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NYC HALF MARATHONMarch 16, 2012Dathan RitzenheinNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Q.  Where does this race fit into your program? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Well, for me right now, I'm about two months after the Olympic Trials marathon, so this has been kind of a time of transitioning to‑‑ this is the first race for me, definitely just to see how I come off, what kind of fitness I may be in after some downtime. Now I can kind of see where I'm at and then adjust from here going into the track season. Q. What was the plan B you had in your head even before the trials? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: No plan B. I didn't think past that day, January 14th, at all. It really took me a little bit of time to kind of wrap my head around it. Usually you kind of have a time to adapt, and really for me it was completely different. This is completely different than what I thought I'd be doing. Q. Do you feel an added pressure? Meb felt he had an added pressure from his sponsor. Do you have those pressures or can you go in and relax? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: There's definitely pressure from many fronts, but yeah, the sponsors for sure because that's based off of the World Championships and the Olympics. You know, if you don't make the Olympic team, it's bad. It affects your income for sure. So you know, even though the Olympics you don't make money at the actual Games, at the World Championships you make money if you win medals and stuff, if you're the top 8, so you don't make that directly from the IOC, but our income comes primarily from shoe sponsors. So you've got to make that money up somewhere else if you don't make the team. Q. I know things were kind of hard for you right after Houston. Did you take complete time off to decompress? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I took four days off completely, didn't run at all, and just trained really lightly for another four days. Then I started doing really light workouts. But my volume was really low. For a couple weeks it was half of what it normally would be. The workouts were very mild, just kind of keeping my legs moving. But I definitely needed some time to kind of let my body heal and stuff. So I didn't do anything hard for I'd say about three to four weeks. Q. What helped you kind of get back in the mindset of like, I'm going to go start training again to get back into it? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I didn't struggle initially. Initially I was able to‑‑ I tried to say, okay, well, that sucked, and now I've got to really focus. And so I didn't have any problems initially. But after a couple of weeks, when I did start to run a little bit more and I wasn't completely recovered still, I didn't feel as good physically as I had been feeling right before my training, I felt really good and I felt good for the six weeks prior to the Olympic Trials marathon. I think when you go from feeling really good physically to struggling with some of the fatigue and stuff that you have afterwards, that was kind of difficult, and mentally, as well, having that physical difference. I think what really got me back going feeling good was probably doing a hard workout, because I was running easy, and my workouts weren't very hard, so finally I had a workout that‑‑ I think Alberto gave me a workout that was really hard finally, and I was like, whoa, wow, I need to get back into it because mentally I had been out of it, too, and you've got to push yourself mentally in those workouts. So that was kind of a wake‑up call a little bit. Q. What was that hard workout? Was it a pace or a distance? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I did eight times a mile, and it was just‑‑ the rest wasn't long like I had been doing and the pace wasn't super hard, but it was hard enough that‑‑ I was taking short rest and stuff that I actually had to push at the end. I started feeling that real fatigue that you get at the end of a long, hard workout. So that was kind of like, okay. And since then I've trained well. Q. Do you remember what the pace he was asking of you? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I don't recall. Q. Were there other people in the workout or were you doing it solo? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I had someone helping me with the workout, but it was‑‑ I did probably half of it by myself. Q. How much rest did you have in between? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I'd take like 400 meters rest. Q. Can you compare the training demands I guess numerically for a marathon compared to what you're doing to train for the trials in 10K? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Yeah, so for me if I do‑‑ I probably do about 120 miles a week for my maximum for the marathon. I might get up close to 110 in the‑‑ it's not a huge difference. But more generally 100 miles a week probably. Basically my easy runs go from being 18 to 20 miles down to being about 13 to 15 miles. That's really the only difference. The workouts are different. Whereas in the marathon they accumulate to a lot, but I probably do one more workout in track season during the course of maybe‑‑ I wouldn't say I only do three workouts every week, but over the course of ten days. So that's an extra workout every week probably. So that's probably where the difference in the volume comes from. Pace‑wise I would say there's a lot more emphasis on intervals that are lower than 1000 meters, whereas we do those workouts when we're doing the marathon, we'll do like 600 breakdowns. He likes to do like 600, 400, 300, 200, so we'll do that three to five times. But it's more like a light, easy workout when you're doing the marathon stuff because we'll do a long 20‑mile tempo run and then you come back with something shorter and easier like that, whereas in track we'll actually emphasize that workout and it'll be hard and fast. So that's kind of the difference. Q. Is it any less time‑consuming? I guess for miles, but‑‑ DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Not really. I'd say it's probably very similar. Sometimes it's longer because the recovery is longer between the really intense intervals, so you might end up spending an hour on the track still doing the actual workout, and so more of the time is recovery. So maybe instead of doing ten times a mile like in the marathon and the recovery is only two minutes, instead you might take three or four minutes' recovery between some really intense, hard things. So it ends up being about the same amount of time. Q. Do you have any goals for this race? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: For the half? For this race, for the half, you know, it's hard to tell who's going to be in good shape, but I just want to get in and really compete. I've ran well here before. I don't have a specific goal as far as time. But I think it's fairly fast. They've changed the course, so it's not going to be quite as easy as it used to be. I don't want to say it was easy before, but you definitely get through the first half, and if you get through in decent shape and you haven't really gone over the line, I think you can really move pretty good the last half of the race. You know, I wouldn't panic if we were 30 minutes at 10K because I think you can probably run 28 minutes the second 10K. Q. What's Alberto like after a race that goes really well compared to one that doesn't go really well? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: If it doesn't go well, yeah, he starts to‑‑ we try to take a look at what happened, what went wrong. I think he's very‑‑ the way that he was when he was an athlete, very focused, so he'll focus on that and look immediately for a reason why. After a good race, though, he's very‑‑ he'll be very excited about it because it's validation that we're doing something right. It doesn't usually change the plan, though, if you have a good race. We still kind of continue going in the direction we're going to. But we always have a pretty fluid plan with racing. Whether the races go good or bad we don't usually respond. It's going to change a lot of times. Q. Does he show outward emotion? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Is he a yeller and a screamer do you mean? Q. Yeah. DATHAN RITZENHEIN: No, not with me. I think he coaches different athletes differently, and so with me, everything is really pretty even keel. I think that's because that's the kind of person I am. I'm pretty even. Yeah, he coaches me in a different way than he coaches Mo or Galen. With Galen he's probably a lot more amped up, you know. I think Galen is a little more like that. And with Mo, Mo is like the most relaxed guy in the world. I'm probably in between the two. The way that he approaches a workout or a race is pretty much tailored to an athlete. Q. Was it a big surprise when Kara left the group? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I was surprised, yeah. He kind of confided in me a little bit what was going on, so it wasn't like a shocker. I think that we knew within‑‑ I knew before it hit the press or anything like that. But I was surprised because she's been‑‑ she had had a lot of success with him, and they were very close. So that's always a hard thing when you get emotionally close to a coach or an athlete. Sometimes that's the hardest thing is breaking that. Like when I left my college coach, Brad Hudson, before, that was the hardest part was not so much the decision to leave; what am I going to do. But how is this going to affect your relationship because when you spend that much time with someone you form a relationship that's really close. So yeah, it surprised me a little bit. Q. Can change be good? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Absolutely. Sometimes there's problems with any relationship. Outside of the sport it's the same thing. You have to address those problems, and if they don't get addressed, then there's going to be a falling out at some point. So knowing when to make that change‑‑ it's inevitable sometimes. Like for me, it was good for me. I ran 12:56 and 60 flat after leaving Brad, so there's been a lot of hard times since then, too, but you make your bed and you lay in it, and you go‑‑ you change what needs to be changed, just don't sit there and be idle and stale. Q. Had there been talk of maybe Galen coming in for this race or Mo? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: No, I mean, they hadn't‑‑ that was one of the rationale for me coming here was Galen and Mo ran here last year, and they ran really well, and so they knew exactly‑‑ Alberto knew exactly what progression they took for the rest of the year and went on and had amazing years, both of them. So that was part of the rationale for me to come here. But this year‑‑ last year there was no world indoor championships, so they had to fill‑‑ Alberto likes to kind of peak twice a year, so they had to fill that peak with something since there was no world indoor championships. So that was a good opportunity for them last year. Of course I'm coming at it from a completely different background. They had run‑in door track before and Galen had flown down to Australia, he had run a really fast 10K. I'm coming down from the marathon so I'm not quite as sharp, but hopefully it'll be a bigger curve for improvement. Speed develops relatively fast. The hard thing is the endurance and the base, and so I have a lot of that behind me, which is good. Q. Beyond this year, you've been refocused for the summer, but what do you see beyond this year? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: You know, if I have a great track, summer track season, I'd like to finish‑‑ I haven't put the thought out of my mind of doing a fall marathon. I feel like I could have ran really well like in 2009 if I had come off my great track season. I think I do a little bit better coming off a big block of intensity and maybe having a shorter window of time to prepare for a marathon. I haven't put that out of my mind at all. Obviously it'll depend on how the summer goes. I try not to think past the Olympics right now, but I'm keeping that in my mind. But I think next year again, I don't foresee myself doing a spring marathon in 2013. I'd like to continue to try to get another last good year in 2013 on the track again, and then after that I'll be a little older, so I'll be 31. By the time the next World Championships rolls around would be 2015, so maybe I'll be more on that normal road schedule. But I really want to maximize the next couple years on the track and see how good I can get. Q. Any chance you'd be here? DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I mean, very possibly. Wow, I don't know, probably 12 or 13 weeks after the Olympics, so I could still stay and run some of the big races at the end of the year like Zurich and Brussels, some of those big races, and try to improve on my PRs and stuff like that and still be able to do that. Yeah, there's a possibility for sure. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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