About nine years ago, there was this guy selling shoes at the Bryn Mawr Running Company just outside Philadelphia. Runners would come in and he’d help them as best he could. Overpronator or underpronator? How much do you run? What are your goals? Need a bag?
No, we don’t have anything in the back. Sorry, miss: We only have one color of this fancy brand. Yes, we have espresso bean-flavored GU and THE STICK, but we don’t carry the STICKENSTONE(TM).
Trust me, kid: You need a half size larger if you run a lot. Please listen to me. Do you like ingrown toenails? That kind of stuff.
And not that there’s anything wrong with selling running shoes for a living, just hang in there with me for a few more paragraphs. Ok, so admittedly the guy wasn’t just some fella off the street. No.
He happened to be a 2:13 marathoner and when he wasn’t selling shoes, he was pounding pavement out on the Perkiomen Trail, trying to keep up with a pack of crazy-fast Kenyans. Still, think about it: nine years isn’t REALLY that long ago was it?
Fast-forward to 2009 and this guy happens to be coaching the American record holder in the men’s half-marathon--a 2:06 marathoner; distance-running’s golden boy, the kid who’s going to bring super-sized America back from the brink of sloth and the Nintendo Wii: Ryan Hall.
Not only that, but let’s not forget the women too--something we tend to do in this sport. This guy’s also coaching the American record-holder in the women’s marathon (the first American sub-2:20, mind you); the 2004 Olympic bronze medalist, Deena Kastor. That’s a lot of talent to coach; that’s a pretty long way to come in less than a decade.
I’m sure you already figured out the guy: it’s Terrence Mahon! Let’s learn some more about him.
RML: This is most-likely the busy season for you. You got Ryan [Hall] running the NYC Marathon in a couple weeks and you got Deena [Kastor] facing Chicago this weekend. How are you dedicating your efforts at this point in time?
Mahon: The last couple weeks have been much easier, because all I have is the marathoners and two people running the world half-marathon championships. I don’t have the track runners. It was a little more complex when I had the track runners in Europe while the marathoners were beginning their build-up.
RML: So I guess you are saying the work is pretty much done for the marathoners. It’s taper time, correct?
Mahon: No. Not really. The way we do it, we hit the work harder and harder and then back down right before the race. The work for Deena is done, because she’s racing this weekend, but for Ryan, it’s still very much going strong.
RML: So it seems, then, that your busiest time was when you were in the middle of ramping down coaching track runners in the European racing circuit while ramping up your marathoners. So how do you focus your efforts in that challenging time?
Mahon: For me, it’s definitely time allotment. I was in Europe for the majority of August, which was when the marathoners started up training in earnest. Deena started in July, whereas Ryan didn’t start any hard training until August. For me, it really came down to staying on top of the communication--connecting via email and on the phone when I was in Europe and they were in Mammoth. We have a lot of help too. Deena’s husband, Andrew, helps with a lot of the workouts. Bob Larsen is up in Mammoth. We have a solid crew up there. I was writing workouts and checking workouts from abroad. But I had coverage with Deena’s husband and Bob [Larsen]. We also get some people on the bikes who ride along with the athletes to make sure they have their fuel and their hydration.
RML: Let’s move on to Ryan and NYC. He ran really well at PDR. New York is a tough course, but yet so was Boston earlier in April. He went out fast in Boston and there is a tendency for some folks to go out too fast in NYC in the early stages. Are you counseling caution here?
Mahon: In Boston, you go out fast, because the first 10K is pretty much straight downhill. And we actually didn’t have a problem with going out fast. I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that plan. But we look at marathons two different ways: One way is the marathons you want to PR or set records in. The other way is to win or place in the top couple spots. We were trying to look at strategies specific to Boston that would give him the best possible opportunity to win that race and we felt that he needed to go out hard. We did that, because a guy like Robert Cheruiyot has dominated that race for a couple of years. When you watch the film, you see that so many athletes defer to him. They wait for him to make a move and then react to it. We didn’t want to put Ryan in that position; we wanted him to be in a more aggressive position and get other people back on their heels right away. A course like New York is definitely much different, because it starts out kind of flat. The first mile is straight up, and then the second mile is straight down. And then you are pretty flat through that first eight to ten miles. If we go out fast, then we have the issue of the back end. Ryan has a little more experience, because he knows the park [Central Park]. Even thought that is the last couple miles, he knows the complexities of how New York goes in terms of its undulation and how to merit out efforts like that.
RML: I just spoke to Brian Sell. The Hansons love their 26K simulations where they try to mimic the race-day course and set up a mock one so that one kilometer is equal to a mile and factor in the hills as much as possible. Are you doing anything like that out in Mammoth with Ryan?
Mahon: Oh yeah. We do that without a doubt. We have the advantage where both Deena and myself have run New York, so we know what we are dealing with in terms of that course. For example, Ryan did a 25-mile run yesterday. The last two miles were easy, but it was a tough climb from mile 15 to mile 23--pretty much all uphill. We have a beautiful place to train with such a diversity of terrain, so for us to get in hills is really not that hard.
RML: And you are at altitude.
Mahon: Yeah, exactly.
RML: Everybody loves to ask about your athletes. I’d like to now turn the focus to you. You have had a really nice rise as a coach--moving up to this level so fast. I think you were even selling shoes at Bryn Mawr as late as 2004-2005 is that correct?
Mahon: I opened up kind of a sports therapy center. I had done that three to four years prior to coming out to Mammoth. I haven’t sold shoes in a while. That was up to 2000. Still, I was a kind of a runner and definitely not a coach.
RML: What or who can you attribute to your success as a coach?
Mahon: There are a lot of people. First off, when I was with Running USA at the time, Coach Vigil was a mentoring-style of a coach. He was always trying to educate the athletes using a scientific background. For him, that was because he was a teacher when he was at Adams State. That was natural for him. And I’ve always been fairly inquisitive. I would always continue that with him on a one-on-one basis. We used to joke that we went to coffee every afternoon and all I did was ask questions about training. Vigil is definitely my number one influence particularly from the sports science-side of it, because my previous influence was Matt Centrowitz who was a much more athlete/instinctual-style of a coach. My experience with Matt and Marcus O’Sullivan who were great athletes and have now become coaches. These guys relied a lot on instinct for how they based training in the beginning, whereas Coach Vigil was never a runner so he approached things from a science background. For me, going to him [Vigil] became a great blend of what does the athlete bring to the table from a mindset standpoint and what does the scientist bring to the table. I am fortunate enough that I was an English and Philosophy major, so I kind of bring the inquisitive side and the art side to it. I guess I’m also some who, if I’m not busy doing something, is always learning and reading new things. And I always relate it back to running; whether it’s studying philosophers, or studying biomechanics, or astrophysics, or some crazy thing that I am reading. All that creates some connection to me as a running coach. And actually, it’s not really about furthering me as a coach, but rather as a human being. I’m always trying to put those pieces of the puzzle together. I then use that as a baseline with whoever I work with.
RML: So I guess you got all the right angles covered with your coaching?Mahon: Yeah, you always remember things here and there. I remember when I was a marathoner, I was talking with Ed Eyestone one time and Ed told me, “I’ve never had the same marathon build-up from one race to the next.” I thought about that and I was stifled. I never knew what he meant and I’m not sure he knew what he meant at the time other than if he did this set of training one time and it worked, that same training might not work the next time. But what I’ve come to understand from that statement is that it’s not the science side of that training, it’s just that we as individuals are always brining new things to the table. And this happens a lot. Motivations change; desires change; general adaptation to stress--things like that. You are never the same athlete from one season to the next. I think the training has to mold with that as well. I’m learning this with Deena.She is older now and has a lot of marathons under her belt. Her first marathon training with Coach Vigil was almost a year long in that build-up to her first race. That is something we just can’t do now with her. We don’t even do 16-week build-ups with her right now. She just can’t hone in and lock into the training right now, because she has done it for too long and it gets old and I’m not sure her body can handle it or psychologically she can focus for that long. I’ve got to adapt training models to get the most out of her and get the best results. All of a sudden, we have to do a different kind of morphing where you throw out traditional build-up, saying that doesn’t work here, what are we going to do? I have to say that I have never been a fan of the cookie-cutter approach. I’ve always had trouble even as an athlete where you read some guy’s training plan in a magazine and say, “Oh well this must be the be-all-end-all approach. In reality, you don’t know everything that is behind it.
RML: That’s why we have coaches, right? [RML laughs]
Mahon laughs: I hope so. Either that or we are just lying to keep our jobs.
RML: Back when you were a competitive runner, you trained with the Kenyans, right?
Mahon: Yep.
RML: What did you learn from these guys that you took with you and applied as a coach?
Mahon: There are a couple things: First, they brought to the workouts a little more relaxed attitude to the training--not to the actual training itself, but to the day-to-day training. They didn’t live or die whether or not the mile-repeats went superb or not. It was like, “Oh it was a tough day; I didn’t run as fast as I wanted to and that’s fine. I will go on to the next day. They didn’t carry anything negative over in their training. The bigger thing is that they start out with the mentality of like, “Ok, I’m training for a marathon, or a 10K, or whatever, and I’m here to put the training in. They are going to let the training come to them than chase it. They stayed that much healthier that way. They didn’t run hard until their body felt good. They didn’t force anything.
RML: You being the philosopher that you are, would then say that Kenyan runners are Type-B runners, whereas most Americans are Type-A?
Mahon: Definitely. Without a doubt.
RML: I ask everyone this question these days. But first let me say that I was recently talking with Todd Williams and he gave you, [Brad] Hudson, and some other coaches like [Alberto] Salazar credit for helping push the envelope to bring America back as a distance-running powerhouse. We got Ritz and Teg going sub-13; we got Hall going 2:06. Meb [Keflezighi] just broke the 20K record. Do you really think the United States is in new territory here?
Mahon: When you look at these people you are talking about--myself, Brad, Alberto, and Todd--back when we were running, we were pretty hardcore training guys. Alberto ran himself to death; Hudson was running 120 miles a week in high school; I was up to 140 miles a week in marathon build ups; and Todd never ran an easy day in his life. We were all guys who were work-ethic oriented, but at the same time, we just wanted to hammer everything. We saw the results of that. If we had done that a little bit smarter, we would have had longer careers and better careers. It’s not that we were wrong. It’s great that we have athletes who have that sort of drive. But none of us were with it enough to take a step back and say that hard every day isn’t the way. We’ve got a little smarter with science maybe. We needed a logical reason on why we shouldn‘t have gone harder, how to space out those efforts, and what we are getting as a response to that training as opposed to “train harder, train more, and just be tougher.”
RML: I see. So it’s kind of like we were putting our head through the brick wall when we maybe could have taken a step back and seen that there was a way around it or over it.
Mahon: Yeah. So now for us as coaches, it’s a matter of taking an athlete--let’s say I have a Todd Williams now we would tell him that it’s not that we don’t want him to run hard, it’s that we are going to introduce controls on where you are going to run hard and where you run easy, so that you can run harder again. I think there is a little more method to the madness now.
RML: Back to the original question: So is this new line of coaching--taking what you guys didn’t do and righting those wrongs--is directly responsible for the Ritz and Teg sub-13s?
Mahon: Yeah. All these guys have very methodical programs. These are well thought out routines that have whittled away the things that don’t work and really focused on what is working and we are just providing a background methodology. What’s nice is that we are starting to do this across the board in different events and with different people, whether they are male or female. It is not just a one-hit wonder where you said that kid is really talented and that’s the reason for his success; it has become more a system. And that is what we’ve lost. In the U.S., we have no system. We have a collegiate system which does very well and everyone knows that around the world, but it is a terrible, terrible system once the kid graduates. And it’s all because we have college coaches who are paid to coach college and the professional demands are different and that’s where I think we’ve gotten lost.
RML: But things are getting better, right?
Mahon: Yes. You look at John Cook and Alberto on the track and now [Jerry] Schumacher. Schumacher brought his whole team to St. Moritz. He had the team together all year. Alberto has always done that. We’ve always done that. That’s how it operates. That is how these other countries are getting it done. Look at the Ethiopians: Their professional program has organized practices. It’s not just talent. We are showing that; we are showing that we have some great individuals, and I think we have way more. We just have to put them in a systematic program. For some of these other countries, it’s driven by the federation which is government controlled.
RML: So has the United States at least identified the problem? Would you say things are optimistic?
Mahon: Oh yeah without a doubt. We have definitely figured it out. Look at the women’s 1500 this year. The women’s 1500 is nothing more than identifying some great talent, realizing the things they weren’t dong well at, putting them into an organized program, and giving them a little bit of time.
That’s what it takes.
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