Run to Win

The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the third part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment, the second part was about nutrition basics and fueling, and the third part was about selecting proper footwear.

The fourth part of this series introduced you to the 3 athletes on the panel, and this final part will summarize their thoughts on training, teamwork, and racing as they answer the questions posed to them by the people in attendance.

What do you wish you knew in high school that you know now?

Lauren Fleshman only had 2 paces in high school, workout and racee. In college, she had 3 paces, workout, maintenance, and racing. She had a much better idea going into each workout what the goal was, and sometimes that was just to prepare for the next workout. She also would like to have known in high school how much better she could recover from two-a-days than doing 1 longer run throughout the day. In college she would run double 3 or 4 times per week.

Matt Lane would like to have known how important consistency in training was, especially having grown up in Maine where consistent running can be more difficult than elsewhere.

Matt did not run on the indoor track team, and instead competed for the ski team. Unless you are Ben True, skiing is not a complete substitute for running. It gives you great cardiovascular fitness, but it just doesn’t translate onto the track.

Matt would basically not run a single step between November and March, and his high school track times suffered as a result. He considers himself by far the slowest guy in the top 10 at Foot Lockers for his track times.

Matt wishes that he knew that running even once or twice a week would have been good enough to allow him to maintain his running fitness between the cross country and track seasons. Going for 5 or 6 weeks at a time without a run just didn’t allow him to do that no matter how well he was cross training. In the Summer, he did not have that same problem, which is why he did so much better in cross country.

Louie Luchini wishes that he had known what a difference a high volume workload can make, and wishes that he had done some harder workouts in high school.

His biggest problem with the extra volume, though, is that he sleeps too much and morning runs are out of the question for him. (Much to the chagrin of his coaching staff.)
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The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the third part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment, the second part was about nutrition basics and fueling, and the third part was about selecting proper footwear. This fourth part will introduce you to the 3 current or former professional runners who made up the athlete’s panel.

The athlete’s panel took over the clinic and comprised a little over half of everything that was said. It was very down to earth and full of practical tips and advice from 3 people whose job it was to run. I will provide a bit of a history on each of the athlete’s here, and in the next article I will provide the answers to the specific questions that they were asked.

Matt Lane

Matt Lane was a graduate of Yarmouth High School in 1996, where he had some measure of success on the track but excelled in cross country. He won the North East Regional Foot Locker Championship as a senior in high school, and started his pattern of 4^th place finishes at the national level race.

Matt was recruited to go to Stanford, but wound up choosing to go to William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia for his degree. Right after he arrived, though, the coaches at William & Mary left after the first day. For a short time there were a few interim coaches, but the former Stanford coach Andy Gerard became the permanent coach.

While at William & Mary, Matt won 3 NCAA cross country championships and 8 indoor/outdoor track titles in the 3k and 5k.

In 2000, Matt ran in his first Olympic Trials for the 5000, which he described as just a higher pressure US Championship race. He finished in 4^th place, although he was the 3^rd place finisher who had already run an Olympic “A” Standard. Nick Rogers managed to run the “A” standard before the Olympics, though, which allowed him to continue on to Sydney and left Matt at home.

Matt graduated from William & Mary in 2001 and went to Stanford where he signed a contract with the Nike Farm Team. In 2004, Matt again finished in 4^th place at the Olympic Trials.

At this point, Matt decided to try moving up to the marathon, where he debuted in Chicago with a 2:17:32 and finished in 14^th place. He did not really care for the distance, though, and decided to retire. He has since returned to Maine where he is studying for his law degree.

Louie Luchini

Beginning his track career as a short and chunky shot putter and discus thrower in Ellsworth, Maine, Louie Luchini moved onto the track as he got skinnier and faster in high school. Both him and his brother were state champs and had respectable showings at the Foot Locker championships.

After graduating high school, Louie went to Stanford where he came into his first season injured and out of shape. Every Summer he would become lazy and arrive at pre-season in less than ideal shape, where he’d do all of his training camp runs with the women instead of the men. (They used to call him Louise.)

Louie considered not training over the Summer the dumbest idea that he ever had, but it did not stop him from becoming an All American 7 times with a 13:25 personal best 5000m time.

After graduation, Louie joined the same farm team as Matt, and now runs for the Oregon farm team. He recently competed in the 2008 Olympic Trials, but did not run as well as he hoped with a 23^rd place finish in 29:42.78 in the 10,000m finals.

Lauren Fleshman

The final runner on the athlete’s panel is not a native Mainer and has never lived out this way. Lauren Fleshman is from Southern California. She was a softball player through junior high, but she moved to cross country and track in high school on the recommendation of her coach. She got sucked into the social aspects of the team, and once she began to become more successful as a runner she began to enjoy the training as well.

Every year since she began running she has set personal bests. Her one overriding goal is to constantly improve, and she has now maintained her PR streak for 13 straight years.

She went to school at Stanford, and instantly went from being a stellar athlete on her high school team to an average runner on her college team. If you can call 15 national titles average. She was All American every time she went to Nationals.

In 2006, she won a national title as a professional, and has competed in 2 world championships. She ran in the 2008 Olympic Trials, and despite a sprained ankle she managed to place 5^th in the 5000m finals with a time of 15:23.18.

Now that you have a little background on the 3 athletes on the panel, come back for part 5 where the athletes answer questions such as what they wish they knew in high school that the know now, what they think of the team aspect of cross country, what are some specific workouts, as well as others. It will give you a great insight into the world of professional running as well as offering a lot of good advice that can help an amateur or recreational runner as well. Part 5 will be available at 8:00 am on Friday, August 28^th.

This year’s cross country clinic is going to be tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 at the University of Southern Maine’s Gerald Talbot Auditorium in Luther Bonney Hall on the Portland Campus.

The lineup is very similar to last year, with the addition of 3 world class athletes and a nutritionist, although Bob Bramen, the head coach of Florida State University, will not be in attendance.

Join Maine Running Company’s 2nd Annual XC Coaches and Athlete’s Clinic. Keynote speaker will be Matt Lane, Former World Class 5K (13:25) and 10K Runner, 4th in U.S. Olympic Trials 2000 and 2004, Lauren Fleshman (14:58 5K; 3 time NCAA Champ (Stanford); US Champ – 2006) and Louie Luchini, current world class 5K (13:25) and 10K (28:41) runner. Lane and Luchini both grew up in Maine and are considered two of the best to ever come from the state.

Their Topic will be: “What I wish I knew in High School that I know Now” They will discuss Training, Racing and TeamWork!”

I will have a post-clinic summary within a few days if you can’t make it tonight.

(More Info: Maine Running Company)

It was a good night for a race. It was relatively warm, but nowhere near as humid as it has been. This led to the gravel path around the Back Cove being nice and dusty, leaving a fine layer of grit on everybody’s legs.

Matt Lane won the race in an easy 17:12, almost 80 seconds behind his performance in week 4.

The real excitement came in the women’s race, though, as the course record has now been broken twice in the same season. This time, Joan Benoit Samuelson took the lead after deciding to drive down from Freeport 40 minutes before the race was supposed to start. She was jogging over to the starting line from the parking lot as everybody was lining up. Joanie cut 30 seconds off of Heather Pagano’s previous record, finishing in 18:11.
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This morning was the LL Bean 4^th of July 10k, which I have not run for the past few years. As I said back in 2005, this course is not quite flat:

Today was far and away the best running weather that I have ever had on this course. It was humid, but the temperatures never got too high and the last mile or so down Main Street did not involve thundering through the relentless sun as it usually does. There was a nice breeze and it felt pretty good.

There were 918 finishers this year, the majority of whom managed to get a free pair of New Balance 1062 running sneakers for being one of the first 500 people to register for the race. The post-race refreshments were a little meager and didn’t really last long enough, although there were enough popsicles for the kids at the end of the 1 mile fun run which is the important part.
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The 4^th Weekly Back Cove race was last evening, and the photos are already online. I especially enjoyed the photo of the guy pretending to be my logo in front of the banner!

All of the fast guys were out last night, which almost made me regret my decision to run slow this week. (Almost.)

Matt Lane led the way to this season’s first sub-16 race in the series, winning in 15:53. He seems to have gotten a little more training in during his second year of law school than he did during his first year. Christian Muentener was 15 seconds behind him, followed by another 3 sub-18 minute performances. Elise Moody-Roberts led the women through the finish with a time of 20:20.

I actually ran about 3 minutes faster than I was expecting to. My wife did not have class last night so I ran with her, and she warned me that she wanted to run slow since she did speed work on Tuesday night. Early in the race, she was having trouble figuring out why she was so out of breath until I pointed out to her that we were running faster than I’ve run with her at any point this season. She slowed down enough to catch her breath, but I let her set the pace and she quickly picked it back up again. We ran through in about the mid-25s, just over 5:00/km and 3 minutes faster than she ran a couple of weeks ago when she was working harder. It’s nice to see her making big gains like that.

Unfortunately, she wore last year’s bib number to the race, so her name got recorded as somebody else in the results and that had to be fixed. She keeps her number in her glove box and didn’t realize that there were 2 bibs in there. She had trouble figuring out why the safety pins had already rusted, but it didn’t occur to her that her number was more than twice as high as it was supposed to be (159 instead of 76.) Once we figured out why her name wasn’t in the original results, I made her throw last year’s bib number out.

Only 2 weeks left until the initial series standings begin to take shape.

(Full Results – Photo Credit: David Colby Young)

The 40th annual Yarmouth Clam Festival is this weekend, and the 24th running of the Clam Festival Classic 5 mile road race was this morning. The temperature was a cool 84 degrees (compared to last year’s 96 fahrenheit) despite starting at 8 o’clock in the morning.

Bob Winn held a course record of 23:58 on a short course, and Todd Coffin has the official course record of 25:06 on the recertified and full distance course. Matt Lane of Menlo Park, California decided to come into town for the clam festival, and he smashed both records with a time of 23:48, followed not so closely by Patrick Tarpy of Yarmouth in 24:29 (also a record setting pace). Kirby Davis followed in third place with a time of 25:38, having run 5:07 splits almost every mile.

Joan Benoit Samuelson won the women’s race for the third year in a row in 29:30, and she had her fair share of supporters all along the course. Erin Lane came east with her husband and took second place in 29:54, followed by local runner Kristin Barry in 30:06.