The BBC’s coverage of Rio 2016 came with nightly references to a particular area of the network’s website:

The “get inspired” feature.

If you watched the Olympics and decided you would like to emulate Team Great Britain’s athletes … the BBC has advice on how to get started.

I was thinking about how silly it is that the British public should be encouraged to be the next Mo Farah (or, in the States, the next Simone Biles) … when I recalled that an American Olympic champion inspired me when I was a teen.

On the final day of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, an American named Frank Shorter won the marathon.

As a child and teen, I was a huge fan of the Olympics, and Shorter’s unexpected victory was something I would have followed closely. Like, for nearly all of the 2 hours, 12 minutes, 19.8 seconds he was competing.

I was a college freshman in 1972, and I wasn’t exactly inactive. We played lots of pick-up basketball. I rode my bike to school. I also was trying to become proficient in golf and tennis. (Failing on both counts.)

But my physical activity was not structured. I had no set amount of half-court basketball in mind per week.

This was a change from my final year in high school, when I played football and baseball and was exercising fairly hard five days a week.

(In the year following, I felt vaguely guilty that I didn’t reach some painful level of exercise several days a week, as I had in high school.)

Shorter got me back on a regular schedule.

I had no delusions that I would be part of Team USA in 1976, but Shorter helped me decided that regular jogging/running/walking was a good idea.

(Also, I was aware of the Kenneth Cooper book “Aerobics”, which had been published in 1968, and has much to do with the boom in running, in the U.S.)

Shorter’s victory was made more memorable, in a twisted way, when an imposter ran into the Munich stadium ahead of Shorter, causing confusion for a few seconds.

At any rate, almost immediately I began running regularly for the first time in my life.

Since 1972, more than four decades ago, I have rarely gone more than a few days without running/jogging/walking for 30 minutes-and-up on an every-other-day basis.

(In 2016, it’s 50 minutes of rapid walking at least three times per week.)

Maybe I would have done that eventually, given that much of the country seemed to be jogging before the 1970s were over.

But I am sure about this: Frank Shorter’s victory led directly to me going outside and running through the streets of our neighborhood, checking my times and recording them.

So yes, I apparently “got inspired” by the Olympics. It is not a silly idea, after all.

Others may get moving after Rio 2016, even if they know they are not going to stand on an Olympic podium.