Interview: Adam Goucher

by Scott Douglas

On consecutive weekends in February, Adam Goucher won national championships in cross country (in the 4K race) and indoor track (at 3,000 meters). His next major race is the World Cross Country Championship 4K, in Japan on April 1st.

Goucher’s early-season successes continued the momentum he built in 2005. After several years of struggling with injuries and sub-par performances, Goucher reached his nadir at the 2004 Olympic Trials, where, as the defending champion in the 5,000m, he failed to make the final. Later that year, Goucher and his wife, Kara, moved from their long-time base of Boulder, Colorado, to Portland, Oregon, and switched from being coached by Mark Wetmore to Alberto Salazar. By the end of his 2005 season, Goucher had set a new 5,000m best of 13:10.19 and had run a 7:40.09 in the 3,000m, just more than five seconds off his best time at the distance, set in 2001.

Goucher’s two national championships in February go with two previous national cross country titles and two outdoor titles. In the international 5,000m championships, he has placed 13th in the Olympics (2000) and 11th at the World Track and Field Championships (2001).

MensRacing.com:The last time you and I talked was in June of 2004, about a month before the Olympic Trials. A lot has changed for you since then—new coach, new location, new 5K PR. How did the move and all that come about?
Adam Goucher: Man, I had two-and-a-half, three years of a downward spiral. I would talk to people, and they would say, “Maybe you need a change.” I would discount what they were saying. I would tell them, “It’s not an option to leave Coach Wetmore.” At the same time, Kara was also struggling. We pretty much knew that, for her, she had to make a change. But we were thinking maybe a different coach; we just never even thought about moving.

After the Olympic Trials, I started thinking, “Maybe I really do need a fresh start, a new approach, to get refreshed.” After running so poorly at the Olympic Trials—I mean, come on, not even making the final—I told myself I wasn’t ready to be done. I thought I still had a lot more to accomplish. I started looking around, and talking to different coaches around the country to see if we could find a match for Kara and myself. We came here for a conversation with Alberto, and it was kind of a no-brainer. The amount of support here for us is tremendous, and that’s what we needed. You know how I’ve been injured on and off through the years and have spent a lot of time struggling. I often didn’t know what the next step should be. We felt like if we came here, there’d be that support system, and we could take care of things immediately.

MR: Like what?
AG: Say I’m out on a run and my leg starts hurting. I’ll get back and phone Alberto and he’ll say, “Okay, let’s figure this out.” If it’s still hurting the next day, it’s, “What is this? How can we cure it in the right way?” And then immediately I’ll get someone to see me, someone we trust.

MR: Was it more scary or exciting to move from Colorado after so much time there?
AG: You’re right, I’d lived my whole life in Colorado. I loved it in Boulder. I have family and friends there. But it was time to make a change. You have that little window as a professional athlete. At that point, I thought I had five, six, eight more years, and I if wanted to max them out, I had to make a change. It was, “Let’s get healthy and see what we can do.” So it was exciting, but also scary, because I had never been away from my comfortable environment in Colorado. If I had found a coach in Boulder who would have made sense for us, I would have stayed in Boulder—that was our home. But it wasn’t an option. It’s a good thing, to get away from there and the same routine day in and day out and try something new.

MR: Does that seem like it was only a year and a half ago?
AG: It seems like a long time ago. The person I was in 2004 as an athlete is not who I am today. It was just constant beating myself up, training well and things starting to go good, and then boom, another injury. It was like always being punched in the gut, always having to go back to step one. With injury would come frustration and lack of motivation, especially when it kept happening.

MR: Can you say more about what you’re doing differently since moving so that you’re not always getting injured?
AG: It’s like we make a pre-emptive strike against things, taking care of things before they get too bad. I see an ART guy, a chiropractor at least once, if not twice a week. I also get massage on a regular basis. It’s constant attention to keeping the body healthy. In Boulder, I would get massage once in a while, but it wasn’t like here, with full body awareness. When you’re training hard, it’s easy to get out of whack. Whether I’m hurting or not, I still get treatment every week. And I do a lot more core strengthening. I did some in Boulder, but now it’s much more part of the routine. It’s kind of like we moved away from Boulder and for the first time became professional athletes. It’s like, “Okay, let’s get serious. This is our job.”

MR: So you won’t be building any more decks on your house?
AG: Exactly. In 2004, before the Trials, I finished the basement in my house. I did 90 percent of the work myself. That’s not being a professional athlete—train, and then spend a couple hours on my feet doing whatever.

MR: I spent a month in Kenya, and was amazed at how those guys could literally do nothing for hours between workouts.
AG: That’s something that a lot of athletes don’t realize—there are people who live, breathe, eat and sleep running. We have to try to mimic that within the context of an existence most people would recognize.

MR: How often do you see Salazar?
AG: Five days a week, at least. Not a day goes by that we don’t have a talk on the phone to discuss how today’s run went, what tomorrow’s workout is. He’s there for every hard session.

MR: Who do you run with?
AG: I’m starting to train now more with Dan Browne. He’s been struggling since the Olympics with knee injuries, so up until a few months ago it was more here or there, but now it’s on a more regular basis. On other days, easy days, I run with Mike Donnelly a lot.

MR: So you’d been with Mark Wetmore since college, and suddenly you switch to another well-known coach. When you started working with Salazar, how much give and take was there? Like, would he say something and you would say, “Well, I’ve already run 13:11, I kind of know what I’m doing, and I’m not too hot about that idea”?
AG: I’d say right away it was pretty much 100 percent me saying to him, “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” If I was unsure, I would ask, “What’s the purpose of this workout?” But for the most part, I was 100 percent committed to doing things differently. I have been around long enough to know when something isn’t going to be in my best interest in a particular workout. And so I’ll tell him what I think, and we adjust. But I wasn’t going to come here and be stubborn or half-ass about it. I wasn’t going to come here and say, “Hey, this is what we did in Colorado.” I was like, “You guide me.”

MR: So what are some major differences between what you were doing in Colorado and what you’re doing now?
AG: There are two different elements. First, I came from altitude, really from being at altitude my whole life. Now I’m at sea level. So that’s going to be different anyway. Second is that we do long interval sessions on a much more regular basis. In Colorado, at most it would be five times a mile, and not all the time. When I came here, I started doing things like 13 or 15 times a kilometer.

MR: How fast?
AG: It depends on the time of year. Let’s see, a week and a half ago, I was coming off of indoor nationals; I did 13 times a kilometer, about half on grass, half on the track. I probably averaged 2:52 on the grass, and a little under 2:45 on the track.

Another thing is that I don’t do 20-milers out here. My long runs are more like 17. Since moving here I’ve done maybe 1 20-miler.

MR: Do you still do your long runs hard? Going back to “Running with the Buffalos,” you weren’t exactly out looking at the flowers on your long runs in Colorado.
AG: In Colorado, I was probably hitting 5:40 a mile a lot of times. I’m certainly not going any faster than that here, so when you account for the altitude...a lot of times, like the day after a workout, Alberto will say to slow it down and just get it in—he wants you to do a long run but he also wants you to recover.

MR: Like you, Salazar was really good young, and then went into a downward spiral. Unlike you, he never came out of it. Do you guys talk about his career and if there are things from his case that can be applied to you?
AG: I wouldn’t say we talk about it a lot, but Alberto learns from his mistakes. How he trained himself was pretty insane. He now realizes you can’t train like that and have a prolonged career.

But when we talked about what I was doing in Colorado, he was like, “There’s a lot of things you haven’t done that are key to being the best you can be.” Those regular long intervals are one thing.

Like I said, Alberto and I sometimes go back and forth. Sometimes he’ll say, “Do this and this and this,” and I’ll say, “Whoa. If I do all that, I’ll be done.” I know what I can handle over a series of trying sessions.

MR: What’s an example of that?
AG: It usually comes down to the amount of work in a given day. Say it’s a recovery day, and he says to run eight or 10 miles in the morning, then go right into plyometrics and core work after that, and then in the afternoon a second run or some sort of crosstraining. He’s always adding in a lot of stuff, and for me, it’s sometimes too much on what’s supposed to be a recovery day. I’ll say, “How about if I do this instead?” It’s not that I’m not willing to work my ass off, but I’ve been around long enough and know that I could put myself into debt and start another downward cycle. It’s good to have an athlete-coach relationship where you have that mutual respect.

MR: Are you always conscious of having recently been injury-prone?
AG: If I go through a phase where it feels like I’m pushing, pushing, pushing all the time, I’ll think, “I’ve been here before, and that didn’t turn out well.” But I’m not gun shy in the sense of I’m not going to do something because it might get me injured. I’m still out there busting my ass every day. It’s more about being careful and listening to my body.

MR: After world cross country championships in April, how mapped out is the rest of your year?
AG: It’s actually not mapped out at all. I’m not sure when I’ll start up again after world cross. After world cross, I’ll take a little break, a little down time to recharge, and then we’ll start looking at the schedule once I’m done with my break.

MR: In general, are you looking to peak in late summer in Europe?
AG: Yes. My overall goal for the year is to run faster than I’ve ever run and to be competitive. Most likely that means doing a complete European season and running well in Grand Prix meets.

MR: That’s a little different than last year, right? Like when you ran 7:40 last year, you won that race. What was the thinking behind that sort of race versus doing one that’s going to be won in 7:28 and getting pulled along to a fast time?
AG: The thinking was for me to get in races where I wouldn’t be completely in over my head, and to remember what it’s like to race again. If you’re not ready to run in the low 7:30s, then being in that 7:28 race, you’re going to be in no-man’s land and run terribly. Last year it was important to get out there and compete, to get that fire back.

MR: Will you do more of those 7:28-type races this year?
AG: I think so. I needed last year to kind of remember what this is all about. I needed to remember how to race again, to get out there and have that courage, that desire, that fire again, because all those bad years I had, it would be like, “I’m off the back again. I’m not in this thing.” It was a matter of redeeming myself as an athlete.

When I came out here, at first it was, “Let’s get a year of being healthy again.” We got that and more—I had some great races last year. Now’s it time to take that next step and see what’s possible.

Interview conducted March 10, 2006 and posted March 16, 2006