Bob Larsen has been one of America's top distance coaches since the mid-1960s. Long before his well-known association with Meb Keflezighi, Larsen was building great programs at Grossmont Community College and UCLA in southern California. At UCLA he won two National Championships in track and field, and was four times named Coach of the Year. After Larsen retired from UCLA in 1999, he and Joe Vigil helped build the Running USA California program in Mammoth Lakes, CA. It has since been renamed the Mammoth Track Club. In 2005, Larsen was named to the Running USA national "Hall of Champions." Last December, at the annual USATF meeting, he received the prestigious Robert Giegengack Award, which is given to "an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the development and success of USA Track & Field and the larger community of the sport." He spoke to us last Thursday from Mammoth Lakes, and will fly to Boston this week with Meb Keflezighi.How did you get into coaching?
Bob Larsen: I graduated from San Diego State in 1961 and spent four years coaching high school, eight years at Grossmont Community College, and 21 years at UCLA. My last year there was 1999. Since then, I've been coaching with the Running USA Group that has become the Mammoth Track Club. I thought I was a pretty fast runner at San Diego State, but we never produced great times, because we were always getting injured because we didn't know how to train. We'd compete in every workout, we'd just try to rip it every day. I'd just go as hard as I could until I got a stress fracture. Eventually you learn a little something, and that makes you a better coach later. You learn what not to do. You learn it the hard way. I also learned a lot from my favorite college courses: anatomy, physiology, kinesiology. They made me think about bringing more science into coaching.
I seem to remember that you had good athletes at Grossmont.
BL: Yes, at Grossmont and at Jamul Toads, the club we formed. We got the Toads to such a high level that one year they beat the Colorado Track Club and everyone else at the National Cross Country Championships. We had runners like Ed Mendoza, Terry Cotton, Kirk Pfeiffer, and Steve Ortiz. Mendoza was incredibly talented--on the same level as Meb. He went to the 1976 Olympics in the 10,000 and ran a 2:10 marathon. Pfeiffer wasn't as talented, but he was so durable. He also ran 2:10. If he had been able to stay with us--he had to move to Colorado for economic reasons--he could have broken the world record in the marathon.
The important thing I learned from all these athletes is that you don't need one set program for everyone. We experimented with each athlete on a sort of trial and error basis. We learned that some did best with 175-mile training weeks, and some ran better with Igloi-type interval training.
How did you come to work with Meb?
BL: I saw him compete a couple of times when he was in high school. He didn't necessarily win, but he looked very smooth and he ran very courageously. By this time, we had stopped giving distance scholarships at UCLA, because it was easier to win meets with other kinds of athletes. But when I went to visit Meb the fall of his senior year, I was just so impressed by his family. They were all so disciplined and motivated, and several of his older brothers and sisters were already in the college system and doing well academically. I told him that if he would sign early, we would work out a scholarship arrangement. He made me look good from his first year in school, when he finished fifth in the NCAA Championships. Not that he was the best freshman in the country. There were kids like Adam Goucher and Bob Keino who showed more than Meb at that stage.
So the two of you have been together for how long?
BL: Since 1994. I think all the years we have been working together helps a lot. We can practically read each other's mind at this point. Just last week I was going to suggest that we change a workout we had planned. And before I could get through the sentence, he was completing it for me. I could only say: "Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I'm glad you agree." We switched a repeats session from 1Ks to 2 miles. He's been coming off some knee problems, and the switch seemed a good idea.
Before we talk about this year, let's talk about 2008 when Meb had the really serious injury problem. Did you wonder if he'd be able to come back from that?
BL: Let's say this. After we finally got the hip stress fracture diagnosed, I knew it was going to take a lot more than just a long rest period. After that, it was going to require an incredible amount of work to correct the imbalance, and that was even before Meb could get going with serious running training again. And the timing was so bad. To lose 2008, an Olympic year. And there are no guarantees in this game. He could have made the decision to come back, and to put in all those hard twice-a-day workouts, and you never know if they're going to pay off or not.
Meb had already been to the mountain top once, when he won the silver medal at Athens. Now the question was: Are you willing to start at the bottom and try to make the long climb back to the top again? We talked a lot about this. I told him I would completely understand if he said he didn't want to go through it again. Fortunately, his answer was: "Yes, I want to do it again." And I can tell you, when Meb makes this kind of decision, he goes above and beyond. I have tremendous respect for him. I give him so much credit for going through everything he's had to go through. His story is one we should keep in the top file to show to other athletes in the future as an example of someone who overcame some really difficult things.
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