11.05.07
Planting the Seeds of Success
Planting the Seeds of Success
Teamwork keeps the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project ticking
The Hansons-Brooks Distance Project team meets every morning at 7:30 at either Rochester Hills Duck Pond or Stony Creek Metro Park in Shelby Township, MI. None of the 14-man team is allowed to skip or reschedule. “We don’t have rules,” says Hansons-Brooks co-founder Kevin Hanson. “We have levels of expectations. Everyone meets in the morning at the same time every day whether they are running the same loop or not.”
The concept of “team” is part of what makes the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project such a professional outfit. In this respect, the group mirrors the most successful running systems in the world, the Japanese, Kenyan, and Ethiopian. Not coincidentally, each morning in Addis Ababa, the top Ethiopian runners gather at 7:30 at the national stadium. The Hansons have taken the seeds that have generated the greatest successes in distance running and planted them in suburban Detroit.
“It’s been proven,” says team co-founder Keith Hanson. “All of the best runners in the world train in groups. The success and improvement of these runners prove that it works. It’s something we have sorely lacked in the U.S.”
Hansons athlete Brian Sell, a top contender to make the U.S. marathon team for Beijing 2008, has gone from a 2:19:57 at the 2003 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon to a 2:10:47 at Chicago in 2006. That kind of progress motivates—and rubs off on—the other team members. “The advantage of having Sell is the same advantage Greg Meyer had in having Bill Rodgers,” says Kevin, referring to two members of the old old Greater Boston Track Club. “When someone you see every day is doing it, it’s easier for you to do it. There’s not that level of uncertainty, like ‘what does it take?’ Here’s what it takes. Right here.”
The group-training concept is also part of the Hansons’ corporate philosophy. They might not have the fastest men competing in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon, but they will have the most visible. The 13 Hansons-Brooks competitors will wear bright yellow, red, and black-trimmed uniforms, and will arrive in their logo-splashed Saturn bus.
“We dress the same to help our sponsors,” says Kevin. “Instead of seven runners [dressed differently] coming into a room, it’s ‘Oh, there’s the Hansons-Saturn-Brooks Group.’”
Train to the Terrain
The Hansons have always been advocates of course-specific training. To prepare for the 2006 Boston Marathon, the team trained on a 26.2K course that mimicked the course in Boston and even featured signage. The team achieved great success—four placed in the top 15.
This year, they visited the Trials course in New York, went home and set up a loop that mirrors the Central Park layout, then returned to New York several weeks later to complete a 26.2K simulation run in Central Park.
“I like the fact that the [New York] course is not completely flat,” says Keith. “That suits our group very well. We are really excited about how that will play out.”
Together We Rise
Of the 14 male athletes training together on the Hansons-Brooks team, only one—Ryan Sheehan—is not running the Trials Marathon. Sheehan, who placed fourth at the New Haven 20K Road Race this year, has yet to run a marathon.
“One of our goals is to have a big group of guys run 2:15, 2:16,” explains Keith, “and from that group will emerge the 2:10, 2:09, 2:08s. I think you are seeing that. When you have second-level guys pushing the top level, people recognize that they have to improve to stay on top.”
There is a palpably competitive atmosphere around the team. In that way the Hansons program has the feel of a typical Kenyan camp. They push one another in training, yet when they are up against everyone else, they feed off and support one another. Only when, and if, it comes down to just them, do the individual or tribal rivalries emerge.
The runner the brothers seem most excited about, besides Sell, is Luke Humphrey. A native of Sidney, MI, and a Central Michigan University grad, Humphrey placed 11th at the 2006 Boston Marathon. He was prepared for a breakthrough race in Chicago last fall; his one-second PR of 2:15:22 there didn’t reflect true fitness and capabilities. “Luke was trained for sub-2:13,” says Kevin. “We had a group working together at 2:15, but it ended up being extremely windy, and he was left out on his own. The other guys reeled him in. So at the end Luke looked like Mike [Morgan] and Kyle [O’Brien] and Chad [Johnson], who all ran the same time. But he’s not. He’s actually better than that. But nobody’s seen it yet. So we’re expecting big things from Luke.”
Sticking With It
The team dynamic has bred long-lasting loyalty in Hansons members. “I attribute still being in the sport and being competitive to these young guys I train with every day,” says 32-year-old Clint Verran, who will be making his third Trials appearance next month.
Verran, who works as a physical therapist, both with the team and in the community at large. He was one year into his studies when he hooked up with the Hansons. “I came on board as one of the first three guys,” says Verran, a graduate of Eastern Michigan University whose forté has always been steady-pace racing. “In 1999 they bought their first house. I’ve stayed for eight years because anytime I travel, I quickly remember how hard it is to motivate yourself to train and push real hard on your own.”
Someone with Verran’s experience goes a long way toward creating stability in the system. “I’ve been down that road,” says Verran, who finished 11th in the 2000 Trials, then fifth in 2004. “I’ve run more marathons personally than the whole [rest of the] team combined. Even the Hansons’s coaching philosophy was developed from my marathoning. When I came in 1999, the program wasn’t about the marathon. But they humored me, and said if I wanted to do the marathon that they would train me for it.”
The atmosphere on the Hansons’s team is professional, says Verran. He attributes this focus to Kevin, who devotes the same attention to the high school girls team he coaches as he gives to his professional charges.
“Kevin hates to lose and is a schemer to win,” says Verran. “He still takes his girls from Sterling Heights to the top in the state meet every year. And there is nothing special about that town. But every single year, he has success. And it’s the attitude of success. I’ll do what they say. It has paid off for me.”
