Rod Dehaven, IMHO, has proven himself as the most consistent American marathoner in the past 5 or so years. He is dropping off a bit now; but my question to the board is this:
Why does a guy who is married with 3 small children and works 30 hours a week dominate American marathoning for 5(or more) years?
He must be a bad father (kidding), ha.
I'm not the brother's keeper but to me it seems he's talented, tough, experienced, trains hard -- nad runs some pretty decent mileage for a working family man -- and has been relatively free of injuries. And because he's got a fallback income, he can be longer-term-oriented. He also seems to be a [pretty smart racer who really knows himself, his competitors, and the externalities (course, weather, etc) -- all of which can de leared from watching him in the tape of the 2001 BAA Boston Marathon.
But more importantly IMO, I get the feeling -- just a feeling, he's not my penpal or anything -- that he's "committed" -- that he'll work his a-- off out of ardor to do well or fear of f---ing up -- because the guy's known some real highs (such as winning 2000 USOT) and some real lows (such as DNFing 1996 USOT) -- and in general, guys who have experienced both tend to get greedy for the former and petrified of the latter. Makes for some good mental fuel for daily training, and for motivation when the going gets tough on race day.
I've seen him running in Madison. He's usually running really fast.
Consider:
Even if he runs his miles at 7 minute pace, the 10 hours he saves doing a 30 rather than 40 hour workweek gives him 85 mpw.
Practice time for this sport is shorter than for others.
yes, I agree with your implication. american distance running sucks and one need only run 85 miles a week to be one of America's best in the event.
Boulder Creek Duck Racer wrote:
Consider:
Even if he runs his miles at 7 minute pace, the 10 hours he saves doing a 30 rather than 40 hour workweek gives him 85 mpw.
Practice time for this sport is shorter than for others.
However, many other sports have a lot of dead time. In high school, I played basketball and while our practices were 2 hours every day during the season (except game days and Sundays), there was a lot of standing around or time with little activity. Very different from long distance running.
Of course, we never watched film for XC or track either as we did for basketball.
Sorry, I shouldn't have presumed you'd be able to connect the dots.
The point was not (nor was it implied) that one need only run 85mpw. The point was that it's a significant chunk of mileage he can put away even before considering time he has to spend outside of normal work week hours. To run 135 under those circumstances is not as daunting. And it's pretty well documented that Rod racks up good mileage.
And as to other sports having more stand around time, that's also part of the point here. Running training is time efficient. When talking about the time commitment, it's about the total time, not the active time.
The deal with Rod is he trains his ass off and doen't let work kill him except for when he is on call. He spends more time with his family them most married men and still gets in lots of milage.He knows what it takes to do well. You only have to be out the door with him at 5:30 AM or 6:00 PM at night. I know the Rocket Man works more like 40 to 50 hpw then 30 hpw.
I think the fact that RDH has a job contributes to his long term success. As JAM points out, his living isn't dependent on his running so he can take the long term view. And it isn't impossible, as some here think, to train seriously while working a real job provided you're a bit selective about the job. It's been done for decades and is still done (or was done very recently) by guys like JAM, Miles and Miles, Joe LeMay, Gary Romesser, etc.
The trick is to decide that you're going to train seriously and ask how you'll arrange it with your work, rather than thinking about how your work will prevent you from training seriously.
I've always admired Rod and his willingness to hit the roads, race(and many times beat) the Kenyans, and maintain a really elite level over time. I would hope that alone would inspire the up and coming marathoners of today. But the fact that he has done it while working and having a family is still more impressive. Unfortunately there's not many people away from this message board who would recognize Rod's name or could pick him out of a line-up. I love how Americans claim themselves as the world's best at sports we invented. Rod(and many other great American runners before him) has competed at an elite level in a sport which every person in this world has access to, assuming he/she can put one foot in front of the other. That is much more admirable IMHO.
Take a 3:40 1500 guy, stay relatively healthy and train like hell (see linky thingy) and 2:11-2:12 is what happens.
Too funny. The last complete week has him too sore in abs and back to really do anything Monday (he did 2 miles). On the mile rep day, the notation is ?felt horrible.? Total for week? 116 miles. And the log for that week answers the question, ?Is it better to do my long run on Saturday or Sunday??
Wonder why no updates? I had heard somewhere that he was injured? Maybe I'm just hallucinating.
Alan
He ran 2:13:18 at CIM on Dec. 8th, so I don't think he is injuried.
Is this Rod DeHigen, Dehaven or Denmark?
Or are they the same guy?