Ritz Interview

A Brief Chat With Dathan Ritzenhein

October 21, 2011 12:34 am



By Peter Gambaccini

Photo by Victah Sailer

Dathan Ritzenhein, the bronze medalist at the 2009 World Half Marathon (in an even 1:00:00) and a ninth place finisher in the 2008 Olympic marathon, will run the Dash for the Finish Line 5K in New York City on November 5, the day before the five-borough marathon. It will be his first race in a year, since he was eighth in the 2010 ING New York City Marathon in 2:12:33. Ritzenhein was the 2010 USA Cross Country champion. In 2009, he finished sixth in the 10,000 at the World Championships in Berlin in 27:22.28 and then set a new American 5000-meter record of 12:56.27 in Zurich; that record was later broken by Bernard Lagat. Ritzenhein was second to Ryan Hall at the Olympic Trials in 2:11:07. His fastest marathon is a 2:10:00 for 11th place in London in 2009. He is originally from Michigan, attended the University of Colorado, and now resides in Oregon and is coached by Alberto Salazar. He was the USA Cross Country titlist in 2005 and 2008; he'd also been an NCAA champion in college and a two-time Foot Locker champ in high school. He was the 2001 World Junior Cross Country bronze medalist. Ritzenhein and his wife, Kalin, are the parents of two children.

You must have a combination of feelings about what's been happening with American runners while you've been on the sidelines. When you see things like Galen Rupp being under 27:00 in the 10,000 and being in the hunt until the last lap at the World Championships, that must be encouraging to you in a lot of ways, right?
Dathan Ritzenhein: Yeah. For me, especially watching the people that I'm closer to, the training partners I have out here (in Oregon), it's encouraging. When you can't be out there yourself, you miss that, you miss the competition. I thought after 2009, that was where I was going after that, where Mo (Farah) and Galen were this year. I thought that would be me. It's kind of hard, but at the same time, at least it was good to have someone there doing it who's been doing the same work that I have. It gives you a little bit of confidence as well.

Well, it was nice that when you broke 13:00 (for 5000), there was a wave of American guys doing it. It wasn't an isolated incident. There were you and Chris Solinsky and Matt Tegenkamp and Bernard Lagat. It showed that American running had gotten to a new place.
DR: We'll take credit for that!

As you get to New York for the 5k on November 5, how far along in fitness and race preparedness do you think you'll actually be?
DR: I don't think I'll be in 12:56 shape, for sure. But I've had a solid build-up of training, finally, after the mess that I was in early in the spring and the summer. I have pretty good base foundational fitness, but I haven't done any intense speed work or anything like that. I've put in some decent long runs. I did 23 miles today (Wednesday, the day of this interview). It's real foundational marathon type stuff. Obviously, the 5k is not very indicative of what kind of fitness I'm in for a marathon. But even at that point (November 5), I'll have quite a bit of work to do with the ten weeks remaining until the (Marathon Trials) race. But to tell you the truth, my fitness is really good, in general terms.

For me, it's really just getting my feet wet again. The outcome (at the 5k), I don't care about a lot. It's really just getting back to racing. I'm really looking forward to it. It's been so long. I think a lot of people in the race will be in the same situation. It's a strange time for some people. A couple of the track guys will have been taking a little break and be coming back. A few people have been running road races all year; they'll probably be in really good shape and be the toughest guys out there. I think it's such a hard race to predict. For me, it's just going to be a matter of jumping back into the water again. The competition part of this is what I'm really looking forward to.

A lot of these decisions are business-related, but as a first race in so many months, is this 5k really a 'right time, right place' situation for you and would you have considered yourself ready to race again in any case?
DR: I had this conversation with Alberto (Salazar, his coach) about what would be ideal and we definitely decided we didn't want to do a big half-marathon. A big half-marathon, for someone doing a spring or fall marathon, it's just as much financial as anything else. I don't think it really indicates how well you're going to do in the marathon. You can be in great half-marathon shape and not be in great marathon shape or you can be like Ryan (Hall). He'll show to half-marathons and run 65 minutes and then go out and run 2:06. It doesn't indicate a lot. But the biggest problem is that you have to essentially stop your training and it (the half) is hard to recover from. So that's the biggest rationale why we didn't want to do that big half-marathon.

But having been away for us long, I do need to race. Ideally, for me, I wish that there was some 10k or 15k road race around that time, but there really isn't. I think the actual race atmosphere is what I need, so we decided to do the shorter races.

Do you have other ideas in mind for races between now and the Marathon Trials in Houston in January?
DR: I haven't pinned anything down yet. I might do another shorter race as well. There are a few options out there. I think it will depend a little bit how this 5k goes. I like the concept of doing 5ks and 10ks. You can essentially train right through them. The outcome doesn't mean a whole lot; it's the actual event and going through the motions that means a lot, and I like that right now. Obviously a 10k might be a little bit better, but I'll take the 5k. After being away so long (from racing), it'll be a fun time.

You've been at this a long time. Is the training enjoyable enough in itself or is it chiefly something that leads to the races that are the payoff?
DR: I really enjoy training. That's one of the biggest things I missed in that whole time away. I couldn't train at all. I don't particularly care to cross-train, but I would rather cross-train than do nothing, but there were a few periods between the surgeries and the infections and all of that when I couldn't do anything for six weeks at a time. You know, I'd never really had that (before). I could always usually do something. And I realized that I like training, I like to be fit. I like the everyday satisfaction of having done something that most people can't do. It was something I missed a whole lot. So I really do enjoy the training. I don't particularly like it when I'm out there doing quarters (400s) and it's super hard, but I like the satisfaction of having done it every day.

That's what sometimes separates people who always run and always train and people who maybe move on in life and do something else. I think I'm a lot more likely to be someone like Joan Benoit (Samuelson), who keeps going forever, just because I actually really like it, as opposed to someone who stops and never runs again.

You're a father of two, which probably supplies a lot of the answer to this next question, but when you get these six-week blocks when you can't train or cross-train, how do you spend your time?
DR: It's tough when you can't do anything. For someone like me, it's kind of been the identity that I've had probably since I was 12 years old. I've just trained a lot. I just trained hard. And so when you can't do it, you almost have a sense of a loss, like you're mourning something. People mourn the end of a career, retirement, and I think it's like that a little bit when you can't do anything. You're at a loss. You don't know what to do.

I spent a lot of time with my family, obviously. Before, you take that for granted a little bit, just having them always there and available. It would be so tough for somebody who didn't have someone. For my daughter (Addison, now four), I was gone a lot more when I was training and wasn't hurt. With my son (Jude, 15 months), I was there all the time. He's so much more attached to me than she was at that age. I did get to spend a lot of time with them. They got me 100 percent, too. Sometimes you're just drawn out and tired and they're not getting the real you when you're just training all the time. That was a nice change as well.

I don't want to go through the whole litany of injuries, surgeries, and rehab, because you've done that often enough (read about his ordeal Here), but there were two surgeries on the tendon sheath, right?
DR: There were two surgeries. One was to remove the sheath from the (Achilles) tendon. Actually, there were three surgeries, because I had a neuroma taken out of the other foot at the same time, but I didn't have any problems with that. The second on the left foot was just to remove the dissolvable stitches that were causing the recurrent infection.

You have this long injury history, but we think of you as this guy who gets in shape in a hurry – 'Give him six weeks and he'll be fine.' And we're starting to think of who the three guys will be who'll make the U.S. Olympic marathon team in 2012, and you were always on everybody's list. But when we start hearing about 'open wounds' that weren't healing, we wonder, 'What's going to happen here?' There must have been a crisis of confidence when that was going on.
DR: Yeah, there was. Now I believe I'll make the team. I really believe I will, and I think I'll do very well. But there were times when I wondered if I would make it to the line in time because the wound wasn't healing not too terribly long ago. It's been a couple of months now, but a few months ago I was running and training but the wound wasn't healing and there was still that possibility it would need to be immobilized to heal. So there were a few times when I was a little skeptical and started to wonder if it would come together in time to make the marathon team.

But that's the stuff that makes you stronger. I actually had to look at that and say, "Well, if it doesn't happen, that's okay. That's not the end of the world." That's a hard thing to do sometimes. I was fortunate that I came out of it and I believe truly that I'll have a great race (at the Trials) and will do well now.

Was the wound a muscle problem or a dermatological problem?
DR: It was more a skin problem, actually. Basically, you could see the tendon go up and down. There's not a lot of tissue between your skin and your Achilles tendon. There was nothing for the skin to grow over. It was an open ulcer, really. That was the tough part.

So the skin grew back over it eventually.
DR: Yeah, eventually. It looks like normal scar tissue now.

You've spent a lot of time with the Gatorade science people. You've talked about having nutritional issues in the past and that they've helped you with that. What have you learned and what changes are you making?
DR: I just went and did a whole bunch of testing there (in Illinois), metabolic efficiency and sweat rate and things like that, which makes a big difference with the nutritional part. And even the training as well; you can see at which points your body uses fats and carbohydrates better. That's something I've had trouble with in the marathon, because I've run very well in the half-marathon, and once you got close to the marathon, you need to really be able to use the fat sources in your body and I had more trouble with that. So if we can pinpoint where that is, we can train in zones that hopefully help the body get a little more efficient in that. And right from the get-go, even before they were able to analyze any of the data, they were able to say I had an excessively high sweat rate. I've had a lot of cramping problems.

When I look at my other times and accomplishments–running 12:56 (for 5000 meters) or 8:11 for two miles or 60:00 for a half-marathon–everything indicates that I should be able to run 2:05 or 2:06 (for the marathon) but I haven't been able to do that. Hopefully, getting that nutritional part right is the missing key for me. I'm waiting for the (Gatorade) report to come back this week.

Looking ahead to the Marathon Trials, to be honest, between 2008 and now, people were getting excited by guys running 2:11s, but it doesn't seem like anybody has really broken through. If we had to pick this time, assuming everyone's healthy, we might just think that the Olympic team is going to be Ryan Hall, you, and Meb (Keflezighi), that there's not going to be any real change. Looking ahead, do you think that's what we might see?
DR: First of all, there are a lot of good people I would never count out. I have a very good friend, Jason Hartmann, who has run very well the last two marathons. He ran 2:11 last year in Chicago. He hasn't had great races outside of those marathons so people might forget him a little bit, but I think he's been a consistent marathoner. The thing about being able to qualify for the Trials now from non-marathon distances, I think there are people who are pretty good runners who haven't even tried it (the marathon) yet or had one, and the first one, you don't know how that's going to go. But I don't count anybody out. I just will get myself as fit as possible, and if I do that and stay healthy, then I'm probably very confident going into the race. But I would never forget about some people who are really good athletes either.

Jason was one guy I was going to ask about. He does seem overlooked. He's off the grid a little bit. And you alluded to the guys who've qualified via other shorter races. Based on some of the other things he's done, I might think Mo Trafeh could be a guy you'd have to worry about.
DR: Yeah, Mo Trafeh. Tim Nelson ran 27:30 (for the 10,000). These are good guys, obviously. Yeah, if you look it at on paper, it should be me, Ryan, and Meb. But that's not the way the sport works. For 2008, thinking that Meb wouldn't make the team, or Abdi, who a year or two before run 2:08 something (2:08:56 in 2006), the marathon's a fickle thing. I think it would be a mistake to overlook anybody who's got semi-decent credentials.

That's something I go into the race with full knowledge of. You maybe let one person get away who's going on there own, but I would never let a group of those guys get away

Thanks for posting this, Chris. I hope Ritz can grab a spot on the team, but man, he's been away for a long time. Fingers crossed.