Week 7

Monday, October 29

The Road to Mammoth

We met up in Reno at 10:30 p.m., grabbed our gear and drove deadbolt straight out along I-395 through Carson City heading south to Gardnerville, Nevada. Behind us the lights of the casinos winked in futility against the luster of overhanging moon. My Chasing Glory partner Matt Taylor and I were on our way to visit Team Running USA in Mammoth Lakes, California, perhaps the most influential American running camp this side of the 1970s. But we had to get there by eight in the morning to meet Coach Terrence Mahon and his group for the first run of the day. We had hoped to make it in one drive, but Terrence had warned about driving at night. “It’s a narrow road,” he’d said, “and winding, too.”

So, at midnight we checked in to the Topaz Lake Inn, rousing the night manager for our room. We were out before dawn (the shortest hotel stay of my career) and, true to Mahon’s word, we soon found ourselves twisting through steep mountain canyons, their walls rising up sheer alongside the two-lane highway as it cut through Toiyable National Forest. Once into California, we passed sulfurous creeks emitting gasses from the earth’s crust, the steam hanging like low-lying fog in the crisp pre-dawn air.

By Devil’s Gate Summit we’d hit 7,000 feet altitude and were still climbing. Then, at 6:43 a.m., as we turned the shoulder of a mountain, the road opened, and the spectacle of sunrise over Mono Lake lay before us. In a scene right out of Lord of the Rings, the sun blinked over the rim of the jagged mountains and shimmered out on the wide, placid lake.

“The last volcano to erupt in this caldera was just 500 years ago,” Deena Kastor reported later. “Every peak you see is a volcano.”

It wouldn’t be the first time the majesty of the place took our breath away.

Just 14 miles from Mammoth Lakes, we passed 8,000 feet, then turned onto CA-203 for the final few miles into town. Team Running USA (formerly Team USA California) is home to three superstar runners: 2004 Olympic marathon medalists Kastor and Meb Keflezighi and rising star Ryan Hall. 

Taking in a lung-full of cool mountain air, you could feel the bounty here, the scope of the place, sitting beneath a beyond-blue sky with the red-trunk pines standing in tall relief against its unpolluted brilliance. It’s an out-West training camp, the kind boxers utilize for championship fights, a fortress of solitude where the focus is tight and contained in perfect isolation. It takes seven hours to drive from San Diego, five from LA, and the three we’d just driven from Reno, the closest airport. What happens in Mammoth stays in Mammoth. And you couldn’t get farther from New York City if you tried.

“Mammoth brings a lot for distance runners,” said Mahon. “It’s between 7,000 and 9,000 feet altitude, and wherever you see great distance running, it’s done at that altitude. Look at Ethiopia and Kenya. They’re situated between 7,000 to 9,000 feet, the same altitude. There are also great trails, terrain, and seclusion.”

Inside the Looney Bean coffee shop at the corner of Main and Old Mammoth Road, Kastor was sitting over her morning cup paging through a Spanish language workbook. She would have rather studied at home, but said she had no choice: “I ran out of coffee.” Now here we were, and that closed morning study hall for good.

The day we visited, the team was headed to Inyo National Forest for their morning session. Along were Kastor, her longtime training partner and Olympic Trials qualifier Mike McKeeman, Matt Byrne (another Olympic Trials qualifier), Hall, and newcomer Kassi Anderson, a former NCAA steeplechase champion from BYU.

As we turned off Main Street, Terrence pointed to the right. “That’s where Meb lives,” he said. Keflezighi was still down in his other home in San Diego, fresh off a 27:41 10,000-meter run in Belgium.

“This is the coldest place in Mammoth,” said Kastor from the back seat as we passed the kiosk at the entrance to the national forest. We took the fork toward Two Craters. In the middle of the forest we slid into a small parking lot outlined by log fencing.

“If you walk up this path a quarter-mile,” said Kastor, “you can see the two volcanic craters filled with water. It makes you realize how geologically active this area is.”

Today’s was a small group by Mammoth standards; usually a dozen or so would be along for the 70-minute run, including Keflezighi; Mahon’s wife, Jen Rhines (racing in Europe); Sara Hall and Dan Browne (on their way back from the USA 5K Championships in Providence, Rhode Island); and summer arrival Josh Cox (returning from Dayton, Ohio, where he’d made the Olympic Trials qualifying standard at the U.S. Air Force Marathon). 

The first part of the Inyo loop was over a narrow path winding through majestic Jeffery pines. Red-tailed hawks rode the currents overhead. Deer and chipmunks leaped or skittered across the trail, and everyone had heard tell recently of the black bears hanging in the trees.

Anderson had only joined the squad the previous Thursday; this was her first run at Inyo. On his mountain bike following along, Mahon laughed at her perception of training when she arrived. “After last Friday’s run, Kassi said, ‘You guys run really slow,’” he said. “But tomorrow we will be at 9,000 feet doing tempo.”

After 60 minutes, Anderson had had enough, and jumped into the back of the SUV. Though she’d come from 5,300 feet in Provo, Utah, the extra altitude of Mammoth was taking some adjusting to.

“This is Meb’s favorite run,” said McKeeman after everyone had finished and was back in the parking lot doing drills. “He hammers this loop. It’s his thing.”

 “Ryan loves the uphills,” said Kastor of the altitude-born Hall, who was stretching to her right. “Boulder’s altitude is nothing. But you add 1,000 feet, 2,000 feet, and you really feel it.”

“You get catabolic,” chimed in Mahon. “You can feel the muscles constricting with the lack of oxygen.”

Summer Sessions
There’s has been a long tradition of California high school and college teams coming to Mammoth in the summer months to train. Coach Bob Larsen used to bring Keflezighi and his UCLA Bruins up every summer. Now even Canton, Ohio-based Malone College and the Ivy League’s Princeton University have spent upwards of a month in Mammoth prepping for their cross country seasons. Kastor and her husband, Andrew, see opportunity ahead. “We want to open a high-end running camp when I’m through running,” she said; the couple has begun searching for property in the area to complete that dream.

With the success that’s come out of Mammoth since Team Running USA first arrived in 2001—its two Olympic medals, national titles, and American records—this model has spread. Boulder, Colorado, has re-fashioned itself in the Mammoth mold, and Flagstaff, Arizona, too, is seeing the benefits of not only of altitude, but of the Mammoth attitude as well.

It had been a good morning, a convivial morning. But the ease of the run, and the good news coming from teammates far away, somewhat belied the seriousness of the Mammoth runners’ intent. With the return of their compatriots, and tomorrow’s tempo run at Lake Mary at 9,000 feet, the hard edge of aerobic training will be back in focus. But now it was time to head home through the pines feeling the cool forest air, and rest for the afternoon session.