Interview with Terrence Mahon

By Shannon Martin Morehouse

A year ago, New York Road Runners interviewed Team Running USA’s Terrence Mahon, who is one of the top distance running coaches in the United States. Since we last spoke to him, he guided Ryan Hall to win the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon and Deena Kastor to win the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Women’s Marathon.

Mahon, 37, was a standout runner at Villanova and has a marathon personal best of 2:13. He qualified for the Olympic Trials three times in the marathon. These days, Mahon keeps fit by training with his athletes—he always carries a pair of racing flats and spikes with him. Mahon is married to Jen Rhines, a 2000 and 2004 Olympian.

Team Running USA is based in Mammoth Lakes, CA, and San Diego. In two weeks, several Team Running USA athletes will compete at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field in Eugene, OR, in distances ranging form 1500 to 10,000 meters..

Mahon spoke with NYRR about his coaching style, his athletes’ amazing performances, and his aspiration for Team Running USA in Eugene.

New York Road Runners: Two of your athletes have already made the Olympic team this year, Deena Kastor and Ryan Hall. I’m sure that many factors contributed to their wins at the Trials, but if you had to pick a couple, what would they be for each of them?

Terrence Mahon: Like you say, there are so many factors. They each went into the Trials through very different scenarios. For Deena, who has already been on the Olympic team twice, she used the months prior to the Trials to rekindle her motivation for what the Olympics are about and what she’s looking to still get out of the Olympics. So, she had to reboot her system to realize that goal. Also, she went into the Trials knowing that if she didn’t win, she may be seen by the outside world as a failure, so that bull’s eye on her back was a huge motivation to prove that she was strong and fit.

It’s the nature of athletes to compare the present to the past; they look to the past to see what worked and try to recapture that, but as athletes mature, they continue to need new stimuli to see where they are and to reach the gains they are looking for. Doing what you did last time doesn’t work. I learned this from Ed Eyestone. Every time he tried to repeat his same marathon buildup, it never worked. An exercise physiologist will tell you that the reason behind it is that when you continually do the same type of training, your muscles figure out how to get through that stress by actually doing less work.

For Deena, we’ve been tweaking her training and making it a little bit different, so that we get a good shock to her body to help her succeed. So, I’d say another factor that contributed to Deena’s success is the ability to allow her training to evolve like this, to roll with the punches, even though it doesn’t come naturally to any athlete. Her training now is different than it was four years ago, three years ago, two years ago.

Ryan comes from a different scenario. He went into the Trials having only done one marathon, so he had no idea what to expect, no idea how to run a tactical marathon in terms of experience, so for him, he had to go through a big learning curve in training building up to the Trials. His training was based on what would make him feel comfortable competing in the event, and that was a huge factor to his success.

Going in as one of the fastest guys put a little pressure on Ryan as well. Guys knew that he liked to run fast from the front, so in training we had to work on changing his game. This helped him to feel a little more comfortable with the slow and erratic first 10K. You can’t win a 26-mile race from the gun, but Ryan would if he could, because that’s his style. So, tempering those emotions was a big part of the game.

Ryan had been dreaming of making the Olympic team since the first day he ran. It is stressful for any athlete trying to make their first Olympic team, so whereas Deena had to refurbish excitement, Ryan had to temper it.

NYRR: Mentioning Ryan’s dream of making the Olympic team reminds me of his wife, Sara Hall’s, most recent NYRR journal entry, where she talks about the power of visualization. I know that you believe that the mental components of training and racing are important to develop. Do you consider visualization a useful tool?

TM: Yes, definitely. I think it’s so important to train the mind to know what your goal will feel like. For example, with Deena, when she expressed the goal of running a sub-2:20 marathon, we worked a lot with her to keep that goal in her mind while training. I think it’s important for athletes to remind themselves what their training means to them. After workouts, I’ll often ask the athletes to absorb their workout in their minds, to see how what they did in their workout will translate into a race they have coming up. This mental connection helps the workouts to stick a little better.

Different athletes have different workouts that mean more to them than others. As long as the athletes have at least one type of workout that they are able to use to visualize a race, then they are going to be mentally prepared to achieve their goals.

NYRR: Now, let’s talk about your intuition. Every time I interview one of your athletes, there’s always some mention of your intuitive abilities.

TM: [Laughing]. To me, that’s just part of my job. The quicker I can learn about what gets the athletes excited and what they respond well to, the better. I’ve found that when I try to do it the other way around, and do a workout that I know means X, it doesn’t help the athletes. I need them to do workouts that will help feed their confidence. Learning about each little thing that makes each athlete tick helps me to give them the workouts that will best enable them to reach their goals.

NYRR: Do you find it difficult to provide each individual athlete with training unique to them, and still foster a healthy group dynamic?

TM: No, it’s not hard at all. I look for where I can fit people together in workouts. It depends on the athlete how much they need that group dynamic. For example, Ryan doesn’t need as much outside motivation as inside motivation. So, more often than not, Ryan’s workouts are solo workouts, and they’re that way on purpose. So, he gets his group-dynamic-fix on a lot of easy runs, the weight room work, and some hill sprints. It helps ease the daily grind of it. When it gets to the hardcore training, it’s very important for him to be by himself at this point in his career, rather than with others, because he can tune in to what he needs to do. He has so much to learn about how to succeed as a professional runner. He can’t both do that and focus on someone else who is running with him.

But other people come at it differently. For instance, Ryan’s wife, Sara, is so much better with people. For her, her learning curve goes way up when she has other people to measure against, to push against, and to get more out of the workouts than she thinks she has.

NYRR: I know that when you first meet with athletes who join your group, you help them devise goals for the next how many ever years they say they are willing to commit to the sport. How specifically does this long-term goal-oriented approach help your athletes?

TM: Well, first of all, I think it’s important for the athlete to have their motivations for running at the forefront of their mind. When we leave it in the air, they lose a sense of urgency and running becomes more happenstance, with the athlete thinking “well, hopefully, I’ll get this done and hopefully I’ll get that done, but if I don’t I’ll try it next year.” My goal as a coach is to try to limit the number of next-year tries the athletes have, but the irony of this goal-oriented approach is that you create many more next years. By getting the athlete goal-oriented early, you’re putting them on a path that provides many years of opportunity.

Part of this approach, too, is encouraging the athletes to incorporate into their goals a way of giving back. Being a professional athlete can be such a selfish sport, so I believe that doing something for others fuels them, whether it’s in the running community or outside the running community. They don’t necessarily need to be giving back at this moment, as long as they have an idea in their head of how they’d like to give back. This helps prevent them from feeling off balance by the fact that so much is being done specifically for them. The more I can get them to think globally, socially, and beyond themselves, the better. For example, you see this with Ryan and Sara getting involved with Team World Vision .

NYRR: How difficult is it for you to have some athletes training in San Diego and some training in Mammoth Lakes, and then also having athletes competing around the globe at different times?

TM: Having two different training sites makes things a little challenging at times. I think my driving record is suffering from it [laughing], with a couple speeding tickets in the desert. Other than that, it’s not too bad. Obviously, if I wanted to make things easy, I’d put everyone in one place, but I know that if I were to do that, someone would suffer. It’s my job to provide for these athletes, so I don’t mind having to drive a little more or maneuver my schedule around to be available for them.

NYRR: The final question I have for you is about the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field, which is quickly approaching. Tell me about the squad you are sending and the particular goals for each athlete going.

TM: Number one, everyone is looking to run their personal-best times. So, the number one goal we had going into the Trials is to have everyone in the best fitness they have ever been in. The way things stand right now, that’s mission accomplished. Number two is to have everyone going in healthy, and knock on wood, right now, that’s mission accomplished as well. We’re looking for the opportunity where each of these athletes gets to be a hero, because we need more heroes in this sport. And the whole mission that we’re trying to accomplish is to create heroes.

Interview conducted June 16, 2008, and posted June 18, 2008.