Interview: Ian Dobson

by Scott Dance

Ian Dobson, 24, enters this week’s USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships as a veteran of two world championships in the past year. As a collegian at Stanford, Dobson was a nine-time All-American and got international experience in both junior and senior world cross country championships. He parlayed that success into a contract with adidas after a runner-up finish at 5000 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in a then-personal best of 13:22.54. A week later at the 2005 USA championships, he qualified for the U.S. team for the IAAF World Track and Field Championships by placing second in another personal best, 13:16.03.

Dobson, a Klamath Falls, Oregon, native and twice a high school cross country All-American, will race the 5000 meters again at this week’s national championships in Indianapolis. From there, he plans to begin another slate of international racing in Europe this summer.

Dobson trains under Terrence Mahon with Team Running USA. Mensracing.com caught up with him on his last day of training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, before he left for Indianapolis. For online journals by Hall and other members of the USA Distance Project, go here.

MensRacing.com: So you’re at the Olympic Training Center. How is training there?
Ian Dobson: I like it a lot. It’s kind of out in the middle of nowhere, though. I had to go to a massage today, and it took like 40 minutes to get there. As far as set-up goes, it’s great, though—the food is good, the facilities are good, the training room is good. It’s a really nice set-up.

MR: U.S. nationals was obviously a huge race for you last year. What does it mean to you this year, with no major championships this summer?
ID: I’m pretty much looking at it the same, because I thought I had a shot at making the worlds team last year, but I wasn’t banking the season on it. So it’s the same this year—I plan on running well and I think I’ll run well, but judgment of the season doesn’t rely just on that one race. Running a fast time is really the important thing this year. If I get 12th at U.S. nationals and run 13:05 this year, it’s a success. I’m going into it the same as last year. I’m expecting it will go fast, just with the guys that are in there. I plan on just getting in there and running hard the whole way. I don’t think it will be easy at any point in the race.

MR: It’s looking pretty stacked, with [Bernard] Lagat, [Adam] Goucher, Abdi [Abdirahman], [Dathan] Ritzenhein, Ryan Hall, and yourself already declared. And last year, the race seemed kind of unique compared to previous years—a very fast pace. With so many guys putting down fast times last year and stating goals of running with the rest of the world in the coming years, do you expect that to happen again?
ID: I think just looking at the field, there are guys that have run those fast times, and I think there’s a group of guys that are right behind that group, including guys like [Matt] Tegenkamp, [Jonathon] Riley, even Bolota [Asmerom]—a few guys who have really good finishes. That’s the reason I think it’ll go fast. I think I can beat those guys in a fast race, but when it comes down to the last 600 in a 13:30 race, then I think it becomes a lot more of a gamble. I don’t want to put any words in anyone’s mouth, but I think guys like Dathan and Ryan would feel the same way. I think Adam Goucher is the most prepared to run a good race at any pace. I think I can beat those guys if it’s a fast race.

MR: Do you have a plan for the race?
ID: We don’t have any specific plan yet. I think Ryan and I both would like to see it go fast. It’s going to be similar to last year, because going into that race, we didn’t have any set plan. We said we hope it goes fast and got lucky when Tim [Broe] took it out there. We train together enough that I think we can trade paces and trade leads, and if it’s moving along, we’re gonna be out there. If we want to go fast, we’re not going to make Dathan lead the whole thing or something. We’re both getting confident enough in our last 1000 speed that there’s no guarantee it’s going to go that fast. If it goes along, we’re going to help it.

MR: How are you preparing for this race in light of that, mentally and physically? I talked with Ryan recently, and he said you guys have been doing a lot of strength work. What has been the bread and butter for you?
ID: Like Ryan said, the bread and butter has been the strength stuff. We were up in Mammoth after world cross country until the Adidas meet in L.A. That was the first time we had been on a track. Most of our stuff was tempo stuff, long intervals, and we do some anaerobic work like 300s and 800s, but you can’t really do the VO2 max-type stuff, like miles at 4:10 or even half miles. You just can’t do that kind of work up at 8,000 feet. We’ve been doing a lot of threshold and also a lot of hill sprints and plyometrics. I think that helped with the transition down to sea level. Now we’ve been doing some quicker half miles or 300s. We’re kind of in a transition now from the slower stuff to some quicker stuff on the track. I don’t think we’re as far along as we’re going to get, since we’re planning some 1500s in Europe. We’ll still continue to do some threshold stuff. Like Saturday, I did a workout starting with a threshold two-mile on the track and a set of 300s at 1500 pace or faster. We did some 800 repeats, some straight 400s, some stuff that gets you down under 3K pace.

MR: What has the transition been like for you into professional running? What has the training been like with Terrence Mahon versus at Stanford?
ID: It’s been good. I think the difference from my last coaching change, from Coach [Vin] Lananna to Coach [Andrew] Gerard, is that one wasn’t by choice, but it ended up being really good. I was really fortunate Coach Gerard came in. But this time, the change was my decision. It just made sense, and Ryan and I wanted to stick together and go to altitude.

The support we get here from New York Road Runners and others is really ideal. I really believe in Terrence, and he has the time to put in to make sure things are great. If something’s not going well, we don’t sit there and keep going down the wrong path—we make the changes, if it means taking more time to stretch me out or do body work. That’s the biggest difference from college to now. All the little things are taken care of, and you don’t sit around and hope they go away. Terrence is very calculated, and sitting around and waiting isn’t really his style, and it’s not mine either.

MR: When did you know you wanted to go pro, and then when did you start talking to companies before deciding on adidas? I know there’s probably a big gap there.
ID: I pretty much always assumed I’d run professionally, which I guess is maybe kind of naive, but I definitely planned on doing it after college since high school. I just really like the running lifestyle. As far as the practical parts of it, I started talking to a couple different agents last spring, soon after world cross country, and decided on Ray Flynn. He couldn’t really do anything until after NCAAs, but pretty quickly after NCAAs, he had the different offers from the companies together. I don’t even really know how it worked. He told me what we had, and I verbally decided before U.S. nationals. It was a pretty quick process, maybe a week or a week and a half of wondering and getting offers. I didn’t sign anything until after worlds, but the verbal commitment was there.

MR: How did you then end up with Coach Mahon and Team Running USA?
ID: Terrence just called me up last spring, not too long before NCAAs, and said he wanted to introduce himself and asked what my plans were. I didn’t know Coach Gerard was leaving [Stanford], and I said I was interested in his group, and we clicked right away. My plan was to give the fall a try. We’d get back from Europe, take a little break and head up to Mammoth and give it a shot and see if I like it. Not too long after I was thinking about Terrence’s group, I heard Coach Gerard was going back East, and that just wasn’t in my plans. Once Coach Gerard decided that and I ruled out Nike, which would have included running for the Farm Team, unless things went bad, I was going to stay up there. By the middle of the summer I was pretty sure it was going to be the right thing. Fortunately, everything has turned out well. You never know with things like this, but it’s worked out great. I think Deena [Kastor]...I’d never talked to Deena, but the fact that Terrence was working with her; that helped the decision along.

MR: How has the team atmosphere been for you?
ID: It’s been good. Obviously there are a number of us from Stanford, so I had some friends in the group. For somebody like Missy [Buttry] or even Kate and Laura [O’Neill], it was a little more of a transplant. Ryan and I kept our same routine. I like training with Ryan. He’s a good friend, so that’s a comfortable thing. I always know I can go out and run an hour and not be racing back and forth. I’ve become really good friends with everyone on the team. We get along well, and you end up being really good friends. And Terrence, too, he’s a great coach and a good friend. Times like this when you’re at the training center, it makes things a lot easier when there’s not much to do. You don’t feel quite as isolated. It’s fun.

MR: It’s been awhile, but what was the experience like at the world championships in Helsinki last summer? What did you learn?
ID: It was a good experience from an experience point of view. I’m glad I made the team, I’m glad we stuck it out over there for the summer, but I think I had kind of thrown in the towel a little bit in the sense that I felt tired. Once you feel that, you’re not setting yourself up to run well. When race day came around, I gave it a fair shot, but there was a feeling in the back of my mind that I wasn’t as fit as I was at U.S. nationals. It was a good experience in the sense that I don’t want that feeling again. I know what it’s like to not be that confident. When it becomes your job, it’s really disappointing to look back and say I never really gave myself a shot. I don’t want to have that happen again.

MR: You got some more international experience running the short course at the world cross country meet in Japan. How did that compare? From the results, it looked like you had a slightly rougher day.
ID: That was actually more of a positive experience. I had had a calf problem for maybe three weeks, so training hadn’t been ideal going into that race. I was pretty happy to stick that close to Jorge [Torres] and Daniel [Lincoln] and to feel like I was in the race. I felt like I gave myself a better chance and ran as good as I was going to run. I think I finished in the back end of the guys who were really good. There was a fairly elite group of guys up there, so I didn’t feel bad losing to those guys, but we all felt we were going to finish stronger. In talking to Jorge after the race, he thought he ran pretty well compared to a few years ago when they placed well. It was really exciting to be part of that team.

MR: So you say you want to work on getting into big races mentally. How do you plan to do that?
ID: I keep telling myself I’m getting to that point where you can’t write things off as experience. I’ve got to actually start running well every time now. I think there are a lot of intangibles—one of the biggest things is learning to relax, and to not get so worried. I think I’ve had trouble in Europe so far because I like to have my routine and eat the foods that I eat, and when you’re staying there, everything kind of throws you out of your routine, and you have to learn to adapt. Being part of this group is good, because we travel so much and don’t really have a base, living out of bags like you do in Europe, and I think it’s going to add up to being good at traveling and running well when you’re not in your element. You learn the basic things like not getting in a race and just hanging on the back; it never works. If you’re going to get in the race, you’ve got to get in the race, because as soon as someone gets dropped, you’re going to get dropped. Some of the hardest times were in those races when I said, “Hey, I’m just going to stick on the back.” It just doesn’t work.

MR: What’s your schedule for this summer looking like? What distances do you plan to race? I know you’ve said you want to get your 10K down to around 27:30.
ID: Well, I think I’m done with the 10K for the year after I had a poor showing at Hengelo last month. [He ran 28:17.49 for 13th.] The plan now is, we’re leaving straight after Indianapolis—“we” being me, Ryan, Sara [Hall], Kate, Missy [and the rest of Team Running USA]. We’re going to head to Leuven, outside Brussels. That’s going to be our base for the summer. Ryan and I are planning on running some 1500s, one on July 1, and then we’re going to run the 5K in Heusden, which is usually a pretty good race, and not a 12:50 race but a 13:00, 13:05 race, which is just what we’re looking for. After that we don’t have any definite plans. I’m just going to have to see how that one goes. If it goes well, we have options, but if we don’t do well, we have to figure out what’s going on. With the European championships, there’s a break not long after Heusden. My philosophy is, when things get going good, I’m going to race it to death. There’s no reason to have a specific peak except maybe for the World Cup if I qualify, but if Heusden goes well then I’ll keep racing.

MR: Any plans to try steepling again?
ID: I don’t have any plans to try steepling again. I didn’t have a particularly good experience with it before. I think I’m naturally a good hurdler, but there’s just not the time for it right now, and it’s kind of a risky event. Some guys have gotten some pretty gnarly injuries. It’s just not worth it to me to risk it. I’d be pretty surprised to do that again.

MR: In the next couple years up to 2008, do you have any plans as to what event to focus on?
ID: I’d just like to run the 5K as long as I’m improving in it. I’d really like to run under 13:00, so I’ll keep at it until I do that, I guess, and I think the 5K would be my preference to do at the [Olympic] Trials, and I just love the 5K. But if not, I’ve got to be realistic and look at what my best chance is. I’m hoping it’s in the 5K, but I’ve had success in the 10K, too. I don’t think the marathon is going to be an option for 2008, but I’d like to run one one day. With the [World] Marathon Majors, it’s getting to be a really exciting event.

MR: You say you want to look where your best chance is. Does that mean your best chance against Americans or to medal internationally?
ID: I think you’ve got to look at that. I’m taking it one step at a time, seeing if I can make the team first. But beyond that, realistically, I think the 10K is the hardest event right now, for myself anyway. I think it’s the hardest to be competitive in at the championship level. Those guys are running really fast at 10K, and they close really fast at 10K. I think in the marathon, there’s a lot more variables, so obviously in the Olympics you see people like [Paul] Tergat and [Paula] Radcliffe not medaling. I think in the 5K, take anyone who can run under 13:00, and they’ve got a shot. [Craig] Mottram has shown that. Right now I would say that I would end up going for the 5K or the marathon.

Editor's Update: Ian Dobson placed tenth in the 2006 USATF 5000-meter championships, with a time of 13:43.08.

Interview conducted June 19, 2006, and posted June 23, 2006.