Livin' The Dream, Matt Answers His Own Question
by Paul O'Shea
Running the Dream
One Summer Living Training and Racing
With a Team of World-Class Runners Half My Age
By Matt Fitzgerald
Pegasus Books, 214 pages, $27.95
Every race is a question answered, someone once said.
Matt Fitzgerald asked himself: How good could I be if I really got serious about running? Could I run a marathon faster than I ever had before?
Forty-six-year-old Fitzgerald had compiled a notable list of marathons (40), but none faster than 2:41.29. Not in the front rank on the starting line, he starts in another corral. Decelerating as he aged, injuries were a frequent running partner. Fitzgerald's last race took nine minutes more than his PR, run nine years before.
Still he wonders: what if I found a way to train with the best American runners, run their workouts, and get the counsel of one of the top coaches? What if all this gave me new motivation at a point in my career when I should be checking age group schedules.
Matt Fitzgerald makes a living writing. He's authored twenty books, including Iron War and Life is a Marathon, and innumerable pieces forRunner's World, Outside, Men's Journal and other publications. He does not make a living running.
He decides to join a high-end pro team, in exchange for writing a book about the experience.
The Californian persuades NAZ Elite, the Hoka One One team, to allow him to join its coterie of world- and national-class runners in Flagstaff, Arizona. They welcome the prospective book and the visibility Elite will get from an accomplished writer. It's a joint venture: Fitzgerald wants not only a PR, he wants more: sub-2:40 at the 2017 Chicago Marathon.
For 13 weeks he embeds with America's finer distance runners. Elite boasts two 2:10 marathon men, a national road champion, national cross country titlist, and women who have run a 2:28 marathon and a 1:11 half. He calls himself a "fake pro runner."
Like Chris Lear's Running With the Buffaloes, Fitzgerald's Running The Dream is a day-by-day journal of training and developing friendships with laser-focused athletes. There are good days and sad days (former Elite, Peru Olympian David Torrance, dies suddenly: his death is listed as "drowning" though teammates say he was a strong swimmer). Matt Fitzgerald's mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. His quest for the Holy Grail PR is almost upended by a "white-hot bolt of pain in his groin," on one of his runs. World-class physios work their magic and keep him upright. Like the pros, he schedules naps.
Another unsettling development for his teammates: a Hoka executive comes to Flagstaff to tell Coach Ben Rosario that it will reduce NAZ Elite funding to ten athletes from thirteen. Three runners are downsized.
Gradually, his workouts get better as he hits, then exceeds the goals he and Rosario set. For Fitzgerald, the workouts and the seven-thousand-foot altitude are the core of his progress. He watches and follows his teammates' lifestyles and makes major changes to his diet. He benefits from other amenities that elite runners enjoy: physical therapy, massage therapy, a
sports psychologist, race planning, and the camaraderie of a blue chip contingent.
Fitzgerald's confidence builds and just before heading to the Windy City he goes public with his goal: 2:39.
At Chicago Marathon race headquarters Fitzgerald takes us through the technical steps that elite runners handle with aplomb. Chicago requires a racing uniform check. Logos are measured (this isn't NASCAR). He's a legal bandit, but somehow draws bib number 33 (double digits, a credential given entrants with a sub-2:14 PR). He gets a waiver and joins forty-seven runners in the elite echelon.
Rosario and his teammates stress starting the race easily, restraining a rush of adrenaline that could later result in a serious energy deficit after twenty, miles. His mile targets are 6:05 each, and he is 1:19.41 at halfway. Fitzgerald pays attention, and hits his splits, misses a water bottle or two. He finishes with a lifetime best of 2:39.30, dead last in the men's pro division, but a personal best by almost two minutes. His mile pace works out to be
6:05.005. He calls his mother after the race.
Later, reflecting on the journey and the destination, he writes: "But as long as you can keep things in perspective, acting as though your very life depends on some semi-arbitrary number may lead you to a richer, more intense and textured experience of life than you wold had otherwise. I know it did for me, at least for the span of one enchanted summer in the
autumn of my life."
Fitzgerald answers his own question. He's lived his dream, he's the best he can be.
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Paul O'Shea writes about the sport from his home in Fairfax, Virginia. He has been an athlete, administrator, coach, sport journalist and traveler to international events. His attempt to complete the 1978 New York City marathon ended prematurely at 18 miles.
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