Interview: Mark Carroll

by Kevin Beck

1995 Providence College grad Mark Carroll, originally from Cork County, Ireland, and a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, for the past decade-plus, is slated to compete in the Healthy Kidney 10K in New York City's Central Park this Sunday. Carroll is the Irish record holder at 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 meters (7:30.36, 13:03.93, and 27:46.82 respectively). He was the European Indoor 3,000-meter champion in 2000 and the 5,000-meter bronze medalist at the 1998 European Outdoor Championships.

Carroll, who has run 3:35.00 for 1,500 meters and 3:50.62 for the mile, made an impressive marathon debut in 2002 in finishing sixth at the New York City Marathon; his time of 2:10:54 is the second-fastest ever recorded by an Irish athlete. The adidas-sponsored athlete, who is engaged to fellow Providence College alum and two-time U.S. Olympian Amy Rudolph, has twice represented Ireland at the Olympics in the 5,000 meters and competed in four-straight IAAF World Track & Field Championships in that event between 1995 and 2001.

Carroll struggled with injuries throughout much of 2003 and 2004. Nevertheless, he qualified for the Athens Olympic Games last summer and led the first two-plus kilometers of his semifinal heat of the 5,000 meters before fading and missing the final. After a gradual return to good health, the 33-year-old Carroll proved he was back in form in January by defeating Alan Webb in Boston over 3,000 meters, covering the distance in a quick 7:46.6.

MensRacing.com recently spoke with Carroll after he returned from Europe, where he ran the first two of three races he logged in an eight-day span.

MensRacing.com: You've had a busy racing schedule lately. How does everything you're doing now fit into your plans for the coming year?
Mark Carroll: Yes, I've been traveling and racing a lot. I ran the BUPA 10K in Ireland a week ago Sunday [May 8; he finished ninth in 29:39], a 3,000 meters in London on Wednesday night [May 11; he finished second in 7:57], and a 5K here in Providence on May 15 [which he won in 14:16]. It was a busy week, not something I'd do often, but it was good to get in some nice solid efforts. I'm planning to run the 10,000 meters at the World Championships, and if all goes well, the ING New York City Marathon in November.

MR: Were you pleased with the results of those recent races?
MC: Overall, yes. To be honest, I'm at a very particular phase of my preparation — I like to do things like hard road 10Ks where I don't have to lace up the spikes to get out there and compete. The 3,000 [7:57 for second] was a good effort on a bit of a chilly London night. I'm still in a period of heavier volume.

MR: What's 'heavier volume' for Mark Carroll?
MC: Not marathon training, but right around 100 miles a week, give or take. I'll begin to taper down as summer approaches.

MR: Do you have any specific goals for the Healthy Kidney race?
MC: Well, I feel I'm pretty fit, but the others in the field are likely to be fitter and sharper at this point. [Craig] Mottram is clearly running well, and if [Hendrick] Ramaala is in shape he's another one who can take it. Put it this way — if I beat those guys on Sunday, I will be very, very happy.

MR: You've been treated very well by the tracks and streets of New York City over the years.
MC: That's true. I won the Millrose Games 3,000 meters three times and the Wanamaker Mile at Millrose in 2000. That was kind of the start of it all, and then I became involved with David Monti and the New York Road Runners. After talking with David in 2002 I knew that New York would be a great, high-energy place to open up my marathon career. I ran 1:03:11 for a half-marathon [Grete's Gallop] the month before the marathon, and by the time the marathon itself rolled around I was very familiar with Central Park and the area. Also, New York isn't so far from home.

MR: Speaking of home, you've made yours in Providence for close to 15 years. How do you deal with the New England winters?
MC: Actually, Amy and I head to Gainesville, Florida, most winters for about six weeks. Sometimes we'll drive down as early as December, and we usually wind up being there after Christmas for a while. That's our one planned trip away from the area. When trying to get ready for indoor races, it obviously makes sense to be able to get in some track work in comfortable conditions.

MR: After Athens, you indicated that you might have run your last track race. Then in January you popped a 7:46.6 3K in Boston indoors. How did things evolve for you during the period in between?
MC: For the past couple of years I've been very frustrated by injuries, most of them having do do with misalignment of my pelvic musculature. This has literally been a pain in the ass. I have always been a very smooth runner and have liked the sensation of being on rails when I hit the track, but once I started having problems with my biomechanics it was the opposite. I felt crooked and twisted and my body wouldn't cooperate whenever I tried to force myself through faster-paced running. I saw [health professional after health professional] and each of them seemed to be telling me something different. I had become frustrated enough so that I considered the idea of retiring — I didn't feel old, just miserable and fed up with it.

Finally I saw Gerald Hartmann, who in turn recommended me to a provider in Germany. He found that basically one of my hip flexors was rotated anteriorly, the other posteriorly, and this in effect created a leg-length discrepancy — four millimeters was enough to do it. Part of my treatment involved acupuncture, and I've also been doing all sorts of core strength exercises, some with a Swiss ball. I've paid close attention to those hip flexors, as those are the key to my staying in balance. I see a physical therapist in the area, Mike Silva, who's begun working with a lot of local athletes.

Anyway, I was healthy as we headed to Florida, I got a few good workouts in, and the 3,000 in Boston went very well.

MR: Now that you're creeping toward your mid 30s, do you take particular notice of older track athletes who have been near the top of the heap for a long time, like Bob Kennedy?
MC: I do. My coach of going on nine years, Jim Harvey, is an old-school Brit with a true passion for the sport, and his training ideas are modeled after athletes like Brendan Foster and David Bedford. One of his beliefs is, 'The faster you can run for three kilometers, the faster you can run for five.' That sounds simple, but the point is that in order to perform well at all distances, you have to continue doing 3K and 5K pace work even after transitioning more into road races. And this translates into better racing all around and especially into the possibility of running a fast 10,000. Doing strength-type work exclusively is not enough.

MR: From the sound of things, your one real goal on the track is to break your own national 10,000-meter record in Helsinki this summer [at the World Track and Field Championships].
MC: Yes, I do believe there's room for improvement there.

MR: After this weekend, how will you approach your buildup for the World Championships?
MC: I do have to get the World Championships 10,000-meter standard ['B' - 28:06; 'A' - 27:49], which I plan to try for in Vancouver, Canada, on June 17. I'm also entered in the two-mile at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene on June 5.

MR: Getting back to the marathon, it's clear from listening to you talk about it that you've got a lot of passion for this race.
MC: Well, it's great to be healthy — I feel smoother now than at any time in the past two years. And for all of the highlights I have enjoyed in my career — running 7:30 for 3,000 was one, a 3:50 mile another — the satisfaction I had when finishing the New York City Marathon in 2002 has yet to be matched. One of my goals is to be able to look back at my career when it's over and know that I had great range. I've run the 3:50, and now at the other end, of course, lies the marathon.

Along the lines of what I said earlier, I believe that if you can run a fast 5K, you can run a fast marathon. For someone capable of running three 4:10 miles in a row, 5:00 pace is almost easy, and feels easy for much of a race. Obviously the trick is being able to do 26 of them. A lot of this involves a mental adjustment, even when the physical work has been done.

In my debut, I had decided in advance that I wasn't going to get mixed up in any madness on First Avenue, so when the leaders [including Meb Keflezighi] took off, I asked myself, 'Do I really want to start running in the 4:30s now?' Luckily I didn't — I was 1:38-something at 20 miles, a good two minutes behind Meb and others. Of course, the next April in London I went through 10 miles in 48:06 [about 2:06 marathon pace] and wound up dropping out at 17. So I believe I know the pace range I need to keep myself in out there.

MR: In March, the Irish Sports Council announced that it would not continue to fund you and a number of others. It seems as though a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic jumped to the conclusion that this would have you running in a US singlet before long.
MC: That's exactly what happened — a lot of things were mentioned in the media, but none of them by me. I love living and running in the United States, but I'm Irish and I run for Ireland. I don't know what people, from friends in the US to my neighbors back home, would think of me representing another country.

MR: Where and when will you and Amy be married?
MC: In October, right here in Providence. She's from Pennsylvania and my family is 3,000 miles away, so this was as close to a compromise as we could find.

I went to Providence College's graduation last weekend and realized, 'I've been out for 10 years!' But I will say it's been a great ride, a long ride with a lot to look back on. Hopefully I can continue adding to those memories.

(Interview posted May 20, 2005)