Week 5

Monday, October 15

The Back Roads of Boulder

A gentle rain had fallen quietly through the night, but as we pulled into the west gate of the Boulder Reservoir parking lot a soft crease of blue opened overhead, a hopeful sign for the Sunday morning long run ahead.

Most of the parking spots had already been taken, and several guys were eager to be off. Some stretched anxious muscles as they waited for the late arrivals. In all, 15 runners would gather for the run through the famous back roads of Boulder.

“Yesterday we had 14 guys doing light fartlek,” says Pete Julian, one of the founders of the Tempo Sports club. “Today we have a mix of two groups, the Boulder Distance Project and the elite group.”

Defending Olympic Marathon Trials champion Alan Culpepper, 2006 national 10,000 meter champion Jorge Torres, Boulder Distance Project runners Eric Griffith, Sean Nesbitt, and John Supsic, and Julian were going for a two-hour run. Torres’s twin brother Edwardo Torres and James Carney, who are coached by Brad Hudson as part of the Boulder Performance Training Group, were ramping it up to 2:45.

As the group took off along the hard-pack dirt roads, Torres and Carney fell behind, saving their strength for the extra distance. Up front the boys loped past Triple Creek Ranch and Rubicon Farm.

Approaching the corner of Plateau Road on North 39th Street, a group of Kenyans from the KIMbia team came roaring by on a 15K fartlek session. Their team manager Peter Tanui waved from the cab of his red SUV as his guys tuned up for the ING New York City Marathon.

Fasil

Joining the KIMbia Kenyans this season is a lone American of Ethiopian heritage, Fasil Bizuneh. Born in Germany after his parents fled Ethiopia during the Communist reign of the 1970s, Fasil grew up in Indianapolis and attended Arizona State University. Like Eritrean-born Meb Keflezighi, and Somali-native Abdi Abdirahman, Fasil and his family found opportunity and hope in America. But like a candle blown by fickle winds, Fasil has bounced from place to place in recent times, starting with the now-closed Big Sur Distance Project in California. 

When Big Sur closed due to lack of funding, Fasil relocated to Bristol, Tennessee last summer to train with coach Scott Simmons. Now he was in Boulder fresh from a short training stint in Flagstaff, Arizona.

“I guess it is part of the lifestyle to go to the best training sites,” says Bizuneh, sitting in the sparse living room in the apartment complex he shares with his Kenyan teammates.  “Everyone was on a different schedule in Flagstaff, and I was too far from coach Simmons.”

With all his moving around, Bizuneh hasn’t raced since the July 4 Peachtree Road Race, which doubled as the U.S. 10K Championship. He only took 13th place, but was hampered by a hip injury that has since cleared up. These days he is doing all his training with last year’s ING New York City Marathon runner up Stephen “Baba” Kiogora of Kenya.

“Through most of my career I’ve been the best one in the group,” says the four-time All American from Arizona State. “Now Stephen is much faster, and I’m quite a bit behind.”

Though he hasn’t made his name at the marathon yet, with his Ethiopian pedigree and the promise he’s shown in shorter distances, he feels poised to break out. 

“I definitely want to make the Olympic team,” he admits. “With all the work I’ve put in I hope that at 20 miles I can engage. I haven’t had that in my other two marathons.”

His debut marathon was last year’s Twin Cities. He ran a 2:12 pace for 20 miles before finishing in 2:18:14. Next he tried the Flora London Marathon this past April. It was a disaster. But before London he carried a heavy racing schedule that he now realizes drained his tank.

“I ran the second fastest 5K leg,” he says of the popular Ekiden Relay in Chiba, Japan, in November 2006. “Then at the Houston Half-Marathon in January I finished behind Ryan (Hall), but beat Meb in the last quarter mile.”

Bizuneh continued racing, taking the lead at the U.S. 15K Championship in Jacksonville before fading to fourth, but it was a 90-second PR at the distance. Then at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Mombassa, Kenya, in March he smacked hard into the wall of heat and humidity, finishing almost dead last.

“A month later at the London Marathon I went through half-way in 1:05:30. I should have dropped out. I thought I was in 2:10, 2:11 shape, but at 65:30 I was two minutes behind the leaders and two minutes in front of the next group. It was like a time trial. At a race like London you shouldn’t go unless you’re 100% ready.”

He finished in 2:29:30. But with a world-class training partner like the good-natured Stephen Kiogora dragging him through workouts, Bizuneh will not be overwhelmed by any of his American rivals; however, his coach counsels patience.

“We need to work on some things with Fasil,” explains KIMbia coach Dieter Hogen.  “His lower back tends to get tight at the end of long runs. It is important not just to workout, but to stay healthy.”

Left Hand Canyon
At 10 a.m., we waited at the bottom of Left Hand Canyon at Route 36. This is where Carney and Torres would begin their final half-hour climb after two hours, 15 minutes of running.

Left Hand Canyon is a big hill with a mountain creek burbling to the left and stunning mountain views all around. But when the two young runners came by they were focused.

Carney is a 29 year-old Pittsburgh native from the South Hills section of the Steel City. Ed Torres is from Wheeling, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. They live at “The Fight Club,” the house the Torres brothers built with the help of their father while they were still students at CU.  The Fight Club has housed an uncountable number of athletes in its day, and now would love to place an Olympic medal on its wall of fame.

“Edwardo and James are in phenomenal shape,” declares Jorge Torres before the run.  “They are gonna turn some heads in New York at the Trials. Edwardo has two years of uninterrupted training. James too.”

Jorge himself won’t be lining up on Olympic Marathon Trials morning. The 2006 U.S. national 10,000-meter champion has run into a rough 2007 season, and after a disappointing Pan Am Games decided to back down and prep for the U.S. Track and Field Trials next year in Eugene, Oregon.

A half-hour into their climb, Edwardo opened the slightest of gaps on Carney just as they finished at Buckingham Park.

“It was brutal,” declared James.  “Like hell. There was no water the last half hour. I felt wobbly the last mile.”

Usually the guys run up Left Hand Canyon as a hill workout unto itself, rather than as the culmination of a long run. But this is the same training route the great Rob DeCastella of Australia used when he set the then-course record at the 1986 Boston Marathon. He had it measured out to simulate entering the famed Boston hills as he began his climb at Left Hand Canyon.

“Eight weeks ago we were dying running up this canyon,” says Edwardo. “We’ve got our strength beneath us now. And we did it today only 50-seconds slower than just our straight up run.”

As the boys gave us the wrap up it seemed every middle-aged cyclist within a 100-mile radius was either huffing up, or screaming down the mountain road. 

“We’re just sharpening up the last six weeks before the Trials,” says Carney, who ran the U.S. 10 Mile Championship two weeks later in Minneapolis. He finished third, with Ed a close fourth, confirming brother Jorge’s assessment of their fitness.

“I’m not too high on expectations,” continues Carney, who ran a solid second to Dan Browne at the U.S. 20K Championship in New Haven in September. “But I’m not intimidated either. I’ll stick my nose in there. And if I blow up, I blow up.”

Boulder feels like the 1970s again. Then, as now, the place is bursting with talent and buzz. Masses of rail-thin runners course these canyon roads and back road trails. But no longer are they alone, rather they have bunched together, supporting, cajoling, elevating one another in the process.

And it isn’t just the Americans. Along the Kenyans, Romanian stars Lidia Simon, Nuta Olara, Anuta Catuna, and Contantina Tomescu-Dita all own houses here. So do Japanese Olympic marathon medallists Yuko Arimori and Naoko Takahashi.  Add in the Culpeppers, Steve and Sarah Slattery, Colleen and Darren DeReuck, Kathy Butler, and you have as cosmopolitan a small city as exists in America.   

“I feel fortunate to have so many guys here,” says Carney as he and Torres climbed into their support car for the drive back down the mountain. Ahead beyond the mountaintops lies the chance of a lifetime waiting in New York City. There they will confront canyons of a very different sort.