Week 6

Thursday, October 25

A Last Shot at Olympic Glory

Ready or not, Khalid Khannouchi will give the Trials race his best shot

When he saw me walking toward him at my hotel in San Jose, Khalid Khannouchi couldn’t wait to enlighten me.

“Toni, you’re still swinging your right foot through,” he said, analyzing the troubled gait I’ve carried for over a decade. “You have to go to Spain. My guy will fix you in no time.”

There was hope and promise in his eyes and in his voice, the light of a new day. Years of chronic foot injuries had stalled one of history’s greatest marathon careers. But today, Khannouchi was hopeful that he had at last found the solution that would allow him to fulfill one of his life’s goals.

“It’s been a dream of mine to represent the U.S.,” he said on the eve of the Rock ’N’ Roll San Jose Half-Marathon, his critical final tune-up for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon, to be held in New York City on November 3, 2007. “I did once in the World Championships [2001, Edmonton], but that was not a good experience.  And I’ve had bad luck in the Olympic Trials.”

The Moroccan-born Khannouchi is the true wild card in this year’s Olympic Marathon Trials. Incredibly, seven times in his brilliant career Khannouchi has gone sub-2:08 in the marathon, including three sub-2:06 performances. He ran a then-world-record 2:05:38 (still the American record) to triumph in London in 2002, a race in which he bested Kenya’s Paul Tergat and Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie in what many pundits consider the greatest marathon competition in history. No other American has run a single sub-2:08 marathon.

All he wants now is a chance to compete for a spot on the Olympic team. San Jose was where he would test his new racing orthotic for the first time. If he could perform well here, it would create a whole new dynamic in New York.

The race did not play out as Khannouchi had hoped. “It’s not what I expected,” he said following his 1:05:04 performance, well off the 1:01:11 winning time. “It was a perfect day and course. I thought I could run 1:03 to boost my confidence, but I didn’t feel right out there. I didn’t feel the rhythm. The impact with the road wasn’t there.”

He was fine through the first mile in 4:56. But when the second mile surged down to true race pace at 4:42, Khannouchi was unable to respond, falling off into no man’s land, his breathing labored at 4:50 pace.

“I wasn’t as relaxed as I wanted to be. I ran five or six miles by myself. I have to work a little more on speed in the next few weeks,” he said. Asked to rate his confidence on a scale of 1 to 10, he gave it a 4.

“If I could take my time then a comeback would be possible,” he continued wistfully. “Two months is not enough time. But it’s what I have.”

A series of debilitating foot injuries began 2003. First it was his left foot. Then, after his fourth-place 2:07:04 finish at the 2006 Flora London Marathon, he developed a neuroma in the ball of his right foot that made hard training impossible. “My problem was biomechanical, the form of my running,” he explained. “Looking at old pictures, you could see that one of my quads was bigger than the other, and the opposite hamstring was stronger. That’s because I had a seven-millimeter leg length discrepancy. When I was younger my body could compensate, but finally I couldn’t get away with it any longer.”

Khannouchi is known for the intensity of his workouts. In July, in a last-ditch attempt to get ready for the Trials, he flew to Barcelona, Spain, where he spent a month under the care of Dr. Eduardo Osorio, with whom he has been working with for seven years. They tried three different orthotics and finally found a pair that allowed him to run pain-free.

“I’ve had very good training for a month,” Khannouchi said. “In September I had a good 10K [31:02 for seventh place at the U.S. 10K Classic in Atlanta]. But there is a big difference between the 10K, half marathon, and marathon. And this is the first time I’m using my new racing orthotics.”

Not only has injury constricted the calendar for Khannouchi, he has also had to honor his religious obligations. As a practicing Muslim, he observed the holy month of Ramadan, which requires fasting from dawn to dusk. That meant no food or water for 16 hours a day. Khannouchi dropped five precious pounds. Though Islamic law permits someone to forego the fast for a serious reason if they feed 60 needy people each day, Khannouchi never considered that option.

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