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| Henry Marsh and the Eden Prairie kids(Henry is in the middle of the back row) Photo by Jim Ferstle |
He didn't focus on the minutia of training, but rather in the larger "life lessons" that can be applied to sport, business, or life in general. For example, at the end of his talk, he played several videos of some of his races. The first being the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki where for most of the race Marsh was running in last place. The British announcers who were doing the commentary made several remarks about how foolish they thought Marsh's tactics were, noting that the contenders in the race were battling for position in the front of the field, while Marsh was running in back, like a "novice."
Sitting off to the side watching the race replay in the Eden Prairie East Commons, Marsh responded to the commentator's question why he was not trying to be up near the front of the pack with the leaders. "Because they were running too fast," Marsh yelled at the screen. Afterwards, he explained the philosophy behind his tactics.
His primary goal for two thirds of the race was to be as "efficient" as possible, conserve energy by concentrating not on his proximity to the front of the race, but on monitoring how the race was unfolding. By running in the back, Marsh didn't have to jostle with the other runners fighting for position in front. He had a clear view of the hurdles and didn't have to cope with cutting steps or going over each hurdle less efficiently as he might be forced to do in the middle or near the front of the pack.
Marsh planned his races meticulously. He went over what he thought would be all the variations of strategy. How the race would develop and what to do if seemingly unpredicted things happened. If the pace was too slow, Marsh said, he might abandon his trailing the pack strategy for a more up front approach. If the lead runners threw in surges or tried to crank up the pace 800 meters from the finish, 600 meters, or with a lap to go he developed a strategy for that.
"I didn't worry about (my position in the race) until about four laps to go," said Marsh. "It's all about racing. I have to do the race, I'm not here to work...You have to be very disciplined. I knew pace very well. I'll bet if you looked at my races, my laps would be pretty consistent. They ran their first lap in 63(in Helsinki). Why would you want to do that? You just get into oxygen debt right away. The energy you save(from running consistent pace instead of fast and slow spurts) allows you to be able to kick at the end."
He had plans for many options but, as he discovered in the 1983 race, even he could not anticipate every situation. In Helsinki, Marsh had worked himself up to the top three for the final lap, and as the trio came surging down the home straight he was picking up speed and looked to be in position to win or, at worst, take the silver medal as he was rapidly approaching the final hurdle. Running at top speed and gaining ground on the leader, Marsh suddenly discovered that he was coming up too fast on that last hurdle.
He chopped his steps in an attempt to clear the hurdle, but instead crashed into the barrier and tumbled to the track. In retrospect, Marsh said, he hadn't practiced taking the last hurdle at full speed. He had overlooked the fact that in the heat of competition, he would be approaching that last hurdle must faster than during the rest of the race. It was a mistake, he said, that he wouldn't make again. The setback, he noted, was another life lesson. Picking yourself up after you fall--literally in this case--and using the disappointment to motivate you to do better, be smarter, triumph in the shadow of adversity. "Does the setback become your floor or your ceiling?" Marsh asked the kids.
That was the recurring theme of his talk and his message to the young track athletes. Turn a negative into a positive. Use it to inspire you to do better. Don't be defeated by a defeat. It's been something Marsh has been doing since grade school. Born in Boston and raised in Texas, Marsh began his athletic career in typical Texas fashion. He played football, basketball, and track. He was not an instant success in any of them, but track seemed to be the most logical for someone his size. Even though he had a "growth spurt" in ninth grade, he grew from 5 feet tall to 5' 6", at that size he was not destined to be an NBA or NFL prospect. Track was the more realistic option for achieving athletic success. .
It wasn't until his family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas from Dallas though that things began to develop in athletics. The coaching in Dallas had not been helpful, said Marsh. He basically was left to figure out things on his own, to explore his limits. He once ran 10 miles on a dirt track, testing his capacity to handle that distance. As a ninth grader he had run 3:25 for 3/4 of a mile and 4:52 for a mile, enough to indicate that there was some talent for middle distance running. So, when the move happened Marsh's father canvassed the high schools in Corpus Christi, evaluating the track coaches.
He settled on Coach James Blackwood, who would go on to coach at the University of Texas San Antonio, mentor 17 Olympians, including steeple standouts Patrick Sang of Kenya and Marsh. Under Blackwood, Marsh began to show what he could do. One thing, however, didn't change. Marsh was always testing his limits. One of the early workouts was an out and back 10 mile run. As the pack of high schoolers began the run, they instructed Marsh that they usually went out a ways, stopped running, waited the appropriate time it would take if they had run the full five miles of the out portion of the loop, and headed back to school.
Marsh told his teammates that he really wanted to try doing the full distance, and he did. "I was trying to find my limits," said Marsh. He even later occasionally added an extra four miles to the 10-mile loop for a 14 mile run. The work paid off as Marsh finished seventh in the state in cross country that year and would also take seventh in the mile in track in 4:25. An added bit of info, Marsh said, was that his first high school competition was in the Houston Astrodome.
That tidbit was not the important one for his time in Corpus Christi, said Marsh. It was that coach Blackwood "taught me the basics." The foundation on which he built his training. He trained twice a day, usually starting with a morning four-mile run on the treadmill, followed by the afternoon workout. That routine would work well for him when the family made another move, this one to Hawaii. There the competition was not as steep, but Marsh, who attended Punahoa High(the same high school President Obama attended, Marsh said) continued to push his limits. He won the state cross country championships, as well as titles in several distances in track--the half-mile, mile, and two mile.
He ran well enough to earn a half scholarship to BYU, but there encountered another hurdle. While the furthest high school distance he'd competed at was two miles, college cross country was 10K. Training for the distance was more than he could handle and he struggled. He missed by one spot being on the travelling team in cross country, and in track he wasn't among the top runners in any of the distances, so he was encouraged to try the steeplechase.
He did not have immediate success in the event. "I not only fell in the water on the water jump, but I hit my knee on one of the hurdles and it swelled up." It healed, but Marsh's PR for his first year in the steeple was 9:15, hardly an auspicious beginning to his college career. For the next two years, Marsh did his service mission, which is required of all BYU students. He ended up in Brazil where he did little running for the first year of his mission, but during the second year he linked up with a local Brazil track club and ended up finishing second in the Brazil national club championships.
When he returned to BYU he no longer had a track scholarship and, in a sense, had to start over. Instead of being discouraged, Marsh set a goal of qualifying for the NCAA championships in the steeple, which required running a qualifying time of 8:55, said Marsh. Early in the season he went from the altitude of Utah down to a meet in Tempe, AZ, and ran 8:57. Attributing at least some of his nearly 20 second improvement in the event to running at sea level instead of altitude, Marsh asked the coaches to send him to the Drake Relays. Too expensive. Penn Relays? Too expensive. Mt. SAC? OK.
On the bus going to the track for the race, Marsh sat next to BYU throws coach Jay Silvester, who was an Olympic medallist in the discus. "What does it feel like to be the best in the world?" Marsh asked Silvester. Though he hadn't even qualified for the NCAAs, nor contemplated going to the Olympics, Marsh says he doesn't remember what Silvester told him, but it was clear that Marsh was again exploring his limits. He ran 8:43 at Mt. SAC, followed that up with an 8:41 BYU school record in the event at the California Relays, then 8:32 at a meet in Eugene two weeks later.
Marsh's rapid improvement didn't stop there. At the NCAA meet he finished second in 8:27. His coach at BYU, Clarence Robison, asked him: "Have you ever thought of going to the Olympics?" He not only began to think about it, he did it by placing second in the 1976 Olympic trials and finishing tenth in the steeple final at the Montreal Games. What followed was another 12 years of being at or near the top of his event. Four times an Olympian. Four times he broke the US record for the steeplechase. World number one rankings three times in the steeplechase, but no Olympic medal.
The closest he came was the 1984 Games where he finished fourth. Marsh was in position in the last lap of that race to get a medal, but he didn't want any medal, he wanted gold. Instead of saving his energy for the final straightaway, Marsh, like Steve Prefontaine had done in Munich in 1972, went after the gold. He had beaten the second and third place finishers in the 1984 Games easily, so his focus was not on them, but rather on winning.
Like Prefontaine who ended up fourth in 1972, there were no regrets over the decision. Marsh was simply following his instinct to test his limits again. "Success is being able to look in the mirror and say you did your best," said Marsh. "Winning is how you did relative to what you were capable of doing...Track and field is about being the best you can be." In Seoul in 1988, Marsh finished sixth, but more importantly, he found his limits. "I've now done my best," he said of his career. "I can walk away."
Secrets to his success? Marsh credits a number of things. "I was consistent," he said. "I never missed a workout. Eleven months a year, two workouts a day." From Oregon coach Bill Bowerman, who he trained with toward the end of his career running with Athletics West, he learned when to test his limits and when to conserve. Of the workouts, Bowerman told him: "I want you to feel like you could do a little bit more."
Don't leave your race on the practice track, save it for the competition, Bowerman said. "Continually improve. Stay in control. Stay within yourself and do the best you can do."
"Every one of you is different," Marsh told the kids."I learned what worked for me(in training and racing). You have to find what works for you." learn from others, but don't blindly copy them, and, perhaps most importantly, Marsh said "have fun." He was lucky as his coaches made the training fun, emphasized that achievement does not always have to be just the hard work.
Through the sport, Marsh noted, he'd seen the world. Nike, his sponsor, funded his law school degree. When he was in Russia competing for the US in 1979, he talked to their athletes, learned what life was like behind the "Iron Curtain" at a time when tensions were high among the two world "super powers." He even pushed the limits in that arena, as he told the kids that he was "chased by the KGB."
"What happened?" they wanted to know. In the USSR, there were stores that only accepted US money, Marsh said, but their currency exchange rate was not favorable. One US dollar was valued at two Soviet Rubles, he said. while the international exchange rate had the dollar pegged at four rubles. So, Marsh and one of his teammates went on the street to the, in the USSR, illegal currency exchange. Buying Rubles for dollars for half the price that the banks or US stores charged.
While one of these transactions was happening a pair of KGB agents began approaching. The Soviet making the deal with Marsh and his teammate took off running. The two US athletes did the same, easily outdistancing the KGB pair to their hotel where they quickly ran onto the elevator. The doors closed and Marsh pushed the button for the fourth floor.. "You idiot," the teammate said. "They'll know what floor we're on by watching where we get off. Push all the buttons." Marsh did, they got off at another floor and walked up to theirs. Crisis averted, but another fun story to tell of life on the international track circuit.
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