Saturday, September 18, 2010

Nick Willis interview

By Peter Gambaccini for RunnersWorld
Nick Willis of New Zealand (and Michigan) will compete in the Continental Airlines Fifth Avenue Mile on September 26. It's a race he won in 2008 in 3:50.5. Willis was originally the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist for 1500 meters but he was upgraded to a silver when gold medalist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain was disqualified for a positive drug test. Willis won the 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medal in the 1500 and defending that title in Delhi, India in October is a high priority for him. He holds the New Zealand 1500-meter record of 3:32.17. While competing for the University of Michigan and Coach Ron Warhurst, he won the mile at the 2005 NCAA Indoor Championships and was a member of two NCAA Indoor Distance Medley Relay champion quartets. On a comeback after surgery rehab for a labrum tear in his hip, Willis won the mile at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games in 3:55.26 in February and then set a New Zealand indoor 1500 record of 3:35.80 with a fifth place finish at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham. But he required meniscus surgery in his right knee at the end of March and just recently has able to return for some races in Italy, including a 3:35.17 victory in a 1500 in Milan. Check out his website, including his wife Sierra's terrific blog, at www.willisrunning.com

Sometimes the winners at Fifth Avenue are people who didn't have a full track season and have raced sparingly. Instead of tiring at the end of a season, you might be coming into your own just at the right time for this event. Do you feel that way?
Nick Willis: Yeah, I certainly hope so. In 2008, I was still in very good shape. I was emotionally exhausted, but physically, I was still in very good shape. I mean, I would have had to have been to take down Bernard Lagat. This year, I have a lot of fitness but I'm not very race sharp., although I had a couple of good ones in Italy. Yeah, I think it will be fantastic if I continue to improve those performances. Because of the Commonwealth Games still being a month away for me and not having a big background, I needed to be careful that I didn't use the Italy races to start off an early peak. So we've gone back to the drawing board for these two weeks and I've done some good strength workouts. I'm even running a cross country race on Friday, a college meet at East Lansing, just to keep the endurance going. Maybe that will help me peak better for the Commonwealth, but we'll have to see whether it helps or sort of disarms my arsenal for the Fifth Avenue Mile. But I'm very excited and confident that I can compete right up until the last 50 yards.

Is that a 5k or 6k cross country?
NW: It's an 8k. We're not going to run our hardest. Instead of doing a solo tempo run, this way I can run with a bunch of people and they'll help me feel like I'm jogging around instead of having to grind it out on my own.

One of the things in your wife Sierra's recent blog that interested us was this Ron Warhurst "Michigan workout" you did in which she says you ran the last 400 in 53 seconds. Running the last 400 of any workout in 53 seconds in impressive. That's got to make you think that you can, as you say, really do something in those last 50 yards on Fifth Avenue.
NW: Yeah, I certainly hope so. That Michigan workout is a grueling effort of six or so miles. I put in a little more time to recovery so I could put on my spikes for that final 400 in that workout. But I'm going to have to be able to kick like that to beat the likes of Amine Laalou (of Morocco), who has already run 3:29 this year (for 1500) and also won the Continental Cup. He deservedly would be the favorite, in my opinion. And then there's Bernard Lagat, who also won the Continental Cup double (in the 3000 and 5000). Those two guys who are at the top of the world in their events.

The last time I did that race (the Fifth Avenue Mile), I won. It's hard to take that from my memory. Naturally, when you won on a certain track or in a certain competition, you go through that same mindset or viewpoint the next time you stand on the line. So I'll feel that I won here last time, there's no reason why I won't expect to that again. That's how I'll approach it, and I'm really looking forward to getting amongst the best guys in the world.

Are there secrets to running his race, as opposed to a regular track mile? It does have a hill, and then a downhill. You have to careful not to expend everything at that point.
NW: For anything over 600 meters in my intervals, we don't go on the track. we go to what is called the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, so often we're going over rises and dips and stuff. You learn how to adjust your stride according. I find in that second quarter on Fifth Avenue, when you start hitting that hill, the key is to shorten up your stride a bit rather than try and power up it. You've got to become more economical, so you sort of shuffle up the hill a little bit more so you're not fatiguing your quads. I've got that technique stored in my muscle memory from a lot of the training we do. And being a straight race rather than laps around the track, it suits guys like me or Andy Baddeley, the winner last year. We normally start off more conservatively and work our way through the field. When you're on a track, you have to go around the outside on the right hand side and you're turning corners on every bend, so that's a couple of extra yards, but on a straight course, you can pass people on the inside or the outside and you don't have to run much further distance. It allows us to run a little bit more of our race naturally and you never feel like you're getting too far behind if you're starting out more conservatively.

You ran 3:35 in Milan. Considering the effort you put in and the time, how satisfied were you with that 1500?
NW: Very satisfied with the win. I was actually quite frustrated afterward. My wife (Sierra) had to quickly remind me "hey, this is awesome, considering what we've come back from." But I definitely thought I was in 3:34, maybe 3:33 shape. I didn't run aggressively enough in the last 500 meters. We went through the first 800 quite fast but I didn't know what it was. I heard them say "57" at the 800-meter mark and I thought he meant 1:57. But in actual fact that was the lap split he was giving in the pacemaker. Before that lap, he had run a 57, so I figured "if I'm feeling tired coming through in 1:57, I better conserve for the last 300 meters because everybody will be kicking ferociously." But it turned out we were 1:54 (ie, 57 plus 57) and we really sort of tripped over each other for the last 450 meters until the last 100 rather than be dragged out by somebody in front. We definitely think there was a 3:33 high in there had the race been conducive for that. But most importantly, we got the win and that will give me confidence for the Commonwealth Games to practice those tactical situations.

Alan Webb started racing again at about the time you did. He's coming to Fifth Avenue. What's your take on him at this point? How ready does he look?
NW: Alan and I spent a lot of time together in Italy. We raced in both Padova and Milan together and we did most of our runs between those races together. He didn't want to become a third wheel when Sierra and I went away for two days to a hotel on a lake, but we hung out most of the time together. I was really encouraged by his attitude toward it all. Obviously, we're pretty empathetic to each others' situation, coming back and having a lot of injuries and setbacks.

The last time we'd seen each other was at Nate Brannen's wedding (in April) and I was on crutches. I had had surgery four days earlier. He (Webb) was in a boot from a stress fracture. It's been an interesting journey, and obviously we've got the Michigan connection from back in the day. It was just fun to be excited about getting back at it. We both talked about the future. We both feel like we're rookies starting out again. There's a new chapter starting in our professional careers and we both feel we're got another six to eight years ahead of us. We're both 27 years of age and we'd like to go, like Lagat, into our mid-30s. We're looking forward to a friendly rivalry but also doing some training together when opportunities present themselves.


You were hesitant to talk about this while it was still being adjudicated, but do you have any comments to make now about Rashid Ramzi's Olympic disqualification?
NW: I'm really pleased with how the process ended up taking place. Unfortunately, Ramzi never owned up to the issue, but I think that justice, I guess, has been served, and the medals have been handed out. Unfortunately, (Asbel) Kiprop missed out on his getting his medal (in Beijing; he's since been elevated from silver to gold) and doing a victory lap at the time. I was probably was the least affected in that I got to experience the jubilation of winning a medal and doing a celebration lap. Now I've been upgraded to a silver, but had that been the case at the time, I would have experienced pretty similar emotions. And Mehdi Baala (of France) was affected greatly. He didn't get to experience a medal at all (Baala was subsequently upgraded from fourth place to a bronze medal).

That's the downside to it. But I think the greatest thing that's come of this is it shows the athletes in the future "look, you might think you're ahead of the game, but now they can test you months if not years afterward and you're going to be humiliated and it's going to put shame to your country as well." Alan Webb and I were talking about this. This is a fantastic era to be running in. Yes, one or two people might be getting caught every now and then, but this is one of the better eras to be running in in terms of a drug-free sport because the testers really have been doing a great job either in terms of putting fear into those who are considering it (drug use) or they're actually catching those to keep them off the track as well. It's an exciting time to be a part of it.

Hopefully in London, we'll get 12 guys in the final and they're all clean and we can congratulate the winner, whether it be me or somebody else, with a genuine "good job, you ran the best race today and you deserve it."

You're been an elite runner for awhile and your talent is obvious, and the work you've done in the past is money in the bank, in a sense. But to some of us, it's surprising that someone who was operated on at the end of March can be back to running 3:35 for 1500 meters. Talking to you, and other athletes like Dathan Ritzenhein, it's a surprise how quickly you guys can rebound.
NW: The main thing is getting your body back to your racing weight. And then you need about six weeks of healthy training to get to about 90 percent of your best, or 85 percent. When I ran my sub-4:00 mile a month ago and people said "how do you run a sub-4:00 the first time," I said "well, if you really think about it, most of you would expect to run about ten seconds slower than your best ever." And when you have a faster personal best, it makes the other stuff look good, but really, it's still a whole nine seconds slower than what I have done in the past and probably a full 13 or 14 seconds slower than what I think I'm truly capable of. Unfortunately, like Dathan, I've had a lot of setbacks and never really been able to test myself with two good years of training the likes of which (Chris) Solinsky has shown the benefits of getting in.

I knew I wouldn't be able to get down to running 3:30 or 3:29, but maybe I could get back to 3:32 or 3:33 by the Commonwealth Games, and it looks like that is the kind of fitness I will be in.

It's been two years since the Beijing Olympics. There is always going to be a new crop of runners coming up. I assume there must be a couple of new guys in the 1500 who've impressed you a lot.
NW: Yeah, this guy Silas Kiplagat sort of came through out of nowhere. I don't think he'd even run a race in Europe before he ran 3:29. Amine Laalou, the Moroccan, has certainly made a good transition from the 800. Running 3:29 is a territory that we haven't seen for a few years now. And it wouldn't surprise if there are two more guys from that continent, maybe a Moroccan or a Kenyan, who come out and upstage them by the time London comes around. Unfortunately, when you're from Kenya, it's very challenging to stay at the top because there's always someone else to steal your spot.

And then more locally, Andrew Wheating – I always thought he had that talent when I saw him run 3:38 as a sophomore at a low level meet. It was very impressive to me and surprising, to me, for him to able to do that (a 3:30.90 for 1500 meters in Monaco) after such a long collegiate season. It's very challenging to stay motivated after doing all those championships races where you have to run qualifying races and then finals, and then to go through the whole rigmarole of traveling around Europe and line up against guys who are fresh. That shows he's got quite a good sustained drive to go into a long season. The day that Ryan Gregson (of Australia) ran 3:31 and broke the Oceania record was in that same race (as Wheating), and that sort of woke me up from that slumber when I was coming back from injury as well, I thought "gosh, I've got to start running healthy, I've got to get back to being serious." It's good that they're running fast because it gives me the accountability to try and match some of their times. It's exciting to see that it's possible for those training Down Under or those training stateside that they can match the times that Alan Webb and I have sort of helped lay the pathway for.
 
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