How Fast Was Alberto Salazars Easy Runs
IN SALAZAR'S GAIT, AN ECHOED GLORY
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June 3, 1984
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EUGENE, Ore.
WHEN his running was going well, Alberto Salazar was unbeatable. On the roads, he was the fastest marathoner in history. On the track, he was the fastest American distance runner in history.
All that changed last year. For the first times, he ran in international marathons and he finished fifth in both. In track and field's first world championships, he ran the 10,000 meters, qualified last for the final and finished last.
The bubble had seemingly burst. He was no longer a winner. To many people, Alberto Salazar was history.
This year, at age 26, there has been an almost contradictory turnabout. Salazar has run one marathon and lost, his first marathon defeat in the United States and his first marathon loss to an American. He has run two important 10,000-meter races on the track and lost both.
That sounds disastrous. Actually, Salazar says it is the opposite. He ran well in every loss. He learned that his perennially tired feeling came from an iron deficiency.
Now his target is the Los Angeles Olympics. The marathon favorites there are Rob de Castella of Australia and Toshihiko Seko of Japan. Many people in the sport think Salazar will be fortunate to win a bronze medal. He disagrees.
''I think I'm ready to win one,'' he said. ''I really believe I can win the Olympics. I'm not going to say I will, but my health is back and everything is going well again. Maybe if I won the trial, people would say, 'Well, he's back.' But I didn't win, so they're saying the same old things.''
The trial Salazar cited was the United States Olympic marathon trial last Saturday in Buffalo, where he finished second to the unheralded Pete Pfitzinger. But considering Salazar's tender health and foot, and considering that the first three finishers made the Olympic team, the loss was insignificant.
The problem is that many track fans could not conceive of Salazar's losing a race.
It is easy to understand why. At the University of Oregon, from which he was graduated in 1981 with a degree in marketing, he was a highly successful distance runner known primarily to track people. But when he started running marathons, he became a national hero, a spokesman for Nike and other companies and a full- time athlete with a six-figure income.
He has run only seven marathons. He won the first four - in New York in 1980, 1981 and 1982 and Boston in 1982. His 1981 New York time of 2 hours 8 minutes 13 seconds is the fastest marathon ever run. In a 10-day span in Scandinavia in the summer of 1982, he set the existing American records of 27 minutes 25.61 seconds for 10,000 meters and 13:11.93 for 5,000 meters.
It seemed he could do no wrong. Suddenly, he could do no right.
The trouble started in April 1983, when he finished fifth in the Rotterdam Marathon. With three miles to go, the four leaders were running together approaching a hill. De Castella pulled away and Salazar could not respond.
''I thought, 'I'm going to lose,' '' said Salazar. ''Then others passed me, and for the next mile I was hoping they would slow down. They didn't.
''I didn't philosophize about it until I got back to the hotel room. I didn't feel that bad because I didn't chicken out. I did my best.
''It's easy to know if you ran a bad race because you gave up. But if you're beaten by a better person that day, you accept it. I had no guilt. And the world didn't end. My wife was still there after the race.''
The world championships last August in Helsinki gave Salazar a chance for redemption. Instead, he ran badly. He decided to run the 10,000 meters rather than the marathon because he thought it would be less of a shock to his body in a pre-Olympic year.
''My race was real disappointing,'' he said, ''but I knew I had bronchitis. And I was looking forward to Fukuoka in December.''
The Fukuoka Marathon is perhaps the most important in the world. It was a test against Japan's elite marathoners, including Seko, who won. Salazar flunked the test. He said he felt sluggish throughout, and when the pace quickened with two miles to go he could not keep up. Even worse, he was slowing down.
''I was disappointed,'' he said. ''I couldn't understand why I was falling apart at the end of races when I had track training to run fast. My legs felt like they were turning to wood. I would try to move and there was nothing there. So I knew it was not psychological but physiological.
''I never thought it was gone, but it was just an unlucky chain of events. I thought I would snap out of it anytime. I knew I was motivated. I was a lot more stable than three years ago. I was too young to be over the hill, so it would be dumb to panic.
''But a lot of people gave up on me. I could hear the whispers. But what's one year of bad running? That's nothing. Everyone has a bad year - from injuries, slumps or anything else.''
Still, there was no answer, no instant solution, no instant cure. People thought Salazar was putting too much stress on himself. He consulted a psychologist, and the psychologist agreed with that theory. Salazar did not, and he stopped seeing him.
Last March, Salazar ran in a televised road race in Phoenix. After the race, he said on television that his legs had felt dead in the last mile.
Doug Clement watched that race and interview from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Clement is a former Canadian Olympian who had run at Oregon in the 1960's with Bill Dellinger, now the Oregon coach and Salazar's present coach.
Clement is a physician, and he put together Salazar's complaints - broken sleep, tired all the time, irritability, subpar workouts, falling apart at the end of races. Clement suspected that the problem was iron deficiency. He telephoned Dellinger, and a test for iron deficiency was added to Salazar's scheduled blood tests.
The long-distance diagnosis proved correct. A normal reading on the iron test was 60. Below 30 meant serious problems. Below 20 was a disaster area. Salazar's reading was 17.
Salazar bought iron supplement pills for $6 for a hundred and was put on large doses.
''Before,'' he said, ''I had no energy to do anything. I just wanted to sit home all the time. But three weeks after I started taking the pills, I went out one day and washed both of our cars. Molly and I laughed about it.''
Molly Salazar couldn't believe it when her husband insisted they go to a movie or go shopping. Indeed, his problems seemed over.
Three weeks after the iron supplements began, Salazar did his best workout in a year. He ran five one-mile repetitions, with a quarter-mile jog between each, averaging 4 minutes 23 seconds. Before Fukuoka, his best average for that workout was 4:30.
''It felt comfortable,'' said Salazar. ''So I decided to run a 10- kilometer race the next week and did 27:56 with a 60-second last lap. At that point, I knew that was it. I was O.K.''
In early April, he ran a 10-kilometer race here and finished third in 27:56. He was delighted. Three weeks later, he ran another 10-kilometer race in Walnut, Calif., and finished second in 27:45. The doctor said his iron count was back to normal.
Life was wonderful - at least for three days after that Walnut race. Then Salazar felt soreness in his left foot. When the soreness persisted, he had a bone scan. It showed what physicians call a stress reaction on the top of the foot, caused by the pounding underneath.
Had he run a few more days, the stress reaction might have turned into a stress fracture. Instead, he took three days off and then jogged. Though the Olympic marathon trial was only two weeks off, he had to cut back on his training.
''I was getting in the best shape of my life,'' he said, ''and this happened. Until then, I thought if conditions were good I would go under the world record.
''One part of me said you don't want to do that 11 weeks before the Olympics. Another part of me said if the others run 2:09, I run faster. Maybe I was getting carried away, but that's how good I felt.''
As it turned out, Salazar ran the trial cautiously. The foot gave him no trouble. Neiher did the loss to Pfitzinger, though he said it would have been nice to win.
Now that he has made the Olympic team, he is thinking about how best to prepare for the Olympics. He is concerned about the Los Angeles weather.
''In Buffalo,'' he said, ''the temperature was 70 and the humidity 92. If that affected the race as much as it did, you can guess how much a temperature of 80 to 85 and high humidity will affect Los Angeles. I think the race will go to someone who has trained in the heat.''
For the six weeks before the Olympics, Salazar plans to train in the heat of Gainesville, Fla., or Atlanta. In 1977, as a college freshman preparing for the United States-Soviet junior meet in Richmond, he trained for three weeks in Atlanta wearing a sweatsuit.
He remembers meeting Benji Durden, a leading marathoner, on a training run then.
''He laughed at me,'' said Salazar. ''He said, 'How stupid you are dressed like that in the heat.' It bugged me. But now he trains in sweats and everyone says how creative he is.''
Before Salazar leaves for the South, he plans to be tested at an Army laboratory in Natick, Mass., near his hometown of Wayland, for heat-humidity reaction.
He is frequently dehydrated after a race. After the Olympic trial, he drank 30 eight-ounce cups of water and still needed two hours to produce a urine sample for drug testing. He wants to determine how much fluid he loses during a race and how much he should take before and during.
He does not seem concerned about running fast in the Olympics, but just running efficiently. Eveything about him seems efficient - his build (6 feet, 145 pounds), his decision to live in this running capital, his determination to enjoy watching his sons - 21-month-old Antonio and 13- week-old Alejandro - grow up.
He is a man with priorities, and they are not the ones others might place on him.
''The Olympics are not the last thing in the world for me,'' he said. ''Running is not the end of the world.
''The Olympics are important after what happened last year because I want to prove I'm not finished. But I can't complain just because things may not have gone the way I want.
''People say I haven't won, but these aren't piddling races I've lost. These are the best guys. Running 10 kilometers in 27:45 and finishing second is better for me than running 28:10 and winning. In 1982, when I was running great, I wasn't running under 28 minutes.
''What's the big deal if I'm fifth at Rotterdam and Fukuoka if I do my best? I have a beautiful wife and two healthy boys. What more could I want? You have to look at it that way. If you don't, it's going to tear you up.''
Alberto Salazar refuses to be torn up. He refuses to be pushed off the path. He is a survivor.
''I was pretty much adjusted to my problems,'' he said. ''I knew it was just a matter of time. I knew I would run again. I knew my best running years were ahead of me. I knew I would be able to handle the problems psychologically. God places things in our lives and expects us to handle it. I can handle it.''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/03/sports/in-salazar-s-gait-an-echoed-glory.html
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