Going the Distance

When I first ran with Maegan Krifchin, an Ithaca College graduate student and recent Olympic Trials qualifier, she wasn’t a professional runner, wasn’t eligible to compete in the trials and had yet to even run a half marathon. We met early last February on a Saturday morning, when the rest of the track team’s distance runners and I were getting ready for a 9 a.m. tempo workout. At the time, Maegan was just our new volunteer assistant coach — a short girl sitting in the corner wearing a slightly-too-large Syracuse University long sleeve.

Eric “Sambo” Sambolec, the men’s distance coach, had told us about our new graduate assistant the previous afternoon. “She’s pretty fast,” he had warned us with a smile, mentioning that she held the Syracuse record for 1500 meters (4:22.65) and had run a 4:44 mile indoors. “She might even join you guys for workouts.”

The first day, we eyed Maegan somewhat warily. Although Ithaca College has had its fair share of men’s and women’s All-Americans, Division III athletics are inherently a step below the successful scholarship programs, whose rosters consist of high school All-Americans and record breakers. An adequate analogy to explain the disparity in talent between scholarships athletes and those of us in Division III might be the difference between minor league baseball and the majors. The recent draftees, like the runners on a competitive Division III squad, are better at their sport than maybe 98 percent of people in the world. With that said, they are still a far stretch from Derek Jeter.

Once in a while, an athlete is good enough to break through, to make a go of things at the highest professional level, but more often than not, the sport’s respective pinnacles remain forever distant. We’re first cousins, you might say, with the Division I runners — closely related in terms of training, dedication and practice. The talent gap between the 98th and 99.9th percentiles is almost always an unbridgeable gulf. So, while the college’s programs produce runners like cross country All-American Billy Way, or two-time track All-American Kate Leugers, athletes like Maegan Krifchin — even before her professional breakthrough — are of a select few, a small enough sample, at least, for training with her to be a foreign experience to every single one of us.

After Sambo dropped us off at the intersection of Game Farm Road and the East Hill Recreation Way to brave the well-below freezing temperatures and biting wind, we set off for a couple mile warm-up run down Ellis Hollow with Maegan slotted in quietly at the back of the pack. There was some level of competitive pride on the line for a few of us, however good-natured. With her credentials, Maegan was faster in the mile — 4:44 — and 5K — 16:42 on the roads — than a few on the back half of our team. Although she had not yet reached the level necessary to qualify for the Olympic Trials, Maegan was already well above average — good enough to train with the men’s team rather than the women’s.

On some level we wanted to prove that our program, although modest, possessed legitimate talent and that not just any girl could come in and hang with our team. We were serious runners, even if we weren’t quite at the level of the Syracuse men. A few guys were nervous. No one wanted to get dropped by a girl we had met less than an hour prior — not even one this fast.

After a couple slow, shuffling miles to loosen up, we stopped to stretch, down some water and conduct the warm-up drills and strides. While we shook out of our Saturday morning weariness and tried to stay warm, Sambo explained the day’s workout: four to seven miles at “tempo” effort, a hard but steady pace emphasizing control. Everyone was to begin at six minutes for the first mile before ratcheting down the pace for the remainder of the workout, with the average pace and distance relative to individual event focus and ability level. Although Maegan had told Sambo she would start the workout with us, she seemed unsure about the likelihood of making it under a six-minute pace when the majority of us picked it up. Either way, she said, she would probably stop at four miles.

By the time we’d reached the four mile mark more than 20 minutes later, after suffering over the steep, wind-in-your face pitch up Turkey Hill, Maegan had reached the front of our lagging second group, averaging a comfortable 5:45 per mile pace. She was steadily increasing her speed, and I — a little injured and a lot out of shape — hung on for dear life. Here, the tempo started to hurt as we clung tight to the dropping pace despite the big hill and persistent headwind, the pace finally adding weight to the legs and tightening the lungs.

“Anyone stopping at 4?” Sambo asked, holding his stopwatch out the driver’s side window.

Maegan shook her head, and the rest of us — Tyler, Mark, and I — looked longingly at the van, tiredly at an amused Sambo, and then at Maegan’s back. No one stopped, though I certainly would have on any other day. We suddenly had something to prove.

Distance running is’t really a sport rife with gender rivalry, with male athletes incapable of training or racing with more talented female athletes. It is, of course, a matter of physiology rather than sexist ideology that men are faster than women. As with any statement concerning gender, this comes with a number of qualifications. Most simply, it takes only a brief glance at the gender-specific world records to see that the men’s marks are far quicker than those achieved by women. The men’s marathon record, for example, is the recently set 2:03:38 run by Patrick Makau in Berlin, while Paula Radcliffe’s women’s world record stands at 2:15:25. In absolute terms, men are faster than women. Of course this only holds true for individuals competing at the same percentile of their respective gender, allowing a world-class female distance runner to be faster than a male in that still good (but not great) 98th percentile.

The Bombers’ men’s distance team is perfectly aware and generally not bothered by the fact that a few women — those competing for medals and records — are as fast or even much faster than us. There’sno shame in being beaten by someone better than you, misplaced pride aside. Still, I was surprised to finish the workout sucking in air and barely hanging onto Maegan, the new girl, who looked as comfortable as when we’d started. It’s not every day an athlete gets to train with someone approaching the pinnacle of his or her respective sport — someone who can say she wants to qualify for the Olympic Trials and mean it.

It was immediately clear Maegan was a different breed.

***

I met up with Maegan in Ithaca College’s campus center on the Friday following her fifth-place finish at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon on Sept. 18, where she ran the third fastest half marathon by an American woman in 2011 and qualified for the 2012 Olympic Trials marathon in Houston, Texas. She had the gaunt appearance of an in-form distance runner, so lean from all the mileage that if she wasn’t so clearly at a physical peak, one might think she’d been fighting a persistent cold.

Both then and during the previous afternoon’s run, when she joined the cross country team for an easy 10, it was immediately apparent that she had transformed into an entirely different athlete since that first tempo run eight months ago. Back then, Maegan was good — a former Division I athlete, school record holder at a major university and regionally elite collegiate distance runner — but not great, at least not in the way she had become. In college, Maegan did not qualify for the national track and field championships and had not been an athlete on whom casual fans might pin their attention and expectations, fair or not, of personal success. Between running with us last winter and qualifying for the Olympic Trials, she had turned professional, joined a regionally elite training group — Stotan Racing — and shifted her event focus from the 1500 meters to the 15K and finally to the half marathon. In other words, she had come a long way.

Once we settled in for our chat, I asked what she remembered about her first run with the distance guys.

“I was excited for my first meeting with the team,” she said with a typically wide smile.
“I thought, ‘I wonder what these boys are going to think of me.’ I fit right in and surprised you guys a little bit, but I think we were all pretty comfortable with each other in a matter of a couple of sessions.”

Now in her second year of Ithaca’s entry-level masters program in occupational therapy, Maegan had joined the men’s team as a volunteer graduate assistant during her second semester. She had been trying to find the best way to help as a coach in the fall, but the women’s cross country team had a full coaching staff, and she didn’t feel all that helpful as assistant strength and conditioning coach for fall track. With the pressure of graduate studies and the time commitment leading up to first semester finals, her own training situation had been changing, too. After being in direct contact with Syracuse head coach Chris Fox during the summer and fall, Maegan transitioned to working out on her own and racing for USATF Niagara under the direction of Kevin Lucas. Once second semester rolled around, another coaching opportunity opened up.

“I was still training on my own, doing some workouts at Cornell,” she said. “Coach Nichols approached me and asked if I was still interested in volunteering to help on the men’s side. So it just started from there.”

At the time, Maegan wasn’t training with any particular goal in mind. Having moved up from the 800 as a high school runner at JFK Bellmore in Long Island to the 1500 at Syracuse, and finally to some early dabbling in longer road races post-graduation, she wanted to go somewhere with a great track like Boston, Penn State or the Armory in New York City, but she never got the chance. Despite working her way into what she called “good shape for a solid 3k” during our winter workouts at Cornell’s Barton Hall, she stayed focused on school and spent most of the winter just training and getting fit. Her post-collegiate running plans hit an upward trajectory after a March 12 victory at the Johnny’s Running o’ the Green Five Miler in Rochester, N.Y., where she won with a time of 28:01, prompting Coach Lucas to mention her name to Bill and John Aris, the father-son coaching duo at the helm of Stotan Racing.

“[Lucas] kind of realized, ‘You know, we might need to think about where you can develop even more with a coach or something,’” Maegan remembered. After getting in touch with the Arises, who also coach at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, the five-time defending women’s national high school cross country champions, she entered into a trial phase with the elite Stotan Racing team. This involved adopting a new training program and traveling to and from Syracuse on weekends to do workouts with other Stotans. But, according to Maegan, “It has worked ever since.”

***

The Utica Boilermaker, a 15-kilometer road race held every July, attracts 13,000 runners, along with another 4,000 competing in the shorter 5-kilometer race. Run since 1978, the Boilermaker has invited top international competition since 1983, when four-time Boston marathon champion Bill Rodgers won in 44:38. Long past his own competitive prime, the 63-year-old Rodgers returned this summer to a race that’s been dominated in recent years by world-class athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia and Morocco.

For the 2011 edition, the Ithaca cross country team was represented too. Having held our metaphorical noses against the summer-training grindstone for a number of weeks, a group of us living and working in or around Ithaca packed my little Toyota with sleeping bags, racing flats and a tent bound for Utica. Maegan, we had discovered, would be part of this year’s elite field of invited competitors. Since joining Stotan, her results had shown a strong, steady improvement in the early summer months, with a win in the 10-mile Mountain Goat Run in Syracuse (59:06) followed by a fourth place and personal best (16:24) in the 5000 meters at one of the New Balance Boston Twilight track meets. Although her time commitment to training and racing for Stotan took Maegan’s time away from running and coaching with our team, we had been following her results closely. We felt a certain pride with one of our former training partners, an Ithaca College student and friend who had been out there on the track and roads with us, chasing success on the national level. Still, to everyone else, she was a relative unknown, especially competing in an international field like the Boilermaker’s.

“My goal was to be the first American woman, but I didn’t really know who was in the race,” she recalled. “I still don’t really know people and names that much … People had said, ‘You’re in contention,’ so I was like, ‘All right, if I’m in contention to do it, that’s my goal. I’ll try to be the top American.”

At the Boilermaker, as in many mass start road races, runners are separated into starting corrals based on predicted time performances. The elites — who wear pink numbers — start slightly ahead of the fastest amateur athletes in corral one (white), who start in slightly ahead of corral two (blue) and so on. Most of our men’s contingent was in the white corral, with some just behind in the blue. We were outfitted in matching navy singlets that read “South Hill Distance Project.” Although red-faced officials were diligent about keeping us behind a rope a few meters behind the elite starters, we were close enough to watch them jog to the line from their sequestered warm up area as they were called up, one by one, by the announcer. While other competitors fidgeted and chatted with one another, we waited to cheer for Maegan’s call up and make sure she knew we would be out there, racing with her.

Though the elites started moments before the white corral was called to the line, it was not long before the fastest amateur men had come alongside and swallowed up a number of the female elites. While the African men surged ahead at incomprehensible paces — Riduoane Harroufi of Morocco would win in a sprint finish, covering the challenging course in 43:30, or a 4:40 average pace per mile — we set our sights on Maegan, eager to catch and pass her. For a collegiate cross country athlete, the meat of the season takes place in October and November, so racing in the summer functions mostly as a benchmark to follow off-season progress. We figured we could beat Maegan and knew if we did, it would mean our fitness was coming along nicely. Dan — our intrepid leader — caught her, and they ran together during the first mile before he moved ahead, while it took the rest of us until after the two-mile mark. Phew, we figured, at least that’s out of the way. The relief was short lived, however, and Maegan tore past me as though I was standing still just before the fifth mile mark.

“I started off pretty conservatively just because I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “But I had a plan and knew what kind of time I wanted to run. I was picking people off the whole way through.”

Hoping to ride her coattails through the pack, my original instinct was to run the rest of the way with Maegan — and hopefully outkick her at the finish. After all, we had run tempos together in the winter, and my track times were still a touch faster. If anything, I figured, she would be the perfect pacer. It only took four steps in her wake to prove otherwise; I couldn’t run the pace she was keeping on the long downhill. When I hit the mile mark with Maegan fifteen meters ahead, I checked my watch — 5:06. She had broken five minutes for that fifth mile, at the very least.

By the finish, she had passed every one of our five-man contingent but Dan. Her time — 52:24, or 5:36 per mile — placed her in fourth overall and first among American women, an accomplishment worth $2,300. The time was a two-minute-and-seventeen-second personal best for the distance and marked a breakthrough from talented regional athlete to national competitor. As far as we were concerned, Maegan had arrived.

***

Although finishing first among American women at the Boilermaker marked a big step in Maegan’s career, no one would have predicted the level of her performance at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon on Sept. 18. After her successful foray into the 15-kilometer distance, an attempt at the qualifying standard for the Olympic Trials marathon seemed very possible. To qualify for the Trials for the half marathon, Maegan would have to run 1:15:00, or 5:44 per mile. After the Boilermaker, she had won low key road races in Bergen, N.Y. (16:29 for 5K) and her pre-Philly tune-up at Buffalo, where she defended her title at the Fleet Feet Race into the city and ran a personal best of 52:23, thirteen days before the half marathon. In fact, Maegan’s performance was such a surprise that none of us knew she was running in Philadelphia until a few hours after the race, when we saw her name in the results: fifth, in 1:11:04, the third fastest half marathon run by an American woman in 2011.

“Definitely,” she responded, when I asked if it’d come as a surprise. “We went in there knowing I could get Olympic Trials qualification. That was the ultimate goal. We knew I was in shape to do that, no matter what.”

The three minute and fifty-six second margin by which she qualified took Maegan by surprise and was likely aided by a world-class field, fast course and perfect running weather. The winners of both genders — Matthew Kisorio of Kenya, in 58:46, and Kim Smith of New Zealand, in 67:10 — ran the fastest half marathon times ever run on U.S. soil. Maegan’s fifth place finish came behind two Olympians, one of which (Werknesh Kidane of Ethiopia) is a former world cross country champion.

“I kind of exceeded my expected goal, time-wise, by two minutes or something,” said Maegan of her plan going into the race. “We went in there thinking maybe 73:30, 73:40. It was a big jump.”

So large a jump, in fact, that she set personal bests in nearly every distance en route. After running five kilometers in 16:58, she ran 33:42 through 10K and 54:17 through 10 miles, both large improvements over her previous road bests. Although the web results do not include a five-mile split, her average pace during the race (5:26 per mile) suggests that she also shattered her best at that distance. Comfortably running personal records at each intermediate split over the course of the half felt liberating, Krifchin said.

“Once I saw my 5K split, I was like, ‘You know, I’m quite a bit faster than my goal pace,’” she said. “We kind of had two paces I had thought about — an aggressive pace and more of a conservative pace — and I was way faster than my aggressive pace. So I was thinking, ‘Ok, I am way on. I got the qualifier.’ And I felt good, so I thought, ‘Let’s just see what happens. Let’s see how fast I can go.’”

***

Even at the professional level, distance running is not a glamorous sport. For any athlete not at the absolute pinnacle of achievement, financial compensation is slim and opportunities to focus on training and racing full time are difficult to come by. A number of professional runners live at, or just below, poverty level despite working full time jobs and carrying contracts from shoe companies. Following Maegan’s performance in Philadelphia, message board threads cropped up on LetsRun.com with anonymous posters suggesting she ought to leverage her newfound success into greater financial support, as if it were so easy.

As a sponsored athlete running for Stotan Racing, Maegan is currently compensated through gear sponsorships from Nike and PacificHealth Labs, along with the Arises’ coaching services, rather than with a salaried contract. For now, Maegan remains more concerned with finishing her studies and continuing to improve as an athlete.

“Stotan’s great,” she said. “I get a great coaching staff. Between Bill and John Aris, they have so much knowledge, and they’ve had so much success, especially on the high school level. So now it’s great to see that it’s happening on the post-collegiate level, too. I get their coaching, and then we also have Nike gear.”

She’s quick to set aside concerns about the financial aspect of pursuing running professionally.

“I don’t like to say anything about the gear or money situation,” she said. “I mean, it would be great to get it, but I don’t care much about that yet. We’ll see what happens.”

With the success of her current situation, she feels no pressure to change.

“I’m pretty happy with my Stotan team and what I have.”

When asked about the primary change in her training between the time she ran with us and her breakthrough with Stotan, Maegan pointed toward finding her niche in the longer road racing distances and increasing both volume and intensity in her training.

“I think it’s just a little more quality work and long runs,” she said. “A typical long run for me [prior to joining Stotan] was 90 minutes, or 13 to 14 miles, something like that. Now it’s been bumping up to 20 miles, and I think a little faster than I’m used to. And I really responded well to the long run and what they expected out of it.”

Coach John Aris agreed. “On her very first day with us, two of Maegan’s talents that stood out were turnover and stride efficiency. Over the next few weeks, she showed incredible aptitude for training long.” The next step, he said, was testing her with a gradual and cautious increase in both general training volume and volume of quality. Aris said they could tell that Maegan would likely take well to the marathon, but “There was no way to predict that she’d take to the training as well as she has.”

With the success during training, it wasn’t hard for Maegan and her coaches to decide to focus on longer race distances. With the end of the regional track season coming shortly after her 5,000 in Boston, the focus changed to road racing. Following increased volume in training and success over longer race distances, it wasn’t long until they realized she could contend in the Olympic Trials half marathon qualifier, a goal which they penciled in for Philadelphia’s fast course, where a number of Stotan athletes were competing and the strong international fields would lead to a fast time. She was immediately on board for the challenge, which ultimately culminated with her success on September 18th, when she qualified on her first try in her first half marathon.

“Her race in Philadelphia far exceeded our goals for her,” Aris said. “Our goals were set based upon the training she had accomplished to that point. This tells us that she has ability that has not yet been realized, and the three of us are excited to see where she can go long term.”

***

With the focus now fully on preparing for her debut marathon at the Houston Olympic Trials in January, Maegan is looking forward to the challenge.

“I’m really excited for the marathon,” she said. “I’ve never done one, but — I don’t know if it was just the adrenaline or whatever — I wasn’t bent over exhausted after the [half in] Philly. I know I have to run that exact same race again for the marathon, but I trust my coaches. I think they know what they’re doing and the next block of training, I think they’ll set me up really nicely for the marathon.”

As a relative novice to long distance racing debuting in a race that ultimately selects its top three finishers out of a field of America’s finest, Maegan will enter the race as a dark horse at best. Athletes toeing the line with her in January will include: Shalane Flanagan, second place finisher at the New York City Marathon, 2011 World Cross Country bronze medalist and the American record holder and 2008 Olympic bronze medalist over 10,000 meters; Kara Goucher, the 2007 World Championships’ 10,000 meter bronze medalist, Olympian and American marathon debut record holder; and Desi Davila, who shocked the running community by finishing second in a sprint finish during this year’s Boston Marathon. A number of other runners in the field also boast international racing experience and Olympic credentials.

In the meantime, her training preparation will be balanced with her final year of graduate school. During the week, Maegan trains on her own around Ithaca, occasionally joining the men’s cross country team for easy days. On Saturdays, she drives 70 minutes to Syracuse and joins her Stotan Racing team for a workout before turning around and driving back to Ithaca College. Although her schedule is sometimes hectic, she said the business isn’t necessarily bad.

“I think it’s good to be busy,” she said. “Your mind’s not always set on just running or stressing out about this and that. [School and training] at times can be overwhelming, but I think my biggest thing now is just trying to be really proactive. I don’t wait and procrastinate anymore like I may have used to do.”

In fact, many of her goals remain academic. “I’m going to continue with school, get my degree, take my boards exam and get that license I’ve been waiting for,” she said. “But if running continues to be successful, I plan on pursuing it. Maybe I could work a little bit — not full time, but part time — and put all my heart and soul into running.”

In the meantime, she’ll certainly have a dedicated fan base cheering for her on Jan. 14, when she competes in the Olympic Trials marathon along with her teammate C. Fred Joslyn, who is qualified for the men’s field. I wondered how she would approach a race twice the distance of her previous longest, where she’d line up against some of the best athletes in the world.

Aris, for one, isn’t worried about her ability to conquer the distance. “We have one specific goal with Maegan at the trials — maximize her potential for that day.” He was quick to place the emphasis on the process, rather than the end game. “The training she accomplishes successfully will dictate her potential come January. There are many unknowns at this stage. She’s brand new to marathoning, and we are having a great deal of fun with the learning process. To place expectations on her will limit her. She has an innate competitive ferocity that cannot be taught.”

Maegan’s response was similar. “I think it’ll be a great experience, no matter what,” she said. “I don’t want to go in there with any expectations that I can or can’t do a certain thing. I’m going to go out there and give it my best, and you never know what could happen on a given day. Someone could have an off day, someone could have the greatest day of her life — maybe that’ll be me. So, yeah, I’m just going to see what happens.”

In a race as unpredictable as the marathon, you never know.