Welcome to Colorado, how did you wind up in The Centennial State? For the readers of RunColo who have not heard of you can you tell us where you grew up and how long you’ve been running?
I grew up in eastern Pennsylvania in a small town called Northampton. I started running track my freshman year of high school to get in shape for soccer. I started running year-round my junior year when I started doing cross country in the fall. After a year at the University of Maryland, I transferred to Penn State University in central Pennsylvania. I had an excellent progression during my years at Penn State and ended up with All-American honors in the 10,000m run and a personal best of 29:15 my 5th year. I really enjoyed my time at Penn State under Coach Beth Alford-Sullivan and knew that I wanted to be a college coach with such a positive influence on their athletes like Coach Sullivan. I asked her how to get started building a coaching resume in college, and she recommended I work summer running camps.
I searched online for the best running camps and found the Boulder Running Camps (www.boulderrunningcamps.com). I e-mailed Jay Johnson, the director of the Boulder Running Camps, to see if there were any camp counselor positions available and I was lucky enough to get a spot. I loved Boulder and was very impressed with Jay as a coach. After the NCAA Championships this year, I e-mailed him again to see if he’d be interested in coaching me, which he was. I then signed with Mizuno and Honey Milk and decided to follow my passion to become the best runner I can be.
How is Boulder treating you? Great friends to train with in a great place, despite the altitude challenges? Reading your blog looks like you have been training with Brent Vaughn lately, how did you two meet?
Boulder is treating me great, I absolutely love it here. Everyone here is so friendly that it’s great running with a bunch of different people with different experiences. The views on some of the runs are amazing. I mentioned on twitter and my blog the other day about a run on a soft dirt trail I did from Brent’s house where I could see the snow-capped continental divide in front of me, a couple of deer grazing in a meadow to my right, and a half mile ahead there was a herd of 50-60 Elk…it’s hard not to love Colorado when those are your runs!
Jay also coaches Brent, so I met Brent through Jay. Brent and Sara Vaughn are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I was stuck in between a temporary sublet and moving into a permanent apartment and they were nice enough to let me stay with them and their two kids for ten days. The only bad thing about those ten days is that I really miss Sara’s cooking!! Brent is a great training partner and I’m looking forward to a lot more miles in the upcoming months and years with him.
You received a BS and MS from Penn State in the Department of Meteorology. Do you have plans to go earn your PhD? Is your hope to one day return to meteorology? Dream job?
Good question. In my 5th year of college I actually already took and passed the PhD candidacy exams in Meteorology at Penn State. Then, my PhD advisor took a position at NCAR in Boulder and offered me a position to continue my PhD doing research at NCAR. In addition, I was also awarded the NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship, which is a $7500 scholarship to use for grad/professional school in the next three years. Right now I’m enjoying a break from school (although as I type this I’m making corrections to my MS thesis that was submitted for publication in a journal) and will re-evaluate what I want to do in the upcoming months. Like I mentioned before, I’d really like to be a positive influence on student-athlete as a college coach, so I need to see where a PhD would fit in the grand scheme of my long term goals.
Speaking of Penn State, isn’t it time for Joe Paterno to retire?
Never. Joe Pa is an idol at Penn State. Not only is he a great actual coach on the field, he gives back a lot of money to the community and is a master motivator for his athletes. He has a great supporting staff of coaches at Penn State and does not need to be as sharp as he was three decades ago to do a great job coaching.
You just missed an Olympics trials qualifier at the San Francisco Half Marathon and then again at the BAA Half Marathon in Boston. I believe you'd planned to race the Houston half then, so what changed with you committing to CIM (California International Marathon)? A trials qualifier is the goal?
Exactly, after the BAA Half-Marathon Jay and I discussed changing the plans. The training leading to the BAA Half was going very well, but I probably trained a bit too hard in the last ten days before the race. I’m definitely still learning how my training needs to change at altitude. Most importantly, this was another long road race where 4:5X-5:0X pace did not feel aerobically challenging. It was more the pounding of the legs and especially the hills in Boston. I really liked the idea of doing the California International Marathon because it is a net downhill, fast course with the $1,000 bonus for hitting the Olympic trials qualifier. Also, I didn’t want to fall in a trap of overtraining for the marathon and leaving my legs on the roads/trails here in Boulder. I have a great base already, a few long runs and marathon specific runs will prepare me very well to have a great marathon in California.
You recently signed a contact with Mizuno, can you describe the process? Did you hire an agent? Are there performance clauses and how long is the contract for?
I signed with Caroline Bierbaum of Empire Athletics Management. Caroline is a phenomenal agent that worked very hard to get me the Mizuno contract. I visited with the Hanson-Brooks ODP but decided on Boulder for numerous reasons – including the potential of the PhD – and after the decision to move to Boulder I immediately signed with Caroline. Within a few weeks she had sent out my information/race schedule to shoe companies and Mizuno was interested in me, especially because I had shown promise at longer road races. The contract is for the next couple of years and has performance clauses for a lot of major marathons, US Championships, and major road races. Since I’m focusing on the marathon and roads, it was a perfect fit.
What Mizuno shoes do you train and race in?
I do most of the training runs in the Wave Precision, longer tempos in the Wave Ronin, and most intervals in the Wave Universe. The Universe is a minimalist shoe that is phenomenal – only 3.7oz. I wore it for the BAA Half-Marathon and loved it. I probably will wear the Ronin for the marathon because it provides a little more support and is still light – just over 7 oz I believe.
Recently you became the head track coach at Peak to Peak Charter school in Lafayette, congratulations.
Thanks! As I mentioned earlier, I have had the desire to coach over the last few years. I’m thrilled that Peak to Peak Charter School offered me the position to begin my coaching career! I am also coaching a guy online who is training for half-marathons. I would love to build my online coaching roster as well. I’m enthusiastic about the sport and really want to help people achieve their goals, so I hope I can build a reputation as a knowledgeable, passionate, positive coach who helps people succeed while enjoying the sport more each day.
For professional runners as yourself, is there any mandatory drug testing that goes on? With the recent allegations against Alberto Contador, one almost gets the impression that everyone in cycling is using. Do you feel that performance drug use is a problem at all in the world of distance running?
I have not quite reached the level of being drug tested or I’ve been “lucky” enough to not get tested. It’s funny, I joked with Coach Sullivan at NCAAs that my goal was to be drug tested! I’ve never been through the process and thought it would be fun…although I know everyone hates it. (I wasn’t tested at NCAAs either!) I do believe it is a problem in the world of distance running, especially at the world class level. I have a passion to reach my potential in running and do everything right to get to my potential – including rest (daily naps are the best!!), nutrition, massages, ART, and lots of miles.
There are athletes out there not to try to reach their potential, but need to run fast to feed their village or need to be famous or whatever reason they have. It’s sad that it is a problem in the world of distance running but I’m glad that there is mandatory drug testing that goes on. If you follow Meb on twitter (@runmeb), he tweets at least a couple times a month that drug testers were at his house at 6am. Not that I think Meb is using performance enhancing drugs (which I’m very confident he is clean), but it’s comforting to see that anti-doping agencies are out there fighting the battle.
A recent Running Times article highlighted Coach Jay Johnson's emphasis on plyometrics, core work, the additional stuff. How can that philosophy be adapted for a guy working full-time struggling to get the miles in due to time constraints? Would Jay, or you as an athlete of his, sacrifice mileage to do the extra stuff? Similarly, will you incorporate some of those philosophies into your high school track team?
There are two ways to get better…run more and run faster. The problem is, many athletes (and coaches) do not use an intelligent progression of training and overwork (running too many miles or too fast) athletes and they end up hurt. Jay does have an emphasis on the ancillary work, but that ancillary work is what (knock on wood) keeps us healthy. One thing he said to me when I first got out here was that he wanted “the soccer player in me to come back out.” As a runner we tend to run only in one plane of motion, but a lot of our drills incorporate all planes of motion.
When you build up your strength and flexibility the risk of injuries goes down. How to adapt it for someone working full-time is a very personalized issue. Does the runner have a history of injury? If so, adding in more ancillary work and taking away some of the miles might make them a better runner. In college I topped out at 112 miles in a week, but averaged 85.XX miles a week over the past several years! To average that many miles required that I stayed healthy. In long term development, which runner is going to be better, the runner who occasionally runs 140 miles a week but generally has a couple of months of 0 miles due to injury or the runner who runs 100 miles each week with several hours of ancillary work and is healthy all year? I will definitely incorporate a lot of strength/ancillary work into my high school track team training. Especially at a young age it is vital to keep the athletes healthy and therefore happy. No high school freshman or sophomore is going to stay with the sport if they never run a championship meet because they are hurt.
What's the best cheeseburger in Boulder?
That’s a good question, I honestly have not had that many cheeseburgers in Boulder yet. I did have a good bowl of chili at BJs on Pearl Street.
CIM is the goal race for 2010, any final tune up before the race?
This past weekend I ran the Tulsa Run 15k as a marathon prep workout. Then on November 20th I’m racing the Rothmann Institute 8k in Philadelphia.
Without Limits
The following errors occurred with your submission