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NBR MEMBER PROFILES – Owen Kendall

NBR Profile No. 5

Rodrigo Toscano talks with OWEN KENDALL

Owen Kendall joined NBR in July of 2009 and trained with the team for nearly a year. He’s run 10 NYRR races for the team and has placed in the top fifty in all but the 2010 NYC Marathon. He runs everything from the 800 to the marathon, though he prefers the 100 meter dash up to 8 km. To most people’s surprise, Owen never ran competitively in college. He is largely self-taught in the sport. In 2008, placed 2nd overall and 1st in age group in 5th Ave Mile, running a 4:23 in that race. And in 2010 he was knocking out 5:15’s in the Salsa, Blues & Shamrocks 5K, arguably one of most difficult 5k’s on the eastern sea board.  Before relocating to Jamaica Plain, MA, Owen was a fixture at the Tuesday night and Thursday night runs (as well as at the Turkey’s Nest, where he could be seen toting runners under his arms like bread loaves). He continues to race for NBR.

RT: Owen, since I’ve known you, you’ve struck me as a 100 or 200 meter guy, in both build and I’ll dare say, flare; but here you are, competing really well in 8k’s, 10k’s, 15k’s, etc. Very few people from very short distances transition even up to 1500 meters.  What do you feel is your “limit” in terms of going long, I mean, in terms of it being something you feel genuinely motivated to train for?

OK: It’s good to know I’ve got some flare in the eyes of my peers; bringing positive energy and some unique flavor to running and everything I do puts a smile on my face and it hopefully makes others smile a little, as well.  The point, of course, is to lower everyone’s cholesterol.

In terms of my build and speed, I guess I would be considered a sprinter (at 5’10” and 180 pounds, with pecs larger than most professional female runners), which is why it’s so fun to drop down to the 800 meter and, in the dead of winter, the 200 meter at The Armory (as a side note, one of my favorite races ever was the 50×200 that I ran with Jen, Mike, Linda, Matt, Karl, Kerry, Anna, Ed…it was completely absurd and nearly killed most of us, but is definitely recommended to all those interested in a stupid-fun event this winter).

Distance running, though, is something I love on a different level than I do sprinting.  I recently heard in the movie 180° South that the word “adventure” is heavily overused.  Likely true.  In that movie, it is suggested that an adventure begins when something goes wrong.  Well, using the word in that way, what better way to make adventure happen than to run 26.2 miles?  It’s not adventure like mountaineering is, but inside it’s the same thing.  Things are going to go wrong for sure.  It’s a great functional metaphor for life.  Things are going to go hugely wrong for all of us at times and we have to make the decision of whether we’re going to drop out (grab the rope and start swinging in the closet) or push through to complete the task at hand.  It relates to that seemingly trite statement: “it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that says the most about who you are,” but running is the functional equivalent and is thus a wonderful learning tool for me (and I think can be a wonderful learning tool for anyone willing to pay close attention to subtle movements in their life in general).

RT: Me too, I find many enabling life metaphors through running. For instance, in the case of public oratory, often when listening to people on TV, I think, man, this is some “1500 meter” speech! But the guy doesn’t have anything behind it! No 200’s, 400’s – the form is all wobbly and without foundation. But then take someone like MLK, he had those bite-sized bursts of verse tightly strung together, he “extended”, so to speak, from 200’s to 400’s to 5k. The same might be said of music composition and performance, right? Atomistic composers, Monk & Beethoven, were so clearly adept in deploying small packets of energetic figuration. In poetry, Dickinson, having those 50 meter metrics at the ready, I feel leaner & meaner just reading a piece or two of hers a day.

Alright, so, when did you run your first Marathon? And how did it go?

OK: Actually, the marathon was the third distance race of my life.  It was 2007 and I was starting to feel sluggish and doughy, but I still can’t wrap my head around why I thought it would be a good idea.  I was in the midst of writing my second novel and maybe I needed a tactile example of completing something seemingly epic (perhaps a 200 mile race in Antarctica would have been more apropos, since I completed the marathon, but still haven’t done the same with that book).  The thing is, running is not eudemonistic, per se.  There is no logic behind its ability to inspire happiness in our lives – some non-runners have even told me they believe running is masochistic (they claim knee problems and I promote my belief that my knees will be healthier than theirs in 50 years time – who cares if I’m fitter, healthier, and happier than they are?)

So far, the longest legitimate race I’ve truly succeeded at is the half-marathon (my first marathon was actually a travesty), which helped me to qualify for the NYC Marathon this year (sadly, my Achilles injury took the wind out of my sails for the NYC Marathon this year, but I’ll try again in 2011).

RT:  I love this thinking that there is no logic, per se to make running a sure-fire happiness thing. “Happiness” the great American discourse of happiness, I’d say, can even be a trap, an illusion. I’m really not trying to be “negative” here (there’s another great sand box to play in, ‘negative’ / ‘positive’), but I have to say that running does make you deeply question things about your own body, about others bodies, and also about bodies in time, you know, like what is patience, at the level of the body – not “patience” in relationship to some happy-pappy discourse urging us on to some vague nowhere. Running seems the opposite of one-click shopping mentality. Like your (witty, off the cuff) “a 200 mile race in Antarctica”, well, someone like NBR’s Cherie Yanek, might actually consider it! And that’s more Odysseus than America Wants To See You Haaaapy.

But tell me about “travesty” – in your first marathon.

OK: By travesty I mean that I went out at a pace that matched my best 5k performance at the time, coming through 5k in 18 minutes (Now I run 5k in right around 16 minutes, but it’s taken a lot of training to get there).  There are many reasons this happened, but the primary culprit was my watch (a Garmin), which was malfunctioning and was trying to get me to run world record pace, which I sadly was failing to accomplish.  Since then, I haven’t worn anything but a basic running watch while racing and have been very happy with the results.  I realized at 5k that I was a fool and that the race might well go much more poorly than I had anticipated (Since then, I’ve never seen a first marathon go well for anyone) so I slowed down and cruised along the first half of the course, beginning to recover.  I came through 13.1 in 1:28, which was the same time I’d run my qualifying half-marathon in.  I felt okay, but a little tired.  Then I hit fifteen miles and I started to unravel.  Then there was the Queensboro Bridge and then there was First Avenue and I had to rush into a bodega at about 80th so I wouldn’t end up like those poor bastards who crap themselves and don’t even qualify for Boston.

Then there was mile 22.  I cramped up.  My quad cramped first, making it almost impossible to bend my knee.  ‘I know,’ I thought, ‘I’ll do some butt-kicks to stretch it out.’  No.  Not a good idea.  I did two butt-kicks and my right hamstring tightened up like a cable on the Brooklyn Bridge.  In response, I kicked my leg out straight to try to release the cramp, but my quad cramped again – even harder this time.  I spent three miles doing the rocking horse run, alternately kicking my leg out to release my hamstring, and pulling my foot up to my butt to release my quad.  I must have looked like a cartoon character or someone trying to invent some dumb, new dance move that no one would ever want to replicate even if paid in diamonds.  But I never stopped and never walked because one thing I have going for me in running is a pretty intense pain tolerance.  I might not be the best runner out there, but I’ll push through a hell of a lot to finish something I’ve started even when my body is on the verge of shutting down.

I missed qualifying for Boston by less than a minute and swore I’d never run a marathon again.

The longest “illegitimate” race I’ve ever run was a 200 mile relay through the green mountains of Vermont, of which I ran 41 miles over 24 hours, with a mile of elevation gain and a mile of elevation loss over the course of that mileage. I averaged below 6:45 pace throughout even though I started hallucinating and stumbling throughout the last 9 miles.

RT: A non-eudemonistic epic true adventure to be sure! Smokes. Paid in bituminous coal brickets.

Hey, but now that I’ve got you on the hot seat here, you being one of the team’s middle distance speedsters, there’s some quandaries I’ve got about training and racing that I’ve been dying to ask you.

Scenario involves “x” who’s been running races, let’s say, for only a year. Let’s say x runs about 20-30 miles week, attends Katie’s tempo class, Mike and Jess’s road runs, some of Jen’s and Linda’s speed class, with some Sherry-lead bridge runs on Saturdays. So, x has a 5k race three weeks from now, and five weeks after that, a 10k.

What should be happening right about now? What should be happening after the 5k? In other words, what adjustments to training might be good to enact, and why? And I’ll add this, strategically, what adjustments might you yourself have to make for an effective race-day strategy? (I mean, besides your legendary Paleolithic fury to mount the mammoth, which we’ll get to in a moment).

OK: Ah… the mounting of the mammoth… but I’ll try not to get ahead of myself, as I want to do.  Starting from the beginning, let’s just say that there are going to be seriously different outcomes for different people in terms of the 5k time when just beginning to run.  This is based on physiology, which I only know cursorily, but I will say that if you have a serious background in athletics, that 20-30 miles a week will do a lot more for you than if you were a bookworm or a couch potato or any other label defining your lack of enthusiasm for athletics while a youth.  When you exercise frequently, the cells in your muscles change.  One of the most important changes for running is that the mitochondria, the energy (ATP – adenosine triphosphate) producing cells in the body begin to both multiply and elongate, allowing them to produce much more ATP much more quickly from both glucose and fat (with oxygen as the necessary final ingredient).  This means that your muscles can much more effectively use the oxygen that your blood is bringing to it.  If you don’t have these mitochondria that can use oxygen to produce ATP, which can then power your muscles, you end up going anaerobic with much lower energy output (while running slower).  This is the physiological reasoning behind base training and behind the fact that people will become better runners over years of running.  It’s also a reason that big mileage makes people better runners.

As I was saying, if you have a strong base in athletics (lots of mitochondria), your first 5k will be faster than if you have no background in athletics.  Your improvements will also come much more quickly because all that happens when you haven’t exercises for a while is mitochondrial atrophy.  They don’t die.  And when you get back into exercising, the mitochondria will plump back up and get you back to being able to produce ATP quickly and efficiently.

Once someone has run a 5k, the best thing to do is start adding on mileage – a good amount for a decent 10k is upwards of 40 miles a week (and if you really want to compete at your best, 60-70 is the low end of a good amount of distance).  Doing a 10k on the same mileage you were doing 5ks at is fine if you want to finish, but if you want to legitimately do well (time-wise, but more importantly not wanting to feel like you just want to lie down and die a mile from the finish line), you have to do more distance work because the race has substantially different physiological requirements (more endurance requirements than the speed necessary for 5ks).  A 5k is run at almost top speed the entire time while a 10k is a much more strategic race that is frequently won in the second half.  It can therefore be a very frustrating distance for runners of every pace without experience at the distance (except for Solinsky – AR (American Record) his first attempt at the distance – apparently).

The other thing that’s incredibly helpful in terms of getting stronger and faster as a runner is to do 1000 repeats and 1200 repeats, but not the way you might think where you run 1000 and then rest until you feel good again.  The trick is to run 4-6 1000s or 1200s and between each only give yourself about 90 seconds rest.  This is going to feel awful at first, but you’re going to get a lot stronger fast.  And the reason this is really good for you is it will teach you the kind of pace you’re capable of maintaining.  If you go out too fast, as many of us are famous for doing, you’re going to fall apart in the last few repeats.  If you go out too slow, you’re going to be running far faster in the last few repeats than in the first few.  Once you start running them evenly, with more and more output on each one to maintain the pace, you know you’ve found a pace that suits you. And as you do more and more of these, your speed will increase and your race times plummet!

RT: Owen – thanks! That’s a whole lot of very interesting and useful knowledge. I’m taking it all in … and take about 1 and a half minutes to recover … …  … there, back.

Question: If you run into a polyurethane mammoth in a green wig on the road, do you mount it – keep pace with it – or what?

OK: Green is crucial phenomenon here. It suggests that this polyurethane mammoth, along with being an organic chemist’s dream, is an environmentalist.  I mean, you have so many choices as far as the wig goes.  You’ve got pink, blue, ultraviolet, passion fruit, maroon, or… well, blonde, I guess.  And it’s chosen green, so it’s clearly trying to counteract the damage its creation has done – with all that unrecyclable plastic that’s nonetheless malleable enough to allow it to wander around the northeast with no concerns except to get its race on.  So I’d probably start off with a little howdy, as us west coasters are famed for, and then challenge it to a 10k because even though it might be my worst race, I’d bet that mammoth just loves the distance.  After all, it’s an environmentalist and clearly spends its weekends in the woods, which is solid preparation for a 10k because leg strength is a pretty crucial component for that race.

Afterwards, I’d ask for a little piggy back ride because most runners I hang with aren’t quite big enough to lug me around and it would be a special occasion, and if this polyurethane mammoth is as big as I think it is, it’s clearly a hair above 180 and won’t have too hard a time with it.  Plus, that’ll give me a chance to give it a hug and thank it for the race.  After that, I’d probably try to keep in touch or… keep pace with it, depending on the direction it’s heading.

So that settles it: even in the most unlikely of settings, I do strive to mount the mammoth.

RT: Thank you. The picture is a whole lot clearer to me now. And as is the case with all of these NBR portraits, I feel a sense of sadness as they come to a close as there are so many experiences to recount, and so many friends to relate them to.

So, my friend, what was the advent of you joining this wild cabal of nutty strivers  – did you meet someone?  Did you see a flyer?

OK: A funny story, actually, probably best told by someone like Matt (Decker). But first, a little back story.  I learned about NBR while recovering from what was the worst or second worst running injury I’ve ever sustained.  I ran a pretty fast 5th Avenue Mile in 2008, which is the first and only NYRR race where I crossed the finish line first (ultimately came in second to a 47 year old, but he was in a different heat so I didn’t have to watch a graying ponytail pass me in the last 100 meters).  After that race I really wanted to improve, but didn’t know how to do that myself.  Then barefoot running started to get big and I started reading about Stanford’s famed move to get its runners to spend more time unshod (what I didn’t read was that even though the time they spent unshod was far longer than it had been before, the distances they ran shoeless were minimal).

Barefoot running, I thought to myself, had to be the answer to beating a 48 year old in the 2009 5th Ave Mile.  So I did what I do, which is to dive into things six-million percent. Three days a week, I ran 5ks in Vibrams on a track.  I ran at six-minute/mile pace.  It felt great; I loved it; I felt wildly free.  Then, all of a sudden, walking became a problem.  My right arch started giving way and the tendonous attachment of a muscle on the inside of my right leg started to tug at my tibia.  In response, I got into swimming and then went so far as to join Maxim so I could use an elliptical, which feels ridiculous to me.  It took me almost three months to get back to running, which happened right after I saw a flyer for NBR while at Maxim.

This is where Matt comes in.  I emailed Aja to ask if I could come out to a run and she was wonderful.  The team was still quite small when I joined as far as I can remember and so when I came out to the first practice the only people there were Matt, Aja, Misha, Jen, Anna, Eric and you. The people I remember most clearly are Aja, Misha, and Matt from that first practice.  The reason I remember that Matt was there is that he couldn’t stop commenting on the fact that even though I might think I had recovered from the injury, I was still limping – heavily.  Misha noted that Matt was, indeed, correct but was very gentle about it.  Nonetheless, Matt and Misha, along with everyone else, were amazing to be around.  And from the beginning, even though every step I took hurt like hell because I hadn’t recovered as much as I should have before getting back into training and was pushing hard to get in shape for the 2009 5th Ave Mile, running with NBR was worth every second.

I’ve admitted this to some and perhaps noted it tangentially in an email to the team, but I can’t say enough how much this team has done for me in terms of my running, but more importantly in terms of my life as a whole.  When I joined NBR my marriage, with a woman I’d been with since I was 19, was falling apart.  I’m wary of getting all soggy in public and so I won’t do that to you, but I want to note that NBR may have saved my life.  Knowing that I could go out and run with so many really genuine people, many of whom have become good friends of mine over the past year, helped me during my separation and subsequent divorce in December of this past year, which profoundly affected me – and still is affecting me deeply.  It’s taken me a long time to even be willing to note that I’m divorced and that that doesn’t make me an awful person, but before getting separated I didn’t say much about my personal life to anyone.  Most people on the team had no idea I was having a hard time and yet the positive energy of everyone on NBR really kept me going when I needed it most.

I feel lucky to have found NBR and hope I can remain a part of it, even from afar.

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