Week 6

Friday, October 26

Return of the Native

After 15 years of world-topping excellence, America’s marathon fortunes began a steady decline following Joan Samuelson’s American record 2:21:21 win at the 1985 Chicago Marathon. Though there were individual moments of glory, like Steve Spence’s IAAF World Championships Marathon bronze medal in Tokyo in 1991, and Mark Plaatjes’s World Championships gold in Stuttgart in 1993, the overall tenor of American marathoning was decidedly down, culminating with the inability to qualify a full three-man team for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Marathon.

Meanwhile, African distance running was in the ascendancy. “In 1995, when the Africans started really training hard, it affected everyone,” explains Team USA California coach Bob Larsen. “Look at Australia, England, the U.S., Germany, France, and New Zealand. Spain hung on, and Portugal, but the rest of the world got overwhelmed.”

After 21 years at UCLA, coach Larsen retired. He, along with long-time Alamosa State College coach Joe Vigil, decided to address the issue of American competitiveness. At the same time on a different track, Running USA, an organization of American organizations and sponsors formed in 1999, was also bent on addressing the weakness of the professional sport in America. Together, they formed ideas about rebuilding training opportunities.

“Pittsburgh was the symbol, the catalyst,” says executive director of Running USA, Basil Honikman, of the failed Olympic Trials Marathon of 2000. “We began to hold meetings on how to ensure the sport of running would be secure in the future. We were very motivated people, and our purpose was to put American athletes back on the podium.” 

Go West Young Man
“No one was using the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista,” says Larsen, speaking of the facility south of San Diego where his former UCLA athlete Meb Keflezighi lived and trained. “And we had done a lot in San Diego in the past. So we got together with Basil and Running USA, and decided to try to get guys to be competitive again at the international level.”

Coach Larsen was a devotee of Mammoth Lakes, California, high in the Sierra Mountains. He had taken his UCLA teams there to train in the summer months. In February 2001, Team USA California was founded in Mammoth Lakes under the direction of coaches Vigil and Larsen. 

“We had Meb and Deena on shoe contracts,” says Larsen, referring to Keflezighi and Deena Kastor. “And Joe and I were cheap, essentially volunteering our time. We got the town involved, found some condo rentals, and four weeks later Meb broke the American record at 10,000 meters [27:13].”

Soon the success of Keflezighi and Kastor began to change the attitudes of what was possible for American athletes at the international level.

Motor City
At the same time, two brothers from Michigan, Keith and Kevin Hanson, initiated a similar training environment, called the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, centered around their string of running stores in Rochester Hills outside Detroit. 

“I think American distance running began to change only when people decided to do it themselves,” says Keith Hanson who, along with Kevin, has poured over a million dollars into their project.

“When we began in 1999, America was at its all-time low,” recalls Kevin Hanson. “Now the ball has stopped rolling downhill, and we’ve begun to move it back up.”

The Hansons quickly began developing national-caliber athletes by the score, following what was essentially a Japanese model.

“The Japanese have 55 men’s teams and 35 women’s teams all with different sponsors from across the industrial spectrum: insurance, cosmetics, auto manufacturers,” explains running agent Brendan Reilly. “It’s not a running endeavor. Their budgets are between $500,000 and $4,000,000 annually, and they underwrite everything. Since 1991, there have been 13 World Championships and Olympics, and the Japanese women have won 13 medals. The Hansons are on that path. What they’re doing catches the eye, and next thing you know you’ve got Saturn on board. It wouldn’t surprise me that in six to eight years we have a half-dozen corporate-sponsored teams in America.”

“We based ourselves off the old running club system that brought America to its previous high-water mark in international distance running,” says Kevin Hanson, the older of the brothers and the most hands-on with the athletes. “Greg Meyer was influential. He lived just 30 miles away, and he was the last American to win the Boston Marathon, while he was running with the Greater Boston Track Club. We wondered, why did it work 25 years ago, but not now?”

What they re-discovered was the benefit of group training, but what they wanted to fix were the drawbacks inherent in the 1970s version.

“Back then people wouldn’t get shoe contracts right out of college,” says Kevin Hanson.  “They would go to an area, train, and then get shoe contracts after they proved themselves on the roads. But guys had to find a place to live, and then either wait tables or tend bar to pay the bills. We knew with our stores [for employment] we had the ability to put everyone on the same schedule. So training would be done in a group. That was one advantage that Bill Rodgers had on everyone else; Bill did that with his stores. So we were just going back to things that worked, except we decided to buy houses so guys would have free housing so they didn’t have to race every weekend to pay the bills. And we provided health insurance so something like a knee injury wouldn’t bankrupt them.” 

Tech Savvy

Building on the success of the group-training model, the next phase of American development, which utilizes high-tech advantages in the American system, has begun.

“We are not going to out-talent the continent of Africa,” says Larsen. “Only someone like Ryan Hall, who grew up at altitude and ran high mileage since a young age, may be in the same category. They have hundreds of kids like that to work with. The only way to close the gap is to be more scientific.”

For the last five years, Larsen has been working with Dr. John Connolly of the Immunology Lab at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. Larsen sends blood samples of his athletes at different stages of fitness for Connolly to create and computerize baseline markers.

“It’s a medical tool,” explains Larsen, “not an athletic one. When you are training hard, you are breaking down your white blood cells, which compromises your immune system.  So if we can predict over-training, or see that an athlete might get sick in two or three days, you could back off from training and just maintain so your immune system could deal with the invading infection. I’d be glad to give up a week to offset a two-week illness if I knew it was coming.”

While heart-rate monitors and blood lactate levels have been utilized to determine an athlete’s productive work range, mapping an athlete’s immune system response to training could be the advantage that gives an athlete a chance not just to make an Olympic squad, but to compete for medals. USA Track and Field has funded a high performance center at the Baylor Medical Center with Dr. Connolly and Dr. Fabian Pope serving as co-directors.

Pope’s work is in the field of motion-capture analysis. Twelve cameras are set up around an indoor track. Forty markers are glued to an athlete’s body to track the effect of running. The results are sent to a computer for analysis.

“We had Jorge [Torres] and [Dathan Ritzenhein] go down there a couple of years ago,” says Larsen. “We analyze mechanics, correct imperfections, and [determine] how to cut down on injuries. Better mechanics means more effective use of your maximum oxygen capacity. You run faster with less energy use. Everything in sprint coaching today is based on mechanics, while distance running concentrates on physiology. We should be doing both.”

“Everyone understands the principles of endurance training,” concurs Terrence Mahon, Larsen’s fellow Team USA California coach. “Now it’s what are we not doing? If you put it in Tour de France terms, it’s the height of the handlebars or height of the seat. Half a percent here, half a percent there.”

With coaches sharing new systems, and incorporating the lessons of science and altitude-based training, teams like Hansons-Brooks and Running USA California have been joined by Running USA Minnesota, the Nike Oregon Project in Eugene, ZAP Fitness in North Carolina, the Boulder Distance Project, Tempo Sports, and ad hoc teams in Madison, WI, Flagstaff, and Albuquerque. No longer is American running looking to simply join the top ranks of the world elite; they now seek the ultimate prizes, an Olympic gold or World Marathon Majors title. 

“The American presence in general has caught the attention of the Japanese,” says Brendan Reilly, who assisted 150-170 Japanese coaches and athletes through Boulder in the first six months of 2007. “Three guys in the 5000-meter final in Osaka? Lagat winning, and Tegenkamp the width of a finger out of the medals? People overseas are aware of America’s Renaissance.”

Today, motivated by the 2004 success of Keflezighi and Kastor, the high school class of 2000-01 has come fully into their maturity led by the likes of new American mile record holder Alan Webb and American marathon debut record setter Ryan Hall. With that validation, today’s roster of potential champions reads as long as at any time in American history.

In fact, we have begun to hear grumbling out of Kenya, of all places. World marathon record holder Haile Gebrselassie has said publicly that the old ways may not be enough anymore to compete against the tech-savvy Americans. It seems the winds of change may be shifting once again.