A Lifetime Dedicated to Track

Every year, Tom Heinonen records the distance he ran and adds it to his career total. By July of this year, he will hit 70,000 miles, or approximately 2.8 times the circumference of the earth.

More than just an obsessive training log, Heinonen’s accounting of his daily practice transcends and envelops the history of track and field in Eugene, a community in which he has resided for nearly four decades.

Heinonen qualified for the Olympic Trials in the marathon in 1968 and 1972, was instrumental in founding the women’s track and field program as a varsity sport at the University of Oregon in the mid-'70s, guided dozens of athletes to collegiate championships during his nearly three decades of coaching and continues to contribute to the running community in Eugene through his coaching and activism with the UO Running Club and Eugene 08 Organizing Committee.

Heinonen’s passion for track is evident in other ways, too. In addition to his competitive accomplishments, he married Janet Heinonen, another pioneer in the history of women’s track and field in the United States, and he raised two elite runners, Erik and Liisa.

“I feel that I've done more than just be a runner who became a coach, with coaching being simply a job,” Heinonen said.

Heinonen was inspired to start running in the eighth grade because his brother ran track. He ran for his high school and continued running during his college years at the University of Minnesota.

His senior year in college, he competed in the Big-10 three-mile race, held outdoors at the University of Iowa on an unbearably hot day. Heinonen asked a University of Iowa trainer if he could borrow a baseball cap for the race and was given a black hat with “Iowa” written in large letters across the top.

Heinonen competed using his standard running tactic: He didn’t lead early, but began moving strong in the middle of the race, taking a lead far in front of the other runners more than half-way through.

Sweat dripping from his brow, his feet thumping rhythmically on the track and his heart beating loudly in his chest, he ran, winning the Big-10 title for the University of Minnesota – while wearing a baseball hat for Iowa.

“What is the worst thing you could possibly do?” he said, laughing. “Wear an Iowa hat while you’re winning a title for Minnesota.”

After the race, a coach from the University of Wisconsin approached him and asked if he would be interested in training at high altitude in Alamosa, Colo., for the rest of the summer.

The NCAA Championships would be hosted in Provo, Utah, at 4,500 feet of elevation, so the offer to train at high altitude provided an exciting and unexpected opportunity.

Heinonen walked over to his college track coach, Roy Griak, to tell him about the offer.

Griak looked at Heinonen, who, at that point, was the only All American distance winner that Griak had ever coached. Before Griak even had the chance to congratulate his “golden boy” for winning the race, he was faced with losing him for the last three weeks of his college career before the most important collegiate race of the year.

"He just said, 'That’s a great idea,'" Heinonen said, smiling as he recalled the event.

So Heinonen went to Alamosa, and by the time of the NCAA championships, he was ready. During his three weeks of training, he learned to "respect high altitude." He learned tactical approaches for high altitude races, outsmarting other runners by holding back throughout the race and coming on strong at the end.

Heinonen put everything he had learned from his high-altitude training towards the NCAA six-mile race and placed third. This, the final race of his college career, was his best NCAA performance ever.

"(The day of the Big-10 race) I just thought, 'Wow, I won a Big-10 title. I finally did it. Me, me, me,'" Heinonen says. "And the very same day, I later came to appreciate my college coach even more for having sort of let me go in this new direction that we never even thought about."

Heinonen enrolled in graduate school at the University of Oregon and applied to coach the women’s track team, which was relatively new and needed a stable coach to establish the program. He stayed on to coach the team for 28 years.

Not only did Heinonen make a significant impact in UO women's track and field as a whole, but he changed the lives of the individual runners as well.

Lisa Nye, who was on the team from '87 to '92, said she spent her first three years at UO "kinda messing around" until one day Heinonen called her into his office and told her she had to decide if she wanted to keep running.

"He just sat me down and said, 'if you want to be a runner, you have the ability to be a runner, and this is what you need to do, but you can’t succeed with what you’re doing now,'" she said.

Together, Nye and Heinonen created a new training program specifically for her. After just one year of training on what Nye calls the "Tom Heinonen Program," she went from being 99th at the NCAAs to taking third place.

Heinonen won NCAA Coach of the Year twice and has been named Pac-10 Coach of the Year eight times. In 2006, he was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

In 2003, he retired from the women's track team, but he couldn't stay away from the sport. He has been the volunteer coach for the UO Running Club ever since, and he doesn’t plan to stop any time soon.

"It's fun for me because I just get to meet kids and I hardly ever tell them what to do," he said.
"I'm the focal point. They know I'm going to be there; they know I'm going to hold their stuff; they know I'm going to ask what they're doing. We're going to talk; we're going to laugh; we're going to talk about Oregon sports and whatever's in the newspaper. I look forward to it every single day because it's a chance for me to meet with people (of college age) who are interested in what I'm interested in.”

Laura Bocko, the student coordinator for the Running Club, said that without Heinonen, the club wouldn't have any structure.

"Meeting him and being on the Running Club is the greatest thing I've done at [the University of] Oregon," she said. "We’re really fortunate to have such an elite coach."

Heinonen shares his love for track with his family. His wife was a marathon runner and a track journalist. Their children, Erik and Liisa, both ran track.

"We talk the same language and both understand the different dimensions of the sport," Janet Heinonen said. "It's nice that what's important to him is also important to me."

As a child, Erik was responsible for running up 50 steep double-steps to deliver scores to the press box during meets, while Liisa and her friends worked as the basket crew, carrying the baskets that athletes put their sweats in before they ran.

"We were always invited to their house for pizza," Nye said. "Running was just part of their life. I think it was good for all the kids who had come from other communities and saw how running was a family thing for them and what their life was built around. It really gave you a different appreciation for what running could be about just by seeing them."

To Heinonen, running has always been about more than just winning the race.

"For the people who look back on it over the years, they can't remember their (race) times, they can't remember the places, but they remember the friends and they remember the journey," Heinonen said. “Time and again, people who win look back later on say, 'Yeah, I did win and that was the goal, but really, all the work that I did and all the learning and all the friends that I made, that's really what it’s all about. That’s what I remember.'"

Published in Mosaic's Track and Field edition for the Olympic Trials

Lordi: "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock"

Not many bands that have performed at Ozzfest alongside Lamb of God and Ozzy can say that they have something in common with ABBA and Celine Dion. Not many bands that were once shunned by their entire country can sell their own brand of cola and candies a year later.

But Lordi can.

Since its first live show in 2002, Lordi has mesmerized audiences with its energetic hard rock, horror-inspired costumes and extravagant pyrotechnics. In 2006, Lordi shocked viewers all over Europe as it represented Finland in the annual Eurovision Song Contest.

There used to be a saying that hell would freeze over before Finland would win Eurovision, Europe's oldest and most-watched televised music competition with 37 participating countries and an audience of up to 600 million each year. Not only did self-proclaimed “monsters of rock” Lordi win both the semi-final and the final, the band's anthem, "Hard Rock Hallelujah," also received the highest score in the 50-year history of Eurovision.

Although Finns were initially skeptical about the image of their country that a metal band in monster costumes would present to the rest of the world, opinions changed dramatically once Lordi's song became a success at Eurovision.

“When we actually went to the finals at Eurovision, the whole thing changed,” says Lordi's vocalist Tomi Putaansuu, who goes by Mr. Lordi when in costume. “Over one night we became national heroes and just the other day we were national shame.”

After Lordi's Eurovision victory, the band received an award for exemplary work from the Finnish president and a square in Putaansuu's hometown, Rovaniemi, was renamed “Lordi Square.” By breaking Finland's 40-year losing streak at Eurovision, Lordi had helped its home country gain international recognition.

For a hard rock band like Lordi to win the Eurovision Song Contest was a surprise to many viewers, as the contest normally showcases what Putaansuu refers to as “brainless pop.” Occasionally, however, Eurovision can help more progressive artists gain publicity. “The first band that was really different here was ABBA in the 70's and then I think the next one was Celine Dion in the 80's, and then there was us,” Putaansuu says. “It seems that every 10 or 15 years there is something that really makes a difference.”

Despite the popularity Lordi gained from Eurovision, Putaansuu notes that the band is glad that it is over. “Even though it opened really good windows and opportunities for us, in some ways it's already like a really big burden,” he says. “There has been enough Eurovision for one rock band's career already. We were a rock band before Eurovision and we continue to be a rock band after.”

Lordi formed in 1992, but it took Putaansuu ten years to find a record label willing to sign the band. “No record label really understood the whole concept,” he says. “They thought that the music was crappy but the image was good or the music was good but the image was crappy.”

While at first glance Lordi appears to be just another hard metal band, its music is actually far more melodic than the monster image may imply. It can best be described as heavy metal meets 80's hard rock with killer guitar riffs and catchy choruses. Among the band’s influences are Kiss, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister and W.A.S.P. According to Putaansuu, a paper in Europe “intentionally misheard or misunderstood” Amen, Lordi's guitar player, and quoted him as saying that Lordi is better than Kiss or Alice Cooper. “Now some parts of the media are taking up on that and are really trying to provoke Alice Cooper and Kiss fans,” Putaansuu says. “There are thousands of other interviews where we say they are our big idols and then there's this one where it says that we are better than them, which is something that we never would have said. But, of course, that creates a scandal and sells papers.”

Lordi played its very first show five years ago at a major venue in Helsinki, just after its first album was released.

“For a band like this to go out and play before the album was out in little clubs would have definitely watered down the whole thing. It has to be kind of 'big' from the get-go,” Putaansuu notes. “Of course, that was a huge gamble in a way, but it paid off.”

It was at this very first show that Putaansuu’s worst pyrotechnic mishap occurred.

“Of course when you have pyrotechnic shit something happens every once in a while,” Putaansuu says. “I have this dynamite stick on stage that I point to the audience and it shoots fire and explodes over the audience, but I was holding it upside down, so it actually blew to my balls! But then again, I have lots of leather and latex covering me, so I just felt the warmth for a little bit. All the costumes are so thick and heavy and they are made of rubber so they are not flammable at all.”

Lordi's costumes, made from a layer of latex over foam rubber and leather, are influenced by a variety of its favorite bands, horror films and comic books, including Kiss, Alice Cooper, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, and the Incredible Hulk. “I like to think that I have taken a little bit of each of my favorite monsters and put them all up together,” says Putaansuu.

Although the Lordi characters always remain the same (a mummy, a bulltaur, a vampire countess, an alien manbeast and Mr. Lordi as “The Most Fearsome Khan of All”), their outfits are redesigned for each new album and need constant repairing. “It's prosthetic makeup really, not costumes, so it's not meant to be used day after day after day,” Putaansuu says. “So, of course we need to do constant repairing all the time...like every two days or so.”

While wearing costumes onstage sets Lordi apart from most metal bands, it takes a significant time commitment to get into character. Putaansuu spends five hours putting on his makeup and costume to before each show and ninety minutes afterwards to take it all off.

The band members repeat this process before all photo shoots, interviews and performances because they refuse to show their real faces. In 2005, a Finnish tabloid posted photographs of the band members without their makeup, causing a huge backlash from fans.

“[How we look is] not relevant at all. That's not the band, that's not what the whole concept is about,” Putaansuu says. “If you go to Disney World, how cool would it be if Goofy took off the head?…Our fans are really, really strict on this. They don't want to know about our personal life and they don't want to know about the way we look because they are fans of our characters and our music and this band, but not of our civil personas.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, never having been seen without their costumes, the Lordi characters have become sex symbols in some countries. “I don't know what it is about them but the thing is, the uglier you are, the more girls you get,” Putaansuu says. “Think of Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead or even Gene Simmons. He’s not the prettiest boy on the block.”

Because Lordi is so heavily influenced by the horror genre and Putaansuu is a former film student, it seems only natural that the band would create horror films of its own. In 2004, Lordi released a short film Called “The Kin” on the album Monsterican Dream. In February 2008, its first full-length horror film, will be released. The film, titled “Dark Floors,” stars a young autistic girl who must save the world from a monster attack. Putaansuu wrote the script and designed the monsters for "Dark Floors," which will be directed by Pete Riski, Putaansuu's best friend since childhood, and filmed by Jean Noel Mustonen, who has shot all of Lordi's music videos. “Dark Floors” will not be released in US theaters but Putaansuu hopes that it will eventually be distributed in the US, at least on DVD.

To add to its music and film repertoire, Lordi has taken after its heroes Kiss and created a variety of different Lordi merchandise. “I've always thought that it doesn't take anything away from the band and it's the other way around if you have something else on the side, even though the band and the music is the main thing,” Putaansuu says. “It just makes the thing bigger.”

Finnish fans can buy Lordi-brand cola and a variety of Lordi candies. Copies of the single “It Snows in Hell” (a tongue-in-cheek reference to those who believed Finland would never win Eurovision) can be purchased at Finnish post offices. Lordi even has its own restaurant in Finland, Lordi's Rocktaurant, serving what Putaansuu refers to as “all the good stuff,” including reindeer, steaks, burgers and a la carte food.

Lordi has definitely come a long way since 1992. With a new album out in 2008 and the plans for more tours on more continents, Putaansuu is optimistic about the future of the band.

“Lordi has been going on for 15 years already so I don’t see us stopping,” he says. “It’s the only thing I know how to do and the only thing I want to do. As long as there’s a record label who wants to put out our music and as long as there are venues and people who want to see us live, I think the future is bright.”

Published in the Oregon Voice