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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Nov 02 2010 - 06:37:54 EST
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/sports/02marathon.html?src=twrhp
November 1, 2010
The Rehabilitation of a Champion
By LIZ ROBBINS
Meb Keflezighi awoke daily at 7:10 a.m. in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., this
fall, stretched his quadriceps and abductors, did his squats and leg
lifts, hoisted his three small, giggling daughters over his head for
core strength and arrived early for his 8:30 team practice.
After going on a 16-mile training run in the mountains, he dunked
himself in a cold stream or in an ice bath at home, shivering in pain
for 15 minutes. Later, he went to the gym or to physical therapy, ran
a second time, stretched again, played with his children and ate a
late dinner with his wife, Yordanos.
Then Keflezighi set the alarm to repeat the routine — hyper-regimented
even for an endurance athlete — that last November helped him become
the first American in 27 years to win the New York City Marathon.
Professional athletes must embrace tedium and torture to become
champions. But Keflezighi is 35, an age when most distance runners are
winding down, never mind finding the discipline to return from yet
another career-rattling injury. One year after placing his New York
laurel crown next to his 2004 Olympic silver medal, Keflezighi still
has a preternatural patience for details, and a drive to break the
tape again in Sunday’s race.
“John Wooden says it’s not what you do in the two hours of practice,
but how you take care of yourself the next 24 hours,” Keflezighi said
last week, quoting the legendary basketball coach of his alma mater,
U.C.L.A. “You have to dig in deep within yourself and believe there
will be a reward.”
As a freshman, Keflezighi was the only cross-country runner at
U.C.L.A. stretching intently, recalled his coach, Bob Larsen. He was
the only one who attacked the same drills for sprinters and jumpers to
make his technique more efficient.
“A lot of people run megamiles; I don’t think anybody has done more
drills — that’s rare for a distance runner,” said Larsen, who became
Keflezighi’s full-time coach after college. But it is Keflezighi’s
self-discipline in his ability to rehabilitate “religiously,” Larsen
said, that defines him.
Keflezighi’s meticulous habits mirror his methodical racing style, and
both have origins in his upbringing. Born in war-torn Eritrea, one of
10 children, Keflezighi fled with his mother and his siblings to
Italy. His father, Russom Sebhatu, worked cleaning jobs for hourly
wages to support the family while arranging for them to immigrate to
San Diego.
“He was very efficient, very detailed, saying, ‘If you’re going to do
something, do it right,’ ” Keflezighi’s younger brother and agent,
Merhawi, said of their father.
If anything, his confidants say, Keflezighi might be too duty-bound,
rarely turning down appearance requests, while taking the
recommendations of physical therapists to the extreme.
“People say, ‘You tell Meb once, you don’t have to tell him again,’
but I might even go overboard,” Keflezighi said.
He threw himself into side projects after the euphoria from his New
York victory, and the parades and the television appearances that
followed, subsided. He worked on his autobiography, “Run to Overcome,”
which was published on Monday, and started his charity, the M.E.B.
Foundation, which stands for Maintaining Excellent Balance.
His third child was born in January, although he was not present
because a California snowstorm left him stranded in Houston, where he
had honored a commitment to appear (though not to run) as the
defending half-marathon champion.
A couple of weeks later, Keflezighi’s winning streak ended. He slipped
and fell on ice in Mammoth Lakes, and his left knee swelled. He missed
several weeks of training with tendinitis but still managed to finish
fifth at the Boston Marathon in April in 2 hours 9 minutes 26 seconds
— just 11 seconds off the personal best he set in New York. The pain
got worse, though, and he stopped racing.
In June, Keflezighi consulted with Lewis Maharam, the medical director
for the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathons and the former medical director in New
York. Maharam had diagnosed Keflezighi’s fractured pelvis (which other
doctors missed) after the 2007 Olympic marathon trials, an injury that
nearly ended his career.
Maharam found a two-inch vertical tear in Keflezighi’s left quad and
suggested a procedure increasingly popular with elite athletes to
accelerate the healing: platelet-rich plasma therapy. While a study in
The Journal of American Medical Association has questioned the
efficacy of P.R.P., and a Canadian doctor, Anthony Galea, who was
recently indicted for distributing performance-enhancing drugs to
athletes, is a proponent of the therapy, Maharam said he cleared it
with the United States Anti-Doping Agency. And it worked.
Maharam injected Keflezighi’s blood into a centrifuge machine that
produced a concentrated amount of platelets. He then injected the
platelets back to the wound because, as he explained, they served as
magnets to bring more of the body’s platelets to the injured area.
“I was there to witness it and see what he injected,” Keflezighi said.
“It helped me recover faster, taking four weeks instead of maybe six
months.”
When he felt ready to race again in July, Keflezighi came down with
the flu at a family wedding in Trinidad, and shelved the rest of his
summer schedule. His first race back came last month at the San Jose
Half-Marathon, which he won in 1:01:45, 45 seconds slower than last
year.
“A couple months ago, I thought, oh, gosh, will he be able to pull it
together?” said Deena Kastor, the American-record holder in the
women’s marathon who has trained with Keflezighi in the Mammoth Track
Club for more than six years. “It’s exciting to see how mature he’s
been in all of this.”
She added, “A lot of athletes would have gotten frustrated years ago
with the onset of injuries, but he has gained strength because of it.”
Larsen said that Keflezighi was now ahead of where he was in his
training for Boston, if not close to where he was last year for New
York. “We’re pleased that he’s healthy,” Larsen said.
That health is mental, too, as Keflezighi is not so obsessed by
details that he cannot adjust on or off the course. “His life was not
easy growing up,” Larsen said. “A few injury setbacks in relation to
what he and the family have endured — he can put that into
perspective.”
After New York, some outside the running world unfamiliar with his
name questioned Keflezighi’s being a true American, even though he
became a naturalized citizen in 1998. Keflezighi, though hurt, focused
instead on those who thanked him for reinvigorating American distance
running.
He rode on the Statue of Liberty float at last year’s Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day parade, buoyed by the significance. “This,”
Keflezighi said, “is the land of opportunity.”
It took him five tries in New York to seize the opportunity, and on
Sunday he will attempt to become the first American man to win the
title in consecutive years since Alberto Salazar did it in 1980, 1981
and 1982. Keflezighi will be up against the world record-holder, Haile
Gebrselassie, 27-year-old Dathan Ritzenhein from the United States and
two other defending champions.
“I’ve done it before, why can’t I do it again?” Keflezighi said.
“Anything I do is frosting on the cake, but I want to see how long and
how far my talent can take me.”
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