Interview with Thom Little

By Shannon Martin

Thom Little, 36, ran his first marathon just six years ago in order to cover up a white lie. After that race, which he ran in a respectable 3:19, Little was hooked. His marathon PR is now 2:25:55, which he achieved on the ING New York City Marathon’s challenging course in 2006. Since he was only 3:55 away from the qualifying standard for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials—Men’s Marathon, Little made it his goal to run 2:22 in 2007 and earn the right to join the country’s best marathoners in Central Park on November 3.

Little made his first attempt at the Boston Marathon in April. Fighting severe headwinds and brutal rain, he managed to finish in the top 50, but his time was 2:28. He took another shot at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon in October. Mother Nature wasn’t very kind in Chicago, either. The temperature rose to 87 degrees during the race, and the heat and high humidity forced thousands of runners to drop out. Little’s thoughts progressed from “This isn’t too bad; I’m keeping a pretty good pace,” to “I don’t think I’ll hit 2:22, but maybe I can still PR,” to “I think I’ll have to drop out and go for a different goal: to PR at the [ING] New York City Marathon on November 4.” For the first time in his life, Little dropped out of a race, not discouraged by missing the Trials qualifying mark, but excited to take another stab at the ING New York City Marathon and to help his team, the Nike Central Park Track Club, to come out on top as well.

Little, who grew up in the Lake George region of New York State, ran cross country in high school. He then attended Villanova, where he didn’t consider walking onto a highly competitive Division I team. When Little moved to New York City eleven years ago, he began running again merely to stay in shape. Mensracing had the pleasure of sitting down with Little for lunch at Tabla, near his midtown office, where he works as a producer for an ad agency. With an infectiously positive attitude, a great sense of humor, and sincere modesty, Little not only explains how he was able to make significant improvements in the marathon over the past few years, but also reveals several factors that make his life balanced and fascinating.

MensRacing.com: Why don’t you start off by talking a little bit about Chicago? What was going through your head during the race? And at what point did you decide to drop out?

Thom Little: I was planning on finishing Chicago no matter what. I was going to go for it; I was going to overcome the heat obstacle. You get idealistic about it; you want to be that one guy who is able to withstand the heat. I was with the pack; most of them were these fast Philly guys who I ran Boston with. We were working together; we hit the 5K and we were okay in time. It was definitely an effort due to the heat; I remember passing a bank and the temperature sign said 82 [degrees], which is not a good visual cue; it scares you. I kept falling off the pack and I’d speed up to catch them. By the fourth time I was exhausted. I was just trying to [practice] mind over muscle; I couldn’t hang on though. I fell off the pack before the 10K mark. I realized pretty quickly that reaching the Trials mark was out of the question, but I thought that I could still run a decent race and maybe PR. That thought quickly went away—I had to slow down more. I realized that a sub-2:30 might not even be on the menu. That kind of time wasn’t worth the battle, so I started thinking about New York.

MR: While you were in this race, you were trying to make a calculated decision?

MG: That’s right—As soon as I fell off the pack I was doing this math in my head, trying to figure out pace and timeline, goals, and realistic achievements for that day. When I toed the line, I wasn’t planning to quit; I had never stopped in a marathon before, so this was a big deal. I thought about what I would get out of this race: an okay time in terrible conditions; I had already done that in Boston, though. So, I really slowed down until I saw the bus that was picking people up. I got on it and thought “I’ll fight another day in New York.”

It’s always hard to drop out of a race, but after I knew I wasn’t going to PR, I thought about New York and thought that it would be really great to help out my team, and maybe I could improve place-wise as well. Last year, I was the second local finisher; maybe I can be the first local finisher this year.

All I know is that I’m gonna run the race hard; I have the upper deck this year which will be exciting and different. I’m just gonna go for it and at the very least PR. Some people have asked me if I’d be disappointed if I ran a 2:22 in New York after the window has been closed. My answer to them is “Are you kidding me? No way—I’d love it!” It’s a great time and so what, the window closed, it could help me place well and probably win some money. I think New York is a great race—I’ve run it four times now. I’m looking forward to it.

MR: That’s a very positive attitude to have. Didn’t it disappoint you a little bit though that you had the weather against you both in Boston and Chicago? That’s pretty unlucky!

MG: [laughs]…and I’m Irish—how do I get this kind of luck? What do you do, though? That’s the one thing about the marathon—you get one shot that day and if it doesn’t line up, you lose out. In this case, I turned one shot into two. I didn’t make the Trials in Chicago; it didn’t work out so I dropped out without much damage—now I’m gonna go for it in New York. I’m lucky in that regard, that there’s still New York. You can’t control things, and dwelling on it is living in the land of negativity and I don’t buy real estate there.

MR: Well, your answer is the perfect segue into my next question: What do you think of our Olympic Trials process? Other countries select their Olympians based on how they’ve performed in various races; here, you get one day, one shot! In the marathon, there are so many variables that can go right or wrong to affect your performance.

MG: I kind of love it, the way we do it. I love that whoever shows up that day and has qualified has a shot. This year is gonna be great—when was the last Trials where you’ve had a cast of six people who could make it and you’re not sure who’s gonna be on the team? I mean Meb [Keflezighi], a [silver Olympic] medalist in 2004, might not make the team because there are so many great guys. That’s pretty exciting!

As far as the U.S. Trials process, I think they’ve done enough already allowing 5K and 10K guys to run the race. That’s been a little bit controversial, but that’s just allowing them to run the Trials. As far as our process of making the Olympic team, I think it’s great. In the Olympics, you don’t get a do-over, so why should you get a do-over at the Trials? One day, one shot—that’s what the Olympics is all about.

MR: Are you going to try to qualify for 2012?

MG: January 1, 2010—that’s the day the window opens. I’ll be 38 then and I’ll give it a go. It’s something to look forward to and see if I can get faster in the meantime. Three masters runners qualified [for 2008]. It’ll be a confidence booster to run a sub-2:22 before that window just to know that I can do it. It’s not like I’m going to save myself, and wait to try to break it when the window opens. It just involves a lot of patience.

MR: You’ve been getting a lot of PRs over the past few years—what do you attribute those PRS to?

MG: Focus, intensity, and smarter training. The day I picked up the [Pete] Pfitzinger [and Scott Douglas] Advanced Marathoning book, I got faster and worked off that for a few years when I was on my own. Then, I joined Central Park Track Club and I love training with those guys. I never win the 400-meter or 600-meter intervals, but I have teammates to hang onto. The combination of the teammates and having a coach [Tony Ruiz] make great workouts for you explains my 10-minute PR [in the ING New York City Marathon] from 2005 to 2006. I improved from a 2:35 to a 2:25.

MR: Let’s rewind a bit—when did you become a marathoner?

MG: [laughs] Well, it’s kind of a two-part story. My sister ran the Marine Corps Marathon and I went down to watch her. She ran it in around 4:30, so I was waiting to see her finish and I saw all these guys come running by and I thought “I’m not in great shape, but I could run faster than a lot of these guys.” So, I thought to myself that I’d run a marathon eventually.

I started running and I was keeping a log on my Palm Pilot at the time and a co-worker needed some phone number so I gave her my Palm Pilot and she accidentally clicked on my log and she said, “What are you doing?! What is this?” I told her that it was my log for my runs. She said, “You’re such a nerd.” I was totally offended and defensive so I lied and said “Well, I’m gonna run a marathon; I’m training for a marathon!” And then he was totally cool with it. I wasn’t even [laughing], so I had to find a marathon to make my claim valid. I ended up running Hops by the Bay Marathon in Tampa with my best friend and I ran a 3:17 for my first one.

MR: When was that?

MG: In 2000.I inched along after that. I went from 3:17 to 2:58 to 2:47 to three hours, and then back down to 2:41, 2:39, 2:35, 2:25 and then 2:28 in Boston. So much of my improvement was just intention; I saw that I was better so I focused more on the details, like making sure that I don’t do my long runs hung over, that I do enough tempo runs, stuff like that. I obsessed about it more. One time I broke my collarbone in a triathlon and I couldn’t run for two and a half months. I just kept telling myself I’d come back stronger. I dropped 15 pounds and I came back as an entirely new runner.

MR: So you consider it a healthy obsession…

MG: Yes. I think a lot of people avoid running because they worry about their knees. I recently told someone that running is like eating—you can do it well or you can do it poorly. You can have Twinkies, pizza, and beer all day, or you can eat healthfully. You can run on cement all the time where you’re pounding your feet, and sure, your knee will blow up. Or you can run on dirt, and develop a healthier gait. I think that a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a right way to run and a wrong way to run.

MR: How often do you run on soft surfaces?

MG: I do all of my weekend long runs on the bridle path; I commute up there from the Lower East Side. During the week, I don’t have time to do that, so I’m relegated to the pavement. I love running on the bridle path and I get up there whenever I can.

MR: You mentioned gait—what do you do to improve your gait?

MG: Well first and foremost, you’ve gotta listen to your feet; the more noise your feet are making, the more shock you’re sending to the body. I got two stress fractures early on, one in my shin and one in my foot. I wanted to remedy those injuries and avoid getting them again. I heard someone talking on the radio before about gait and he said, “Pretend you’re running on ice.” I think about that when I run and my stride has become efficient, so luckily I’ve been injury-free. I’m hoping to keep running and avoid having knee problems or getting stress fractures again.

MR: So how long have you been injury-free?

MG: Since ’03.

MR: You must be doing something right then! Let’s talk a bit about your team, the Nike Central Park Track Club.

MG: It’s nice to have people to train with. I’m not a big “running at night” person but I do it twice a week to practice with the team. They’re a great bunch of people, too.

It’s good running with teammates on the weekends too because you can do 18 miles and the time just flies. You’re doing laps on the bridle path and you’re running with 14 different people, so when you get bored with somebody, you can talk to another guy [laughing].

MR: I happen to have seen a picture of you leading the Staten Island Half-Marathon with some not-so-kind four-legged creatures jumping at you. Would you like to tell us about that?

MG: Oh, God [laughing]; that was so over-hyped. It was merely, I don’t know, 10 seconds of drama and now there’s been hours and hours of banter and dialogue about this!

MR: Weren’t you a little bit shocked about this happening in a race, though?

MG: Yes, I was so shocked! The funniest part is that I see the dogs coming and they go right for the red lead truck, and people in the truck start shouting, “Get away! Get away!” I was thinking, “ Do the lead truck people know where these dogs are going to go after they ‘get away,’ because I know where they’re coming,” and sure enough one dog went straight for me and the other went toward Elmustafa [McHkirate]; apparently they didn’t bother him. The dog that was heading my way came right at me. I got bit about two years ago just walking on the sidewalk, so I’m very dog cautious. [Laughing] I don’t know what’s goin’ on there, but he was trying to chomp on my leg--coincidentally the same calf that the dog bit two years ago--so I kicked him in the head a few times and finally he got the message and left. It definitely broke my concentration, but I went out way too fast anyway, so the dog thing had zero effect on the race results. It would have been a big deal if the dog had bit me, but he didn’t.

Staten Island is a big no-show race, so I came in third. If it were farther from New York[the ING New York CIty Marathon] on the race calendar, there would have been a stronger field and I would’ve placed a lot lower down the line. See, I feel three weeks out is safe to run a half-marathon, to really race it, and some people are a little more cautious.

MR: What have you been doing the past couple of weeks to prepare for the [ING] New York City Marathon?

MG: I’m really focusing on my taper. Because of work travel, I was really cramming in my training for Chicago and I didn’t taper properly, which might have had a lot to do with my performance there. So for New York, I took it easy beginning three weeks out, and now it’s only a week and a half out, so with the team I’m doing light track workouts and on my own I’m doing easy runs.

MR: Do you plan to peak for certain races throughout the year?

MG: No, I’m not very good at tapering. So, if there’s a 10K or a half [-marathon], my taper will consist of two to three days, if that. I just like staying in overall shape. The marathon is the only race that I give a true taper to and it’s amazing how much that helps. I may do training runs at marathon pace and I’m exhausted and couldn’t imagine doing 26 miles at that pace, but when you run the actual marathon that you taper for and you crank it out really fast, it’s obvious the taper is powerful and you reap a lot of benefits.

MR: Aside from the hectic schedules when you’re traveling, do you feel as though your job and running balance each other out pretty well?

MG: Oh, yeah, running keeps me sane for my job...and the job, in a way, keeps me sane for my running [laughing]. They do balance each other out—my job gives me a lot of wonderful opportunities that I couldn’t imagine losing out on. For example, this summer I was doing a project for Delta Airlines and I was traveling all over the world for that, which definitely impacted my training for Chicago, but as it turned out, I could have been in the best shape of my life and I was still staring at 82 degrees and humid. I was able to see the world and had a great work experience learning how to run a contest, which I had never done before. Imagine if I’d turned that opportunity down and then I got injured! It’s a question of what’s a sure thing in life. The project this summer was a sure thing. If I had turned that down and trained my butt off, it still wouldn’t have been a sure thing that I would’ve qualified for the Trials.

MR: Your coach Devon Martin says that New York City has the potential to become the next running Mecca. Do you agree?

MG: I think the only thing New York doesn’t have is a brand. As an example, I was just in Dubai. Everybody wants to hear about Dubai; they could care less about the other dozens of cities I’ve been to over the summer, like Buenos Aires, Budapest, or Copenhagen. They ask me “What was Dubai like?” Dubai was the worst—it was a terrible city, awful! But they have such a brand built in and this buzz, you know, Michael Jackson lives there and [Eddie] Vedder had a place there.

With running, people don’t think about New York. They don’t understand that this is a city with a race at least one day of every single weekend, an affordable race, and if you don’t like to ride in the city, you can pop on a train and go to New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, or Upstate and there are races there that you can do. You can train on great trails in the Rockies [Rockefeller State Park in Tarrytown] and Central Park, and the community is great with team competitions.

It’s completely different than anywhere else, but people just don’t know about it. You ask someone in Delaware about running in New York—they’re not going to know. There are so many things going on, even races in Prospect Park [in Brooklyn], that a lot of people in Manhattan don’t even know about. There’s also great crosstraining to do in New York—you can ride your bike to Nyack with people. I think it’s just a matter of getting the word out. The more people who hear about New York and what it’s got going on, the more people would come here.

And the job opportunities are great. Look at [Karl] Dusen —he’s doing some consulting and despite his high level of training, he’s still able to make decent pay and have spending money. He’s able to balance it well. Do other cities give you that opportunity? Not really. I mean, the best I’ve seen is that you have Brian Sell working 20 hours a week at Home Depot stacking stuff and probably missing out on a couple of naps a week.

I think the best thing about New York is that it’s not identified by any one thing. There are so many different interests. Look at Fam [Anthony Famiglietti]; he does poetry and painting, and music, and all this other stuff. Would he be able to do that in Mammoth Lakes? No—he’s not going to have those options. So, New York allows you to be a far more diverse person, be it work, play, or anything else.

MR: Okay, there is one more question that I’ve been dying to ask you. You drive a taxi for fun! Would you care to tell us more about this hobby?

MG:Sure! I’m a licensed New York taxi driver; I’d always wanted to do it. When I moved to New York City, I was driving the box trucks in order to pay my dues in the film business as a production assistant. So, I learned how to drive in the city in those, which was daunting at first and then became very easy pretty quickly, so driving a cab is a joke—it’s so much easier.

As a freelancer, I’d occasionally have weekdays off. So, one summer, I took all the necessary classes to become a licensed cab driver; I passed all the tests, so now I have a license. So I drove a lot my first year, a little less my second year, and this last year, I’ve only done maybe one shift.

It’s a total hobby, but I just haven’t had time this year. I’m still freelancing with this agency, but I call it permalancing because I’ve been there for two years now. This year was my workaholic year; I’ll keep the ball rolling until January 1, just to have one good year on the books.

The best part about being a cab driver is that you just learn so much about people. Someone gets in a cab and you think you have them figured out; you think you know how this is going to go; you think you know where they’re going to go, how talkative they’re going to be, what they’re going to do, and how much they’re going to tip you. I tell ya, I’m wrong four out of four on so many people. It teaches you that you can’t judge anybody by the cover; it’s kind of crazy! You learn so much. The best tip I ever got was from this family who was coming from LaGuardia Airport and I was dropping them off in the Bronx. I didn’t know where I was going and I had to pull over and check a map! That’s probably my best story—they were really nice!

MR: What have been some of your favorite experiences so far as a cab driver?

MG: I have a few. I was driving this girl to a job interview and we were in the middle of this great conversation and then, we’re there! And so I said “Well, we’ve arrived at our destination. Good luck with your interview.” So, that’s hard, there are some people you really hit it off with and you still have this end.

Another time, I had this little boy in the cab with his Jamaican nanny and he was on the phone with his mother, and he was so articulate. He said, “And the gym coach, he used his outdoor voice at me!” It was precious, and at the end of the ride, I turned to the nanny and I said, “I’ve got to ask—how old is this kid?” and she said, “He just turned eight.” He was eight going on 50!

I get more out of the silent people than the people I talk to. For instance, you see this business guy in the back and he’s staring out the window and you just kind of wonder “What’s going on? Is he thinking about his kid? Is he thinking about his wife? Is he thinking about his job?”

MR: Thank you so much for talking with us.

MG: Thank you.

Interview conducted October 25, 2007, and posted October 31, 2007.