Back to the Future: Why the Most Significant Group in U.S. Distance Running May Not be Who You Think It Is
by Marc Chalufour
Running Times, March 2005
An interesting thing happened in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in June, 1984. Athletics West, a seven-year-old club sponsored by Nike, exploded at the Olympic Trials. AW athletes claimed eight top-three finishes in the 1500m through the 10,000m. The previous month, AW’s Joan Benoit and Alberto Salazar had finished first and second, respectively, in the marathon trials.
While only Benoit would medal at the Games later that year, the future seemed bright. Unfortunately, the road that distance running in this country would follow over the subsequent 20 years has had more downs than ups. By 1994, only two Americans broke 13:40 in the 5,000m, a mark that more than two dozen men had achieved a decade earlier. Finally, that road is rising again—with two Athens marathon medals as proof—and it’s risen right up into the mountains of North Carolina
Standing on a stone patio outside of ZAP Fitness’s Blowing Rock, NC, facilities are a small group of leaders in the running community. A dozen coaches, agents, race directors, and other interested parties made the trip to this remote spot to discuss the goals and challenges that they share in pursuit of one end: developing post-collegiate distance runners in the United States.
The brainchild of Zika Palmer, ZAP’s co-founder, the ZAP Fitness Distance Summit was a couple years in the making. In 2002, when Palmer and her late husband Andy were opening the doors to their training center, she began to think about bringing a group like this together. Finally, in 2004, the details began to fall into place. “It just seemed to make sense to us that if we were all working toward the same goals we should get together and see what we could do to help each other,” she says. “Everyone’s program is unique, and I think we can learn from each other’s mistakes as well as successes.”
Of the training groups represented at the Summit, the Indiana Invaders are the oldest, having been founded in 1998. The Hansons Distance Project was launched a year later, followed by Team USA Minnesota and ZAP Fitness in 2001. The youngest, Team USA Monterey Bay, opened its doors in 2003. They’ve been around long enough to prove their worth and feasibility, but haven’t had the time for their potential to be realized. That’s why everyone’s eyes are focused on 2008 and the Beijing Olympics—and that’s why they’re all here in North Carolina together.
Nobody could have been more qualified to get the ball rolling than Bob Sevene, now the coach of Team USA Monterey Bay. Many of the issues raised by his opening-night talk continued to emerge during the following day’s slate of presentations. Sevene’s success with the Greater Boston Track Club in the 1970s and Athletics West in the 1980s validates the model that these groups have revived. Sevene could attest to the value of making long-term commitments to athletes. After all, Athletics West took seven years to peak.
Sevene also knows the potential pitfalls. Despite AW’s success, the 1990s brought new marketing strategies. “Nike was moving away from helping developmental athletes like we’re doing today and had a 10-year market plan that was moving toward paying Michael Johnson $10 million,” Sevene recalled. Keith Hanson of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project observed that for those good enough to land a shoe deal, “The new guys coming out of college saw these contracts they could get that would allow them to train on their own. All of a sudden you had a lot of individuals, and I think they were missing what I’m a huge advocate of—the group training environment.”
With money being redirected to the top individuals, America’s second-tier athletes lost a major source of support, and the depth in U.S. distance ranks began to erode. While a system of individual sponsorship doesn’t preclude individual greatness—Bob Kennedy, the only American to break 13:00 for 5,000m, emerged during this period—it doesn’t build depth.
Pete Rea of ZAP Fitness is hoping for a day when the 25th fastest time in the nation is under 13:30. “If that’s the case, that means the top end, our fastest 5K guy, isn’t 13:18; our fastest 5K maybe is 12:54,” he said. “Where there’s one Bob Kennedy I believe there can be three or four.”
The trend of major individual sponsorships is still evident today. In the past two years, top NCAA athletes such as Alan Webb, Jorge Torres, and Shalane Flanagan have signed lucrative contracts, yet only the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, of the groups present at the Summit, has a shoe company as a primary sponsor.
Nevertheless, a number of developmental programs are finding their niche and succeeding, without, for the most part, large investments from corporate America or the track and field community. Surely each program would benefit from an influx of cash, but with some success already under their belts, this group appears set on looking past money to the variables that are more directly in their control.
“It’s more the environment, the program, the situation that the athlete is put in,” said Hanson. “It’s not throwing more money at it, in my opinion. It doesn’t take a substantial amount of money, and that’s what [we] can demonstrate. . . . You give 10 guys $10 million and say, ‘live together and become the best runners [you] can be,’ and they’re not going to produce anything.”
What, then, are their priorities if each group already has a financially viable system in place? As the summit unfolded, several themes began to emerge. General frustration with:
- Bureaucracy within the sport.
- Distribution of money within the sport.
- Absence of a players’ association to lobby for the interests of the athletes.
- Lack of appropriate competitive opportunities for post-collegiate track runners.
- Demise of developmental European tours that USATF used to fund.
Remarkably, given their scope, and to the participants’ credit, the first three issues were not dwelled upon during the Summit. While many conversations returned to these issues, the very existence of these training groups—not to mention their presence in the same room—relegated these topics to the back burner. Upset with the politics of track and field? Band together with like-minded individuals and create change. Annoyed at where large chunks of money are being routed in the sport? Develop your own revenue streams, and squeak by with a bare minimum of resources. The athletes don’t have someone representing their general interests? Fight the good fight for your particular group every day.
Another theme that emerged was that of cooperation. “Change needs to come from this table. . . . This is the group that’s going to support middle-distance and distance athletes,” said Hanson. “The solution to our dilemma is right here in this room,” said Greg Harger of the Indiana Invaders. So while each of the Summit’s presentations began with a specific focus, and conversation inevitably returned to one source of frustration or another, the prevailing attitude was to continue doing whatever possible to develop distance runners, with or without the backing of USATF, corporate America, or anyone else. That meant focusing on what they could control. Fortunately what they felt they could control is just what their athletes need most: opportunities to run fast.
Each group is already giving their athletes the stability necessary to focus entirely on running. To reap the benefits of this lifestyle, however, appropriate competitive opportunities need to be available.
In an odd twist of fate, the recent success of meets such as the Prefontaine Classic and Home Depot Invitational has been a bane to up-and-coming U.S. distance runners. These meets now attract international fields and answer to the needs of a television broadcast. In 2004, Home Depot didn’t even offer a race longer than 1500m, while only 13 athletes competed in the men’s 5,000m at Prefontaine.
In addition to the lack of high-quality meets is the problem of timing. A meet like April’s Cardinal Invitational at Stanford—which provides the mild climate, evening start times, and fast and deep fields necessary for fast distance races—is perfectly situated for collegiate runners whose seasons will end in June. The timing is less ideal for athletes planning to compete at USATF Nationals and through the summer.
Citing the need for some distance-oriented meets in June, leading into Nationals, Harger argued that “for the 800 and 1500 [runners], if you knew you could get on the track three or four times in six or seven days, then we wouldn’t have to fall victim to the earlier, poor-time-of-day situation. We could turn the lights on, we can run at night, and we can run fast,” and added that similar meets following nationals are also a must for athletes who still need to chase qualifying standards. Actions speak louder than words, and Harger’s club is already involved in just such a series.
Eager to pool their talent, the Summit attendees committed to bringing athletes to a series of Midwestern meets in 2005, starting with the inaugural Minnesota Distance Invitational on May 21 in St. Paul. Also on the circuit will be the Hansons’ Distance Solution in early June in Hillsdale, MI, followed by the American Milers Club High Performance Track & Field Series in Michigan and Indiana (which will consist of five meets in June and July). Though further planning is required, the assembled coaches hope to emphasize certain events at each meet—a women’s 5,000m in one venue, a 10,000m in another, for example. By filling the fields with their top athletes, providing rabbits, and hopefully offering some prize money, they know that they can achieve their primary goal: running fast.
A competitive option that is already available and which everyone is eager to embrace is the European circuit. What used to be a common destination for U.S. runners has now become a rarity, often reserved for athletes who have qualified for a national team and need to chase a qualifying standard for the Olympics or World Championships. Now an agent for many top distance runners, Ray Flynn knows the benefits of racing on Europe’s fast tracks from his career as an elite miler. He sees the opportunity to compete overseas as critical to the development of young athletes: “The 3:38 and 3:39 [1500m] guys are probably really 3:36 guys on a very good day,” he pointed out. “You’ve gone from one extreme where the circuit was full of Americans back in the ’70s, and now there’s almost none.”
USATF used to organize tours of Europe to ease this process for young athletes, but that program is now defunct. One of the most concrete commitments to emerge from the Summit involved restarting this program—even if it meant paying for it themselves.
Jim Spivey, now a coach at Vanderbilt University and one of the few Summit attendees not affiliated with a post-collegiate group, also knows the benefits of running in Europe, having competed there throughout his long career. Still the second fastest American ever in the 1500m, Spivey is committed to helping the next generation receive the same opportunities that he had. “I’d be willing to say that if you guys have eight to 10 athletes . . . I’ll take them over [to Europe],” he volunteered. “Even if they run poorly, they’ll come home and they’ll say ‘I want to go back.’”
An athlete who saw the value of racing in Europe in 2004 was Carrie Tollefson of Team USA Minnesota. “For Carrie, going over this summer . . . this was a whole new deal, running these hard 1500s,” said her coach, Dennis Barker. “She came back from that saying, ‘I blew it at the Olympics. I can medal. I can run with these people.’ She gained confidence from it. I think that there are a lot of other people who think that [they’re] not good enough.”
Many athletes may be hesitant to venture overseas because it’s now much harder for a sub-elite runner to make ends meet while traveling Europe. “Appearance fees have pretty much dried up, with the exception of the big, big names,” said Flynn. “Essentially you’ve really gone toward a prize money sport, which has really changed the dynamic. . . . [I] feel strongly we made too dramatic of a change,” he added. Data gathered by Ken Young of the Association of Road Racing Statisticians supports Flynn’s argument. Prize money payouts for distance runners on the roads, tracks, and in cross country increased more than 770 percent from 1984 to 2003.
The issue is far greater than money, however, with desire being the primary driving force. “You can’t go into this sport to become rich,” said Flynn. “If you have the idea of performing well first and making money second, I think you’ll do well.” In screening athletes for their program, the Hanson brothers look for an uncommon dedication: “We’re looking for an athlete who really wants to invest full-time and is very sincere about trying to be [an] Olympic-level athlete, and that’s a lofty, lofty goal.”
Though plenty of runners are ready to retire their racing shoes after graduation, many would likely stay in the sport if more opportunities existed. Flynn sees a lack of confidence among young athletes that he thinks is unnecessary. “We’ve killed off a whole generation of runners where they don’t believe in themselves anymore,” he said. “They need to be tougher, and they need to have more of a trailblazer attitude, and we need to encourage them to do that and to take some risks.”
These training groups have given a number of athletes the security to take those risks, and with their success more groups are bound to emerge. Then, and only then, will Rea’s vision of three or four Bob Kennedys be realized.
An interesting thing happened at Stanford’s Cobb Track in April, 2004. In two heats of the Cardinal Invitational’s 10,000m, American men ran the 10 fastest U.S. times of the year, and 17 of the top 25. It’s been 16 years since the United States could boast as many sub-28:40 athletes as there were in 2004 (21), and 20 years since so many men went sub-28:20 (11).
Lost amid all of the yearning for past glory is the reality that our runners are, by some standards, just as good as their predecessors of 20 years ago. In addition to their success at 10,000m, 29 U.S. men broke 13:40 for 5,000m last year. The 25th best time on the annual list, 13:38.73, is nearly identical to that of 1985, when 26 men went sub-13:40. But while Americans are again running fast, the competitive landscape barely resembles that of two decades ago. In 1985 there were eight African men in the top 50 in the world over 5,000m. In 2004 there were eight non-Africans. If a larger pool of athletes globally has raised the bar, then the same thing can happen within the United States, right?
In just a few short years, this new collection of training groups has helped to do just that—but their greatest challenge still lies ahead. Now they must figure out how their athletes can not only run as fast as their predecessors, but also compete on an increasingly crowded world stage.
As the Summit wound to a close, the group gathered around ZAP’s dining room table and Zika Palmer issued a challenge. “If we just meet once and everyone complains about all the problems, it doesn’t do any good,” she said. “We have to make decisions and make commitments.”
The first step in that process has been taken; the group is headed in a positive direction. What follows this year, next year, and through 2008 remains to be seen.
This story originally appeared in the March 2005 issue of Running Times.
