It's a Group Thing for Hansons-Brooks Runners

With apologies to Alan Sillitoe, let's call what the guys at Hansons-Brooks/Team USA Michigan are doing The Togetherness of the Long Distance Runners.

In long distance running, especially in elite American marathoning, it's the solitary runner that's the norm, or at least the clich. Alan Culpepper heads out the door, alone, after his fellow-Olympian wife Shayne returns from her own morning run. Olympic Trials Marathon course designer and Birmingham favorite son Scott Strand does his hard long runs alone for lack of fast buddies. Even 2003 USA Marathon Champion Ryan Shay of Team USA California, despite training partners of the highest caliber in Mammoth and Chula Vista finds himself doing his individualized workouts solo.

Not so for the eight runners from Hansons-Brooks who will compete Saturday, February 7 at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Men's Marathon in Birmingham, Ala. But for the early hour, they and their teammates - many of whom will also compete at the USA Cross Country Championships in Indianapolis this weekend - more closely resemble a high school or college team when they take to the Detroit-area streets and paths each morning in numbers more than a dozen strong.

Hanson's-Brooks, which can boast the highest number of 2004 OMT male qualifiers from a single club (10) and includes 2003 USA Marathon Championship bronze medalist Clint Verran, didn't come to their group dynamic by accident. It's a design Hansons-Brooks Co-Head Coach Keith Hanson says has links to the training group in the 1970s that developed Bill Rodgers and Greg Meyer, among others.

"When you get right down to it, the best group of marathoners this country has ever seen is the group, led by Bill Rodgers, training in Boston," Hanson said. "What did they have? They had the group mentality and they were going to bust their butts and train hard together. We felt that that was the best example of what we had to get back to."

To that model Hanson, with this brother Kevin the program's other head coach, added employment - at the Hansons Running Shops stores they own - scheduling that allowed all the team's runs to be done together, health care, and, recently, sponsorship from Brooks which includes performance incentives for the team's runners.

It's noteworthy that Keith Hanson lists his squad's top two prospects at Birmingham - Clint Verran and Brian Sell - as two of the athletes who most benefited from the group training situation.

"Brian Sell's a great example of someone who really, really needs the group to train with everyday," Keith Hanson offered. "Brian loves going home to visit but there's been times when Brian has shortened his trip home because he wanted to be back here for a workout so he can do it with the group."

Sell agreed: "I've often said I definitely couldn't do it on my own. I need some people to get me out the door every morning. It's also hitting the times in workouts as well."

Verran, 28, benefited early on from driving himself to stay with the top runners in the program at the time, according to Hanson.

"Our group started with, basically, Jim Jurcevich and Kyle Baker," Hanson said, "and Clint busted his butt just to try to stay up with those guys in workouts. Clint's always done best when he's had something to prove to somebody."

"After a few months I definitely made a step up to the next level, just out of survival," Verran agreed. "That's sort of how I've always been. If I'm put in an environment where guys are competing at a given level, I sort of adapt to my environment. So, joining the team was the best thing I could have done."

Keeping a hungry pack of former collegiate "top dogs" from racing one-another in training and chewing themselves up in the long run, is a concern not lost on the Hanson brothers.

"Some people think that's a disadvantage of the group, that people get too competitive, but I think with our guys it's become an advantage," Hanson said. "Kevin and I are there everyday to see what's going on. If someone seems to be getting a little fatigued, we can make sure that they back off on those days and run a little smarter."

"It's really important to have someone there overseeing things," Hanson continued. "These are athletes that are at the highest level, so they have very strong personalities. It's important to have a person to say 'No, this is the way it's going to be.'"

Sell, 25, adds that fellow runners are helpful with such matters as well.

"I've learned a lot from Jeff (Campbell) and Clint. They've been around for awhile and they taught me a lot too - to take an easy day every now and then just to keep yourself fresh."

Hansons-Brooks, despite its Motor City-area location, doesn't intend to be a distance running factory that stamps out runners on only a single press, however. Not only are this winter's marathoners and harriers on separate schedules, but the Hanson's split up their marathoners - presenting a bold training schedule to those they saw with the best potential for an Olympic-level breakthrough at the Trials.

"Our group of guys is such that it's going to take a breakthrough for any of our guys to make the Olympic team, so in our training for this Olympic Trials we consciously tried to raise the bar in training with more intensity in our workouts," Verran explained.

"Our group-within-a-group set off with the thought in mind that if we made it through this training cycle we'd have a good shot at making the Olympic team. There are workouts that I do that are so hard for me that I would never be able to do it if I had to dictate the pace on the entire workout. The workouts are amazing because of the group."

Sell, the 2003 USA 20 km runner-up, concurred that the training load was heavy.

"Yeah, when they handed it to us, Clint and I kind of looked at each other like, 'Well, if we can make it through this and hit the times we should be pretty well ready."

Verran and Sell have logged weekly mileages in the low 140s on their big weeks and have stressed strength-oriented intensity work in large measure. A representative workout during the build-up, according to Verran, was reps of four miles, two miles, and four miles run at 4:50 to 4:55 per mile with an 800 meter jog recovery.

Both Sell and Verran are confident heading into Saturday's race in Birmingham.

"If we have a good day, I think we could break 2:12 on this course," Verran said of himself and Sell. "That's if we have optimal weather and the pace stays even and we don't get ahead of ourselves early. I think if you can run 2:12, you're probably not going to win the race but I think you've got an outside shot at taking a second or third"

"I don't want to make any predictions or anything for Saturday," Sell said from Birmingham. "I'm using Clint as my biggest guide, because he knows what he did before he ran 2:14 in Chicago and before he ran 2:15 here last year. If he says he's in better shape, I've been doing basically the exact same thing so hopefully I'm ready to go."

The eight runners that will compete for Hansons-Brooks at the Olympic Trials are: Verran, Sell, Mike Franko, Carl Rundell, Bob Busquaert, Trent Briney, Terrance Shea, and Ben Rosario. Jeff Campbell and Nick Cordes, original members of the group-within-a group with Verran and Sell, also qualified but will not compete in Birmingham - Campbell due to illness that hampered his training, Cordes due to injury.

By Charlie Mahler, Running USA wire