Week 5

Friday, October 19

Tempo Sports

“You know who that guy is?”

The Centaurus High School Cross Country team turned as their spike-haired coach pointed down the dirt path at the lean runner cruising by on the Davidson Mesa. “That’s Alan Culpepper, one of the fastest guys in the world,” the coach said.

Unaware of his audience, the defending U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon champion was out alone again, notching 11 miles on one of his favorite routes in the western meadowlands beneath the Rocky Mountains. Running amongst the coyote and black-tailed prarie dogs has been Culpepper’s method since graduating from CU in 1996.  But though his self-coaching has produced two Olympic team berths and national cross country and track crowns, his days as a lone wolf have come to an end.

“It’s funny,” Culpepper says. “A year ago I couldn’t find anyone to run long with except Andrew Letherby. Now there’s this big group.”

For more than a decade, the Boulder running scene was made up of a compilation of individuals rather than a cohesive team. There were lots of national and world-class runners in town, but other than transient camps of Kenyans, Japanese, and Romanians, none of the locals worked out together. After the 2007 USA Cross Country Championships, which was directed successfully by Pete Julian and won by Culpepper, that each-to-his-own mentality began to change.

“I came here in 1994,” recalls Pete Julian. “That was before group training disappeared. We were all still buddies, but we just got away from working together. Everyone was fragmented. We’d socialize, but not train together. Cross country nationals brought everyone back.”

It came back because Julian, Culpepper, and Steve Jones, the former world record-holder in the marathon, realized that in order to reach the highest levels of performance, you simply couldn’t go it alone. Jonesy didn’t in his day. Kenyans don’t. Ethiopians don’t.  Japanese don’t. Americans can’t either.

“Me, Pete, and Jonesy got organized after the cross country nationals,” explains Culpepper. “It was in response to our own needs—mine and [wife] Shayne’s. There comes a point where you can only do so much by yourself. There were just a lot of guys not getting the support to compete at the next level. And there was too much support [available] in town not to take advantage of it.”

Culpepper’s training for the 2005 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon consisted of four 21-milers and four 20-milers. “I’d pass a group of Kenyans, ten of them, and I’d be wearing a belt with my Gatorade,” he says. “It was the loneliest training ever.”

As a kid in El Paso, Texas, Culpepper grew up running alongside the great African runners of Ted Bank’s UTEP teams. Back then, Culpepper’s coach, Sam Walker, had been a non-traveling member of one of the greatest collegiate teams in history, filled with Olympic medalists like Kenya’s Michael Musyoki. In those halcyon days, the UTEP Miners were pushed to ever-increasing heights by Bill Dellinger’s Oregon Ducks—Salazar, Chapa, Centrowitz, and McChesney—and John Chaplin’s Washington State Kenyans led by Henry Rono. 

“When I got out of college, I had Scott Larson, Pete Julian, and Mark Coogan to train with,” Culpepper says. “It’s a different sport now. With the rankings you are always measuring yourself against fellow Americans. If you have a bad race, the sponsors are looking. Plus, it wasn’t as deep back then as it is now. So you need to be more professional in your approach.”

The Culpepper-Julian-Jones response is called Tempo Sports, a professional-athlete enterprise modeled on Team USA California in Mammoth Lakes, home to Olympic medalists Meb Keflezighi and Deena Kastor.

“We watched the other groups in the country doing so well,” explains two-time Olympian Shayne Culpepper. “And we saw the need locally for extra support. Alan and I got a lot out of ourselves, but the others could use the extra help, and Alan knows so much.”

What they saw happening in Mammoth Lakes wasn’t just the coming together of great running talent, but the foundational elements that go into maximizing potential. It took a long while, but they finally made the commitment to encourage a group-training dynamic in Boulder.

“I just couldn’t get out of my car one more time into a 40-mile-per-hour wind for a solo long run,” laughs Alan. “I just don’t have that anymore. It beats you down. I mean, I could take it, but it’s not best for running at a high level.”

Culpepper also marveled how his wife could run her 4:05, 1500-meter PR being self-coached and doing every workout alone. “If she can do that without any help, what could she do with support?”

 “I came out in 1988 before my New York [City Marathon] win,” says Steve Jones. “Once you visit Boulder you always keep coming back. For a long time it was the Mecca of running.  And it’s a great place to train. But one reason people didn’t train together for a while was that they’d come and go. But Plaatjes, Coogan, and I trained every day.”

Runners have been coming to Boulder since the late 1960s when Americans realized the effects of altitude on training and racing. Kenyan star Kip Keino besting world-record holder Jim Ryun in the 1500-meter final at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics was the catalyst. Ever since, Boulder has been at the forefront of American running with its ideal mix of altitude and unpaved trails.

“I could never have done the training I did without the 22 guys I trained with every day,” remembers 1979-80 Road Racer of the Year Herb Lindsay. “And we couldn’t have done what we did as a group without knowing what [Bill] Rodgers, [Greg] Meyer, and the boys in Boston were doing. We brought the best out in each other.” 

In the 1980s, the world descended on Boulder. At one time Jones, Rob DeCastella, Plaatjes, Ingrid Kristiansen, Rosa Mota, Arturo Barrios, and Priscilla Welch—every one of them an Olympic champion or world-record holder—all lived in the same neighborhood. Jones, Plaatjes, and Barrios remain in Boulder along with Frank Shorter, the godfather of Boulder running. Today, Plaatjes owns the Boulder Running Company, while Jones is a coach of the Boulder Distance Project (BDP), a developmental team, and a Tempo Sports coach.

“I spent a lot of time training here for Boston, Chicago, and New York,” says Jones.  “Pete and Alan brought me in as a facilitator, and down the line as a coach. This will be an elite-level club, which takes the pressure off.  So Alan will get water every 20-25 minutes on long runs, and we’ll have pacers for track sessions.”

“It’s ridiculous not to work together,” says Julian. “This is not a cookie-cutter approach—we make sure individual needs are addressed. We have 15-minute 5K guys here who were 17-minute guys running with BDP. It all hurts the same from a developmental age to the very top. You cross over the same territory. There is a long transition to distance running.”

Tempo Sports will cater to the professionals, and leave the developmental work to BDP. Original Tempo members include both Culpeppers and 2006 USA 10,000 meter champion Jorge Torres. Others are expected to come aboard next year.

“Jonesy and I will coach,” says Culpepper. “Pete is more fund-raising and the business end. Will it elevate us to Olympic medals? I can’t say, but it will give us a better chance.  Mammoth is the model. We are not trying to get 29:40 guys down to 28:40. We are trying to take good guys, and raise it one to two percent to winning medals.

“Shayne and I are fortunate to live here in Boulder and to have been able to build a network of support,” continues Culpepper. “But we didn’t have an organized elite-level group providing all the small aspects runners need.”

They do now. And maybe one day when he runs along Davidson Mesa, kids from the Centaurus High School cross country team will look, and say, “You know who that guy is? That’s Alan Culpepper, the coach of Tempo Sports. He coaches the Olympic champion.”