New hope for U.S. distance running

Bill Rodgers is having one of those days that jog the memory back two or three decades. Back to a time when Americans ruled the roads, when “Boston Billy"’ and guys like Greg Meyer and Alberto Salazar were toasted as Boston Marathon champions.

Another marathon steps off from Hopkinton on Monday. As usual, an American probably won’t be in the picture at the finish. You have to flip back 20 years, to Meyer in 1983, to find a U.S. winner. Or 1985, if you include Lisa Larsen Weidenbach’s victory on the women’s side.

But now there's a glimmer of hope. The state of American distance running had deteriorated so badly that it finally brought a call to action within the running community. Over the last couple of years, a handful of elite training camps have cropped up, and Salazar and others have stepped in as coaches.

Of course, it helps that Khalid Khannouchi, a diminutive Moroccan and the world’s fastest marathoner, has won U. S. citizenship. But with the Olympic trials next February, he didn’t consider a run over the tough Boston course. Neither did Alan Culpepper, who debuted with a 2:09:41 last fall at Chicago. So the men’s field for the 107th running is, as usual, heavy on Kenyans, led by defending champion Rodgers Rop.

The great American female hope, Deena Drossin, is also absent from Boston, having finished third last weekend at the London Marathon in 2:21:16 -- which bettered Joan Benoit Samuelson’s American record set in 1985. But two other Americans, Marla Runyon and Milena Glusac, figure to push for top 10 finishes.

“For the first time, we’re making efforts to look at how we should do this," says Rodgers, a four-time Boston winner. “If you look around, we have a lot of new people to the marathon in this 2:09 to 2:14 range. So we have talent, but we have to have a system.

“We have to pay our coaches like we do in other sports. We have to have these camps where athletes have an environment in which to train with other runners. Greg Meyer, Frank Shorter, myself -- we all trained with groups. Today that is happening again."

Just about everywhere you look, camps have popped up since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Salazar has his Nike Oregon Project. Upwards of 80 post-collegiate runners are training with the Nike Farm Team at Stanford. Pete Rea and Bill Stewart have opened camp at the ZAP Training Center in Blowing Rock, N.C.

The most organized and successful effort is arguably Team USA, a partnership of USA Track and Field and Running USA -- which is made up of the road races and companies in the sport. They’ve produced four separate teams, with training bases in Minneapolis, San Diegoe, Rochester, N.Y. and Rochester Hills, Mich.

Like the others, Team USA came on the scene after the U.S. earned only one spot each in the men’s and women’s marathons, respectively, for the 2000 Olympics.

“For 10 years we had talked about the decline in distance running," muses Ryan Lamppa, Team USA distance running spokesperson. “Things weren’t horrible yet. It bottomed out in 2000 when one male and one female qualified for Sydney. It got us from talking and having plans on paper to doing something real. It was almost, ‘Do this or let’s be quiet.’ That was dark ages for a lot of us.

Now, for Rodgers and the other heroes of Boston past, there’s hope for the future.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.

 

Related information

Stories

Previous Mike Fish Columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video