CHAPTER:01 STARTING OVER Iarrive at the University of Michigan during the first week of March 2002, at the beginning of the outdoor track season. A handful of athletes will compete at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in a few days, but for the vast majority of collegiate and post- collegiate runners in the United States, the spring outdoor track season has arrived. Only it doesn't feel like it in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Old Man Winter is hanging on something fierce. Practice starts in an hour, at 3:30 P.M. After a 2-day cross-country drive, I'm loath to spend any more time driving my little jalopy around campus. So I walk to the athletic department to try to catch Michigan coach Ron Warhurst before practice. I find his office door open, and, as I peek in, I spot him hunting and pecking at his keyboard. I knock. He turns, "Christopher!" He grins broadly and waves me in. I take a seat on his couch beside a rag-tag pile of old newspaper clippings and track magazines. I notice a few All-America plaques on the wall from Warhurst's early days at Michigan. I know they're hardly representative of his total haul: In his 27 years with the university, his athletes have won 94 All-America honors in cross country and track and field combined. Warhurst looks as I remember him from my visit last November, when I traveled here for an initial visit to talk up my book project and get everyone on board. As we chitchat about my trip and his runners, I listen to his deep baritone voice, gravelly from years of smoking. His laughter erupts freely and often in an infectious cackle. An ex-Marine, Warhurst has both the authoritative air and the incisive wit of a drill sergeant, and he brings a drill sergeant's old-school approach to his coaching. He coaches on feel and instinct and tests the limits, both psychological and physical, of his athletes. Yet at times, he's also remarkably collegial. On his desk sits a framed wedding photo of him and his wife, Kalli. It wasn't too long ago that Coach Warhurst thought he'd die a bachelor, but now, this May, at age 59, the decorated Vietnam vet will become a father for the first time. For fatherhood, he's had practice. In coming months, I'll hear from multitudes of Michigan trackmen, some of whose names I see on the wall above me, who will tell me how Warhurst not only coached them to great performances but also helped steward them to manhood. Also in the next few months, Warhurst will face the greatest challenge of his career, one that will test all the assumptions and tenets of his three decades of coaching. That challenge will revolve around Alan Webb, his newest track sensation. ALAN WEBB: MAKING A COMEBACK The phone rings. Warhurst takes the call and I duck out. I walk briskly across the parking lot from the athletic building to the University of Michigan Indoor Track Building to await the arrival of Webb and the rest of the Wolverines. The building is like a large airplane hangar, and, at first glance, I think I'm alone. I notice a couple of old bleachers. As I walk past them, I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. "Hey!" Webb yells to me from beyond the second set of bleachers. Although practice won't start for another half-hour, Webb is already here, stretching to ready his body for the upcoming workout. He springs up, bounds over, and greets me warmly. Webb didn't compete this past winter due to a nagging Achilles tendon injury that first flared in December, persisted through the winter, and finally forced him to take a 2-week layoff from running. As we chat, I give him a once-over, searching for signs that this training break has softened his powerful physique. I see no marked changes from when I saw him in the fall. And I'll never forget what I witnessed then, 5 months ago. It was in November 2001, the week after Webb won the Big Ten Cross Country Championships. He was preparing to run the NCAA regional qualifying meet en route to the NCAA Cross Country Championships. Webb's teammates told me that he had been demolishing workout after workout all fall, consistently running times that boggled the mind. Yet I was still unprepared for how indefatigable and indomitable he looked. That day, I watched in awe as Webb ran a better Michigan (a workout that Warhurst's harriers have been running for some two decades) than anyone else ever had. The Michigan tests the range of a runner's talents, requiring the speed to devour track intervals of 1 mile and 400, 800, and 1200 meters, plus the stamina to endure punishing 1 1/4-mile road runs between the track intervals. Essentially, they run hard for just under 7 miles, with little break between repeats. With extraordinary control, Webb ran incredibly fast splits of 4:19, 0:54, 2:04, and 3:06 for the track work. He raved afterward about how much he had progressed since he ran his famed 3:53 mile (in the Prefontaine Classic), how in just half a year he'd made huge strength gains while preserving the ballistic speed that allowed him to run a 54-second 400-meter sprint while his teammates could manage nothing faster than a 58. "I felt so in control of my stride," he said after the workout. "I've never felt that much in control of my body, ever, even last year at the end of outdoor [track season]." It seemed that attending Michigan was agreeing with Webb, propelling his running to yet another amazing level. Coach Warhurst was just as excited about Webb's progress. Although Webb's fall training was designed to prepare him to run 10,000 meters--not the mile--at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, he had adapted so well to the training and had such natural speed that Warhurst knew Webb could go on to stun the world with a much faster mile time. "He can run a 4-minute mile right now," Warhurst told me after that spectacular workout. "So? I'm thinking [he can run] under 3:50. Everyone else in the world wants to know when he will run under 3:50. Well, it's gonna come, it's gonna happen, but I don't want it to happen next week. I want it to be at the NCAA outdoor 1500 or at the Penn Relays or in the summer. The summer is the key. I have to train him not only to represent Michigan. I have to train him to represent the United States." To train Webb to reach his potential, Warhurst planned a series of workouts to test both his mental and physical limits. "Basically, I want to see how far he can go without breaking down, and I want to see how he responds to the training. He's going to get faster by getting stronger to sustain the basic leg speed. It's simple, simple for me. And it basically starts with cross country to develop the strength." Then, in December, Webb's success began to unravel. After pushing hard, he injured his Achilles. He battled the injury throughout the winter. I know that now he fears another layoff. Spring track season is his season. The mile is his race. He doesn't want to do anything to his body that would jeopardize this. So, at the track building, I find him cautiously easing back into his running regimen. Today's task: 4 miles. This is child's play for him, but he's clearly excited to be running again. I watch him as he completes his pre-run stretches. Webb moves from one drill to the next with vitality, a boyish sense of excitement. As I marvel at his intensity, I realize that his previous accomplishments have done little to satiate his drive. Rather, they've whetted his appetite for more. KEVIN SULLIVAN: WORLD-CLASS MILER Webb, of course, isn't the only one here for practice. Over on the far turn, quietly going about his own stretching regimen, is 1998 University of Michigan graduate Kevin Sullivan--"Sully" to all who know him. Although he now volunteers to help coach the middle-distance and distance runners, Sully is an athlete first and a coach second. A world-class miler, he finished fifth in the 1500 meters in the 2000 Olympic Games. He's one of three professional world-class middle-distance runners now training with Warhurst in Ann Arbor, and he's one of the main reasons that Alan Webb decided to attend school and run track and cross country here. Of course, Coach Warhurst had wooed Webb by cultivating a relationship with his high school coach, Scott Raczko. But because Sully and other top milers already trained at Michigan, Webb knew he would be training with the best sub-4-minute milers in the country. That could only help him achieve his dreams. Sully's a quiet guy. He's so reserved and unassuming that he's easy to overlook, especially next to Webb, who, as the It guy in American track and field, commands the media's attention. Sully's anonymity in the United States is also a product of his nationality: He's Canadian. That he is a Canadian star in a sport that barely resonates with his hockey-mad countrymen makes him obscure enough to Canadians, let alone Americans. But anonymity suits his temperament. Sully trains not in hopes of fame or celebrity. Rather, he trains for the singular purpose of beating the world's best milers. He dreams of climbing a few places higher at the 2004 Olympic Games than he did in 2000, high enough to land a cherished spot on the podium. The coterie of world-class runners at Michigan is here, in large part, because of Sully. A native of Brantford, Ontario (best known as the hometown of hockey god Wayne Gretzky), Sully entered the University of Michigan in 1993 as the most sought-after recruit in North America. Before going to Michigan, Sully, at age 18, ran a sparkling 3:39.11 in the 1500 meters--equivalent to a 3:56 or 3:57 mile--to win the bronze medal at the World Junior Championships (for athletes 19 and younger). Warhurst's signing of Sully was a remarkable coup. Since his first year as coach at Michigan in 1974, he had distinguished himself as the orchestrator of one of the nation's premier distance-running programs. He could boast of coaching myriad NCAA All-Americans in events from the 3000 meters on up. His athletes include NCAA champions such as Brian Diemer (3000-meter steeplechase, 1983) and John Scherer (5000-meter indoor, 1989, and 10,000- meter outdoor, 1988 and 1989). Moreover, his cross country teams excelled year after year. From 1974 to 1992, his teams won four Big Ten titles in cross country, qualified for the NCAA Championships 13 times, and finished in the top 10 at the NCAA Cross Country Championships five times. Although Warhurst had certainly coached sub-4-minute milers, his forte was developing distance runners. Sully single-handedly erased any notion that Warhurst couldn't develop milers. At Michigan, he won the NCAA indoor mile title twice (1995 and 1998) and the outdoor title once (1998). Moreover, he did it while also excelling on the world stage. After his sophomore track season in 1995, he competed in the 1500 meters in the World Track and Field Championships and finished fifth. Upon graduation in 1998, Sully signed a sizeable endorsement contract with Reebok, yet he remained in Ann Arbor under Warhurst's tutelage. He was rewarded for his decision to stay. In July 2000, in Oslo, Norway, he ran his fastest mile--3:50.26. TIM BROE: SUB-4 MILER By the summer of 2001, two other professional middle-distance runners had gravitated to Ann Arbor to train alongside Sully. The first was Illinois native and University of Alabama graduate Tim Broe. Broe won the NCAA steeplechase title as an Alabama senior in 2000 and then missed the U.S. Olympic team by the barest of margins, finishing fourth at the Olympic Trials, just one place away from making the team. Broe signed a contract with Sully's agent, Mark Wetmore, shortly thereafter, and when he asked who should guide his career, Wetmore suggested he give Warhurst a call. They began collaborating by fax and phone, and Broe's running took off. In January 2002, after several training stints at Michigan, Broe moved to Ann Arbor to train full-time with Sully directly under Warhurst's supervision and serve as a volunteer assistant coach. He proceeded to go on a remarkable tear. On January 27, he ran a 7:39.23 at the Adidas Boston Indoor Games, breaking the U.S. indoor 3000-meter record of 7:39.94 set in 1989 by Steve Scott. Scott still holds the American mile record (3:47.6) that he set in 1982. On February 9, Broe won the USA Cross Country Championship in the 4-K. And on March 1, he won the 3000 meters at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships in 7:50.09, then came back a mere 2 hours later to finish third in the mile in 3:58.81, only 1 second off the winning time. Although he's heading south for a vacation tomorrow, I expect Broe to show up at the indoor track in just a little while. PAUL MCMULLEN: MISSING IN ACTION While I await Broe, I don't hold out much hope of seeing Warhurst's most quixotic charge, Paul McMullen. McMullen was a fierce rival of Sully's as a collegian when he competed for Eastern Michigan University, just miles down the road in Ypsilanti. Like Sully, McMullen went on to run professionally, earning high praise for making the finals in the 1500 meters at the 1995 World Championships, where he finished 10th, and for qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team in 1996. In 1997, McMullen suffered what appeared to be a career-ending injury when his right foot slipped under a lawn mower, severing parts of two toes and cutting through his big toe to the bone. He feared he was finished, but only a year later, he returned to win the U.S. indoor mile title in 3:55.81. In June 2000, however, after finishing a dispiriting 10th in the first round of the 1500 meters at the Olympic Trials, McMullen decided he had had enough. He didn't run again until January 2001, when he began jogging to lose some of the girth he'd gained in the intervening months. As his fitness progressed, though, so did his ambition, and in April 2001, he called Warhurst to see if he could come to train with Sully at Michigan. Warhurst obliged, and over the next 3 months, McMullen followed Warhurst's program to the letter while dieting to get back into racing shape. He began his comeback with a 3:48.51 time for the 1500 at the Len Paddock Invitational in Ann Arbor on May 11, 2001. From then on, he cut his times as rapidly as he dropped his weight. Although with Warhurst for only 4 months, he ended his phoenix-like summer track campaign with another 10th- place finish at the World Track and Field Championships and new personal bests of 1:45.71 for 800 meters and 3:33.89 for 1500 meters. Excerpted from Sub 4:00: Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile by Chris Lear All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
