Week 7

Tuesday, October 30

Run to Win

The first snow of the season clung to the ground around Lake Mary, the pristine mountain lake that Team Running USA uses to simulate the Central Park course of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon. Reigning Olympic silver medalist Meb Keflezighi warmed up with fellow `04 Olympian Dan Browne, and Josh Cox, the 2004 Trials seventh-place finisher. Each wore a hat, gloves, and sweatshirt in the brisk mountain air.

“Okay, Josh, Dan,” said coach Bob Larsen, turning to the runners as they stripped down.  It’s 2.2 miles. Let’s start cautiously. If he goes out fast, Dan, be careful. Josh, double careful. We definitely don’t want to push the first one, okay?”

“I’m gonna sit behind Meb,” replied Cox. “Let him do what he wants to do.”

“Me, too,” agreed Browne.

“You feel okay warming up?” asked the coach, speaking to a focused Keflezighi with a hint of concern in his voice. Meb nodded, “Yeah.”

Keflezighi had stretched assiduously this morning. He came down with a slight strain below his right calf a few weeks ago, in late September. It was one of those minor training incidents that can prove dangerous on the cusp of an important competition. It began after a long Sunday run with Browne, during which they got off course and had to climb a few more hills than planned to find their way back.

“The next day there was a PowerBar photo shoot,” explained Larsen. “They had him do back-and-forth strides, but he got there late and didn’t warm up properly. That made his calf a little tighter. But Meb didn’t tell me about it at the time and we had a hard session planned for Tuesday. So it got a little tighter again.”

For precaution they took the next couple of days off, and backed off the intensity of training for the next 10-14 days. “Ideally, we’d like to have those days going full bore,” admitted Larsen, “but you don’t always get all your wishes. He’s been able to train fine since, and has had two strong weeks. He’ll be ready to compete.”

Meb has had experience with last-minute twinges prior to major marathons. In 2005, he partially tore a quadricep muscle in the Helsinki World Championships 10,000 meters.  He came back to finish third in the ING New York City Marathon that November. He also placed second in New York `04, just 70 days after his Olympic silver medal performance in Athens.

What was perhaps more worrisome this time was the similarity of the timing of this and a pulled right hamstring at last year’s Rock `n` Roll Half-Marathon in San Jose. Meb doesn’t want to replay that scenario now, before the most important race of the last four years. 

“Okay, let’s do the first one well under control,” instructed Larsen as Keflezighi, Browne, and Cox prepared to take off for their first lap of Lake Mary. “We can always do four if we feel like it. Ready? Hut!”

Ryan Hall, Olympic Trials qualifier Mike McKeeman, and Ian Dobson arrived for their morning session as the three men took off. Ryan’s wife, Sara, and the couple’s husky-mix puppy were also on hand. Though all are members of Team Running USA—except for the puppy—coaches Larsen and Terrence Mahon keep their big dogs separate in training. 

“We don’t want people together who are going to race one another,” said Larsen. “On easy days, Meb and Ryan are together for 8-10 milers, but Meb runs a little harder on his easy days than Ryan.”

The loop around Lake Mary is one of the most picturesque training venues in the world, undulating gently through pines at 8,900 feet altitude. Yet at tempo pace, the athletes were focused on internal monitoring. Keflezighi quickly opened a gap on Browne, who left Cox an equal distance behind him. 

“10:36, 10:37, 10:38,” called out Larsen as Meb cruised by at well-under 5:00 per mile pace. Browne and Cox followed.

The consensus at the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials was that the three best trackmen made the team, Culpepper, Keflezihgi, and Browne. This year, the New York City Trials course will not be a speed runner’s route, but a strength-runner’s test. But tests are right up Keflezighi’s alley.

After a boyhood in Eritrea that saw his family broken up by war, then a short reunion in Milan, Italy, five years later, Keflezighi and his five brothers and sisters were brought to Southern California when he was 12. In San Diego, Keflezighi’s father, Russom Keflezighi, began building a life fueled by hard work and a belief in the American way.  Through food stamps and welfare, the family gained its footing. Keflezighi recalls working with his father and two uncles cleaning a bank every night. He cleaned the toilets.

“You have an opportunity that 3.5 million Eritreans don’t have,” he remembers his father’s admonition. “So don’t waste it.”

His dad went into the taxi business, waking at 4:00 a.m. for work, and waking his sons to study, which always took precedence over running. The family grew to eventually number 11 children, all of whom utilized their opportunities to the fullest. Keflezighi graduated from UCLA, where he won four NCAA titles under Larsen.

“My parents were like the left hand and right hand directing the family,” he recalls. “Dad only had a seventh-grade education, and Mom never attended school.”

“Meb does the same thing everyday,” explains Larsen, “stretching, icing, getting in cold baths after training. That’s his pattern, very conscientious. That’s the way he got above the crowd he was clustered with in college and now as a pro. He was just a harder worker.”

All those ideals of hard work and sacrifice came together in a moment of glory at the Athens Olympics when the silver medal in the men’s marathon was draped around Meb’s neck as the American flag rose in the Olympic Stadium. Russom Keflezighi, who speaks five languages, especially appreciated his son’s language skills when he turned to Stefano Baldini of Italy during the final miles of the race, and said, “Endiamo. Uno a due [let’s go get first and second],” as they chased down surprise leader Vanderlei Lima of Brazil.

Keflezighi carried his Olympic success to New York City 70 days later, once more taking the runner-up position at the ING New York City Marathon.

Snake Bit 
Since finishing third in Boston 2006, Keflezighi’s marathon fortunes have turned. In his last two marathons, he’s been snake bit. In New York City 2006, the compromised hamstring suffered in San Jose combined with a bout of food poisoning during marathon week laid him low and out of contention. Then at the Flora London Marathon in April of `07, the race where Ryan Hall stunned the world with his American marathon debut record 2:08:24, Keflezighi dropped out with a painful blister that never healed after his March win at the USA 15K Championships in Jacksonville, Florida, where he beat Hall convincingly.

This summer, Keflezighi began his pre-Trials racing season at the Bix 7 Road Race in Davenport, Iowa, in late July. He finished fourth in a final two-block kick. A week later he again took fourth at TD Bankworth’s Beach to Beacon 10k in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, again in a sprint.

“I told him after Beach to Beacon, you are wearing those guys down,” says Larsen. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t beat them in Falmouth. But they brought in a new guy, Micah Kogo. Meb wasn’t sharp. But he’s getting faster, with an eye toward the Trials.”

August training had gone so well that he flew off to Brussels with a goal of getting his Olympic “A” standard in the 10,000 meters out of the way. But his goal was his own American record 27:13, set back in 2001.

“Brussels was fine,” says Keflezighi. “The pacing was a little inconsistent, so I didn’t show the fitness I was in.”

What lies ahead is another Trials and, hopefully, another Olympic opportunity. What is more difficult, doing something once or pulling it off again?  Depending on how you answer, Keflezighi has either less or more pressure on him come November 3 at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon. After his silver medal in Athens, Keflezighi carried autograph cards showing him crossing the Olympic finish line. “Run to Win,” he wrote before signing. But in fact, he didn’t run to win in Athens. When Baldini made his final surge, Keflezighi chose to protect the silver medal. This time, though third is as good as first at the Trials, he may not settle for anything less than the winner’s circle.