KEY POINTS:
Dave McKenzie was exceptional at running a long way in very public places. When talking to strangers, though, he only runs to very short and frustratingly inconsequential bursts.
"Oh yeah," says West Coaster McKenzie suspiciously, after I introduce myself on the phone.
His memories of winning the Boston Marathon don't extend anywhere beyond a reluctant "yeah, yeah, yeah, ahhhhh ... "
So did it change your life in any way, Dave?
"Nah, nah, nah - you take it in stride," he responds, flirting with verbosity.
As for finishing back in two Olympic marathons: "Wasn't good enough."
McKenzie certainly was good enough, especially on a snowy 1967 Boston Monday.
A little man who sprang along on bow-legs hauled by rolled shoulders, he left the best in his wake to win in record time.
In 30km winds and single-digit temperatures which eliminated nearly a quarter of 600 starters, McKenzie's 52kg frame - wearing a Greymouth club singlet - charged on the famous Heartbreak Hill. The 23-year-old McKenzie, a national marathon title holder, was on top of the world that day.
The 111th Boston Marathon is on Tuesday and McKenzie was to be an honoured guest. But he called off the trip when his wife, Adele, became ill.
The story of McKenzie and the 1967 race is fascinating to recall, partly because it was a day which changed history. Fortunately, there are those keen to tell it.
One is Kathrine Switzer, the American who created headlines in the 1967 race. The other is Switzer's English husband, Roger Robinson, a Victoria University literature professor emeritus and former New Zealand cross-country runner.
Switzer and Robinson split their home lives between the United States and Wellington. The couple are now in Boston, launching Switzer's book about her eventful life which was changed for ever by the 1967 race.
If McKenzie is at one end of the public speaking scale, Switzer is at the other.
She's never lost for a word, including about Dave.
"I'm crazy about Dave - a wonderful man. But he lets his legs and kind deeds do the talking," the 60-year-old Switzer says from Boston.
"I'm only sorry the economics of the era prevented him and many others like him from racing around the world.
"His run at Boston was one of the gutsiest and most brilliant ever. I first heard about Dave at the 23-mile mark where a young newspaper hawker was yelling, 'Read all about it - New Zealander wins Boston Marathon'."
McKenzie, a newspaper printer by trade, saw those headlines quickly replaced by Switzer, who ran into controversy as the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official number.
Race rules didn't specifically bar the so-called weaker sex, but women weren't welcome. She signed her entry form K.V. Switzer.
Pictures of a hot-headed race director named Jock Semple attacking Switzer during the race, and trying to rip off her race number, flashed around the world.
Switzer was protected by Syracuse University teammates including her boyfriend - a large ex-football player - who sent Semple flying. Switzer, who was encouraged by other runners, finished unofficially in about 4h 20m.
It was five more years before the Boston Marathon welcomed women, and a further 12 years before the Olympics did.
The scant pre-1972 women's presence in Boston only won retrospective recognition in 1996. But Semple and Switzer became great friends over common ground - their love of the race. She visited the ailing Scotsman days before he died in the early 1990s.
"What happened that day in 1967 was as significant as giving women the right to vote," Switzer says, her zeal brushing past laryngitis. "It showed everyone that women can do anything - that women have no physical limitations."
Switzer won the New York Marathon in 1974, the fourth year it included a women's race. A writer, she emerged from the Boston drama an ardent and versatile champion of "women's physical capability". McKenzie, as you might guess, simply went home to tiny Runanga.
He was an Olympian, finishing 37th in Mexico in 1968 and 22nd in Munich in 1972, and ran the then fifth-fastest marathon in Fukuoka in 1967, when Australian Derek Clayton broke the 2h 10m barrier.
But nothing matched Boston, not that McKenzie shouts about it.
Robinson, who has bonded with the little man as maybe only a fellow runner could, says behind the exterior lies a character fully aware of his ability and success. And yes, even to this outsider, McKenzie acknowledged, in a brusque and perfunctory manner, a local fame and the attention he once brought to his province.
"He's just very, very shy although he warms up if he knows you," says Robinson.
McKenzie's Boston Marathon year started tragically, with his brother Hector among 19 men who died when a fireball ripped through Greymouth's Strongman Mine.
"Dave turned loss into resolve," says Robinson.
The disaster also built support for McKenzie's trip to Boston. He returned a legend although McKenzie's private nature has probably assisted his Boston feat into the shade.
It would be remiss to recall a West Coast story without including a real West Coast story.
This one involves a Greymouth train driver who claimed almost sole credit for McKenzie's triumph. Runner and train had a habit of meeting at a certain bridge each day, and the railwayman reckoned he built up speed over time, forcing McKenzie to work even harder on his hilly runs.
It's a classic West Coaster's tale, and this story needs one.
McKenzie did break past his public awkwardness in 1984, joining Switzer and Robinson on stage in Greymouth before a packed house. Apart from that, the oft-forgotten story of Dave McKenzie is left for others to revive.
