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Brian Sell, 28, who trains with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project in Rochester, Michigan, will defend his title on January 14 at the USA Half-Marathon Championships in Houston, Texas. Sell performed phenomenally in 2006, winning the USA Half-Marathon Championships in a time of 102:38, placing fourth in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:10:55, and placing sixth in the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:10:47.
Mensracing caught up with Sell after he returned home from a team meeting, the Monday before the USA Half-Marathon Championships. He gladly shared his hopes for the race and the value he finds in training with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project.
Editor's Note: Brian Sell placed sixth at the USA Half-Marathon Championships in Houston, with a time of 1:03.10. His average pacce was 4:49 per mile, which is faster than he was aiming for.
MensRacing.com: You head down to Houston on Friday for the USA Half-Marathon Championships in Houston. Are you excited for this year’s race?
Brian Sell:
I am pretty excited. There’s a lot of pressure because I won the U.S. title last year. I don’t know, my workouts haven’t gone quite as well as I would have liked, but I guess I’ll just have to get down there and see what happens.
MR: Do you think you’ll defend your title?
BS:
[Laughing], I hope so. We’ve got Meb [Keflezighi] running this year and there’s a pretty deep field this year, deeper than last year, so we’ll see.
MR: Do you have any strategies in place?
BS: Not especially. Last year, my plan was to go in and run 4:50 per mile. We went out and I think the leaders were at about 4:32 and 4:35 for the first two miles and I was maybe about 10 or 15 seconds off them, so I was faster than I had anticipated [laughing]. It turned okay though, so sometimes you go in with a plan and you have to be ready to change your plans depending on the situation.
MR: Are you looking at running 4:50 miles again at this year’s race?
BS: Yeah, probably 4:50s. I have done workouts that were about the same as last year. Originally, three months ago or so, I would have a goal of 1:01 [for his half-marathon time] or something like that in mind, but I’m going to try to run 4:50s and stick with the main pack, and hope things turn out okay.
MR: The next thing that you have lined up is a 30K in Japan.
BS: Yeah, that’s February 4.
MR: There are six of you going out for that right?
BS: Yep, the six of us who broke 2:15 in Chicago are going.
MR: Are you looking forward to this race?
BS:
Yeah, I’ve been out there for the Chiba Ekiden twice. The 30K is more my speed; the longer, the better. I hope it turns out all right. It’s a good opportunity for the other guys to travel a little bit too. I think four of the six guys haven’t been overseas that much, so it will be neat for them.
MR: Let’s talk a little bit about the Hansons. They’ve been around for quite some time. How did you get involved with them?
BS: My college coach coached in the same conference as Kevin [Hanson]. [Sell’s college coach, Kevin Donner, had coached at the University of Detroit-Mercy and was old friends with Kevin Hanson]. The program was still relatively new when I was in college and my college coach told me that it was something that I should check out.
We were out in Wisconsin on vacation one summer and I decided to check it out. They actually originally thought that I was going to be here for a year or two and my performances kept getting better, so we kept saying “We’ll see how the next one [year] goes” and it still seems to get better each year, so it’s been a great experience.
MR: How has the team evolved since you have been there?
BS:
Originally, it was more of a 10K/5K type of team and now, we’re focusing more on the marathon. It seems like most of the guys that we have on the team are more suited for longer distances like the marathon. I think that that has been the biggest change, but it’s been pretty similar ever since I arrived here, as far as there being a lot of guys just trying to accomplish the same thing. I think that’s the key to success, a lot of guys pushing each other every day.
MR: How much has the group dynamic of your team helped you to continually improve on your times?
BS: [The team] is pretty much everything. When you get a group of guys together who were tough in their college programs, you end up with a competitive bunch. We just get faster and faster guys every year, and I think that’s a big reason why everybody gets a little faster every year. It’s also great to have company out there. We have good times on runs just talking about stuff and rainy days are a lot easier to get out on when you have a group to meet up with and run with.
MR: Was today a rainy run for you guys?
BS:
We actually had some pretty bad snow this morning. It was a snow and freezing rain mix. It was probably the worst running conditions imaginable. It was about 30 degrees out too. We had a 20-mile run in that weather.
MR: Wow. It sounds like you guys go out there and hit the roads no matter how terrible the weather is, and Michigan isn’t exactly known for having friendly weather.
BS: Yep, we do. We meet at a central location at 7:30 every morning whether it’s raining or super-hot [laughing].
MR: Is it usually two runs a day for all of you?
BS: Yeah, we usually do two runs a day, six days a week or so. We didn’t do a second run tonight because we did a long run this morning.
MR: And how many workouts a week do you do?
BS: We usually do two easy days and then a workout and then two easy days and then a workout, so it’s every third day that we will do a workout or a long run.
MR: The Hansons-Brooks Distance Project has served as a model for other distance projects. What are your thoughts about the number of distance projects launching year after year? Do you think that these projects will help catalyze the success of American distance runners?
BS: I hope so. There isn’t any reason why Americans shouldn’t be able to compete on a world level. I think that a lot of it is that we emulate what the Kenyans do. The Kenyans have big groups of guys that just go out and basically race every day. The guys that don’t want to do that end up hanging it up and the guys that do want to do that get tougher. I think that’s key.
Interview conducted January 8, 2007, and posted January 12, 2007.
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