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Long-distance runner and ODU professor Mel Williams dies

Mel Williams, an Old Dominion professor who helped found the Tidewater Striders running club and whose research in exercise science helped convince Olympic officials to ban blood doping, has died.

The Kingston, Pa., native succumbed to bone cancer at his home in Ocean View on Thursday morning, ODU officials said. He was 78.

In 1972, Williams joined 14 others in founding the Tidewater Striders, who fanned a running craze in Hampton Roads that continues. Striders sponsors dozens of local races and, with 1,600 members, is one of the nation’s largest road-racing organizations.

Dave McDonald, one of Hampton Roads ’ best-known runners, was living in Pittsburgh when he met Williams at the Shamrock Marathon in 1980, a race McDonald won.