Week 2

Wednesday, September 26

Carrying That Weight

The burden of expectation has been heavy for Dathan Ritzenhein

Dathan Ritzenhein doesn’t fully understand the investment that young American running fans have made in him: the yearning that they have for him to succeed, and the frustration they feel when he doesn’t. Perhaps it is his generation’s longing to find their own Steve Prefontaine, their Gerry Lindgren—men who stirred passions by taking on the world’s best at a young age and who led others in the quest for greatness.

As high schoolers, Michigan’s Ritzenhein, Virginia’s Alan Webb, and California’s Ryan Hall were touted as the potential saviors of American distance running. Now, with Webb having claimed the American mile record (3:46.91 in Belgium in July) and Hall the American half-marathon record (59:43 in Houston in January) and the debut marathon record (2:08:24 in London in April), two-thirds of this Big Three have come fully to form. Only the third of them, who beat Webb and Hall at the 2000 Foot Locker National Cross Country Championship when they were all high school seniors, has yet to hit one out of the park as a pro. And so the expectation game continues for Dathan Ritzenhein.

“Sometimes when things aren’t going so great, it’s like, Why is everyone against me?” said Ritzenhein from his new home in Eugene, OR, referring to the message-board postings his exploits have generated.

At the USATF Outdoor Championships in Indianapolis in June, he had found himself battling for the 10,000-meter title against fellow 2004 10,000-meter Olympian Abdi Abdirahman when suddenly it all went bad. “With three or four laps to go, I thought the race was setting up perfectly for me,” he recalled. “I was coming off a really fast two-mile [8:11 at the Prefontaine Classic], and I know the strength was there after my early-season 10K at the Healthy Kidney [28:08, a Central Park course record, in New York City on May 19]. So I knew all the tools were there. And then it was like someone flipped the switch and drained all the blood from me in 50 meters.”

Ritzenhein barely held on for third place as Galen Rupp of Oregon, the latest can’t-miss kid, whipped by him for second. Alan Culpepper, the Colorado two-time Olympian with the fearsome closing speed, was gaining fast as well, but he had let the margin grow too wide and fell three seconds shy of knocking Ritzenhein off the team headed to the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan, in August.

After collapsing to the track, Ritzenhein had to be half-carried up the ramp by two medical volunteers, his eyes rolled back in his head. “I wasn’t proud of that,” he said, “but at least I got through—made the team.”

But what of letting the win get away, especially after two great tune-up races that seemed to position him perfectly to win his first national track championship? “It was hot and humid,” explained Ritzenhein, “but it was compounded by the fact that I didn’t eat enough the week before the race. I had been reading a lot about how if you’re lighter you can be better in the heat and humidity. But I took it to the extreme, and I’m angry at myself for doing it the week of the U.S. championships.”

Ritzenhein’s coach, Brad Hudson, says he wasn’t aware that Ritzenhein hadn’t been eating enough. “He looked a little thin in Indianapolis, and I said so. After [the Prefontaine Classic two-mile], we were very confident, and I didn’t want him to lose weight if he was running well. Then he went to the Midwest and didn’t eat. It’s a fine line.”

That fine line seems to be Ritzenhein’s natural territory, even in triumph. Twice after winning the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships in high school, and again after winning the 2003 NCAA cross title, he collapsed just past the finish line, having given his last energy to the effort.

In Brasschaat, Belgium, in July, on the same day and track on which Webb eclipsed Steve Scott’s 25-year-old American record in the mile, Ritzenhein ran the 5000 meters. After leading with 800 to go and looking to be on his way to a substantial personal best, he lost nine seconds over the final lap to winner Markos Geneti of Ethiopia. Though he still managed a half-second personal record (13:16.06), again he had come up short.

Because of his early success, Ritzenhein has never had the chance to develop in anonymity. Every lap he runs has the wags and bloggers rooting or bashing him, depending on the outcome. “He was so successful at a young age that maturing puts some pressure on him,” says Ritzenhein’s wife, Kalin, who shared what she calls a “schoolyard romance” with him in grade school. The pressure really kicked into high gear after the World Cross Country Championships in Ostend, Belgium, in March 2001. There, in what Ritzenhein calls the best moment yet in his running life, he won the bronze medal in the junior race, taking the measure all but the greatest runner of his generation, Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia, and Duncan Lebo of Kenya. He followed that with a near–national high school record 13:44.70 for 5000 meters, missing Gerry Lindgren’s 1964 mark by less than one second.

“Sometimes it feels like the world is on my shoulders a little,” Ritzenhein concedes, “but I’ve been put in a very fortunate position. I have a good company [Nike] behind me. I get paid to run. How great is that? And it is a great feeling to see the support you receive from people you’ve never met. If I can give motivation to people, that just makes it a less selfish sport for me.”

“It is his drive that separates him,” says coach Hudson. “He pushes himself very, very hard. It’s a gift. Not to say he doesn’t have talent, he does. You can look at the physiology, but it comes down to how badly do you want it? And Dathan Ritzenhein wants it very badly.”

“Ritz,” and he’s often known, has matured since his days as a scrawny kid who first took up running with his dad, Jerry, after his parents divorced when he was 10. Now married and with a new baby on the way, Ritz has filled his life with much more than running.

“He’s changed a lot,” Kalin confirms. “In high school, running was everything. Now he has a family. Running is a big part of him, but other things are just as important. My wish for him is that he can look back and not regret or wish he hadn’t done that. I’d rather he say, ‘This is what happened. How do I build on that experience?’”

His latest experience was a ninth-place finish at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan in the 10,000 meters. He fell off the pace early, got lapped by the medal winners, and watched Abdi Abdirahman finish 30 seconds ahead in seventh place, having run with the leaders through 7K. It wasn’t just the speed of the Africans that was unsettling, but the manner in which they produced it, storming the battlements from the outset, taking no prisoners.

“It was a good experience,” reported Hudson. “It made him take another look at the marathon and realize how hard it is to run against these guys, especially in the heat. With that added element, he didn’t get his full fitness out in Osaka. But he is in very, very good shape, the best by far in his life.”

It can be argued that Ritzenhein’s injuries, though not all serious, have kept him from building the long, unbroken stint of training that is the foundation for any peak performance. This year he suffered a stress fracture following the USA Cross Country Championships in February, but he recovered quickly and has been injury-free since.

Dathan Ritzenhein has the passion, and his racing style quickens the heart, compels attention, and magnifies hope. That it has also frustrated his fans when their hopes for him fail to materialize is understandable. Throughout his career Ritz has represented one of his generation’s best hopes for an American return to world glory. Webb and Hall have gone through to the other side, and the fans wait to see if Ritzenhein, too, can lift the weight of all the expectations, theirs and his own.