{"id":4678,"date":"2011-11-07T07:27:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T14:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=4678"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:10:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:10:22","slug":"running-with-the-coatman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=4678","title":{"rendered":"Running with the Coatman"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dennis Marsella ’75. Photo (c) Chris Freeman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dennis Marsella is not like the rest of us. At age 60, his hair is conspicuously dark, and he believes he\u2019ll never get old\u2014at least not in the traditional sense. He\u2019s risked death by heat exhaustion in the name of his passion. He likes to figure out how something should be done and then do it the hard way, better than anyone else. He learns the rules and then breaks them.<\/p>\n

Marsella, a 1975 graduate of the College, is one of the country\u2019s greatest stunt runners. They call him Coatman.<\/p>\n

Since 1981, Coatman has completed 128 marathons (26.2 miles)\u2014four or five a year\u2014in some of the most counterintuitive running garb imaginable. When he runs, he wears a winter coat, big tie, and dress shoes, and carries a tray topped with a bottle and glass, waiter-style. Marathon fans await his appearance and cheer for him on the streets of Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, where he has guaranteed entry to the New York City Marathon.<\/p>\n

To qualify as a stunt runner, Marsella explains, one must either wear something or carry something that makes it considerably more difficult to finish the race. Check and check.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never run with anyone who\u2019s done both,\u201d he says. His wardrobe has evolved over the years\u2014he added the tray, once a pizza box, in 1993, and says it\u2019s become \u201cthe star of the show\u201d\u2014but it all started with the coat. At age 29, never having run more than a few miles at a time, Marsella saw a photo of a man crawling to the finish line of a marathon. He decided to give it a try. Three days before the race, he had a crazy idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, you know, the most ridiculous thing you could do in Miami is to put on a coat and run,\u201d he says. A former high-school wide receiver, he decided he wasn\u2019t lightweight enough to top the ranks of traditional marathon runners. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just bring out the best in you?\u201d he asked himself. And so, in spite of Miami\u2019s sizzling climate, Marsella donned the denim jacket he had taken with him when he moved to Florida from New Jersey. Coatman was born.<\/p>\n

The secret of \u201cpsy-running\u201d<\/h3>\n

Three decades and four coats later, Marsella is as relentless as he\u2019s ever been, and running has become more central to his life than he ever imagined it could. Coatman\u2019s lifestyle has taken on a couple different layers. Obviously, there\u2019s the entertainment value: Stunt runners offer a welcome distraction from the monotony of the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s satire. It\u2019s like seeing Saturday Night Live<\/em>,\u201d Marsella says. Coatman and other costumed runners playfully take the wind out of the competition, all while running the full length of the course themselves. \u201cEven though it\u2019s very difficult to do it, it\u2019s also funny,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the spectators at a marathon are there to watch somebody they know,\u201d says Bart Yasso, chief running officer at Runner\u2019s World<\/em>. Though he doesn\u2019t understand what would drive anyone to run in a winter coat, he admires what Marsella does. \u201cEveryone kind of looks the same at some point,\u201d Yasso says. \u201cCoatman does not look the same as everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly surprising that Marsella plays the part of a trickster. His most pronounced memory of campus life involves planting speakers in the windows of his Wolfe Hall dorm and blasting the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cSympathy for the Devil.\u201d Everyone heard the rock \u2019n\u2019 roll echoes, he remembers, but no one knew where it was coming from. \u201cI used to laugh my head off,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Yet underneath the showman is an intensely serious runner. Marsella runs every day, peaking weekly or biweekly at around 20 miles, and he estimates he\u2019s racked up more than 108,000 training miles since he started. He enlists a strategy he calls \u201cpsy-running\u201d or \u201cBodhisattva running,\u201d which combines Eastern breathing and concentration techniques. His special technique, he says, is the reason for his superior endurance and his unusually young appearance. He maintains that he has never once been injured by participating in sports.<\/p>\n

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At the 1987 Moscow International Peace Marathon. \u201cThe Russians went nuts,” said Coatman. “I ran in my coat and it hit 80 (degrees) that day.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s like my religion,\u201d he says. \u201cI do the breathing when I run, and I also do certain visualizations. You have to visualize the energy flowing around your system.\u201d Though Marsella studied traditional psychology at the College and says he was initially \u201clike an atheist scientist,\u201d he started reading books about consciousness in the late 1980s. In between his intense running workouts and his night job as a security officer, he studies physics and parapsychology\u2014the researching of \u201caltered states.\u201d<\/p>\n

On subjects like these, Marsella can expound at length. \u201cIt is being studied in a scientific way, [though] it sounds like it\u2019s not scientific,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A card on his jacket bears the word \u201cBodhisattva,\u201d which Marsella says is an enlightened being, \u201creincarnated to help humanity.\u201d In coordination with his visualizations, he inhales extra amounts of air when he runs, holds it in for half a minute, then exhales, flooding his body with oxygen.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost guys do it sitting in meditation,\u201d he says. \u201cI do it as I run.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next Paula Abdul…almost<\/h3>\n

Coatman\u2019s denim namesakes have stories to tell. His coats have taken on red ribbons, sewed-on souvenir patches, and holes and tears from wearing and washing. \u201cEvery time I washed it, it got holes,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s something with denim.\u201d He wears it anyway. His newest coat, he says, is probably the warmest yet.<\/p>\n

Marsella and his coats have been featured in newspapers across the country, in Runner\u2019s World, and on CBS. They are artifacts of the wear and tear he\u2019s taken over the years. Despite not having been injured, he says, he\u2019s gotten knocked around by other runners and has on more than one occasion, unsurprisingly, succumbed to the power of heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one is the factor that can kill you,\u201d he says. During one Los Angeles Marathon, he blacked out on the side of a road in Hollywood. When bystanders summoned him awake, he told them he\u2019d only had a cramp and leapt back into the race. \u201cI know that if I give myself two, three minutes, I can come back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Marsella\u2019s souvenirs recall happier memories. One of his patches depicts an American flag and a Soviet flag joined together, enveloping a pair of silhouetted runners. It commemorates what he calls the biggest marathon of his life\u2014the 1987 Moscow International Peace Marathon. \u201cThe Russians went nuts. I ran in my coat and it hit 80 (degrees) that day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a great course. It went through Gorky Park and through the Kremlin and Red Square and Lenin\u2019s tomb,\u201d he recalls, where, he points out, the embalmed Soviet leader remained agelessly preserved.<\/p>\n

Coatman could have been \u201cthe next Paula Abdul.\u201d In 1992, L.A. Gear\u2014the shoe company known for its late-\u201980s rise and subsequent slide into bankruptcy\u2014flew Marsella to Los Angeles for dinner and a photo shoot and presented him with a coat labeled \u201cCoatman.\u201d The company was still riding relatively high then. Pop stars such as Abdul and Michael Jackson were promoting L.A. Gear shoes. Had the t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate led to something more, Coatman might have been the next voice of one of the nation\u2019s biggest shoemakers.<\/p>\n

Nothing came of it. But after Jackson and the company sued each other and L.A. Gear\u2019s stock plummeted, Coatman kept on doing his thing, endorsement or no endorsement.<\/p>\n

Last man running<\/h3>\n

He seems to have outlasted them all: the \u201czanies\u201d in New York who run as robots and clowns, the Perrier bottle man who lasted three years, the Elvises and Wolfmen who run the first mile or take turns. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen any stunt runner last more than 10 years,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Marsella estimates he\u2019s racked up more than108,000 training miles since he started running.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What\u2019s more, he shows no sign of stopping. That would be very un-Coatman-like. \u201cI have no injuries. I honestly can\u2019t imagine not being able to run marathons,\u201d he says. \u201cTo me, I should be able to do this at least another 20 years.\u201d He lists his times in the lower four-hour and upper three-hour range. He ran the New York City Marathon in 4:12 last year and 3:59 the year before. \u201cHe\u2019s running them at a pace that\u2019s kind of in the median time for people his age, or even faster,\u201d says Yasso. \u201cHe\u2019s adding that degree of difficulty, so you\u2019ve got to hand it to the guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stunt runners, who constitute a small portion of the competition, are not taken very seriously, according to Yasso. He\u2019s convinced Marsella is in it to be recognized\u2014that\u2019s the only way the Coatman stunt makes sense to him. Still, he can\u2019t help but respect the legacy of the denim-clad dynamo. He says Marsella is \u201cthe real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(It\u2019s) amazing to me. There have been some others out there that kind of come and go, but the Coatman\u2019s been steady,\u201d Yasso says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen this guy for 20-plus years, and he\u2019s not going away.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, Marsella says he\u2019s made about $10,000 from his running career\u2014not an insignificant sum for a stunt runner. And his ambitions are as strong as ever: \u201cIf I keep doing this another 20 years, I don\u2019t see how I can\u2019t make a million dollars with some company doing something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see all these fake characters doing advertising,\u201d he says. \u201cHow can I not be worth money if I\u2019m a real character?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet the king of the stunt runners: Dennis Marsella ’75, aka the Coatman. Since 1981, Marsella has completed more than 120 marathons in some of the most counterintuitive running garb imaginable. Yet underneath the showman is an intensely serious runner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":4683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-features","category-november-2011"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}