Halfway into the 2009 world marathon championship in Berlin, Desiree Davila sat 42 seconds off the lead pack in 1:14:21 and 28th place. No scooter-mounted cameras fed her every stride to dissecting commentators. To the few who observed her -- other than her coaches, who knew better -- she appeared out of the race, an anonymous Team USA marathoner clicking off solo 5:38 miles.
"She has a quiet confidence about her," says coach Keith Hanson who, with brother Kevin, has coached Davila over her six years as a member of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, based in Rochester, Mich. "She doesn't say something she doesn't believe."
Before Berlin, Davila laid down the verbal gauntlet, announcing goals of running a 2:28 and finishing in the top 15, an ambitious prediction considering her PR was 2:31:33 and only one other U.S. woman, Deena Kastor, had placed as high in a world championship or Olympic marathon in the previous decade. But Davila had her reasons.
Earlier that spring, Davila set PRs at 3,000m, 5,000m, and 10,000m. With these accomplishments in her back pockets, Davila and the Hanson brothers were confident of her capabilities.
"It's been almost predictable: If we do x and y, we will achieve z," says Kevin Hanson on how track segments feed the bigger goals of Davila's marathon performance. "Whatever you train her to, she's going to run. [She] comes to the starting line saying, 'I know I can do this well.'"
It's this level of mutual trust and confidence, slowly built over a professional career, that makes Davila and the Hansons an effective team.
Starting at the half of the world championships marathon, Davila launched an assault on the field, negative-splitting the course and gobbling up international competition en route to running 2:27:53 -- a PR of over 3 and a half minutes -- good for 11th in the world, just one place and 5 seconds behind Kara Goucher.
As fall marathon season approaches, Davila eyes another breakthrough performance, but to get to the streets, the Hansons again steered Davila to the source of her previous success, the track.
Since Berlin, Davila has set PRs at 3,000m (8:51), 5,000m (15:29), and 10,000m (32:06), even somewhat improbably donning the Team USA uniform again at the 2010 indoor world championships in Doha, Qatar, where she made the 3,000m final.
"You're not developing if you're racing two marathons a year," Kevin Hanson says. "As soon as you're recovering from your last race, you're starting the next segment. It's why so many marathoners become stale. People sometimes get themselves pigeon-holed in one event. When you do that, it affects your overall development."
The Hanson brothers use track or cross country segments to break up marathon training for their athletes, following a rule of no more than three marathons every two years. For Davila, it has meant the difference between a 2:31 marathon and a 2:27.
"The goal is the 2012 trials," Davila says, unequivocally. "But you have to be well-rounded, and competitive throughout the range of distances."
Davila's track season concluded after the 10,000m at the outdoor national championships on June 24, where she placed 3rd behind Amy Begley and Lisa Koll, and July 3's Prefontaine meet. Then her training shifted toward a fall marathon. Her accomplishments during the spring track season point to another breakthrough marathon, and Davila and the Hansons have decided that nowhere offers a better opportunity to display her fitness than on the flat and fast course of the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10.
How fast can she go?
"When we chart her progress on the track as we have in the past, we're looking at a couple-minute PR in the marathon," says Kevin Hanson.
"We look for her to be competitive in the 2:25 range," says Keith Hanson. These are tall claims -- breaking 2:26 would make Davila the fourth-fastest American in history, behind only Kastor, Joan Benoit Samuelson and Goucher -- but so were Davila's predictions for Berlin. Davila isn't one to guess about races; she performs at the level to which she's trained.
"If [my coaches] say 2:25, I know I'll be ready to run it. We'll go after it, and Chicago is a great place to do that," says Davila.
The formula Davila followed to her Berlin race is rolling toward a dynamic performance in the fall, and when it happens, no one will be less surprised than Davila herself.
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