September/October 2015 // Issue 427
Stephanie Jenks, high school standout
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September/October 2015 // Issue 427
Features 38 / THE MUDDY RUN FOR GLORY Running Times captured the action at NXN 2014. Photos by Chris Hornbecker
46 / A BALANCED APPROACH
Justin Janke (214) and Gabriel Meek of North Central High in Spokane, Washington, exit the finishing chute last December after helping their squad to a thirdplace finish at NXN.
A look into a week of training for Stephanie Jenks, who uses her triathlon strength to improve her running. By Ashley Rodriguez
48 / BETTER ATHLETE, FASTER RUNNER Athleticism and track speed make Andrew Hunter a threat in cross country. By Hailey Middlebrook
50 / THE SUCCESS OF SPOKANE The Washington city might be the best prep running town in the country. By Paul Snyder
52 / SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT With eight NCAA titles to his name, Edward Cheserek is fast becoming a legend in collegiate running. By Michael Heald
Runners straddle a fine line between recognizing success and wanting to perform better. By Richard A. Lovett
16 / ESSENTIAL WORKOUT
28 / PERFORMANCE PAGE
Jared Ward has made a seamless transition to the marathon.
After a marathon, the focus shifts to recovery. By Steve Magness
These eight models pop off the ground and won't weigh you down during your fall miles. By Jonathan Beverly
70 / A RUNNING LIFE Runner, coach, Stotan: FayettevilleManlius coach Bill Aris. Interview by Marc Bloom
Shorts 11 / WRONG NUMBERS Activity trackers collect arcane data, but runners ask: Will this make me faster?
How much should you drink?
14 / DANCING SHOES Cross-country runners have lots of options when it comes to spikes.
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Mountain running films put loners into starring roles. By Rachel Toor
30 / FIT BUT FAINTING You’re a runner with no medical problems. Why do you pass out?
These four gave up running to serve in WWI. By Roger Robinson
Owner’s Manual
Sabra Harvey goes from desk jockey to record holder.
34/ TRAILS
If you want to succeed in 5Ks and 10Ks, it’s the middle of the race you have to worry about.
Magdalena Boulet became the first female Olympian to compete at Western States.
SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION
25
32/ MASTERS
25 / MASTERING THE MIDDLE MILES
6/ EDITOR’S NOTE
46 60 28
46, 48 50 52 65 14
22 / FOOTSTEPS
In Every Issue
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29 / FAST FUEL
Columns 20 / PERSONAL RECORD
65 / FALL PERFORMANCE SHOE GUIDE
ON TH E COVE R
8/ CONNECT
Stephanie Jenks, photographed exclusively for Running Times in Eugene, Oregon, by Chris Pietsch.
76 / ART OF THE RUN
(ISSN 0147-2986; USPS 376-150), Issue 427. Running Times is published 6X a year, bimonthly in January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/ October and November/December by Rodale Inc, 400 South Tenth Street, Emmaus, PA 18098 (610–967–5171). Periodicals Postage Paid at Emmaus, PA, and at additional mailing offices. Subscribers: If the postal authorities alert us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within 18 months. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Running Times Customer Service, PO Box 26299, Lehigh Valley, PA 18002-6299 Postmaster (Canada): PM #40063752 GST# R122988611 Return undeliverables to: Running Times, 2930 14th Avenue, Markham, Ontario L3R 5Z8, CANADA
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Chris Hornbecker
60 / NEVER SATISFIED
HOK AONEONE.COM
THIS IS NOT A SHOE.
T H I S I S A N I N V I T A T I O N . YO U R
P R E S E N C E I S R E Q U E S T E D T O G O P O U N D T H E PAV E M E N T, G I V E T H E H I L L S A L I T T L E H E L L , A N D P U T YO U R DA I LY A M B I T I O N TO T H E T E S T. TO G O U P TOW N, D OW N TOW N, CROSSTOWN, AND, FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES, TO GET OUT - OF - TOWN. TO GO EXPRESS. TO BE A LOCAL. TO GO WITH THE CLIFTON 2 – 8.3 OUNCES OF SMOOTH RUNNING THAT SHOWS THESE STREETS WHO’S BOSS. LET’S GO.
MIKE RUT T HOKA ONE ONE ELITE 800 METER RUNNER
Running Times Magazine September/October 2015, Issue 427 • runningtimes.com
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CONTR I B UTORS
What We Wish For witnessing the moment a young runner “gets it.” Like the morning after his first long run last summer when an incoming freshman told me, with a new sparkle in his eye, “I really like running, the sense of accomplishment when you do more than you’ve done before.” He didn’t miss a run all summer, and every day I could sense his growing strength, skill, and confidence. What do I wish for him? From daily runs, a lifetime of simple joy, clarity, and energy. From setting and accomplishing goals, a sense of personal control and the power to effect change. From racing, the ability to face a fearful situation with poise, to endure difficulty and discomfort en route to a desired outcome. From success, pride and confidence in being able to compete and win in life. And, if gifted and lucky enough, college scholarships, and maybe the chance to run professionally? I’m not sure. It’s the American dream, played out on sports fields, courts, rinks, and tracks across the land: Get good enough and you can make it to the big leagues, be on TV, become a household name, be showered with riches and love. But I wonder more each day whether that dream doesn’t poison more than it inspires. What I fear for the runner on my team is the moment when he loses the ability to define success for himself and instead needs to produce results to measure up. That moment can begin early, if every milestone serves only to predict how good he will be in the future, if every step only hints at where running will someday take him. Many runners fall into the trap of unrealistic goals and fail to ever be satisfied at progress if it falls short of where they “should” be. (See “Never Satisfied,” page 60.) And what if he did make it to the top of the sport, where running becomes his job? It may sound like a dream. But numerous elites have told me how running can be ruined when every workout holds the weight of putting food on your table, paying your mortgage, and saving for retirement. Plus, when the outcome matters more than the process, athletes have to decide how much of themselves they will compromise for those results. Recent months have been filled with suspensions, revelations, hints, and allegations about top runners and programs in our sport,
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RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
from Kenya to Oregon. Professional athletes, even “clean” ones, compete in a world where they must consider every possible legal advantage, from engineered diets to oxygen tents, cryotherapy, or questionable medications. Pushing at the limits feels necessary when the competition has similar, if not better, enhancements. Moral victories don’t win medals. I’d never want to see a runner lose his or her soul because he or she had to win. That said, despite the potential pitfalls, I don’t know that I’d throw out the possibility and drown the dream. When you read about Edward Cheserek (page 52), whose legs have carried him from running in Kenya’s Rift Valley to leading the U.S. college running scene at Oregon, you can’t help but celebrate the system that allowed this story. And young runners I talk with say they’re motivated by the idea of competing in college, or even going pro, while admitting it raises expectations they fear they can’t live up to. The good news is that most of us need never worry about the pressures and decisions we’d have if we turned pro. Our lack of elite-level talent is, in this context, a blessing. More than ever, I am grateful to have had enough success in running to enjoy nearly four decades of satisfaction from it, but not enough that anyone else cared about my results. What do I wish for the freshman getting his first taste of running? That regardless of the level he attains, he learns, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, to “meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same.” And that he continues to run, and love running, until he is as gray as I am.
Jonathan Beverly Editor-in-Chief
Hailey Middlebrook, editorial intern for Running Times, is a senior at the University of Michigan, where she runs cross country and track with a 5,000 meters PR of 18:17. For this issue, Middlebrook interviewed high school standout Andrew Hunter and several collegiate runners, asking what they wished they could tell their younger selves. Her favorite response came from steeplechaser Colleen Quigley. “Her advice was to hold back,” Middlebrook says. “Runners put so much pressure on themselves to perform well, especially in high school. Quigley proves that the key to success is to set high expectations, but not to lunge for them all at once.”
Chris Hornbecker is a commercial and editorial photographer based in Portland, Oregon. Last December, he shot pictures of high school runners at the Nike Cross Nationals that we’ve compiled into the photo essay beginning on page 38. “It was inspiring to see such dedication to their sport,” Hornbecker says. “[But] after the race it was great to see these racers let their guard down and just have fun being kids, stomping and wrestling in the mud and having dance parties in the athlete village.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY GOLDEN HARPER
Courtesy of Hailey Middlebrook and Chris Hornbecker
ONE OF THE PLEASUR ES OF COACHING IS
ALL HEART ALL AT YOUR WRIST
Forerunner 225 with wrist-based heart rate. Hate wrestling with a heart rate strap on the run? We get it — so we got rid of it. We even refined how this watch gauges your effort, so you don’t have to decide if 176 beats per minute means you’re cookin’ or almost cooked. Create customized workouts or download free training plans at Garmin Connect, send to your watch and get coach-like guidance. See it at Garmin.com/forerunner ©2015 Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries
Forerunner 225 ®
A New Marathon
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW Check out the September issue of Runner’s World for a story on why you don’t have to be in high school to fall in love with cross country. Plus, read reviews of jackets for all conditions.
WRITE TO US Send emails to editor@runningtimes.com with your address included. All letters become the property of RT and may be edited for length and clarity.
“Is 100 Miles the New Marathon?” [May/June 2015] fails to mention one crucial fact: While the marathon has exploded in popularity, it has come with a drastic increase in average finish times for each gender. So, while many more are completing the distance, not that many more are completing it at faster speeds. The front of the race hasn’t gone mainstream. Daniel Bucci / via Facebook
It is easy to overlook ultra races held on the road and the track. It would likely be an easier transition for someone who has run a marathon to try a road 50K, 50-miler, or 100K. More people likely have access to roads and tracks than they
do to trails. As someone who lives in an urban area with paved bike paths, I definitely felt more comfortable trying a road ultra first. Camille Herron / via Facebook
A missing point in “Is 100 Miles the New Marathon?” is that every runner should be prepared to do it on their own and sometimes alone. Build up your mind and motivation to face the challenge of running solo— you’ll need that focus on race day. Rui Pedro Juliao / via Facebook
Ultra Women I loved “Tough Terrain” [May/June 2015]. It’s so exciting to see that women are being recognized in the ultrarunning world. Elisa Malkasian / via Facebook
Hard Times In addition to stating that “concrete is 10 times harder” than asphalt, you also should have provided some justifying numbers in “The Hard Road” [Owner’s Manual, May/June 2015]. That statement is like saying that
water is 10 times wetter than milk. I want to know more about what it means. Usually factors such as camber of an asphalt road, density of the asphalt and concrete, temperature of the substance, density/temperature of shoe cushioning, and a runner’s bodyweight are overlooked when discussing running surfaces. What is it about soft surfaces compared with concrete or asphalt that allows us to run injury-free?
FOLLOW US
UPDATE
Long Runs That Work Professional runners Nick Symmonds and Casimir Loxsom were featured for their longrun workout in “Long, But Not Always Slow” [May/June 2015], in which they run an hour steady followed by four miles at a moderate tempo. The run works: Symmonds and Loxsom finished first and third, respectively, at the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships in June, and they will compete at the world championships in Beijing, China, at the end of August.
Daniel Force / Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Victor Sailer/PhotoRun
FIND US ON THE WEB Head to runningtimes.com for comprehensive coverage of high school and college cross country this summer and fall and to runnersworld. com for coverage of the world championships from Beijing, China, in August. Preparing for a marathon? Find all the training and racing information you need there, too.
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September/October 2015
Wrong Numbers Activity trackers collect arcane data about the body, but competitive runners ask: Will this make me faster? BY BOB PARK S
Matt Rainey
R EN EE M ETI V I ER BA ILLI E, 33 , IS CLOSER TH A N EV ER TO A DOPTI NG SOM E K I N D OF
activity tracking “gadget,” but she finds the options bewildering. The marathoner, who ran 2:27 at Chicago in 2012, had a run-in with overtraining a few years back and now thinks a little data on her wrist would be useful. “I already write down my daily sleep quality and my own sense of how I’m feeling the day after a workout. But I’m starting to think that hard numbers would be better,” says Metivier Baillie, who posted a 2:34 race just before Christmas last year. Her goal for this season is a top finish at the Berlin Marathon. “My dream gadget would track actual sleep, not just how much I’m in bed. It would stack that against my daily resting heart rate so that I could see the trajectory of my rest and recovery time,” she says. “Thinking about all this lately, I’ve been like, ‘Wow, I want one.’ ” Is there such a gadget suited to a highly competitive runner? You’d think so, judging by the public hype around activity trackers. More than one in every 10 U.S. adults wears a wrist tracker, according to a January 2015 report by consumer products analyst NPD
DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION BY RAFFAEL DICKREUTER
Group. Fitbit, the device on the most wrists, just raised $732 million in its June public offering. Never has there been so much info about personal health. Apple Watch, which debuted in April, charts all-day heart rate, calories, and motion. Fitbit does all of these plus GPS. Microsoft Band adds UV exposure to the mix. And Intel’s Basis charts continuous skin temperature and sweat response, though the manufacturer offers little explanation as to why these are important. For competitive runners, though, many available devices come up short, in design as well as accuracy. Most are built to motivate beginners to go harder and longer—chasing the dubious goal of 10,000 steps a day (about a seven-mile run). In contrast, fit runners are often looking for the opposite—accurate cues on when to back off to prevent injury and overtraining. And when it comes to accuracy, most trackers skip a beat. Athlete reviewers of Apple Watch, Fitbit, and other wrist-based HR devices have found the pulse rate sensors are not reliable during strenuous exercise. (Only Mio, and its partners TomTom and Garmin, have garnered positive reviews for capturing wrist heart rate when worn by athletes who are running.) Because of this, analysts at NPD see a shift afoot. The category of activity trackers—basically glorified pedometers—will soon morph into more sophisticated products. On one side will be smart watches, those businessy, do-everything wrist-tops like Apple Watch
RUNNING TIMES
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steeplechaser at Stanford (with a PR of 8:35). He has tracked sleep, morning heart rate, and detailed pace in the past, but just as quickly stopped paying attention. “Those tools are really useful when you’re starting, but now that I’m familiar with my body and my training methods, they only provide a check-in,” he says. “I don’t need the objective stuff. I can wake up and know when I don’t feel great.” Alex Willis, 27, disagrees. A 5,000-meter runner in college, he became a pro triathlete a few years ago and sought meaningful data points. “Athletes are sometimes too much in their heads—you can push yourself too hard or not enough,” Willis says. “A coach can help lend that objectivity, but some good tools can provide an additional light bulb to what’s going on.” So Willis wakes every morning and applies one sticky electrode to his forehead and another to his palm. He sits absolutely still for 10 minutes while the sensor relays the DC-voltage potential (a measure of brain fatigue, according to vendor Omegawave) to his cell phone. This “omega” signal indicates Willis’s readiness for a hard workout that day. The technology is littleknown outside of its extensive use among team sports. Though recent independent studies verifying the science are scant, Willis says the feedback has been crucial. One recent morning Willis felt terrible and called his coach, Trista Francis, to cancel. But the Omegawave put his readiness at 100 percent, so he exercised. Francis says it was one of the most successful training days in recent memory. Some athletes have gone even
Frequent racer Michael Wardian wears two watches: a Suunto and a Mio.
I USED TO THINK I DIDN’T NEED HEART RATE OR ANY OF THAT JUNK. BUT THEN MY RACE TIMES PLATEAUED, I COULDN’T BREAK 2:30, AND I FELT LIKE I WAS GETTING COMPLACENT.”—MICHAEL WARDIAN
further afield in the thirst for data. Runners have taken more interest in so-called “heart rate variability,” or HRV, a way of analyzing the spaces between heart beats. According to an April 2014 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, the amount of variation in heartbeats is key to diagnosing overtraining. Others have donned wearable body sensors that transmit specific biometric data, such as the patch for heart rate (AmpStrip), the shirt for breathing and muscle activity (Athos), and the calf sleeve for lactate threshold (BSXinsight). Many of these require further research to test their effectiveness. And until their price points become more accessible (a full Omegawave system currently runs $30,000), runners will likely improvise what they need from products on store shelves. And they will hopefully continue recording their own thoughts. A 2014 study in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance found elite cross-country skiers’ self-reported impressions of the intensity of workouts matched heart rate almost perfectly. It’s a reminder that just as we may need better electronic tools to help us track our activity, we can’t forsake the most powerful compass of all—the one inside.
S P LI TS GENERATOR RESEARCH EXPECTS THE PERFORMANCE WEARABLES MARKET TO GROW FROM $2.2 BILLION TO $2.9 BILLION BY 2020.
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RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Victor Sailer/PhotoRun
that work in tandem with a smartphone. On the other will be sports performance wearables. These accurate and expensive sportsspecific devices will eventually deliver more useful coaching on speed, calories, heart rate, sleep, stride, and other data points. For serious runners, the search for current technology tools is, at present, a game of mix and match. Michael Wardian, 41, for instance, can often be seen racing with watches on each arm. “Yes, I look like a dork,” says the 2:17 marathoner and multitime 50K national champion. “I need the Suunto for the altimeter, barometer, and GPS. And I wear the Mio for heart rate.” (Both Suunto and Mio sponsor Wardian with free products.) Heaping on the technology began several years ago for him. Wardian uses heart rate to pace the early parts of a competition and for recovery afterward. The latter is obviously key for Wardian, a serial marathoner who, for example, on three consecutive weekends this spring ran Boston (2:27), Big Sur (2:34), and the 45-mile Wings for Life World Run in Melbourne, Australia. For several days, Wardian monitors the little screen for trends in his resting heart rate. That way he knows when he’s ready to charge ahead. “I used to think that I didn’t need heart rate or any of that junk. A Timex was fine,” he says. “But then my race times plateaued, I couldn’t break 2:30, and I felt like I was getting complacent.” Some athletes begin with great hopes for using techie tools but eventually decide it isn’t for them. Triathlete Jesse Thomas, 35, was a n All-America n 3,000-meter
1
DANCING SHOES CROSS-COUNTRY RUNNERS HAVE PLENTY OF OPTIONS WHEN IT COMES TO RACE-DAY SPIKES, WITH A WIDE VARIETY IN FIT AND FEEL. BY J O N AT H A N BE V E R LY
2
3
4
5
6
7
Saucony
Puma
Nike
New Balance
1 / CARRERA XC 2 $110
2 / CROSSFOX XCS V2 $90
3 / ZOOM VICTORY XC 3 $120
4 / KICK XC700V3 $70
M 4.2 oz/W 3.8 oz › The Carrera, already a minimalist
M 5.3 oz/W 4.5 oz › The Crossfox offers a nice compromise
M/W 4.4 oz › This update of the Zoom Victory bites into
M 5.5 oz/W 4.7 oz › This entry-level spike feels much like
spike, got lighter and more flexible. The new design uses two layers—an inner, stretchy wrap surrounded by outer “fingers” connected to the laces—to hold securely while adjusting to your foot shape. With an ultraflexible sole, one tester said, “I love barefoot runs, and now I can get a similar feel [in] spikes.”
between an ultralight racing spike and a more comfortable, cushioned shoe. The seamless mesh upper provides an airy, open fit with support from a soft suede internal wrap around the midfoot. A durable rubber outsole holds the five spikes without a plate. Testers said the cushioning was “just enough and not too much.”
the course with four widely placed spikes and plastic teeth on a horseshoe-shaped plate surrounding the forefoot. Despite the light weight, the sculpted midsole and carbon fiber shank under the arch provide support. Foam around the ankle is perforated to avoid getting waterlogged, and testers liked the narrow but flexible mesh upper.
New Balance’s professional-level XC5000 at about half the price. Testers found the thin, flexible, no-sew upper formed to their feet, allowing them to breathe and holding securely enough for all but the narrowest heels. The sole has a thin but effective layer of cushioning, four spike wells, and lugs that grip grass but are fine for the track, too.
Brooks
Asics
Adidas
5 / MACH 17 $100
6 / CROSS FREAK $85
7 / ADIZERO AVANTI 2 $120
M 4.9 oz/W 4.4 oz › The Mach 17 fits snug but not tight, with
M 6.8 oz/W 5.8 oz › With a high, sculpted arch and multilayer
M/W 5.4 oz › This high-performance track spike from
a seamless stretch upper. A plastic plate with aggressive lugs surrounds the perimeter of the toe and holds five widely spaced spikes, with a rubber tread in the center to grip firmer surfaces. Combined with an internal torsion plate, this version is less flexible than previous models; it digs into the ground and provides powerful toe-offs.
sole, this spike is a supportive option. Sturdy, stitched overlays wrap the heel and midfoot, and firm lugs on rubber pads resist wear and enhance the grip. Testers said the shoe has a narrow but comfortable fit, but some felt the arch was too high. Given its support, the Cross Freak works well for those who like to train in their spikes.
Adidas can double as a cross-country shoe due to its grippy sole with turf-grabbing toe claws, plus a Boost-enhanced midsole that testers said provides excellent, responsive cushioning. Adidas went for performance first, giving the shoe a stiff plastic spike plate with a long “tail” reaching back to the midfoot, enhancing a powerful stride.
SEE MORE ONLINE AT RUNNINGTIMES.COM/SPIKES15 New Balance
Nike
› KICK
› ZOOM
XC900 V 2 $85
RIVAL XC $65
New Balance
Puma
› KICK XC
› HARAKA
5000 V 2 $125
XCS V 2 $65
IN 2013, THE MOST RECENT YEAR FOR WHICH STATISTICS ARE AVAILABLE, 470,668 U.S. HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS RAN IN CROSS COUNTRY.
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RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATT RAINEY
ESSENTIAL WO R K O U T
Who Jared Ward, 26
What After a two-mile warmup, five two-mile repeats at 20 seconds per mile faster than marathon pace with three minutes slow jog recovery; twomile cooldown.
Jared Ward’s transition to the marathon has been smooth and speedy. BY A B I G A IL L O R G E AS A PROFESSIONAL MARATHONER
with a master’s degree in statistics, Jared Ward might be expected to spend hours poring over data from his workouts— a regression-running runner, perhaps. But Ward doesn’t pass his nontraining time obsessing over the numbers, and in fact, doesn’t even record the details of every run. “I keep a spotty training log,” he admits. Ward’s recent racing success, however, is well-documented. He placed third overall at the Los Angeles Marathon in March, running 2:12:56 in hot conditions to set a personal best in his third career marathon. As the top American finisher at the race, Ward earned his first national title at any level of the sport—and a first world championships team berth, which he is forgoing, with some reluctance, so as not to compromise his preparation for the Olympic Marathon Trials next February.
Eight weeks after Los Angeles, Ward picked up a second U.S. championship, winning the 25K River Bank Run in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1:14:56. As a high school star in Utah and a four-time All-American at Brigham Young University, Ward, 26, noticed that the longer the race, the better he fared. But while his success at the 26.2mile distance is not a shock, the ease with which he made the transition to marathon training was a revelation. “I love long runs, I love long intervals, and as I was building up for marathons with higher mileage, I began to realize how much I just love running,” says Ward, who is based in Provo, Utah. The training to which he has taken—120 weekly miles during marathon prep—is accomplished in only six days of running a week, as Ward, a devout Mormon, takes Sundays off to spend time with his wife,
Why The workout allows him to get in some solid volume while making his marathon pace feel easier. It also serves as a good gauge of fitness.
When About once a month
The Details Ward does the workout on flat roads using a GPS watch to help him measure distance and time. Sometimes training partners will accompany Ward for some of it, but before the L.A. Marathon he did it on his own and averaged 9:12 per repeat.
Erica, and their two children. His coach, two-time Olympic marathoner Ed Eyestone, happily accommodates the schedule. “Coach is a family guy and a religious guy as well, so he understands,” Ward says. “And he performed well in college and then made the transition to national-class marathoner, so I feel like I’m being coached by the guy who did exactly what I’m trying to do.” While making the games is his dream, Ward says his focus now is preparing for fall road races, including a half; he won’t run another full marathon before next year’s trials in L.A. Pressed to do some early forecasting of that race, Ward switches into analysis mode. “It will be interesting to see if next year’s marathon team will be the talented group of veterans that have represented us for the past decade, or if [it] will be the up-and-comers,” he says. “I believe that I can make the team, but I also respect the dozen other guys that legitimately could make [it].” It doesn’t take an advanced statistics degree to like Ward’s odds.
AS OF JULY, WARD’S MARATHON PR OF 2:12:56 RANKED HIM 12TH ON THE LIST OF QUALIFIERS FOR THE U.S. OLYMPIC MARATHON TRIALS.
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Andrew McClanahan/PhotoRun
A Quick Study
At the end of a repeat, you’re tired, but three minutes ends up being close to enough time so that at the end of the recovery you think, ‘I can do another one.’
E AT LIK E A N ELI T E
Chris Derrick
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SHOWCASE RACE
Where to Get a Boston Qualifier
Snack I’m partial to anything slowcooked, like chili, braises, or soup. Anything that makes the house smell awesome when I come back from my second run has my support.
Runners at these races often hit the time they need. 1 / ERIE MARATHON AT PRESQUE ISLE
2 / ST. GEORGE MARATHON
3 / BAYSTATE MARATHON
Erie, PA September 13, 2015 7 a.m. 33.4 percent qualify Weather › average
St. George, UT October 3, 2015 6:45 a.m. 18.1 percent qualify Weather › average
Lowell, MA October 18, 2015 8 a.m. 24.8 percent qualify Weather › average
low 56/average high 72 Facts › The course takes runners on two flat and fast loops with beautiful views of the Presque Isle lighthouse and the Lake Erie coastline. BQ seekers find the course is well-shaded, with frequent aid stations. Laura Kaulen, the women's winner last year in 2:42:12, was third overall and qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials. 2014 › 959 finishers
low 50/average high 78 Facts › The point-topoint route through the Pine Valley Mountains in scenic southwest Utah finishes at Worthen Park in St. George. The course, which begins at 5,000 feet of elevation, favors those used to altitude. Downhill runners also do well, because the route drops about 2,500 feet, mostly after mile 14. 2014 › 5,842 finishers
low 38/average high 62 Facts › Mostly flat and fast two-loop course runs along the Merrimack River and over two bridges, all under the cover of New England fall foliage at its peak. Six pace groups hit notable times: 3:05, 3:15, 3:25, 3:35, 3:45, and 4:00. As with St. George, times earned here are too late for 2016 Boston, but good for 2017. 2014 › 1,530 finishers
Postrace Indulgence A Chipotle burrito, although I consider this less of an indulgence and more an essential part of proper nutrition. When the government asks me to rewrite the outdated food pyramid, I’ll give burritos their own section.
Brunch I have either leftovers from the night before or breakfast food, or I combine the two by putting leftovers in my scramble. I’ll throw an overeasy egg on top of pretty much anything.
“Family” Dinner We try to eat together. Favorites are pulled pork, chicken pesto pasta, fish tacos, and coconut curry. Mo Ahmed, German Fernandez, and Ryan Hill refer to themselves as the “Enchilada Team,” but usually Elliott Heath and I will cook and they’ll clean.
S P LI TS MARATHONGUIDE.COM SAYS AT LAST CHANCE BQ.2 CHICAGOLAND MARATHON IN 2014, 60.9 PERCENT OF THE FIELD EARNED A BQ.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATT RAINEY
Races imges (3): Courtesy; Top Right: Victor Sailer/PhotoRun
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Winner of three consecutive U.S. crosscountry titles, Chris Derrick has a PR of 13:08.04 for 5,000 meters. He shares a house in Oregon with six Bowerman Track Club teammates, including steeplechaser Evan Jager.
photo by @bubritt85
thank you running The moment when you slip on that first race medal is hard to beat. And with Glycerin 13’s Super DNA midsole, you’ll get perfect, dynamic cushioning that instantly adapts to your every step. That’s a wonderful thing, because now that you’ve achieved this milestone you’ll want to get right out and start training for that next big race. Learn more at brooksrunning.com
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Trail Porn MOUNTAIN RUNNING FILMS LET WILD LONERS READ THEMSELVES INTO STARRING ROLES. HERE’S A KIND OF MAN WHO IS MOST COMFORTABLE WHEN HE IS ALONE IN NATURE.
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He may look normal, holding down a job and loving his family, going out for beers after work and making Sunday breakfasts. But he also just likes to get outdoors. This is the way he will say it. Not that he likes to be alone, or he needs to get away from anything. It’s not a movement away; he’s drawn toward something. Challenge is part of it. He may or may not be interested in proving himself against other men, in a race or at a game. He does activities with others who are like him in fundamental ways—who can go for hours without talking. He may have learned how to be alone by reading. He probably found Ed Abbey and Wendell Berry in high school or just after, though he’s unlikely to be able to name a contemporary version of these writers. He will get close to the woman he loves, will have a bunch of friends with whom he plays—music or sports. He will do what’s right, most of the time. You can count on him to help you move or to loan you a tool. He won’t ask you for assistance unless he really needs it. On those times when he goes out, he goes far. He is Aron Ralston. He is Chris McCandless. He is John Muir. He is Henry David Thoreau. He is Gifford Pinchot. He is any number of dudes—and a few women—who love to run trails. He may not participate in too many cultural activities, and it’s rare he gets to see himself represented in the movies. Last summer, 500 versions of this man (as well as me and some other women) showed up at a trail running film festival. After the first amateur movie, I worried it was going to be a long night. We watched the emcee of the festival and two of his buddies run up and
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down European mountains. A GoPro perched on the head of a runner who is bounding up and down, even if the scenery is heart-stopping, can be dizzying. There were some moments of humor, intentional and not. The only film that starred a woman—a fast young Kiwi—intimated she ran because her dad died; she may have been more interesting but we never learned. In another one a French guy fell during a training run, required a couple dozen stitches, started the race he’d been gunning for, and dropped out with frozen corneas. Suffer-fest! A longhaired American who wore only loincloth-like shorts shared squirminducing Deep Thoughts. These films, touted by the curators as “The World’s Greatest Mountain Running Films,” were all, if you think about them as art, pretty awful. But they were also totally awesome. You didn’t notice the bad music (soulful lyrics and a driving beat), or the clichés (most of the films showed an ungulate looking directly at the camera and seeming to ask, “WTF?”), or the cinematographic tricks, such as speeding up the film so the runners moved like cartoon characters. Instead, you were transported. What I understood as I sat in that dark auditorium filled with men (and some women) who love trail running is that, as with porn, these films allowed us to read ourselves into the starring role. We imagined bounding up those rocky inclines, dousing ourselves in mountain streams, raising our arms as we reached the summit. We didn’t care so much about those who were depicted on film except insofar as we wanted to be there with them, wanted to be them. The best films allow for that. And for those men (and women) who are unaccustomed to seeing representations of themselves, watching them can give us the transcendent experience we usually get from great art.
Rachel Toor’s newest book is On the Road to Find Out, a novel about a teenage girl who decides to start running.
ILLUSTRATION BY KYUNG SOON PARK
Courtesy of Larry Conboy/Eastern Washington University
By Rachel Toor
By Roger Robinson
A statue of an angel holding a soldier stands near a cemetery in Belgium where the headstone of Jimmy Duffy takes its place among the solemn rows.
Lest We Forget ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, THESE FOUR SOLDIERS GAVE UP GREAT RUNNING CAREERS TO SERVE IN WORLD WAR I. HIS YEAR, MUCH OF THE WORLD IS LOOKING BACK SORROWFULLY TO 1915, ONE
of the worst years in history. World War I battles devastated a generation at Gallipoli, Ypres, Passchendaele, and Loos. Thousands died at sea, including 128 American civilian passengers when the British liner Lusitania was sunk by U-boat torpedoes. The United States entered the war in 1917. Organized sports like running were suspended. The 1916 Olympics were canceled, and there were no international cross-country championships for six years. The Boston Marathon in 1918 became an interservices relay, with teams of 10 men from Army and Navy units racing in full uniform, complete with epaulets and polished boots. Runners from many nations traded racing flats for boots and joined their comrades in the trenches. As a tribute, here are four short stories of runners who served in that conflict. Jimmy Duffy won the 1914 Boston Marathon. A vivacious, talkative, Irish-born Canadian, he beat fellow Canadian Edouard Fabre by 15 seconds and immediately demanded a cigarette and a beer, writes Tom Derderian in Boston Marathon. A year later, when Fabre won the 1915 Boston Marathon, Duffy was in a frontline trench at Ypres, in Belgium. After poison gas shells enabled the Germans to overrun a French-held trench, the Canadians were ordered to retake the position. In an exposed night attack, 278 of 305 soldiers died, Duffy among them. Russell Watson broke the Australian 880-yard record at age 19, won Victoria state titles from 440 yards to the mile, and in 1914 achieved a famous 880-yard win against visiting American star James Power. “Watson was the most exciting prospect in athletics,” says Tim Crosbie of Athletics Victoria. Watson volunteered and was wounded in the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landings at Gallipoli in April 1915. He never
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“The rain is on our lips, We do not run for prize. But the storm the water whips And the wave howls to the skies. The winds arise and strike it And scatter it like sand, And we run because we like it Through the broad bright land.” He coached his team of recruit soldiers to win the interregimental championship, before going to the front. (For more on Sorley, see Running in Literature.) Sorley’s talent could have made him a major poet. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet in October 1915, at age 20. Roger Robinson has won three American writing awards, has published five books on running, and is setting post-kneereplacement personal records.
Top: AP Images; Bottom: Courtesy Tim Chamberlain
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ran well again. The novel and movie Gallipoli tell a similar story. Tom Longboat, who won the 1907 Boston Marathon in record time at age 19, was one of history’s finest marathoners, a huge star during the 1908 to 1912 era of indoor professional races. An Onondaga Native Canadian, Longboat served as a runner-messenger in the front trenches, work so dangerous that he was twice reported killed. Once he was buried under rubble for several days. He returned home after the war to find his wife had remarried in the belief that he was dead. Charles Hamilton Sorley, who competed in cross country at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, England, wrote the great poem “Song of the Ungirt Runners” when he was serving as a British officer. In it, he describes running with the men under his command. The poem evokes the freedom, friendship, and contact with nature that running gave them, contrasted with the rigid hierarchies and restrictive uniforms of army life. The final stanza reads:
You can run. You can run. You can run.
Tinker Bell Half Marathon Weekend presented by PANDORA Jewelry May 5-8, 2016 5th Anniversary Disneyland® Resort becomes Never Land for a magical weekend especially for Fairies and Princesses. It starts with a family 5K and kids’ races and culminates with a 13.1- mile run that weaves you through Disneyland® Resort. Just follow the second star to the right! Registration opens August 11, and fills quickly. © Disney
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MASTERING THE MIDDLE MILES THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE 5K AND 10K ARE NO PROBLEM. IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED, IT’S THE PART IN BETWEEN YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT. By Carl Leivers ILLUSTRATIONS BY RUI RICARDO
The 5K and 10K races are a Trojan horse. Safe and approachable from the outside, they’re filled in the middle with danger—waiting to inflict pain on those who let their guard down. ¶ “It’s the worst feeling in all of running,” says Ben Rosario, coach of Northern Arizona Elite, describing the pain of oxygen debt in these seemingly simple races. ¶ Not even the strongest among us are safe. Molly Huddle, 5K American record holder, says that as the race turns tough and the finish still seems far off, “usually no one feels good.” ¶ The races are so short, yet so long—a long time for runners to spend on the edge of the red line. Rosario calls it “gut-wrenching.” It’s not the dead-leg sensation of the half marathon and marathon. It’s something possibly worse. Here’s how to approach the meat of the race: RUNNING TIMES
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START AT THE BEGINNING It’s sage advice for any race distance: Don’t go out too fast. The same is true for the 5K and 10K. Eric Heintz, crosscountry coach at Marist School in Atlanta, says he sees the slowdown in the middle miles from those who go out too hard, overextend themselves, then try to recover and get back in their comfort zones. He should know—his teams have won 12 Georgia state crosscountry titles. Christo Landry, the 2014 U.S. road 10K champion, says staying relaxed and controlled early sets you up to negative-split the
race and gives you the best chance of running fast. “There’s a reason that all the world records at the mile and above have been run negatively,” he says. Because you won’t get a split in most road races until the mile mark, Landry recommends focusing on your effort to gauge if you’re going out too hard. It’s also helpful on a course with significant hills or misplaced mile markers. The effort in the beginning of a 5K or 10K race should feel similar to a tempo run, Rosario says. “You’re very amped up, so even though the pace will probably be faster than tempo run pace, the feeling is pretty similar,” he says. Heintz also recommends
“IF YOU CAN PICK IT UP AT THE END OF THE RACE, THAT MEANS YOU COULD HAVE GONE HARDER IN THE MIDDLE MILES.” —BEN TRUE
Workouts to Master the Middle Miles
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HEINTZ’S MARIST MILES
MACKEY’S RIDE THE LINE
SIMMONS’S HAMMERS
GOAL › To practice settling into an appropriate race pace after a quick start
GOAL › To focus on maintaining pace throughout the race
GOAL › To better simulate late-race pain and fatigue
WORKOUT › 200m–400m at “starting effort” (untimed), directly into 1 mile at 5K pace + 10 seconds. Repeat three times, taking 3 minutes of rest between sets. COACH SAYS › “It’s a chance to settle back in and find that pace. You don’t need to do it often, but you need to do it a little bit to know how to turn it down after that quick start and settle in so you’re not drawing yourself out too long.”
WORKOUT › 10–12 x 500m at goal 5K race pace with 45 seconds rest COACH SAYS › “I usually want the athletes to go out at goal pace straight away. I want them to ride that line as much as possible during [the workout] versus being too conservative early and not having to focus in the middle and end reps.”
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
WORKOUT › 12 x 400m at goal 5K pace or slightly faster with 60 seconds rest; hammer rep 11 (faster than race pace) COACH SAYS › “We inject a ‘hammer’ or two in the last part of that workout to mirror what the challenge of the race will be. The hammer is faster than race pace. The athlete really pushes herself and crosses into the anaerobic area. Coming into the last interval with a higher level of fatigue, the athlete tries to get back to race pace, practicing increasing effort to maintain pace.”
being realistic about where you line up on the starting line—if you are in the appropriate place, it’s more likely you’ll begin at a sustainable pace. “We often get a little too big for our britches at the start of a race,” he says.
PRACTICE THE PAIN Even with a smart start to the race, the middle miles will still be difficult. Scott Simmons, coach of the American Distance Project, says the challenge in the middle distances is maintaining pace after fatigue and pain have set in. Your training has to be designed in a way that helps you meet that challenge. Danny Mackey, coach of the Brooks Beasts, says that most adult runners are not prepared for the intensity of an all-out 5K, which he compares metabolically with an all-out mile. Mackey says your brain and nervous system need to be prepared “to be okay with that intensity and know that it’s safe to go that hard.” That training can take a variety of forms (see sidebar), but the common thread is workouts that specifically simulate aspects of the race. “In theory, the more specific the workout is to the race, the more prepared the athlete should be come race time,” Mackey says. A workout doesn’t need to be at race pace to be race-specific, Rosario says. Although a three- to four-mile tempo run isn’t as tough as a race, the lack of rest means that the workout will still test you at roughly the same place in the tempo run where the race will get difficult. Aiming for race-specific workouts also doesn’t mean that each one needs to feel as hard as a race. Mackey says that you should only
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“go to the well” in a workout once every 14 to 18 days and warns that doing too many of this type of workout can wear you down.
MENTAL EXERCISES Although practicing pain in hard workouts can help build mental toughness, the race itself is a difficult psychological experience. When the pace starts to lag in the middle miles, Ben True, who has won U.S. road championships at 5K and 10K, says it’s usually a psychological rather than a physical issue. “Most people pick it up at the end of the race,” he says. “If you can pick it up at the end of the race, that means you could have gone harder in the middle miles.” It’s the challenge of competing—can you keep pushing when the finish line is still far away? Thinking about the finish during the middle of the race is “way
too daunting,” Mackey says, and can cause you to get distracted. “I tell my athletes to think about what they are doing right at that moment,” he says. Landry’s coach, Alex Gibby, cross-country coach at University of Charlotte, tells him to “go dumb” during the race—to not overthink things and just focus on racing. Other coaches recommend finding positive energy to keep your thinking upbeat. Mackey says finding cues that work for you during hard workouts is helpful so you can keep them consistent on race day. Finally, Heintz says to admit that the race will be hard. He recommends reminding yourself that your hard workouts have prepared you mentally for the tough parts in the middle of the race to help “take the mystique away” from the event.
™
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means some combination of butt kicks, leg swings, and skips to take your legs through a nice range of motion. Add this into your routine once or twice a day to maximize the benefits.
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By Steve Magness
Bouncing Back AFTER THE MARATHON, THE FOCUS SHIFTS TOWARD RECOVERY. AFTER 26.2 MILES OF BATTLING UNSEASONABLY WARM TEMPERATURES, CRAMP-
ing quads from traversing the steep downhills of the Los Angeles Marathon, and a post-race trip to the medical tent, Sara Hall did not look good. It was a tough debut at the distance and the last thing we were thinking about was a trip to the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in China in less than two weeks. Before the marathon, I had discussed with Hall (as her coach) the possibility of attempting the double; now, in her condition, it seemed like a pipe dream. Yet 13 days later, Hall laced up her spikes again in China, moved her way up throughout the race, and finished as the top American in 20th place. How did she go from completely gassed to racing in top form in less than two weeks? A lot of self-belief and grit, along with a well-thought-out recovery plan, gave her a shot at competing to the best of her ability. For most of us, the marathon is the ultimate goal, and we put little thought into how we are going to bounce back. Still, even if you’re not shooting for the ideal short-term recovery, these tips Hall used will help you get back to normal much sooner.
KEEP IT MOVING After a marathon, most of us want to find the nearest couch and stay on it for a week. While this might be appropriate the first day, after that it’s time to get moving. Start with a short shuffle of 10 to 20 minutes. If this doesn’t seem possible, go for a walk with brief periods of jogging throughout. As the week goes on, slowly increase the length to 30 or 40 minutes of total moving. Hall did her first workout, which consisted of some shorter segments that were essentially glorified strides, a week after the marathon. The purpose isn’t to gain fitness, but to take your body through a bigger range of motion for a longer period of time. It’s all about loosening up your muscles and getting those dead quads to fire again. Few, if any, of us will ever try to tackle a marathon and a world championship in the span of two weeks, but Hall’s experiences show us that a specific recovery strategy can have us back on our feet and feeling strong sooner than we think.
TAKE A DIP Find your nearest pool and splash around. This simple but neglected tip is one I initially took from my high school coach, Gerald Stewart. The combination of movement, low pounding, and hydrostatic pressure does wonders to loosen up achy muscles and joints. Go through your normal warmup drills in the water. That
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Steve Magness coaches professional runners and the cross country team at the University of Houston, where he is pursuing a doctorate in exercise science.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE LAYTON
Courtesy of Steve Magness
P E R FOR M A NC E PA GE
Following the marathon, your muscles are full of tiny microtears; these need to be repaired before your muscles can function at max capacity. To accelerate this repair, we need to keep protein synthesis elevated in the muscles. The more we can keep this going throughout the day, the quicker these tears will get repaired. Research has shown that this can be accomplished through frequent “hits” of protein. My rule of thumb is to have five servings of 15 grams or more of protein spread evenly throughout the day. Then we end it with a large dose of protein (30 or more grams) right before bed to take advantage of the higher rate of synthesis and repair during sleep. It also boosts some recovery hormones overnight. Any protein will do the trick, ranging from meat to milk.
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FAST F U EL
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Fluid Guidelines Hydration protocol has been evolving in recent years. The theory that you should never allow yourself to get dehydrated by more than 2 percent of your starting weight has given way to the reality that top runners like Haile Gebrselassie can sweat out as much as 10 percent of their weight during marathons—and still set world records. Stephen Cheung, an environmental physiologist at Brock University in Canada, had cyclists ride a 20K time trial in 95-degree heat while either fully hydrated or dehydrated by 3 percent. The twist: Instead of letting them drink, he pumped fluid straight into their veins through an IV drip, to eliminate the psychological boost of drinking. Surprisingly, there was no difference in performance. “Obviously there’s going to be a point where dehydration is going to be a problem, no questions asked,” Cheung says. But that point may be further away than you think. —Alex Hutchinson
START HYDRATED
TAKE A SWALLOW
DON’T PANIC
To shrug off dehydration temporarily during a run, you have to be fully hydrated when you start. “The shorter the recovery bout between runs, the more difficult it is to adequately rehydrate,” says Eric O’Neal, a University of North Alabama physiologist, so doublers in particular should watch for warning signs like darkerthan-normal urine.
Even if your body can handle a dry spell, your brain still responds to the sensation of water passing down your throat. One study found that swallowing less than an ounce of water now and then prolonged time to exhaustion by 17 percent, so take a swig from fountains and aid stations on hot days or runs of longer than 60 to 90 minutes.
In a perfect world, you should still aim to avoid getting too dehydrated. But the world’s not perfect— so when your drinking plans go awry, bear in mind that it’s simply not as big a deal as we once thought. If you remember that, Cheung says, it’s “one less psychological crutch to hold you back from a top performance.”
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PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT RAINEY
FIT BUT FAINTING YOU’RE A SERIOUS RUNNER WITH NO MEDICAL PROBLEMS. WHY DO YOU KEEP PASSING OUT? By Mark Henricks Exercise is supposed to make us healthier and, for the most part, that’s what it does. But there are some medical conditions, aside from injury, that you’re more likely to experience if you’re fit. One of those is dizziness and fainting when rising suddenly from a lying position to standing. The medical term for this is exercise associated postural hypotension, or EAPH, and it’s common. ¶ The classic example occurs at night, when a competitive runner, triathlete, or other hyper-fit person gets up to visit the bathroom. After a couple of steps, a wave of dizziness strikes and the sufferer may sway and experience dimming vision and buzzing in the ears. You may even black out briefly. Generally, the episode passes in a few seconds with no lingering effects except, naturally, concern about whether what just happened indicates a potentially serious underlying medical condition. 30
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If this has ever happened to you, relax. It doesn’t mean you’re sick or hurt. Far from it, in fact. Spells of sudden dizziness on standing are actually a common side effect of high cardiovascular fitness, especially having a low resting heart rate. Many competitive runners have resting heart rates of 40 to 50 beats per minute, significantly fewer than the normal 60 to 100. That’s not usually a problem, but it is a cause of EAPH. When you’re lying in bed and your heart is beating only 40 times per minute, if you suddenly stand up, gravity causes blood to pool in your legs and your slowly beating heart takes slightly too long to get the blood back up to your brain. If you also have lower-than-average blood pressure—another common feature of competitive runners and other highly fit exercisers—this can exacerbate the problem. The brain is extremely sensitive to oxygen starvation, so even
ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE LAYTON
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68 PERCENT OF ULTRAMARATHONERS HAD SIGNIFICANT DROPS IN BLOOD PRESSURE WHEN RISING SUDDENLY FROM LYING DOWN. momentary loss of oxygenated blood to the brain causes faintness. “It’s one time that being athletic doesn’t help you: in the middle of the night,” says Dr. Lewis Maharam, a New York sports medicine physician and former medical director of the New York City Marathon. “If you were less athletic and had a resting heart rate in the 80s, it would never happen.” Not every competitive runner experiences EAPH, but many do. One study of ultramarathoners found 68 percent had significant drops in blood pressure when rising suddenly from lying down. If you are one of these people, a few simple measures will minimize episodes of fitness-induced orthostatic hypotension. For one thing, don’t let yourself get dry. “One of the issues that can cause this is dehydration,” says Dr. Timothy Miller, an orthopedic surgeon and the lead physician for the Endurance Medicine Team at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. When your body is low on water, Miller explains, blood volume can decrease, which can lead to lower blood pressure and make you more susceptible to EAPH. And be careful about standing up suddenly, especially from sleep. Instead, sit for a few seconds before rising to get a midnight glass of water or to visit the bathroom. If you do start to feel dizzy, try to avoid falling and possibly injuring yourself. “Just sit down on the floor to keep your body from passing out and hitting your head on the floor or something,” Miller advises. EAPH usually passes quickly and quietly without harmful aftereffects—other than sometimes
causing affected runners to worry. But a similar condition called exercise associated collapse or EAC is potentially more serious, though not uncommon. “We see it very often at aid tents at the end of triathlons and 10Ks,” says Dr. Diana Heiman, associate professor of family medicine at East Tennessee State University. What happens with EAC is that a runner crosses the finish line, stops, and often leans over with hands on knees. The key factor here is stopping. The lower legs are important for pumping blood to the upper body while running. When a runner suddenly stops moving his or her legs, it can produce low blood pressure and cause dizziness, sometimes accompanied by fainting. In some cases, Maharam says, this can happen to runners who significantly slow their pace. It’s the most common cause of collapsing during or after a race. One study of collapsed marathoners found nearly two-thirds of the cases were caused by EAC. EAC is usually remedied quickly by simply raising the legs of a collapsed runner. Avoiding it, in most cases, is equally simple: Don’t stop at the finish line. Keep walking through the chute and for a few minutes afterward. That will ensure your lower legs keep pumping blood through the body while your system adjusts. The bottom line on exerciseassociated dizziness and fainting is that if a runner collapses during or just after a race, it is potentially a sign of a serious underlying medical condition and you should stop exercising until you are checked out. If it only happens hours or days later, it’s probably nothing to worry about.
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Fast Finish
PRIOR TO USATF MASTERS 5K CHAMPIONSHIPS, LAST OCTOBER IN SYRACUSE, NY
Sabra Harvey, 65, goes from desk jockey to record holder in her second half century. BY JOHN A . KISSANE
WEEK 1
MONDAY 2-mile warmup with dynamic stretching followed by 16 x 400m (she averaged 1:35) with 200m recoveries; 2-mile cooldown
AT AGE 51, SABRA HARVEY WAS A GRAPHIC
designer who spent long days in front of a computer. Work friends got her up and moving— and ultimately setting masters records. ¶ In those days, Harvey, 5-foot-8, wasn’t in good shape. “Working full-time sitting at a computer all day, I was up to about 160 pounds,” she says. “That’s not heavy, although it’s not light, either.” ¶ Harvey took her first steps toward running in 2000, when she participated with a group of women coworkers in the Dogwood Half Hundred. The 50K competitive endurance hike follows a grueling route in Virginia’s George Washington National Forest. “We had so much fun,” Harvey says of the long day in the mountains.
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for 5K while in D.C., Harvey dipped under 21:00 in late 2006 at age 57. “I always knew I could run fast in spurts, but that was all,” Harvey says. “Karen knew the potential that was there for me.” In April of 2008, the USA Track & Field (USATF) Masters 10K Road Championships was held in Austin, and Harvey, then 59, felt ready to compete. She ran 42:11, trimming more than two minutes off her 10K PR. The performance earned her runner-up honors in the 55–59 age division, behind standout Kathryn Martin, who ran 39:26 at age 56. Harvey also ventured onto the track for the first time in 2008, again finishing second to Martin in the 1500 meters and 5,000 meters at the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships. Though she was pleased with her continued improvement, Harvey discovered that she didn’t
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
WEDNESDAY AM 30 minutes, starting easy (7:30–8:00/mile) and slowly increasing the pace PM 1-mile warmup followed by 12 x 30 seconds fast with 30-second recoveries; easy 1-mile cooldown THURSDAY 2-mile warmup followed by 6 x 90-second hill repeats with 4-minute recoveries; easy 2-mile cooldown FRIDAY Off
STATS
Sabra Harvey DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1949, CURRENT RESIDENCE Houston, Texas
PRS (ALL SET IN 60 –64 AGE DIVISION) 800m 2:34.66 (2009)
SATURDAY AM 45 minutes easy PM 90 minutes cross-
training: 30-minute cardio warmup, then 60 minutes of strength/core work SUNDAY 45 minutes easy WEEKLY TOTAL
39 miles
1500m 5:12.27 (2010) MILE (ROAD) 5:44 (2009) 3,000m 11:11 (2010) 5K (ROAD) 19:11.6 (2009) 8K (ROAD) 32:10.11 (2009) 10K (ROAD) 40:24.5 (2009) 15K 1:05.09 (2013) 10 MILES 1:12.06 (2013)
WEEK 2
MONDAY 45 minutes easy followed by 6 x 400m hard with 400m recoveries; 1-mile cooldown TUESDAY 50 minutes starting easy (slower than 8:00/mile) and slowly increasing the pace WEDNESDAY 2-mile warmup followed by 20-minute tempo run and 1-mile cooldown THURSDAY Off
like getting beat. “When I started this journey,” she says, “I would have said, ‘Oh, I’m laid back.’ But I’ve learned that in reality I’m highly competitive.” Deciding in 2009 to capitalize on her natural speed, Harvey dropped down to
FRIDAY Travel day SATURDAY Easy shakeout run SUNDAY First in 65–69 age group in 20:27 (100.73 age-graded percentage) TOTAL 30 miles
Victor Sailer/PhotoRun
The next undertaking for the women? Continuous running: a 5K. “My response was, ‘You gotta be kidding me,’ ” Harvey says. “I had a lot of doubt about even finishing.” She thinks she ran 31 or 32 minutes. But Harvey enjoyed the experience enough that she signed up for a series of races. Then living in Washington, D.C., she found no shortage of opportunities but kept it low-key. “You know, I did want to get faster,” she says, “but I didn’t really know how to go about doing that. And I never thought much about competing, other than against myself.” This changed in 2004, shortly after Harvey and her husband moved to Houston. There she met local coach and runner Karen Bowler. Working with Bowler brought quick benefits, and Harvey’s times began dropping. Despite never breaking 24:00
TUESDAY 45 minutes, starting easy (slower than 8:00/mile) and slowly increasing the pace
run 800 meters on the track. It was good timing, as just a few months after her 60th birthday she sped to a world record at the distance for women aged 60–64. Battling wind and heat in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Harvey ran 2:34.66, taking more than two seconds off a world mark that had stood for a decade. Her speed also helped Harvey’s road racing, and in 2009 she established world bests at 5K (19:11.6) and 8K (32:10.11) on the roads. Since then, Harvey’s record streak has continued nearly unabated. In 2010 she ran a still-standing 1500-meter world record for women 60–64 with a 5:12.27 at the at the masters outdoor nationals. When she turned 65 in 2014, Harvey, now retired, was eager to rewrite the women’s 65–69 record book, and she got off to a good start. At the U.S. masters 10K championships in Dedham, Massachusetts, Harvey notched an American 65–69 record of 42:37. She also ran 2:42.14 for 800 meters (0.33 off the current world record held by Canada’s Diane Palmason) and 5:29.85 for 1500m (a new world record). Three months later Harvey claimed the 65–69 national 5K road title with a 20:26 at the Syracuse Festival of Races. But last October, Harvey suffered a major setback when she fractured her left ankle—as she stepped out her back door. “It didn’t happen running; it was a life injury, as I like to call it,” she says. “Fortunately I didn’t need surgery, but the recovery took longer than I had wanted.” Harvey was in a walking boot for six weeks, then she started cross-training with
I‘VE LEARNED THAT IN REALITY I‘M HIGHLY COMPETITIVE.” aqua jogging, swimming, and stationary biking. When she started jogging on an AlterG treadmill, she developed a severely inflamed IT band on her right leg, which required more time off. Although she resumed training last spring, Harvey opted to delay her return to serious competition until the USATF Masters 1 Mile Road Championships in August in Flint, Michigan, and she’s considering several other races in the fall. Harvey generally runs by time, not distance, and keeps her weekly volume in the range of 30 to 40 miles, taking one day off each week. She typically logs a 10-mile long run every other week, depending on her competitive schedule, and fits in supplemental core and strength sessions up to three times a week. Missing the outdoor track season was a disappointment, especially after coming so close to an 800-meter world record in 2014. But Harvey prefers to look to future opportunities. She responds the same way when asked whether she wonders what might have happened had she started running three or four decades earlier. “That does cross my mind sometimes,” she says. “But honestly, if I had started earlier, when my kids were young, I doubt I could have focused enough to do what I’m doing now. So yeah, I wonder about it. But I don’t have any regrets.”
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Magdalena Boulet is greeted by her son at the Western States Endurance Run finish line.
The Reinvention of a Running Career At age 41, Magdalena Boulet became the first female Olympian to compete at the Western States Endurance Run—and she won. BY ERIN STROUT
SHE MADE THE 2008 U.S. OLYM-
pic marathon team and has a 2:26 personal best at the distance. She has two team bronze medals from the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. She’s competed at the World Mountain Running Championships, and shortly after her 40th birthday she won the masters national road mile championship in 4:50. Magdalena Boulet already had just about every accolade a professional distance runner aspires to achieve.
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But rather than live out the rest of her running days in the masters division on the roads, Boulet, now 42, has hit the dirt, becoming one of the country’s top ultrarunners and regularly besting women who are 10 or more years her junior. In June, she made her debut at 100 miles as the first female Olympian to compete at the prestigious Western States Endurance Run. She won in 19:05:21, which was 15 minutes ahead of secondplace Kaci Lickteig. “Age was irrelevant in my decision to switch to the trails,” Boulet says. “Deep inside, I was just looking for change. It would probably be
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
different if I had made the [Olympic] team in 2012, but when that didn’t happen, I was soul-searching.” Along with her age-group peers, including Deena Kastor, Jen Rhines, Blake Russell, Meb Keflezighi, and Bernard Lagat, Boulet is redefining what “masters running” looks like. These runners are finding new niches and goals in the sport to continue their careers well past the point of previous generations. Since September 2014, Boulet has won against formidable fields at The North Face Endurance Challenge 50 Mile Championship, the 2014 Sean O’Brien 50 Mile, and the
Chuckanut 50K. She qualified for Western States by winning the Sean O’Brien 100K in February, then went on to win the Canyon Runs 100K shortly before Western States. But the difference between the 100K and 100 miles is vast—and, at times, frightening. Before toeing the line in Squaw, Boulet admitted she was scared. “But it’s a healthy level of fear. It’s just unknown territory and I have no idea how I’m going to feel,” she said at the time. “I do know that I’ve done solid training and I’m ready for the challenge.” What makes Boulet a force in ultrarunning, seasoned observers say, is her experience in pushing through pain. When you’re vying for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, reckoning with discomfort is a critical skill. John Trent, president of the Western States board of directors, refers to Boulet as the “X factor” in a sport that is becoming increasingly competitive for women. “[Boulet] obviously has the speed, ability, and tactical sense,” Trent says. “Western States champions are usually the ones who are the best at finding solutions when things aren’t going well. There is always that moment in 100 miles.” Boulet’s “moment” came about 33 miles into the race
Top Left: Matt Trappe Photo & Film; Top Right: Derrick Lytle; Opposite page: Courtesy of Richie Boulet
Boulet logs more vertical miles than ever before.
this year when she took a wrong turn. She went off course for about 40 minutes. Two women, including Stephanie Howe, the returning Western States champion, gained a 20-minute gap on the field. “It took some patience and courage and determination to deal with it,” Boulet says. “I just slowly made up ground and it was Foresthill [mile 62] that I caught up to Stephanie.” As a marathoner who was coached by Jack Daniels, Boulet regularly put in 120mile weeks leading up to competitions. As an ultrarunner, she’s scaled back her volume to about 80 miles per week—but covering the more challenging terrain means she’s still logging approximately the same number of training hours. The essential ingredients of Daniels’s training philosophy still stand. What she’s added is vertical, integrating more climbing into everything she does, including long runs at Mount Diablo State Park, which mimics the terrain and high temperatures of Western States. The staple workout? Driving from her home in Oakland, California, to Mount Tamalpais at 6 a.m. each Wednesday to summit the peak north of the Golden Gate Bridge, which gives her enough time to get to GU Energy Labs, where she is a full-time vice president of innovation. “The training is more effort-based and a little more relaxed,” Boulet says. “When you’re chasing a specific time in a workout, it’s very different. When you’re listening to what your effort is, every day is good.” Ian Sharman, who coaches through sharmanultra.com, advised Boulet through her
Western States preparation. He had little doubt that she’d be contending for the win. “Physically, I think Magda has all the elements she needs,” he said before the race. “The longer the race is, though, the less it comes down to pure physical fitness, so we discussed how to deal with issues like overheating, eating throughout the race, and all the things that are likely to go wrong in the last half, so she’ll know what to expect and how to handle herself.” What she is enjoying most, though, in this new phase of her career is the deep sense of community in the trailrunning world and more opportunities to include her family in her running. Richie Boulet, her husband, is her race crew. Owen, her 11-yearold son, has been serving as chief hiking officer. “With this kind of training, I’ve started to hike more and I got my son to do two-hour hikes with me. That time is just precious—every time he finishes a hike, it’s just a proud moment and it melts my heart,” she says. “There’s no sacrifice. I am so happy doing what I’m doing.”
Training now includes effortbased workouts.
HS RUNNING:
THE MUDDY RUN FOR GLORY page 38
A BAL ANCED APPROACH page 46
BEST ADVICE page 47
BETTER ATHLETE, FASTER RUNNER page 48
THE SUCCESS OF SPOK ANE page 50
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RUNNING TIMES
Every December, 44 of the nation’s best boys and girls high school cross-country teams converge on Portland, Oregon, for Nike Cross Nationals (NXN). Running Times captured the action at NXN 2014, where athletes raced 5K over Glendoveer Golf Course to decide a team national champion.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY | CHRIS HORNBECKER
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RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
1
2 3
4
1 / The girls run tightly packed in the early stages. 2 / Tall pines lining the course act as a perfect warmup tool. 3 / Fayetteville-Manlius High School wins the team title. 4 / Nerves build prior to the race. 5 / Allie Ostrander (44) of Kenai Central High School in Alaska powers over the hills in the final 1K for the win. 5
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2
1
1 / Tanner Anderson (208) of North Central High School in Spokane controls the race late, using a strong final 800 meters to pull away for the victory. 2 / The FayettevilleManlius girls join their boys team as NXN champs to make it a clean sweep of the titles for the New York school. 3 / Racers line up to wash away the mud postrace. 3
2015
RUNNING TIMES
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1
2 1 / The girls burst away from the starting line. 2–5 / A range of emotions fills the finishing chute— from joy in the mud to exhaustion and frustration.
3 4
44
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A Balanced Approach A LOOK INTO A T YPICAL WEEK OF TRAINING FOR STEPHANIE JENKS, WHO USES HER TRIATHLON STRENGTH TO IMPROVE HER RUNNING. BY ASHLEY RODRIGUEZ LAST SUMMER WAS A BUSY ONE FOR
STEPHANIE
Stephanie Jenks. After her sophomore year at Linn-Mar High School in Marion, Iowa, the 4:42 miler placed second to Mary Cain in the 3,000 meters at the U.S. junior championships in 9:28. That qualified her for the 2014 world junior championships in Eugene, Oregon, where she finished 15th. She also earned a silver medal at the Youth Olympics triathlon in Nanjing, China. Jenks finished the sprint triathlon—a 750-meter swim, 20K bike, and 5K run—in 1:00:33, running 17:31 for 5K. Jenks completed her first triathlon at age 7. That background has made her a strong runner who excels at multiple distances. “Training for a triathlon helped me with my
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Core and strength work are a big part of Jenks’s training.
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
strength at a young age and kept me injuryfree,” Jenks says. Now heading to her senior year, however, she has given up triathlon to focus on running full time. Continuing to compete in triathlons meant risking an injury that could be devastating for her college prospects, and she has taken a few nasty spills on the bike. “Triathlon is fun, but why did I exactly start?” she says. “Because I enjoy running. I always looked forward to the run.” But her multisport background makes her curious about other track events. Jenks tried the 400-meter hurdles at the Drake Relays in April, and placed seventh in the event less than an hour after taking the win in the 1500 meters. “I took up the 400-meter hurdles to open up the possibility for [competing in] steeplechase in college,” Jenks says. “I’m trying to keep a range of [capabilities] so when I go to college they can build me into different events and I can see where I excel the most and go after that.” Where that will be is unknown for now. Jenks says she doesn’t have a short list of colleges; she has a long list. Before she decides, this fall she’ll attempt to make her third Foot Locker cross country nationals appearance, after placing ninth in 2013 and 15th in 2014. With two summer jobs, one teaching swimming at a local pool and the other at a supermarket, Jenks is trying to do the little things to become a better runner, including maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. “I consider food as fuel,” she says. “I eat what I need in order to train and stay healthy.” Except for the bike crashes, Jenks has never had a training injury and credits a lot of that health to a balanced diet. (See “Training Log” on page 47 for a look at a week of Jenks’s training—and eating—this summer as she prepared for her final high school crosscountry season.)
BEST ADVICE Collegiate runners share their tips with high school athletes.
Stephanie Jenks, who gave up the triathlon to focus on running full time, hopes to qualify a third time for Foot Locker Nationals this fall.
COLLEEN QUIGLE Y Florida State University, Class of 2015
COLLEGIATE HIGHLIGHT won 2015 NCAA outdoor steeplechase in 9:29.32
“Hold something back, even if you don’t want to. If you run yourself into the ground in high school, you have nowhere to go from there. You don’t have to be everything at once.”
Opposite page and Top Left: Ryan Lowry (2); Lower Left: John Nepolitan, Bruce Wooder/PhotoRun; Top Right: Kirby Lee/Image of Sport; Bottom Right: David Bernal/isiphotos.com
1 / Jenks, a 4:42 miler, races at the Brooks PR Invitational in June. 2 / Placing fifth at the Midwest Regional in 2014, Jenks earns a second trip to San Diego for Foot Locker Nationals.
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1
SE AN M C GORT Y
TRAINING LOG SUNDAY Rest day FUEL BREAKFAST
pancakes with strawberries LUNCH
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
10-mile long run, 6 strides, Core/30 min.
7-mile recovery run, Yoga/30 min.
4x1,000m with 3 min. rest, Stretch, Core/30 min.
7-mile recovery run, Yoga/30 min.
3-mile tempo, 7-mile Core/30 min. recovery run, Yoga/30 min.
FUEL
BREAKFAST
oatmeal with cinnamon and banana
FUEL
FUEL
BREAKFAST
FUEL
BREAKFAST
BREAKFAST
kale and banana smoothie
BREAKFAST
oatmeal with raisins
grilled chicken salad
LUNCH
LUNCH
taco salad
pasta
two hardboiled eggs and toast with peanut butter
DINNER
DINNER
LUNCH
DINNER
a few slices of pizza, with some veggies and meat
grilled chicken with rice and black beans
oatmeal
peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread
LUNCH
DINNER
turkey wrap
beef stew with potatoes and carrots
SNACK
peanut butter with crackers
SNACK
nuts, such as almonds or cashews
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
FUEL
LUNCH
grilled chicken and apple salad
turkey and chicken wrap
chili
DINNER
SNACK
DINNER
lasagna with watermelon salad
FUEL BREAKFAST
omelet with cheese, bacon, and veggies LUNCH
peanut butter and jelly sandwich with salad DINNER
SNACK
steak with potatoes
dried fruit
SNACK
Stanford University, junior
COLLEGIATE HIGHLIGHT placed eighth at 2015 NCAA outdoor 5,000m in 13:53.63
“Improve your study habits. If I had figured out the best way to study in high school, freshman year of college would have been a much easier transition. Take advantage of resources on campus like tutoring, and never be too proud to ask for help.”
strawberries
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Better Athlete, Faster Runner ATHLETICISM AND TRACK SPEED MAKE ANDREW HUNTER A THREAT IN CROSS COUNTRY. BY HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK middle school, but the senior at Loudon Valley High School in Purcellville, Virginia, had plenty of background in the sport. His parents, Marc and Joan, are not only the cross country and track coaches at Loudon Valley, they’re accomplished runners themselves. Marc ran for Cleveland State, where he placed fourth at the NCAA championships in cross country before qualifying for the 1980 Olympic Trials in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. Joan ran for the University of Virginia and set a masters world record in the 4x400-meter relay at the 2014 Millrose Games. They didn’t push their son to run, however. “I hated running when I was younger,” Hunter says. “I tried running for a year in middle school, then stopped because I was really into football, basketball, and baseball.” The summer before his freshman year, Hunter decided to go out for cross country. He guesses he ran three times a week that summer, probably 20 minutes at eight-minute pace each time. But that family talent showed: He ran 16:43 for 5K and 9:40 for the two-mile, playing basketball between seasons. Hunter hasn’t slowed since. After placing fourth at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships last December as a junior, he’s a favorite to take the title in 2015.
TRAINING SUCCESS Hunter thinks it’s an advantage that he didn’t run until high school. “Running is a one-tool sport,” he says. “Playing other sports is important, because becoming a better athlete translates into being a better runner.” He also believes college coaches are happy that he’s only been running for three years, because it shows he has room for improvement. Hunter’s parents have a similar mind-set when it comes to training: Leave room to grow. “They make my workouts long, but not a lot of hard speed,” Hunter says. Intervals are at “critical velocity pace,” which is a
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RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
stamina-building pace that’s faster than tempo but slower than VO2 max. Hunter attributes his success in track to the conservative paces of his workouts. “A lot of times kids are burned out by the end of the year from doing too much speedwork,” he says. “The fastest I’ll go is on a 4x400 relay.” Picking the right times to run solo has also kept Hunter from overtraining. “When you’re with a bunch of fast teammates, you can end up racing in practice,” Hunter says. “I can go my own pace on recovery runs and not feel pressured to make it a workout.” Though he runs workouts alone, Hunter warms up with the Loudon Valley team, of which his younger brothers, Noah and Jacob, are also members. Not all of the family runs, however. Hunter is one of nine kids, including three who were adopted from China and two from Haiti. Hunter fits naturally as a role model. “My adopted brother from China, Josiah, loves to watch me race,” he says. “Having my family’s constant support has pushed me to where I am today.”
KICKING SPEED Hunter thrives on breakneck races. “I think my biggest strength in racing is kicking off of a fast pace,” he says. “If the pace is quick and everybody is hurting, having that extra gear in the last 300 meters pushes me over the line first.” That kick was on display when he beat Grant Fisher, the 2013 and 2014 Foot Locker champ, in the two-mile at the Brooks PR Invitational on June 20 with a furious final lap. Fisher, who became the seventh high-schooler to run sub4:00 in the mile and is heading to Stanford this fall, couldn’t match Hunter’s finishing speed. Hunter crossed the line in 8:42.51, a personal best. Along with the Brooks win, he also took the 2015 New Balance Indoor Nationals two-mile title. With a 4:02.36 mile PR, he might become the eighth high school runner to break 4:00 during his senior year. But first, he has some cross-country races to attend to.
Opposite page Top Left: Bruce Wodder/PhotoRun; Bottom Left: John Nepolitan (2); Top Right: Courtesy of Michigan Photography; Bottom Right: Courtesy of Texas Athletics
A NDRE W HUNTER DIDN’T RUN IN
BEST ADVICE Collegiate runners share their tips with high school athletes.
ERIN FINN University of Michigan, junior Andrew Hunter relaxes prior to the 2014 Foot Locker championships, where he took fourth as a junior.
1
1 / Hunter joins Matthew Centrowitz, Jr., as one of two runners to win a Penn Relays title in the mile and the 3,000 meters. 2 / Hunter breaks the tape at the Brooks PR meet, where he won the two-mile in 8:42.51.
COLLEGIATE HIGHLIGHT Fifth at 2015 NCAA outdoor 5,000 meters in 15:43.97
“Look forward to the college running experience, but don’t let it diminish the awesomeness of high school running. Really soak in the coolness of it, because it’s probably the only really cool thing about high school.”
2
CR AIG LUTZ University of Texas, Class of 2015
COLLEGIATE HIGHLIGHT
They’re Back! These are the returning runners who placed highest at Foot Locker last December.
BOYS
GIRLS
ANDREW HUNTER 2014 › 4th place HIGH SCHOOL › Loudon
PAIGE HOFSTAD 2014 › 4th place HIGH SCHOOL › New
Valley, Virginia
Braunfels, Texas
AUSTIN TAMAGNO 2014 › 5th place HIGH SCHOOL › Brea Olinda,
HANNAH DEBALSI 2014 › 5th place HIGH SCHOOL › Staples,
California
Connecticut
CARTER BLUNT 2014 › 13th place HIGH SCHOOL › Frisco
LIBBY DAVIDSON 2014 › 6th place HIGH SCHOOL › E.C. Glass,
Independence, Texas
Virginia
Fourth at 2015 NCAA outdoor 10,000 meters in 29:11.17
“There will be some mornings that you wake up and hate running, but the bad days always pass. Remember that success doesn’t happen overnight, but is made up of little things, like listening to your body and leaning at the line.”
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By PAUL SNYDER Illustration by Alexander Wells
The Washington city might be the best prep running town in the country. T’S NOT UNCOMMON FOR A SCHOOL to maintain a powerhouse reputation for years or decades at a time, but an entire city? For the last halfcentury, Spokane, Washington, with a population of more than 200,000, has churned out nationally competitive
I
individuals and squads from nearly every one of its high schools. Since the inception of Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) in 2004, a Spokane high school has placed in the top eight of the boys race each year. North Central High School won the team race outright
in 2008 and has boasted the individual champion each of the last two years. “There’s a fraternity of coaches and athletes that believe in the sport,” says Jon Knight, the North Central coach. “We’re competitive, yet friends and supporters at the same time.”
MEAD Dominant 1990s program had two top-10 finishers at Foot Locker in 1993.
NORTH CENTRAL 2008 NXN CHAMPS
Home to the past two NXN individual champs.
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SPOKANE ROGERS Gerry Lindgren put Spokane running on the map in the 1960s.
LEWIS AND CLARK
FERRIS
Fifteenth at NXN in 2010, coached by Michael Lee, a Mead star in the 1990s.
Ferris placed third at NXN in 2006 and second in 2009.
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
GERRY
RICK
DON
LINDGREN RILEY
KARDONG TRAINING LIKE THE BEST
SCHOOL Rogers High School, graduated 1964 HIGHLIGHTS Set a high school national record of 13:44 in the 5K that lasted until 2004.
SCHOOL Ferris High School, graduated 1966 HIGHLIGHTS Set the high school national outdoor twomile record in 1966.
RESIDENT Moved to Spokane in 1974 HIGHLIGHTS Finished fourth in the 1976 Olympic marathon and founded the Lilac Bloomsday Run.
KAI
KATIE
TANNER
WILMOT
KNIGHT
ANDERSON
SCHOOL North Central High School, graduated 2014 HIGHLIGHTS Won NXN individual title in 2013, now a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin.
SCHOOL North Central High School, graduated 2013 HIGHLIGHTS The four-time state champion is a junior at the University of Washington.
SCHOOL North Central High School, graduated 2015 HIGHLIGHTS Now a freshman at the University of Oregon, Anderson won the 2014 NXN race.
BLUE-COLLAR HISTORY Spokane lies in the far eastern stretch of Washington. Nestled between rolling hills and slashed through its center by the Spokane River, the former mining town feels smaller than it really is. It’s a blue-collar place that’s home to the Lilac Bloomsday Run. The 12K is 50,000 runners deep and was founded by the famed Don Kardong,
who is Canadian by birth but lived in Spokane when he placed fourth at the 1976 Olympic marathon. Except for the race, nothing about Spokane screams distance running hotbed. But thanks to a history of success, Spokane’s past elevates its present. “Most of the coaches in Spokane are good friends, exteammates, or ran
for one of the older coaches in high school,” says Rob Cosby, who led Ferris to a 10th-place finish at NXN in 2005. The Mead teams of the ’90s were dominant. Coached by Pat Tyson, a college roommate and teammate of Steve Prefontaine and current coach at Gonzaga University, Mead runners finished 1-2-3 at the 1993 Washington
state meet. Going back further, in the early 1960s Gerry Lindgren rose to national prominence. The Rogers High School phenom grew up near the rail yards of Spokane’s Hillyard neighborhood, and under the tutelage of coach Tracy Walters, ran 8:40.0 for the indoor two-mile in 1964— a national record that stood until 2013.
North Central’s Jon Knight likes to let his team train by effort, especially in the summer. His squad meets on Tuesdays for long runs and Thursdays for tempo work and strides. They’re running 50 to 60 miles per week and will start doing hard interval work in the first few weeks of September. “It’s an arms race,” Knight says of the Spokane competition. “If you want to get to the state meet, you gotta run fast at the end of the year.” If you rise to the top in Spokane, you’ll be near the top of the state— and the nation. “Lots of other places have large running communities, but what set s Spokane’s apart from others is the high level of respect we have for each other,” says Katie Knight, the daughter of Jon who won four state titles—one in cross country and three on the track—at North Central and is now a sophomore at the University of Washington. It’s true the bulk of Spokane’s lore currently pertains to boys’ distance running, but the girls are playing catch-up. “My dad always trained me exactly how he trained the boys,” Katie says, noting that this trend in girls’ training is “slowly but surely” advancing. With that, the mythology continues to grow and shows no signs of slowing.
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SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT WITH EIGHT NCAA TITLES TO HIS NAME AFTER ONLY TWO YEARS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, EDWARD CHESEREK IS FAST BECOMING A LEGEND IN COLLEGIATE RUNNING. BUT BEFORE THE MYTH GROWS MUCH MORE, HE—AND HIS TEAMMATES—CLARIFY A FEW THINGS. BY MICHAEL HEALD
n the first day of the summer term, during the lull between the NCAA and U.S. championships, a tour group gathers at Hayward Field’s northern gates. The guide is too busy giving the spiel about this being the best place in the world to run—showing off the plaques dedicated to its heroes—to notice a tiny black man in a yellow shirt gliding across Agate Street. Out of the dozen prospective students, only a tall blond kid sporting his high school crosscountry T-shirt catches sight of the runner who has already won more NCAA titles than Steve Prefontaine. The blond kid puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder, and together they watch Edward Cheserek disappear down the block. A week ago, in front of more than 11,000 fans,
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PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS PIETSCH
Cheserek twice unrolled his fearsome kick on the orange track inside those gates and put to rest any questions about whether he or his teammate Eric Jenkins was king of the NCAA. Now, in the lobby of the Bowerman Building, Cheserek, 21, bumps into a recreational runner perhaps 20 years his senior. They launch into a conversation that is unintelligible to everyone else in the lobby, including Andy Powell, distance coach at Oregon. Behind a table, Powell waits to consult with his star, knowing that the older runner, a university IT specialist, is from Tanzania. Toward the end of the conversation, Cheserek turns to his coach and shakes his head. “I’m losing my Swahili,” he laments. Despite having spent virtually the entirety of his five years in the U.S. in the public eye,
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Cheserek has remained an enigma. Some of this is intentional; he is usually flanked by his teammates when he speaks to the media. And so his life has been regarded as a fairy tale—stories written about him can be boiled down to “impoverished Kenyan makes good in America”—and little is known about the complicated young man who is one of the most exciting talents in his sport. “He does care what people think about him,” Parker Stinson, a former teammate, says, “but he knows he can’t control it. It’s like, If people are gonna hate me, like me, whatever, I might as well get what I want and keep winning titles.” Today, Cheserek seems tired from his hot midday workout. He slowly climbs the bleachers of Hayward’s West Grandstand and takes a seat. His long sophomore season is finally behind him, and his focus, for now, is on his summer classes. In a deep, elegantly accented voice, the business major explains why he’ll be wearing Oregon colors for two more years. “You never know when it’ll happen,” he says, “but one day I’ll have to stop running, and I’ll need a degree to survive in this life.” The fourth of seven siblings, Cheserek is the only member of his family to leave Kenya. Back home, one older brother is an engineer, the other in the military; his older sister is a teacher, his younger siblings are finishing their educations. All of them have given running a shot, but only Cheserek displayed the kind of
called Stadi za Maisha identified him as a candidate for a scholarship to St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey, having sponsored their first Kenyan student the previous year. For Cheserek, the demanding application process culminated in an epic 60-mile run from his hometown of Kapker to Kapcherop High School in Elgeyo Marakwet County to make it to the screening exam on time. The roads were washed out, driving was impossible; if he hadn’t run, he might still be in Kenya. St. Benedict’s, a boys-only Catholic school in Newark, reportedly knew nothing of Cheserek’s prowess, even though he’d won Kenyan junior national titles in the steeplechase and the 5,000 and 10,000 meters the previous year and was a member the Marakwet tribe, a subset of the Kalenjin tribe, the source of arguably the greatest distance runners on the planet. “It’s unbelievable how the Lord brought Edward to Newark,” his high school coach, Marty Hannon, says. “I have no idea, except that the Lord provides.” A basketball powerhouse—the Cleveland Cavaliers’ J.R. Smith is the latest Gray Bee to make a name for himself in the NBA—St. Benedict’s had had limited success as a track and field program until Cheserek arrived. “What a lousy business model,” Hannon jokes about the school where he’s taught math for 16 years. “It costs about $20,000 to educate a kid. Tuition is $9,000 or $10,000. Of that, virtually all the kids are on some kind of financial
“S O M E T I M E S I T R Y T O A C T L I K E I ’ M N O T A N A T H L E T E . L I K E I ’ M N O T T R Y I N G T O W I N E V E R Y T H I N G .” transcendent talent and resiliency it takes to win races in the Great Rift Valley. “My dad was a sportsman, too,” he says. “He used to run, a long time ago. You know how people get to this point with running? I think he just had to stop. Everyone in my family tried running. My oldest brother hurt himself and had to stop. My older sister stopped running in college. I could keep going…” When asked how he deals with the pressure of staying healthy for the long haul, he laughs and says that he trusts his coaches completely. “And how about the pressure of just being…you?” “Sometimes I try to act like I’m not an athlete,” he says. “Like I’m not trying to win everything. That I’m just a normal person, when I’m just walking around. When I go into class I just rock my normal stuff—my jeans. Not any running shoes around. And I’m happy.”
P R E S S U R E H A S B E E N T H E R E S I N C E W E L L B E F O R E E D WA R D
Cheserek landed at JFK Airport in the summer of 2010. As a freshman in high school in Kenya, the 16-yearold frequently missed classes in order to help his struggling family look after their farm. A missionary group
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aid. Eighty to 90 percent of the kids are African-American or Hispanic. Many of them only have one parent at home—a mother who works until eight, nine, 10 at night.” Approximately 10 percent of the student body lives in a residence hall on campus. The majority are kids who are escaping unsafe living situations in Newark, but a handful of others, like Cheserek, have crossed the globe in pursuit of an American education. For the Kenyan, who had spent the entirety of his life living in a mud hut, the change of locale was dramatic, but not uncomfortable. “It is a boarding school,” says former high school teammate Darien Edwards, who ran with Cheserek on many relays. “There are other students going through the same thing you’re going through.” Cheserek also found much-needed support in the assistant track coach at St. Benedict’s, Chelule Ngetich, who is also Kenyan. “From the beginning,” Cheserek says, “Chelule would have me over and his family would feed me Kenyan food. We have a very close relationship.” During summer vacations, Cheserek lived with Ngetich. In return, the teenager looked after his coach’s young children, helped out with chores, and for all intents and purposes, became part of the family. Almost immediately after arriving in the States, Cheserek suffered a stress fracture and missed the first
Top to Bottom: Bruce Wooder/PhotoRun; Michael Scott; John Nepolitan (2)
month of his sophomore cross country season. He managed to stay healthy after that, despite a demanding race calendar that sometimes saw him stepping to the line four times a weekend, not to mention a training environment that offered few of the low-impact options he now has in Eugene. “The track at St. Benedict’s is 200 meters,” Cheserek says, “but it’s not shaped like a real track. It’s only three lanes. The corners are too tight. Sometimes after workouts I’d feel it in my hamstrings, in my feet.” In 2010 and 2011, distance running fans in New Jersey were treated to a series of memorable duels between Cheserek and twins Jim and Joe Rosa, the current Stanford standouts who back then were seniors at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, located in an affluent community about an hour southwest of Newark. “It wasn’t like now, where I think he’s unbeatable,” Jim Rosa says. “I always knew when I raced him that it was going to be incredibly tough. In cross country he always used to surge up the hills. And I would hang back a little going up and then catch him going down. We’d just keep making surges back and forth the whole time. In track he would make really big moves at unexpected times. He would open up miles in times I would run for the four-by-four. It was a little demoralizing.” Later that year, Joe Rosa squared off against Cheserek in the mile at indoor nationals, when they were both anchoring their respective DMR teams. “I got the baton like 10 seconds before him,” Rosa recalls, “and we were out pretty quickly, and all of a sudden we hear the announcer saying that Edward Cheserek is right on our heels. It was a testament to how competitive he was, that he could catch up to some of the better runners in the country like that. But of course he had gone out way too hard, and we dropped him on the last lap.” High school teammate Edwards—who once got into a tiff with Cheserek for telling him “not to run crazy” before a big race—marvels at how patient and under control his former training partner has become at Oregon. “That was one of the biggest things we wanted to change for him,” he says. “Edward finally understands what his strengths are. I love watching him.” “If you read some websites now,” Jim Rosa says, “it’s like, ‘Ches is bad for the sport, he just sits and kicks.’ I get mad when I read that. The kind of guy he is, he’s trying to maximize points for the team. I don’t think people understand just how team-focused he is.” Not surprisingly, his coaches describe him as the ideal athlete—humble, yet fiercely dedicated to his teammates. “Every year,” Hannon says, “he chose to run the DMR at Penn Relays, to give his teammates a shot at winning. He never won an individual race at the Penn Relays. That’s how much grace and unselfishness he had.” “No ego,” adds Oregon head coach Robert Johnson. “He’s always so willing to help.” For all their praise, one quickly sees where the coaches diverge: Johnson has mentored more than his fair share of world-class talent at Oregon, whereas Hannon appreciates the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Cheserek offered him. “You could argue that he
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3 1 / Cheserek at Foot Locker, where he won twice. 2 / Jim Rosa (115) stuck to Cheserek at the 2013 Pac-12 championships. 3–4 / St. Benedict’s won many titles with Cheserek anchoring; his coach considers him the best high school runner ever.
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is the best high school distance runner ever,” he says. “In 16 years of coaching, I’ve never seen anyone that could compare.” Hannon’s enthusiasm seems excessive with Cheserek’s high school PRs. After all, Cheserek didn’t break 4:00 in the mile, and a sub-14:00 5,000 meters just doesn’t have the same caché. But if you consider the young runner’s zeal for competition, as evidenced by his simply unheard-of splits in relays (more than once, he opened the mile of a DMR with a 54-second quarter, bringing his team from way back into immediate contention) and the quality of his two victories at Foot Locker, the best ever assertion begins to look more reasonable. Few were prepared, however, for just how dominant he has been over his first two years at Oregon. With eight national titles and counting, there is a growing air of inevitability around Cheserek. The tag of best ever seems likely to follow him until he makes his professional debut in 2017 and tests himself in a world-class field.
I F T H AT D E B U T L O O K S A N Y T H I N G L I K E H I S F R E S H M A N Y E A R
at Oregon, nobody should bet against the diminutive Duck. For those with short memories, think back to the lead-up to Cheserek’s first NCAA cross-country title, when the 5-foot-6 freshman scored a massive upset over Texas Tech’s Kennedy Kithuka, who is five years older. Slowed by mud and wind, Cheserek lost ground to Kithuka from about 5K to 7K and thought the race was lost. Then, buoyed by an unexpected tailwind, he pounced and defeated the older runner by 18 seconds, joining Bob Kennedy as the only teens to win the title in their first NCAA cross country championship races. The signs were there from early in the 2013 cross-
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country season, but it took a while for his teammates to buy into the hype. “I didn’t think he was all that good,” Stinson confesses. Stinson was expecting to be the No. 1 guy on Oregon’s cross country team in 2013. “I was coming off the best summer training of my life,” he remembers. “In the first tempo workout that we did, I had to go five miles, which was one more than the rest of the team. And on the fourth mile, Edward gets to the front, and I didn’t know it at the time, that this was his move—he starts doing the thing.” The thing is Cheserek’s only visible flaw as a runner: that moment at the end of a hard race when his form falls apart and his arms begin to do an increasingly wild shimmy. It happened most memorably when Arizona’s Lawi Lalang narrowly outkicked him in the NCAA outdoor 5,000 meters last year on his way to breaking a 35-year-old meet record. “The paddles are coming out,” says Eric Jenkins, the two-time NCAA champion who recently signed with Nike. “That’s what we call it—because it looks like he’s swimming.” “People have different forms when they’re running all out,” Cheserek says, without embarrassment. “We’re working on fixing it. It’s getting better, but if it works, it works.” “So anyway,” Stinson says, “Ed was still a little overweight from the summer, and I had another mile to go, and I’d led this whole workout for him, and we’re on, like, Amazon Trail, and he’s running probably a 52-second quarter. And he’s like, looking back to see where I am. And I’m like, What an a--hole. I try to go with him and I can’t catch him. And this is a freaking tempo, and I have to keep going. After the workout, back at Bowerman, he goes, ‘What’s
Kirby Lee/Image of Sport (3)
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1 / The Ducks celebrated the first of back-to-back indoor team titles in 2014. 2 / Parker Stinson (right) was expecting to be the top Oregon distance runner in 2013. Then Cheserek arrived. 3 / Cheserek and Eric Jenkins finished 1–2, again, in the 2015 NCAA outdoor 5,000 meters.
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up, Bro? You die?’ And right then and there I was like, I don’t think I like this guy at all.” Now only 122 pounds—8 pounds lighter than his racing weight at St. Benedict’s—Cheserek tells the story of his first college cross-country season a little differently. “When I came to Oregon,” he says, “I tried not to put pressure on myself. ‘I’m still a freshman,’ I would remind myself. ‘I’m still learning how to race. Just listen to what Coach Powell has to say.’ He would hold me back in the workouts and tell me, ‘Never lead the workout, never lead the race.’ ” “Later that season,” Stinson continues, “I remember this one workout in particular, mile repeats, which Edward closed in something like a 4:18 mile. I knew how good that really was, and I never talk to Coach Powell about stuff like this, but when I was cooling down, I went over to him and was just like, ‘Man, I don’t understand how I’m supposed to be able to do these things that I want to do, but I can’t even keep up with Edward.’ ” Stinson, who notched his first sub-28:00 10,000
L A Z Y R E P O R T E R S H AV E P E R S I S T E N T LY—A N D I N C O R R E C T LY—
labeled Cheserek an “orphan.” When given the opportunity to set the record straight, he explains: “There was a kid at St. Benedict’s a year ahead of me, and he was from an orphanage. Eventually he went back to Kenya and didn’t come back to the States. But people misunderstood and got the two of us confused. Every time I see something in print about how I’m supposedly an orphan, I’m like, Who wrote this bulls---? It’s bothered me a lot. That’s why I don’t like to do interviews.” In America, where the track and field media have long struggled with how to handle East Africa’s dominance of distance running, it’s more than a little troubling that the narrative so many have settled on for Cheserek is the simplest possible cliché: one more African kid who had “absolutely nothing” when he materialized in New Jersey. “I get the sense that he was actually kind of rich in Kenya,” Stinson says. “Not in terms of money, but in terms of family. On the road, every time we’ve roomed
“E V E R Y T I M E I S E E S O M E T H I N G I N P R I N T A B O U T H O W I ’ M S U P P O S E D L Y A N O R P H A N , I ’ M L I K E , WHO WROTE THIS ?” meters this spring and now runs for Saucony, attempts to explain why this one workout changed so much for him. “It was one of the very few times in my career I was humbled,” he says. “I usually have some sort of rationalization in my head for why something didn’t work out. But seeing Edward do that, and knowing I was in good shape and that I should be happy with how I was running, I just had to talk to Coach Powell about it. And he told me right then and there, ‘I thought Edward was gonna be pretty good, but I think he’s gonna be better than Lawi Lalang. You can’t worry about him, Parker.’ ” Jenkins, whose surprising victory over Cheserek in the 3,000 meters at indoor NCAAs this past March led to more questions than it answered, is a little more guarded when he speaks about the dynamic between the two of them. “It’s interesting, both good and bad,” he says, “knowing that the toughest guy to beat in the country is your training partner.” “When Edward got here,” Stinson remembers, “he was just so quiet. So quiet. Eventually, once he started to relax, he was just one of the funniest guys you could imagine. You can’t see it in his interviews. But when he’s around us—I don’t know how to explain it. He’s a jokester. Over time I realized that I really liked him. And was surprised I did. But man, that first title...” Stinson shakes his head and laughs, “People are so quick to forget, with all this stuff about how all Edward does is sit and kick, what that cross-country race was like against Kennedy. He got broken, he was gone, but all of a sudden he was back up there. He’s just a champion.”
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together, he’s always on Skype talking to them about his races and school.” As to why Cheserek has never corrected any of these journalists, consider the atmosphere he was thrust into just months after landing at JFK in 2010. “He was like a rockstar,” Hannon says. “At meets in high school,” Jim Rosa says, “I remember kids going up to him, wanting pictures and autographs. And reporters trying to get close to him. That’s got to be so weird—you’ve just arrived in this country and you’re getting all this attention. I think about what that would be like—if someone were interviewing me in Spanish, how scared I’d be of saying something wrong.” As soon as he began to make a name for himself, accusations about age cheating that plague any prep phenom from Kenya began to fly. On the LetsRun.com message board, there is an “OFFICAL [sic] Edward Cheserek Age Guessing Thread.” Another thread from 2011 asks, “What is the real Edward Cheserek story?” and goes on to state: He was supposed to be an orphan—then he posts on his Facebook page asking for prayers for his sick father. Again supposed to be an orphan and this month he posts that he is headed back to Kenya to see his family…How does an orphan from Kenya just show up at the doorstep of a school in NJ anyway? Also if so much of his story is questionable have to start to question his age. Every step of the way, rumor-mongers have ignored his youthful appearance, birth certificate, and other Continued on page 72
NEVER SATISFIED Runners straddle a fine psychological line between recognizing success and wanting to perform better. But perfectionism can sabotage your racing. BY RICHARD A. LOVETT ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUART BRIERS
Theresa Hailey has been dreaming of qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials from the day she joined her club, a couple of years after she graduated from college. For the next 15 months, she built up her base, put in highvolume speed and tempo sessions unlike anything she’d needed in college, and whittled away at her half marathon and marathon times. Finally, this spring, she felt ready to make a full-fledged attempt at the Olympic Trials “B” standard (2:43:00). She got an elite seed for the Eugene Marathon and set out to see how many 6:13 miles she could run. ¶ The answer turned out to be a disappointing 14 or 15. She was perfectly on pace at the half marathon mark, but faded significantly by mile 18 and was even farther off at mile 24. She finished in 2:49:23. ¶ But on a day when many of the other elite women ended up in tears (no American made the 2:43 standard), Hailey was ecstatic. She missed her goal, but ran a big personal record, scored a surprise top-five finish, and was almost immediately plotting her next assault on 2:43:00. ¶ “I have a tendency RUNNING TIMES
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to find the positives in everything I do,” Hailey says, “and when it was apparent it wasn’t going to come from qualifying, it had to come from somewhere else—like getting a PR. Even a one-second PR would make me happy.” From a mental health standpoint, Hailey might as well have won the Olympics. “[Her response] is extraordinarily healthy, productive, and satisfying,” says Jeffery Simons, a sports psychologist at California State University at East Bay, who has worked with elite athletes in several sports, including distance running. It’s also simply not what most of us do. We get down on ourselves for not achieving our goals. All too often, in fact, we demand more even when we achieve our goals, wondering if we might have done better had we set the bar a bit higher. Alan Webb, who holds the American record for the mile, refers to this as the neversatisfied syndrome. “[It] is common among runners,” he says, “especially high-level runners.” Partly, that’s because there’s a confusion between satisfaction and complacency, something most competitive runners want to avoid. “I am either thinking I could have been a little tougher, could have raced a little smarter, or could have been more or less conservative,” says Ryan Vail, a 2:10:57 marathoner who is also no slouch on the track, with 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter PRs of 13:28.11 and 27:44.05. “There has never been a race where I have decided I got 100 percent out of myself, mentally and physically. I am assuming that day will never come, either.” But just as Hailey notes that any PR, even by a single second, is reason for celebration, there’s a difference between perpetually beating yourself up and Vail’s desire to improve. Not only does the former mean that someday you’ll look back on your career and realize you were never happy, but always striving for too much can be counterproductive. Yes, it can be a key element to success, but “it is the main cause of most injuries— and then lack of success,” Webb says. Being too self-critical can also isolate you from needed support. Bob Williams, a Portland, Oregon-based coach, notes that what he wants is for his runners to enjoy and appreciate what they are able to do. “It’s hard to coach someone who is never satisfied,” he says. One of the big traps for runners, Simons says, is thinking the only thing that matters is the result. He analogizes it to the difference between watching a basketball game and only caring about the score. The fun part of watching the game is the experience of living through it, he says. “I can read the score in the paper.”
“ I am either thinking I could have been a little tougher, could have raced a little smarter, or could have been more or less conservative.” —RYA N VA IL 62
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CRUEL SPORT When we race, of course, we are the game and what’s needed is to shift from thinking only about the outcome to focusing on the drama and experience of the entire event: from training through race-day preparation, strategy, tactics, and everything else that goes into a race. In doing that, Simons says, it’s good to recognize that we have chosen a sport that’s a little bit cruel. In basketball, you either win or lose and there are myriad paths to either option. In bowling, it’s possible to roll a perfect game. In running, you’re up against a clock whose minutes and seconds can be subdivided into such tiny units that the difference between breaking three hours in the marathon and coming up a second short is a mere 0.009 percent. We need to shift from seeing each race as a punishing and awful test that we can’t possibly ace to focusing on the race experience. “You can still try to achieve something, but the achievement is taking what you’ve gotten from training and appreciating the drama and the narrative of the particular race,” Simons says. Shift from outcome-oriented thinking to masteryoriented thinking: a realization that you are the runner, not the clock. “It’s always great to have a marker, like, ‘Yes, I made 80 minutes,’ or ‘Yes, I made a qualifying time.’ But if that’s the only thing you’re after, you’re probably going to be disappointed,” Simons says. Tom Cotner, distance coach of Seattle’s Club Northwest, asks his athletes to assess their races afterward, mile by mile, in writing. “You say what worked and what didn’t, and what sorts of things do I need to work on in order to improve,” he says. He urges his runners to keep these evaluations in a racing journal, so they can remind themselves of what strategies and tactics were effective for them. Cotner particularly remembers one elite woman who liked to send him long emails describing her races. “One day I got a five- or six-paragraph recounting of the race, and she never mentioned two things: her time or her place,” he says. “She was so into the racing part of it that those things were secondary.” This type of mental shift, however, is difficult for runners who tend toward perfectionism. “It’s okay to be a little obsessed, trying to get everything right and taking care of all the loose ends,” Simons says. “What we’re talking about is neurotic perfectionism. A neurotic perfectionist wants things to be truly perfect, sparkling, and fantastic. Anything less is awful.” This, he says, is why so many runners aren’t happy even with big PRs. “As soon as the perfectionist sees that something [more] might have been possible,” he says, “it is shameful not to have achieved it.” Ironically, this mindset can actually make you slower. Perfectionists don’t do as well because some part of them knows that perfection is impossible. That creates a dissonance in the brain. “They get so worried about the absence of perfection that they will not do what they need to do,” Simons says.
DO THE WORK But you can also get in trouble by thinking too positively. There are many studies showing that certain types of positive thinking, especially visualization, can improve performance, particularly in skill sports. But a more recent line of research, spearheaded by Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and author of Rethinking Positive Thinking, has found that too much positive thinking can get in your way. Oettingen’s work began with a surprise result published in 1991 in Cognitive Therapy and Research, in which she and a colleague found that dieters who most strongly fantasized about success were the ones least likely to succeed. Subsequent studies found similar results for people seeking other goals, whether they were getting good grades in school, landing good jobs after graduation, improving their love lives, or recovering from hip replacements. One reason the dreamers often failed, she says, is that they tended to invest so much of their effort into positive-thinking their way to success that they forgot to do the real work. That, she wrote in a 2014 article in the New York Times “Sunday Review,” “fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal, slackening our readiness to pursue it.” Runners, of course, aren’t likely to get lazy and forget to train. Most of us realize that the only way to achieve our dream is by hard work. But Oettingen isn’t done. She’s not a runner, but she is an expert at goal achievement. The first stages, she says, are to identify your wish, then let yourself fantasize about the outcome you desire, because such fantasies do have a role in propelling yourself toward it. But then you should change gears and look at the obstacles
standing between you and your dream. That way, she says, you will understand what you must do to overcome them. She calls this process “mental contrasting,” by which she means contrasting your dreams with the obstacles you will need to overcome. Doing so, she argues, will force you to deal with the reality of whether you have the time, energy, or talent to actually do what you want—a discovery that can save you a lot of grief later on. “If people would do that,” she says, “they would understand what they really want, and that would give them more satisfaction than blindly running after more and more.” For runners, what this ultimately translates to is realistic goal setting. “[It’s] the key to not being disappointed,” Vail says. It’s also important to have backup goals. Vail always has an “A” goal and a “B” goal. “The ‘A’ is always quite lofty but not unrealistic,” he says, “while the ‘B’ is the bare minimum that I would be satisfied with.” For example, in this year’s U.S. championships, his “A” goal was to be in the top three and go to the world championships. His “B” was to be in the top six. He was fifth. “I don’t usually talk about my ‘B’ goal,” he says. “I just keep it in the back of my mind and try to focus on the ‘A.’ ” But he notes, “I hit my ‘B’ much more often than I hit my ‘A.’ ” If you take this approach, you have to realize that missing the “A” goal isn’t a failure. “If it’s not worth striving for and falling short, then it’s probably not worth striving for,” Simons says. Studies of history’s great achievers, he adds, show that the one common denominator—besides achieving great things—was the tremendous number and scope of their failures. This is not commonly reported or understood. In part, this is because you often learn more from a failure than you do from a success. “I think logically,” says Hailey, who is by profession an engineer. “It’s like writing a [computer] program or giving a presentation. There will always be things you miss, and things you learn from that make you better prepared next time.” But also, it’s because sometimes you just want to throw yourself out there after a lofty goal. In a reception after this year’s Grandma’s Marathon, 1980s marathon great Dick Beardsley noted that some of his greatest successes came from doing exactly this…even if on other occasions he failed miserably. If you are faced with such a decision, give yourself the freedom to risk without fear. As Cotner says, “Go for it. If it doesn’t happen, there’s no failure.”
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FALL PERFORMANCE
BIGGER AND SOFTER ARE THE FLAVORS OF THE DAY WHEN IT COMES TO RUNNING SHOES. BUT DON’T DESPAIR IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A LIGHTWEIGHT TRAINER THAT DOESN’T GET IN THE WAY. THESE EIGHT MODELS POP OFF THE GROUND AND WON’T WEIGH YOU DOWN DURING YOUR FALL MILES.
B Y J O N AT H A N B E V E R LY / D ATA A N D A N A LY S I S B Y M A R T Y N S H O R T E N P H OTO G R A P H S B Y M AT T R A I N E Y A N D M I TC H M A N D E L
LESS SHOE
MORE SHOE
C U S H I O N I N G
MORE CUSHIONING
P E R F O R M A N C E
ALTRA ONE 2.5
BROOKS PURECONNECT 4 SKECHERS GOMEB SPEED 3 SALMING SPEED S1 361° CHROMOSO SAUCONY FASTWITCH NEW BALANCE RC1400V3
ON CLOUD
Altra One 2.5 $100
LESS CUSHIONING
Altra’s One intends to be only what you need and nothing else. But it’s not exactly minimal: Despite being zero-drop and one of the lightest shoes tested, it provides above-average cushioning in the forefoot and a stable platform due to its width and the contours of the midsole. Like the 2.0, this model has more cushioning than the first version, but the foam density in the 2.5 is a hair firmer, providing a more responsive ride that several testers found hit the sweet spot. As with other Altra models, testers gave their greatest praise for the comfortable fit of the wide forefoot that allowed toes to splay naturally. They also appreciated the feather-like weight. “It felt like I wasn’t wearing any shoes when I was wearing these,” said Tony Heriford, 30, of Grand Ledge, Michigan.
Go to runningtimes.com/shoes for a detailed description of how we test shoes and for additional reviews.
STATS WEIGHT MM
30.6
HEEL HEIGHT
22.0 8.6 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
¾ 9.6 oz (M) ¾ 7.4 oz (W)
84 69 HEEL CUSHIONING 18 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
HIGH
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
¾ Zoot Solana ¾ New Balance RC1400v3 ¾ Nike Free Flyknit+
¾ Adidas Response Cushion 21 ¾ New Balance 1080v3 ¾ Asics GT-2000 3
The full-mesh upper is the Chromoso’s most defining characteristic, delivering an open, unrestrictive feel that echoes the neutral ride. A new shoe company in the U.S., 361° uses its rubber-infused “QU!KFOAM” in the top layer and in the heel of the Chromoso’s midsole, with a firmer bottom layer providing some stability. The result is a well-cushioned heel that gives way to a thin, flexible forefoot. The flat outsole is almost entirely covered with durable rubber, cut by deep and effective flex grooves. The Chromoso works well for those who wear an orthotic and don’t want a heavy, controlling shoe below it.
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
22.0 HEEL HEIGHT
20.0 2.0 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
¾ 6.6 oz (M) ¾ 5.3 oz (W)
62 FLEXIBILITY 27 HEEL CUSHIONING
HIGH
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
MM
WEIGHT
361° Chromoso $90
66
STATS
LOW
LOW
FLEXIBILITY
61 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
¾ Saucony Virrata 2 ¾ Skechers GObionic 2 ¾ New Balance 1500
¾ Altra Instinct ¾ Altra Torin 2.0 ¾ Altra Lone Peak 2.0
Brooks PureConnect 4 $100
New Balance RC1400v3 $100
On Cloud $120
The lightest model in the Pure line offers a natural ride with a low, rounded heel and a highly flexible sole. Previous versions were narrow and too tight for many, but this version corrected that, removing all overlays from the stretchy upper, allowing the foot to spread where it wants while a wide elastic band that wraps over the arch keeps the foot secure. A few still felt the shoe ran narrow, but many more found the fit ideal. “The cushioning struck a perfect balance between just enough to be comfortable, but not so much that you feel bulky and it takes away from your interaction with the terrain. Had somewhat of a minimalist feel, but not crazy minimal,” said Michelle Wallace from Carlsbad, California.
The 1400 has been a Running Times tester favorite since its debut in 2011 as a racing flat or lightweight trainer with a well-cushioned heel, a low, flexible forefoot, and no control features. Many were disappointed when the v2 messed with the fit, though it went mostly unaltered underfoot. This update removes the offending overlays, allowing room for forefoot splay while still holding the foot securely enough for fastpaced turnover. Testers unanimously praised the comfort of the soft, flexible upper that “seemed to meld with your foot.” They also noticed the improved traction of the blown-rubber outsole and reported the one-piece REVlite midsole delivered a ride cushioned and supportive enough for long runs while light enough for 5Ks.
The Cloud is the lightest, least-structured shoe made by On, a Swiss company that uses collapsible tubes to provide cushioning. Those tubes look less radical in the Cloud than in other models because they are squared off and aligned to form a full-length midsole and outsole. On the run, however, they provide the same sensation of smooth cushioning as they compress, transforming to a firm, stable platform for pushoff as they bottom out. Testers universally disliked the stretch-cord lacing, but when they switched to the optional conventional laces, they rated the fit and support of the upper highly. Some testers found the ride lacked stability, but faster runners appreciated the shoes more. One tester claimed it to be “quite possibly the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever run in.”
STATS
STATS
STATS
FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
90
HEEL HEIGHT
11.1 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
LOW
HIGH
¾ 8.1 oz (M) ¾ 6.4 oz (W)
34
FLEXIBILITY
47 HEEL CUSHIONING 39 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
20.0
52
FLEXIBILITY LOW
12.0
31.1
FLEXIBILITY 83
HEEL CUSHIONING 13 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
HIGH
16.6 HEEL HEIGHT
WEIGHT
¾ 6.3 oz (M) ¾ 5.4 oz (W)
MM
2.8 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
28.6
LOW
HEEL HEIGHT
22.5
¾ 8.3 oz (M) ¾ 6.8 oz (W)
HIGH
25.3
WEIGHT MM
MM
WEIGHT
55 HEEL CUSHIONING 16 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
¾ New Balance Fresh Foam 980 ¾ Zoot Solana ¾ Mizuno Wave Sayonara 2
¾ Nike Zoom Streak LT ¾ Newton Gravity ¾ Nike Free Trainer 3.0
¾ On Cloud ¾ Under Armour Speedform Apollo ¾ Mizuno Wave Sayonara 2
¾ New Balance RC1600 ¾ Zoot TT Trainer ¾ Asics Gel-DS Racer 10
¾ Mizuno Wave Sayonara 2 ¾ Salming Speed ¾ New Balance RC1400v3
¾ Asics Gel-Blur33 ¾ Brooks Ravenna 6 ¾ New Balance M860v5
RUNNING TIMES
67
Saucony Fastwitch 7 $90
Skechers GOmeb Speed 3 $120
Salming, a Swedish company marketing in the U.S. for the first time this year, makes shoes that combine elements of minimal design with an almost retro look and feel. The three-layer upper of the Speed S1 has a well-padded ankle collar and more structure than most shoes this light, but testers found it comfortable with plenty of toe wiggle room. Despite low cushioning scores, you feel a protective, bouncy response underfoot. “They somehow fit a lot of padding into a very light and thin shoe,” says Melissa Tarasenko, 31, of San Diego, who usually runs in a plush, cushioned trainer. Similarly, while the lab gave it a low flexibility score, the flex grooves—closer to the arch and more angled than in other shoes— deliver a quick, smooth roll.
The Fastwitch has been a popular race-day shoe for mild overpronators for more than a decade, and a lightweight trainer for some. In that decade, it has lost more than an ounce of weight, its rigid plastic midfoot shank, and a lot of suede. This year it gets a new, sticky rubber outsole that testers said gripped dry and wet roads effectively. The upper was also improved, using thin, flexible, welded overlays that conform to the foot’s shape and provide support without bulk. The ride has some of the feel of a minimalist model: firm but not hard, with less than a 4 mm heel-toe drop and a wider forefoot than most racers. But the dual-density medial post makes it stable enough for almost anyone (too stable for those testers who didn’t need or want that much control).
This is the shoe that Meb wore when he won the 2014 Boston Marathon, and it performs as if designed for an elite runner. In a marathon shoe, the goal is to minimize impact with little loss of road feel and responsiveness. The Speed accomplishes this with a firm-feel foam and a thermoplastic plate embedded in the midsole, which makes the shoe bounce back quickly, improving the turnover while sacrificing some flexibility. Skechers tuned that plate even stiffer in this version, giving it a more responsive ride. Testers noted the difference, saying this felt more like racing flat than distance shoe. The upper on this version is wider, more flexible, and more breathable than the Speed 2, which was too narrow for many. Testers reported the new version still hugged the foot, adding to the speedy feel.
STATS
STATS
STATS
68
6.8 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
HEEL HEIGHT
62 FLEXIBILITY 21 HEEL CUSHIONING 28 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
LOW
6 FLEXIBILITY 17 HEEL CUSHIONING 33 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
HEEL HEIGHT
18.3
26.2
20.2 6.0 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
¾ 7.6 oz (M) ¾ 5.9 oz (W)
37 FLEXIBILITY 22 HEEL CUSHIONING
HIGH
6.8 FOREFOOT HEEL–TOE HEIGHT DROP
25.1
WEIGHT MM
¾ 7.1 oz (M) ¾ 5.6 oz (W)
MM
¾ 7.7 oz (M) ¾ 6.1 oz (W)
HIGH
LOW
HEEL HEIGHT
19.8
WEIGHT
LOW
26.6
WEIGHT
HIGH
MM
Salming Speed S1 $140
46 FOREFOOT CUSHIONING
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
SIMILAR MODELS IN PERFORMANCE
SIMILAR MODELS IN FIT
¾ Altra Instinct/ Intuition ¾ Puma Faas 500 ¾ New Balance Fresh Foam 980
¾ Adidas ClimaCool AT 180 ¾ Asics Gel-Noosa Tri 6 ¾ Salming Distance D1
¾ Mizuno Wave Hitogami 2 ¾ Skechers GOmeb Speed 2 ¾ Adidas Adizero Adios Boost 2
¾ Adidas adizero F50 Runner ¾ Nike LunarEclipse ¾ Skechers GOmeb Speed 3
¾ Nike Free Flyknit 4.0 ¾ Altra One 2.5 ¾ Adidas Adizero Boston Boost 5
¾ Saucony Fastwitch 7 ¾ Nike LunarEclipse ¾ Newton EnergyNR II
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Bill Aris RUNNE R , C O A C H, S T O TA N INTERVIE W BY MARC BLOOM
» Bill Aris, 60, started coaching at Fayetteville-Manlius High School—12 miles east of Syracuse, New York—in 1992, and over the years, his duties kept growing. He became the girls head coach in 1998, and in 2004, the same year the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) high school championships began, Aris took over as head coach of the boys team. His teams have had unmatched consistency at the national level, and last fall the boys and girls squads won NXN titles. Growing up, I played football, basketball, lacrosse, and pickup games of hockey. I could play schoolyard sports all day and still go running. I went out for freshman track and ran the 800. But I did not enjoy all the interval training on the track, typical of that era. After that season, I continued running on my own. Teammates tried to get me to come out for cross country, but I didn’t want any part of it. I got caught up in the 1970s running boom and was inspired by watching Lasse Virén win the 5,000 and 10,000 in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. I went on to run a dozen marathons. In 1991, I ran my
70
PR of 2:43:12 at Boston. Prior to coaching, my job from 1980 to 1992 was real estate manager for a large corporation in the Syracuse area. Dealing with a range of people, having to negotiate to satisfy different needs, would serve me well in coaching. I got to know what made people tick.
Herb Elliott and other greats. The purity of Cerutty’s approach appealed to me. His emphasis on strength, running on sand hills, nutrition, and training as a lifestyle all clicked with my own thoughts. I read and studied every book on Cerutty I could find. Cerutty’s ideas were so old-school and so passé that they felt new and audacious. The Stotan philosophy of a “stoic” and “spartan” value system could be what high school runners needed. In August 2004, I organized, with my son, a weeklong camp for our top eight F-M boys at the Adirondacks summer home of one of the boy’s parents. Our camp was voluntary and free. The only requirement was that the parents purchase the week’s food. A typical Stotan day at the camp went like this: three runs, including long trail runs, hills, and tempo hill circuits, totaling 10 miles and up; mind-body discussions; nutritious meals; jumping in the lake after runs.
My company downsized in 1992, and I was let go. We had two children, and my wife was a registered nurse. I decided to offer my services at the high school as both a teacher’s aide and assistant coach.
The experiment worked. At the end of the week, the boys had learned many new ideas that they would hold dear to their hearts. They were now different.
In the years leading up to 2004, I was looking for fresh ideas. I found the Stotan concepts of the Australian coach Percy Cerutty, who developed
Our Stotan attributes hit the high school crosscountry community with a jolt that fall. At the Manhattan Invitational, the boys placed first
through fifth for a sweep in their varsity race against national power Christian Brothers Academy of New Jersey. By being selfless, thinking of performing for others—your teammates— you free yourself from the constraints of performing only for yourself. Last spring, we were featured on Today. A senior, Olivia Ryan, made the comment that she did not know her PR on any cross-country course. That was telling. We do comprehensive resistance work, including squats, dead lifts, and power cleans, yearround. I do the same as the athletes. Recently, for my 60th birthday, I did a 365-pound dead lift. Our program rarely has stars. My process is attempting to take average runners and make them above average. But it’s not making them; it’s sharing with the athletes the pursuit of excellence.
FAYETTEVILLE-MANLIUS AT NXN GIRLS NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 RUNNER-UP 2013
BOYS
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
NATIONAL CHAMPIONS
2014 RUNNER-UP 2004, 2010 THIRD PLACE 2005 ALSO MADE APPEARANCES
2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013
Marnie Carter Photography
A RUNNING LIFE
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT (continued from page 58)
basic biographical facts in an effort to discredit his accomplishments. Cheserek’s anger at having been the target of so much uninformed racism is understandable, especially when he talks about his father. “My dad was a huge influence,” he says about the cattle and sheep farmer who raised him. “After I won a couple races in eighth grade, when I was still totally new to running and still thought of myself as a soccer player, he was like, ‘Edward, I think we should send you to a training camp.’ Like a weeklong summer camp. I had been getting lazy about running that summer, because helping my family was too much work—so when I got to the camp, I was like, ‘Just do this.’ “That next year, freshman year of high school, I ran like 31 minutes for the 10K, maybe 14:30 for the 5K, 9:09 for the steeple. I was 15 years old. Suddenly there was this opportunity to go to St. Benedict’s and make it in the U.S. It all happened so fast. When my dad was getting sick, I tried to let him know what kind of times I was running over here in high school. I wanted him to know I had a future. I knew it then, that I could really do this.” Cheserek has only gone back to Kenya twice. The first visit was after his father, 61, passed away after a brief illness in the summer of 2011, when Cheserek was about to enter his junior year of high school. “It was so hard to make myself return to the States that first time,” he says. “I remember talking to my older brother about it, and he was like, ‘This is how life is. Finish your school. Take care of your future.’ I was there for only three days.” When asked if there is anyone in Eugene who offers him a connection to Kenya, Cheserek shakes his head and sighs at the question. “Man,” he says, “I’ve gotten used to America, so I don’t have to worry any more about adjusting. I have my coaches, I have my teammates—we all just hang out.” The message is clear, and a good reminder of what it feels like to be 21 years old and at ease on a college campus: I can take care of myself, thank you very much. “When the time comes for me to turn professional,” he says, “I’d like to use the money to go and visit my family. But I would like to run for the United States.”
“ T W O Y E A R S A G O , ” J O H N S O N S AY S , “ E V E R Y O N E WA S A S K I N G ,
‘Who’s gonna be here to run with Mac Fleet?’ And now they’re asking the same thing about Edward. I’ll admit he makes it harder than most. But we look at it as just another incentive to recruit hard.” Oregon has long been on Cheserek’s radar. He first caught wind of the Hayward Field mythology when one of his neighbors in Kenya—who happened to be a professional runner—told him he had been invited to race in Eugene. “I was like, ‘What the heck is Eugene?’ ”
72
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Cheserek recalls. “And he told me, ‘It’s the best place to run in the United States.’ ” As the top recruit in the country, he entertained the possibility of going elsewhere, but in reality, it didn’t take him long to start wearing his future colors. “At NXN in 2010, we showed him around,” Joe Rosa says. “It was fun for us—we had been there before—but he was in awe of all the cool stuff. Everything was so new for him. The meet is in Portland, of course, and at some point Edward bought a hat—an Oregon hat—and me and Jim were like, “Aww, man, you gotta come to Stanford. Edward, you’re just wearing that hat for now, right? That’s not a permanent thing?’ ” Turns out it was, and five years later, looking down at the track that holds so many stories, Cheserek doesn’t hesitate to share his goals for the next two years and beyond: “I want my name to be up there with Prefontaine, Salazar—one of those famous names to come through this program.” Some observers are puzzled as to why he wouldn’t turn pro now and take guaranteed money instead of risking injury or an unexpected fall from the NCAA mountaintop. “If you look at pro golf,” Johnson counters, “players often turn pro when they’re very young. Some are successful, others not so much. People who are successful go to college. Look at Jordan Spieth. Tiger Woods. They learned how to win at all levels.” This kind of collegiate dominance brings to mind another fan favorite at Hayward Field: Nick Symmonds, who owned Division III track for four years while competing for Willamette University. There can be a real value in getting a feel for the finish line, as evidenced by Symmonds’s six national titles in the 800 meters. Cheserek’s newfound patience on the track has also informed the way he looks at his upcoming career. “Bernard Lagat is 40 years old,” he points out, “and he still runs really, really fast. Look at Galen, and Mo—who’s 32, but still running so fast. I want to set my career up like those guys. The style of the races that they win, it’s basically what I’ve been doing here at Oregon.” Having begun the arduous, uncertain process of gaining U.S. citizenship, he dreams of being able to compete for the U.S. Olympic team next summer but knows there are no guarantees. “If not,” he says, “I’ll probably just focus on school instead of trying to make the team for Kenya next year.” After all, he’ll be 26 years old in 2020, and 30 in 2024, which means he’ll have two Olympic cycles in his prime. And so, for the time being, he will tackle an even unlikelier accomplishment than winning a gold medal: winning the cross-country team title at Oregon. It’s the only NCAA title—team or individual—that continues to elude him and his coaches. With the powerhouse squads of Colorado and Stanford in the way, this is, perhaps, the last chance to call Cheserek an underdog. “A sport is a challenge,” he says. “We have to challenge each other. When we get back together as a team, we’ll figure out how good we are. And then we’ll try and do something special.”
1600
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RUNNERS’ MART CL A SSIFIED ADVERTISING SECTION TO ADVERTISE: Contact MICHAEL AUSTRY p. 214.674.8126 // f. 630.578.1331 // e. MAUSTRY@SBCGLOBAL.NET
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CANADA
Sun, 05.29.16
Sat, 10.17.15
Scotiabank Ottawa Marathon
The Medical Center 10K Classic
Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K , 5K, 2K & Kid’s Marathon
10K Classic,10K Wheelchair Race, 5K Run/Walk & 1.5M Fun Walk
CONTACT: John Halvorsen, 5450 Canotek Rd., Unit 45, Ottawa, ON K1J 9G2. 866.RUN.OTTA halvorsen@runottawa.ca runottawa.com
CONTACT: Marie Noall,
OTTAWA, ON, CANADA
Run with over 49,000 runners In Canada’s Capital!
MID-ATLANTIC
Sun, 09.20.15 WASHINGTON, DC
Half Marathon & 5 Mile Run CONTACT: Joint Base Anacostia Bolling MWR, 12 Brookley Avenue, Washington, DC 20032. navyairforcehalfmarathon@gmail.com navyairforcehalfmarathon.com
Sat, 11.14.15 Anthem Richmond Marathon
RICHMOND, VA
Marathon, Half Marathon & 8K 100 Avenue of Champions, Richmond, VA 23230. 804.285.9495 marathon@sportsbackers.org richmondmarathon.org
MIDWEST
Sat, 09.26.15
White River Marathon For Kenya Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K CONTACT: Paul Gigliotti, P.O. Box 2551, Mountain Home, AR 72654. 870.404.8363 rd@whiterivermarathon.com whiterivermarathon.com
Flat Boston Qualifier!
Sat, 12.05.15 TN Sports Medicine Mt. Juliet Half Marathon & 5K Presented by LC
MT. JULIET, TN
Half Marathon & 5K 2315 Eugenia Ave., Nashville, TN 37211 615.415.3520 races@team-magic.com team-magic.com Part of Mt. Juliet Christmas Parade
Sat, 01.09.16 Mississippi Blues Marathon Marathon, Half Marathon, Quarter Marathon & Relay CONTACT: John Noblin
Marathon, Half Marathon, Team Relay & Kids Fun Run
info@msbluesmarathon.com msbluesmarathon.com
CONTACT: Brian Polen, Race Director,
Fri-Sun, 01.15.16-01.17.16
Sun, 05.15.16
Louisiana Marathon
BATON ROUGE, LA Marathon, Half Marathon, Quarter Marathon, 5K & Kids Run CONTACT: Danny Bourgeois,
Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon
CLEVELAND, OH
Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K, 5K & Kids Run CONTACT: Ralph Staph, 29525 Chagrin Blvd., Suite 215, Pepper Pike, OH 44122. 800.467.3826 cmi@clevelandmarathon.com clevelandmarathon.com
PACIFIC
Sat, 03.19.16 Valley To The Sea Marathon
WAILUKU, HI
Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K & 5K
Details at: http://www.usatf.org/ Resources-for---/Masters/LDR.aspx
Sat, 11.21.15
AKRON, OH
453 S. High St., Suite 301, Akron, OH 44311. 877.375.2278 info@akronmarathon.org rubbercityraceseries.org
Free to USATF Members
RRCA State Championship Race: 36th Annual of The Medical Center 10K Classic; The Race for Everyone!
JACKSON, MS
Akron Marathon (Rubber City Race Series)
Long Distance Running Participation Award
P.O. Box 1175, Bowling Green, KY 42102. 270.796.2141 themedicalcenter10kclassic@yahoo.com themedicalcenter10kclassic.com
CONTACT: Faye Yates,
CONTACT: Race Director,
USATF Masters
BOWLING GREEN, KY
COTTER, AR
Navy Air Force Half Marathon & Navy 5 Miler
PHIDIPPIDES AWARD
SOUTH
CONTACT: Rudy Huber, P.O. Box 1024, Wailuku, HI 96793. 808.280.5801 huber_rudy@yahoo.com runnersparadiseinc.com
721 Government St., Suite 103, Box 295, Baton Rouge, LA 70802. 504.669.1530 danny@thelouisianamarathon.com thelouisianamarathon.com A Running Festival with Lagniappe
Sun, 02.07.16 Tallahassee Marathon
TALLAHASSEE, FL
Marathon & Half Marathon CONTACT: Eric Godin
marathon@gulfwinds.org tallahasseemarathon.com Guest speaker Greg McMillan, $9,500 cash purse, Boston Qualifier.
WEST
Sun, 02.14.16 Lost Dutchman Marathon
APACHE JUNCTION, AZ Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K & 8K (Trail Run)
Address inquiries to:
Phidippides@earthlink.net
CONTACT: Lost Dutchman Marathon,
P.O. Box 6417, Apache Junction, AZ 85178. contact@lostdutchmanmarathon.org
Courtesy of Chicago Marathon
On October 10, 2010, after numerous surges, Kenyan Sammy Wanjiru, 23, pulls away from Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede to secure victory in the Chicago Marathon (2:06:24). This was the last race of Wanjiru’s career. He died seven months later after falling from a balcony at his home in Kenya.
76
RUNNING TIMES SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Foraging chef, currently seeking to embrace life’s challenges and run with them
Be A SeEkEr > FinD Y O U R s T R O ng See his story at saucony.com/ďŹ ndyourstrong