iconic landmark and enduring beacon, and Salzberg, too, keeps on keeping on. In 2000, he ran Falmouth for the 28th consecutive year and remarked then that his goal was to run at least 50 in a row before quitting.
Fast forward to the summer of 2025. Salzberg, who will be 83 in September, his signature beard now mostly white flecked with hints of gray, is going above and beyond. He soon will arrive on Water Street at the Tommy Leonard Start Line and compete in the race for the 53rd straight year.
“Yes, I guess you could say I’m a bit obsessive. Falmouth and running are that important to me,” said Salzberg. “A runner who lived to 100 said, ‘You don’t stop running because you get old; you get old because you stop running.’ I like that.”
Inspired by Dr. Ken Cooper’s 1968 landmark book “Aerobics” and a family history of coronary disease, Salzberg began jogging around the streets of Cambridge in 1968 when he was a student at Harvard. In the summer of 1973 he was in a Yale postdoctoral program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole when Mike Bennett, a scientist at the MBL, told him about a bar-to-bar run called the “Falmouth Marathon.”
And so it all began on a Wednesday afternoon with less than 100 runners, Salzberg among them, huddled inside the Captain Kidd restaurant. They waited during a driving rainstorm outside, then sloshed through seven miles (not a marathon) to the finish line at the Brothers 4 in Falmouth Heights.
There were 92 finishers. David Duba won and Jenny Taylor was the first woman. Race founder Tommy Leonard was 13th. The legendary Boston and Olympic marathoner Johnny Kelley was 17th, at 65 years old. Salzberg was 28th.
Photo: The Falmouth Five with John Kelley (L-R: Salzberg, Bennett, Pokraka, Kelley, Delinks, Brannelly)
That was 52 years ago, but the memories of that mid-August day remain vivid.
“The horrendous weather and the party after the race,” Salzberg said. “It can still picture it all. Everyone was soaked and sweaty, completely bedraggled in the Brothers 4. But there was Johnny Kelley, showered, in clean clothes, and jitterbugging on the dance floor.”
Salzberg was once one of the famous “Falmouth Five” – along with Bennett, Don Delinks, Ron Pokraka and Tom Brannelly – who started and finished every race since the first in ‘73. The Fab Fave stayed together well into 40-plus races.
Photo: The Falmouth Five (L-R: Bennett, Salzberg, Brannelly, Delinks, Pokraka) prior to the start of the 35th Falmouth Road Race in 2007
But Salzberg is now, indeed, the one and only. And he has a new goal.
“I hope that I will have run Falmouth the year that I die,” he said.
Salzberg once told the running journalist Amby Burfoot (himself a Boston Marathon champion) his philosophy of life: “As long as I am still running, I am still alive! Always remember that every run is a new personal age-group record. You have never been this old before.”
Salzberg was a longtime professor of neuroscience and physiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, where he studied optical phenomena in mammalian nerve terminals and other neural systems. He retired last summer but still holds a title of Professor Emeritus. He also can speak with expertise on ceramics from China’s Tang and Song dynasties.
When it comes to running, he said he’s more stubborn than talented, but, in fact, his racing resume indicates otherwise. He has kept a detailed log of his weekly training since 1968 and through June he had run 56,150 miles in his lifetime.
Falmouth 1973 was the first time Salzberg ever raced, but a few weeks later he ran the New York City Marathon. Between the ages of 35 and 50 he ran seven marathons, all under three hours. His best Falmouth finish was a more than respectable 40 minutes, 40 seconds.
“The nice thing about running is you get out of it pretty much what you put into it,” he said.
From monsoon-like downpours to scorching heat, Salzberg has seen it all at Falmouth and faced more than a few challenges to keep his ironman streak intact. The closest he came to missing a race, he said, was in 2008 when he severely sprained ligaments in his foot in early August. Less than two weeks later, a podiatrist taped him up and he walked the course on crutches.
“And I finished under the two-hour time limit. I bet I have the course record for crutches,” he said.
Salzberg has had nearly two dozen surgeries in his lifetime, including three craniotomies for benign brain tumors, three back surgeries, an operation to reattach a torn hamstring muscle, another to remove a bone spur from his hip, and a knee replacement. He also has twice suffered heat stroke during the race and been hospitalized.
Still, somehow, some way, he is always present on that Sunday in August at the Woods Hole drawbridge. He has miles to go and once again will be there August 17 to answer the call for No. 53.
“I’m always extra careful to avoid any accidents as Falmouth gets closer,” the redoubtable Salzberg said.
“It’s a beautiful course and it was my first race,” he added, trying to answer the obvious “Why?” question. “And, well, after a while and about 25 of them, I guess I just have to be there. Quitting is not an option.”
Photo: Salzberg crossing the finish line in 2023
And so as it was in 1973, has been and will be again. He will jog-walk-jog through the first mile, crest the hill at Nobska Light and gaze across the waves to his final destination in the Heights. Another finish line awaits in this grand festival of feet – and feats – that has been a benchmark of his life.
Some things never change. Onward he runs, Brian Salzberg, the one and only. The Last Man Standing.
Bill Higgins is the retired sports editor of the Cape Cod Times. He has written about the Falmouth Road Race every year since 1975 and has run the race about a dozen times. He can be reached at bhiggins54@gmail.com.