mario fraioli

Getting ready for Boston? Or perhaps preparing to chase a PR at some other spring marathon? Then check out my latest article at Competitor Running for some advice on how to plan for your next peak race. This piece is the first of what will be a twice-monthly training column for the website, so be sure to check in every other Friday for more training talk from yours truly.

As for my own peaking plans, there are none on the immediate agenda. Like my beloved Boston Red Sox, 2010 will be a rebuilding year for the runner formerly known as Mario Fraioli. On that note, it’s time to make the most of my Monday by spending some quality time on the spin bike followed by a gravity-defying jaunt on the AlterG at Hopkinton PT. If Lance Armstrong can come back from cancer and win 7 Tour de Frances, well, then there’s no reason I can’t rebound from three stress fractures and take home a Grand Prix title or two in 2011.

Hyelloh, comrades! The big bang of busyness and bullshit that paralyzed this blog at the end of 2009 has finally started to settle down and postings on this site will once again be a somewhat regular occurrence now that the new year is fully upon us. There’s been a lot going on of late in the life of yours truly, some of which I will share with ya’ll now.

In a nutshell…

• On January 1, I took a step back from my full-time job as store manager at PR Running and accepted a part-time position as shift supervisor. The motive behind this move was to open up more time in my weekly schedule to pursue two of my my biggest passions: writing and coaching. This plan had been in place for a few months and I’d like to thank my most excellent bosses, Rich & Jess Allen, for their full support of my endeavors.
• Building off the above bullet point, you can find my name in a few bylines this month by going to your local newsstand and picking up the latest issues of Running Times and Triathlete. The January/February edition of RT features a profile on Larry Olsen, a local legend who passed away unexpectedly just as the magazine was hitting mainstream. I also wrote an Owner’s Manual piece on hill workouts for the same issue, explaining how and when to attack inclines during a training cycle. In the February issue of Triathlete, I make my On The Run column debut, exploring how long one’s long run has to be when training for triathlon. It should be noted I’ve never competed in a multi-sport event, but have plans to do so sometime in the not-so-near future.
• My coaching responsibilities have kicked up of late, as I am currently working with a dozen athletes scattered throughout the country. 2009 was a successful year with six of my athletes running PR’s at distances ranging from 5K to the marathon. I’m excited to expand what will eventually be called On The Line Athletics and help more athletes achieve their fitness and competitive goals in 2010. If you’re interested in obtaining my assistance, go here and send me an e-mail.
• After 14 weeks of near complete inactivity, the stress fracture of this past fall has finally healed (or so I’ve been told), and I’ve resumed something of a regular training routine over the last month or so. I’m running every other day for the time being and with the help of a few fine folks in the physical therapy field and easy access to an AlterG treadmill, I’m working toward achieving my goal of getting through 2010 in one piece.

And that should just about bring everyone up to speed with the dull details of my otherwise exciting existence. Stay tuned to this space for more information and entertainment as it becomes available!

Finishing up the Larry Olsen Memorial 5K with Adam Tenerowicz this past Saturday.

(Photo: Ted Tyler)

I’m sitting in the terminal here in Las Vegas, laptop wide open and thoughts flying all over the place. I still can’t wrap my head around the tragic news I received yesterday on the passing of Larry Olsen — a great friend, unbelievable runner, awesome coach and above all an incredible person.

The timing of his passing is unexpected and eerie — unexpected because a relatively young, insanely fit guy with many miles in his hardened legs left us so suddenly, eerie that it happened the day before this article I wrote for Running Times hit newsstands. Just over a week ago on Thanksgiving I was chatting with Larry after the Whitin 5 Road Race and he was asking me when the article was going to come out. He was so excited — not for himself, but for the girls on his high school cross country team who were going to get a thrill out of seeing their picture in such a major magazine. I’m sad he never got to read the piece, but honored that I had the chance to write it. I know I will write hundreds more stories in my lifetime, but I can say with certainty I will never be more proud of a piece than that one. It was an honor to know Larry, call him a friend and share his selfless story. He will be dearly missed by many.

Rest in Peace, Larry and Godspeed.

Larry Olsen: November 14, 1946-December 6, 2009

It was a rockin’ weekend in Vegas as I watched my best bud Sean McKeon chop 5 minutes and 8 seconds off his previous marathon best to record a new PR of 2:36:26 at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon this morning. My main man from Millbury ended up running the final 18 miles all by his lonesome on a blustery 36 degree in Sin City, but fought tough all the way through to finish 17th place amongst a solid field. Sean has put in a 12 solid weeks of work — including a half marathon PR in San Jose — and has no doubt set himself up nicely for a solid spring of racing in 2010. As his best friend and coach, I am super excited for him!

In addition to my support and coaching duties, I unexpecedly found myself on assignment for Competitor Running (www.runnow.com) and wrote a post-race recap, which can be found here.

Call me sappy, but I couldn’t help but wax nostalgic as I watched the NCAA Division 2 Regional Cross Country Championship at Franklin Park this afternoon.

It’s hard to believe it was almost six years ago to the day that I was chasing this animal out of the wilderness and up the last hill before launching into a final flurry around the field — a too little, too late move that forced me to settle for second place in a race that, regardless of my own individual result, still ranks as the most exciting I’ve ever had the privilege of running.

That cold, blustery November afternoon back in 2003 will be forever remembered as the turning point for Stonehill Men’s Cross Country, a program that is now considered one of the best in the land — as far as Division 2 academic institutions go, anyway. For the first time in school history the men’s team qualified for the national championship, finally joining the women’s squad, who by this point had made an old habit of punching their ticket to the big dance.

We were not a squad loaded with superstars, but rather a bunch of rag-tag, wanna-be 4:30-something milers out of high school who, on paper, had no business even thinking about running at a national championship. In 2000, we finished next to last at the New England Cross Country Championships — barely beating out Fitchburg State for the honor of collegiate cellar dwellars — and finished sixth at the regional meet. A national championship berth? I’m not sure we could have won the High School State Coaches Invitational. Three years later, however, we were the fourth best cross country team in all of New England, runner up in the region and the 12th best Division 2 squad in the country. As I sit here and look over the words I just typed, I can’t help but crack a smile.

That smile has less to do with what we accomplished that season, but more to do with the group of guys who accomplished it. To this day I have yet to come across a band of overachieving idiots with the unselfish mentality we maintained that entire season. Mike Tyson’s cornerman used to wear a jacket that had the following slogan embroidered on the back: All For 1 For All. That was Stonehill Cross Country in a nutshell.

Six years ago I wasn’t running down Nate Jenkins with the aim of winning an individual title; I was trying to stop the hairy guy in the UMass Lowell singlet from taking points away from my team. And the six guys behind me with STONEHILL emblazoned across their chests all fought with the same mindset: All For 1 For All. It was a two-team war from start to the finish. In the end, we just fell a few points short.

But we battled all the way to the end. Everyone, to a man, PR’d that day. For 6.2 miles we fought tooth and spike for the guy in front of us and the guy behind us in an effort to earn the privilege of punching a plane ticket to nationals in Raleigh. When we arrived in the Tar Heel state two weeks later, we showed our mettle by beating the boys in blue and posting a 12th-place team finish that still ranks as second best in school history.

Today’s Skyhawk squad replicated our regional finish from 2003 with a second-place showing to those raskly Riverhawks from UMass-Lowell. The similarities, however, end there. In this year’s battle of the birds, the guys in the purple came out with guns a blazin’ through 2 miles, but suffered an ambush from the blue backs somewhere around the 4-mile mark. They never recovered. They never fought back.

As a retired general of this army, it was tough to watch this current crop of soldiers from Stonehill — seven studs with the talent of a top-10 team in the country — lay down on the field of battle. Sorry fellas, but that’s not how you fight. Luckily for you guys, the war isn’t over yet.

I’ll leave you boys with the following advice. Over the next two weeks pick yourselves up and dust yourselves off, and when that gun goes off in Evansville, Indiana on November 21, fight for your life and the lives of those going into battle with you. Fight for the name on the front of your singlet. And when you feel like throwing up the white flag, think of the guy in purple behind you who’s trying to catch the blue shirt in front of you and keep fighting.

All For 1 For All.

Just when I thought that poorly thought out, unfounded displays of ignorance in regard to Meb Keflezighi’s victory at the New York City Marathon on Sunday were limited to the letsrun message board, Darren Rovell — at one time a well-respected and credible journalist — comes out with this crap yesterday.

Rovell’s retraction this morning doesn’t do much to make up for his uninformed article that has been at the center of controversy since it was posted on CNBC’s website yesterday. The New York Times, in a slightly more balanced manner, ran this article by Gina Kolata on their website this morning. The piece explores the question of whether or not Meb’s first-place finish on Sunday should count as an “American” win.

(AFP/Don Emmert)

The answer is: of course it should. The bottom line is that the winner of the race was an American and deserves to be recognized as such. As journalists, I believe it’s our job to present both sides of a story, as well as offer our own opinions on a matter when it’s necessary. In regard to Keflezighi ending a 27-year American drought at New York on Sunday, however, there should be no debate.

Contrary to Rovell’s claim that Keflezighi is “like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league,” Meb was not “imported” here from Eritrea to win medals in the marathon. This isn’t a case of Qatar buying its athletes from Kenya. Keflezighi came here as a 12-year-old, much like my own father did, because his parents wanted to provide him the chance to take advantage of opportunities he otherwise never would have had. Just because he wasn’t born on native soil doesn’t make Meb any less American than the son of a soldier born on an army base in Germany. Just because he wasn’t born here doesn’t put Meb at a genetic advantage over anyone with the letters “USA” emblazoned on their birth certificate. That’s unfounded and it’s a load of horseshit. If anything, not having being born in this country gave Meb — someone whose worked hard toward everything that’s he’s ever accomplished in his life — an unmeasurable advantage over the most ungrateful domestic complainers who expect everything in life to be handed to them.

Keflezighi and Alberto Salazar, the last American male to win it all in the Big Apple, share a lot of similarities. Neither was born in this country. Both came to the United States as children because their parents wanted to provide them with a better life growing up. Both attended American schools, competed for American universities and wore their country’s colors with pride in international competition. In my opinion, both of these men exemplify what what it means to be an American — someone who has taken full advantage of the opportunities he’s been presented with as a citizen of this great country. By winning one of the most prestigious races in the world Meb Keflezighi did himself, his family and his country proud.

I think why this muddled mess has struck such a nerve with me is because of my own upbringing as something of a second-generation American — someone who has been given a good life because the United States of America gave my father, an immigrant from Italy, the opportunity to work hard and be compensated for his efforts so he could provide a better life for himself and his family. That’s the American Dream, Mr. Rovell, and instead of downplaying the accomplishment of someone who has taken full advantage of the opportunity that Americans pride themselves in as a basic tenet of their citizenship, you should instead be using this man as an example of inspiration for future generations of Americans to follow.

In case you hadn’t already heard, it was a big day down in the Big Apple as an American male won the New York City Marathon for the first time since 1982. Donning his country’s colors as he crossed the finish line first in 2 hours, 9 minutes and 15 seconds, Meb Keflezighi was one of six — yes, count ‘em, 6! — runners from the United States to finish in the Top-10 today, the greatest American showing in The City That Never Sleeps since well before I was born.

To simply say this was a big day for American distance running is an even bigger understatement, but since I have neither the time nor the right words to pay these performances their proper homage, I’ll just leave it at that for now.

The bottom line is I’m excited, perhaps a bit more so than the next guy because I’ve had the good fortune of interviewing some of these fast fellas — including Meb — over the past few years. I know how hard they’ve worked, how much they’ve sacrificed, how badly they’ve wanted to show the rest of the world that Americans can indeed run well on an international stage. Today, it all came together for them, and it truly was something special to see. I don’t tend to get overly emotional about races in far away places, but I had chills as I watched the live coverage online this morning. I’m excited, and proud, to be an American distance runner today.

At the same time, however, I’m more than a little pissed off. Pissed off at the peckerheads who write off guys like Meb and Abdi because they weren’t born in this country. Pissed off at these ignorant assholes who always have to find fault in a time of celebration.

Face it, he’s just another African marathon winner. When was the last time someone born in the USA won a major marathon…..

Give me a fucking break. That shit stain of a quote came straight out of the toilet known as the letsrun.com message board, a place I infrequently frequent these days because it’s more rare than an American winning a major marathon that anyone has anything good to say on there. Still, I stopped by the board this afternoon curious to see what people’s reactions were on the race, and sadly, this sort of inexcusable excrement was one of the top threads on the page. The more posts I picked through the more my blood boiled, so I called it quits rather than waste any more of my time tending to incessant ignorance.

To those people who say Meb isn’t really an American, I urge you to get your heads out of your own un-American asses and appreciate a fellow countryman’s accomplishment. He is no less American than you or any of your own ancestors, who at one time or another came to this country and gave you the opportunity to choose to be an ignorant asshole. Meb was given that same opportunity in 1987 and chose to run with it instead. Good on him, shame on you.

“U.S.A. gave me all the opportunities, education, sports, lifestyle,” Keflezighi told the New York Times after today’s race. “When you dream, you dream. You don’t give up.”

For my latest piece of practical training advice, get off your ass and give this a read. The article explores the benefits of breaking out of your regular running routine and switching up the surface you run on from time to time. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, and if you’re a runner, it can also keep you injury free and mentally refreshed. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed my running more and kept my aches, pains and injuries to a minimum when I wasn’t running mile after mile on the same roads day in and day out. Taking it to the trails every so often or going for an easy run on the grass is a great way to free your mind and give your body a break. Enjoy the article!

A big congratulations to a couple of athletes I coach – Robert Jarrin and Sean McKeon – who both nabbed HUGE PRs for themselves at their respective races on Sunday.

Robert got off to a fast start at the Army 10 Miler in the nation’s capital, running 1:00:52 to better his previous best by a minute and eight seconds. At 39 years old, Robert is just starting to come into his own as a runner, as the former competitive cyclist has set PRs in the half marathon (1:21:37) marathon (2:49:16) and now 10 miles since I began working with him in 2006. Having missed six weeks of training from June through July this past summer with a torn calf muscle, Robert has been gradually increasing his overall volume with nothing more than easy to moderate running for the last 11 weeks and is establishing a solid base from which to build off moving forward. This morning’s result represented a very big step forward – congrats to JARRIN!

On the other side of America, Sean ripped a minute and 28 seconds off his previous half marathon best, crossing the finish line at the San Jose Rock-n-Roll 1/2 Marathon in 1:10:01 to finish 20th overall. Running a metronomic pace of 5:20 per mile from the sound of the starter’s pistol, Sean also set a 10-mile PR of 53:23 en route. I’ve been working with Sean for the last 8 weeks as he prepares for the Rock-n-Roll Vegas Marathon on December 6th. Having been away from formalized training since graduating from college in 2005, Sean asked me to help him prepare for his second marathon by writing him up more of a structured training schedule. Since we started working together in mid-August, his overall volume has increased and he’s responded very well to the introduction of longer progression runs, extended aerobic intervals and a weekly session of short hill sprints. After this morning’s result, everything appears to be on track for a big marathon PR the first weekend in December. Way to roll Sean!

Here’s a sample week of Sean’s training from September 20-26 (11 weeks out from R&R Vegas)

Sunday – 20 miles: PMP Progression Run
10 easy (6:45-7:15/mi), 5 steady (6-6:15/mi), 5 @ PMP (5:45-50/mi)
Monday – AM: 5 miles EASY; PM: 5 miles easy + 8 x 10-second hill charges
Tuesday – 8 miles easy
Wednesday – AM: 4 miles easy; PM: 12 miles – In-n-Out Intervals
3 x [2 miles (1 mi @ MP/1 mi @ HMP) w/3:00 recovery] MP – 5:45-50; HMP – 5:20-25
Thursday – AM: 4 miles EASY; PM: 4 miles EASY
Friday – 12 miles easy/moderate + 6 x 20-second strides
Saturday – 6 miles easy
80 miles

Sean crossing the line in San Jose on Sunday with a nice new PR of 1:10:01!

In most career fields it’s not considered kosher to promote the craft of your competition, but luckily in the world of jogging journalism there’s enough assignments to go around that it’s not doing me a disservice to point you in the direction of another writer’s website. Plus, it’s not like there’s a whole helluva lot going on around here at the moment, anyway.

For those of you who haven’t yet checked out Duncan Larkin’s latest incarnation on the interweb, roadsmillslaps.com, I suggest you do so in the next 5 minutes or risk running across another uninteresting article on athletics that does nothing to uncover the issues that runners really want to read about. The site goes in a different direction than most other mainstream media outlets and offers a less-than-predictable perspective on the sport through a series of interesting interviews. In the typically tame world of running writing, it’s a nice change of pace.

Now for some shameless self promotion. If you don’t have one already, I suggest signing up for a subscription to Running Times magazine, as I’ll have a pair of pieces premiering in the January/February 2010 issue in the form of a feature story on a local legend, as well as my initial installment in the Owner’s Manual. To say I’m uber excited about these two incredible opportunities would be an unbelievable understatement.