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LetsRun.com
April 6
, 2005

LetsRun.com is pleased to present the following interview of Chris Graff, a scheduled competitor in this weekend’s Papa John’s U.S. 10 Mile Championship. The interview was conducted by former US elite Keith Dowling.

Chris Graff is a 1998 graduate of St. John's University. At St. John's, Graff pr'd in both the 5k and 10k at the 1998 NCAAs to place 6th and 12th respectively (13:46 for 5k and 29:12 for 10k). Chris trained for a few years post-collegiately under Frank Gagliano with the Reebok Enclave in Washington, DC (where he was briefly a roommates with LetsRun.com co-founder Weldon Johnson when Wejo sported a pb of 30:13 for 10k) before moving with "Gags" out to Palo Alto to train with the Nike Farm Team. He has just recently left "The Farm" and returned to the Washington, DC area with his wife. His current prs are 13:37 for 5k, 28:08 for 10k, 47:09 for 10 miles and 2:18.44 for the marathon.

Chris and Louisville mix well. The winner in 2003, and 2nd place finisher in 2004, Graff comes to the Papa John’s U.S. 10 Mile Championships with a potent mix of track speed and superior knowledge of the course.

KD: Talk a little bit about your recent performances (On March 26, 2005, Chris placed 16th at the US 8k championships in 23:29).

CG: I think I left a little too much in practice. It took a little while to get my bearings back here on the east coast in the winter. Working out by myself is a lot different than working out with Matt Lane, Jonathan Riley, and Brad Hauser in the vacuum of Stanford that apparently has no weather.

KD: Well that’s got to be a big adjustment for you moving back to the D.C. area and away from the Farm Team.

CG: It’s all about resetting the gauges and redefining what makes a good workout. At Stanford, you can run 4:15 for a mile at the end of 6 x mile and it's not really that hard. I never used to believe the workouts I’d hear about prior to my move to Palo Alto, but it truly is faster out there.

KD: What is it about Palo Alto that makes it so fast?

CG: It’s a combination of the group and the weather. It seems like it’s always 50 something degrees and all the reasons that make for great racing conditions make for a great training environment. Sometimes it can work to your disadvantage because your training can get away from you in January or February and you start running faster than you want to. Back here on the East Coast if I run 4:15 at the end of a mile repeat workout and it’s windy and there’s snow on the track- that’s really overtraining. Going into my last two races I haven’t tried to go that fast but I’ve been attempting to go faster than I should have been in workouts and I haven’t felt that good. Looking back on my last month of training it felt like I was having a hard time running 100 miles a week. Since New York I’ve backed off the training and switched to more effort-based training. For example, now I’ll run 6 x 5 minutes on the trail rather 6 x mile on the track. I feel a lot better and more confident.

KD: Could you describe a typical week of training in April while you were with the Farm Team?

CG: [Graff digs out one of his old training logs] Let’s see, Monday, April 8, 2002. We ran the Michigan workout (1600 hard/mile steady/1200 hard/mile steady/800 hard/mile steady/400 hard/ mile steady). We went 4:20/5:20/3:15/5:20/2:10/5:20/58/5:20. Wednesday we did 4 sets of intervals 4 x 400 in 61 seconds with a minute jog, 2 x 800m in 2:03 with 2 minutes rest, 8x200 in 30 seconds w/30 seconds rest, then followed all of that with a mile in 4:05. Four days later we did 6 x 1000, the first in 2:48, the next two were “break downs” where you run a 500, 300, 200 and your jog/rest equals your last interval. That was all done at 58 second pace. We followed that up with the last two 1000’s in 2:45 and 2:44. The rest was a decent amount, at least 2 minutes or more. The mileage for that week was 100 miles.

KD: After that specific block of training, where did you race and how did it go?

CG: I ran 13:37 at Mt. SAC.

KD: So if you were preparing for Mt. SAC back here on the east coast what would the training look like today?

CG: I still get the longer session in but it might be 7x 5min or some kind of fartlek where the effort or heart rate would equal a 4:20 mile pace. I just try to break down the efforts down to minutes on the road. You just can’t go out and run the Michigan solo, finishing in 4:05. It’s not going to happen. Odds are you’re going to run 4:09, but that effort is going to be harder than the 4:05 in Palo Alto. Now your confidence is terrible because you’ve run slower. It’s just a bad idea mentally and physically. You just have to make those adjustments. I think that’s what took me a month or two to figure out.

KD: When you come home from an effort based workout like 7x 5 minutes and your wife asks you how the workout went, what gauge do you use to answer her?

CG: Basically I go by how I feel. I’ll come home sit down on the couch and try and remember how it felt to come off the track at Stanford. If I feel that same level of fatigue and achy-type of feeling than I have to think that I’m generating the same level of fitness.

KD: You had the seemingly perfect situation out in Palo Alto with the Farm Team. Why leave?

CG: For starters, my wife and I are both from New York. When you’re as big a Yankee fan as we are you can only handle the west coast for so long before you start to lose it. We never planned on living out there forever and we used the 2004 Olympic Trials as a marker. The group is changing out there also with Matt Lane moving back to New York and Jason Lunn going to business school.

KD: What is it about Papa John’s and the 10 mile distance that suits you?

CG: I’m not sure. It’s always been a distance that’s worked out for me. I’ve always been good at tempo runs at that distance. The 10-mile distance just works for me physiologically for whatever reason. I guess that’s part of the reason why I feel good about this weekend’s race at Papa John’s. I feel like my workouts are going better and I get to go compete in a race that I’ve been successful at in the past and it’s a distance I always felt good running. It’s good place to steer the ship in the right direction.

KD: Who do you see as being main factors in the race?

CG: Abdi is always tough because he runs up and down with a lot of surges. That makes him a difficult guy to race against. Matt Lane has been running well and is enjoying the whole road-racing thing. It’s new to him so he’s having fun and I think he’ll be a threat. Pete Julian and I are keeping score of who beats who where, so I’m not going to let him beat me two weeks in a row. There’s a ton of guys out there in the U.S. like the Hanson’s cranking out good mileage and it’s a post Olympic year so there’s less pressure. With the Olympic goal gone, people can get out there, relax, and open up and run fast.

KD: Do you see yourself ever becoming a marathoner?

CG: I’m definitely going to run a fall marathon and I’ll train and prepare to run 2:10 in that marathon. I think I can do that and once I accomplish that I can think about running faster.

KD: What have been the major challenges for you in the marathon so far? How many have you run?

CG: I’ve attempted three. The first one was the 2002 Twin Cities and I was overtrained. The second one was the 2003 U.S. National Marathon Championships in Birmingham and I ran a nice controlled 2:18, which wasn’t hard at all, just to get the qualifier out of the way for the next year’s Trials. The third marathon was the 2004 ING NYC Marathon and I dropped out at mile 17.

The biggest thing with the marathon is learning. Before my first marathon I went up to Mammoth Lakes and we cranked out super mileage and I learned that was too much. There’s a learning curve that I need to go through with the marathon. Instead of launching into mileage of 145 one week and then being dead the next, I just need to find the right balance. My first 10k in college wasn’t too good either but eventually I got the hang of it.


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