Interview with Anthony Famiglietti

By Stuart Calderwood

On Tuesday of the week before the Reebok Grand Prix track and field meet, Anthony Famiglietti is sitting in a coffee shop after his morning run, looking over the entrant list for the men’s 5000 meters. The meet, which will be run at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island in New York City, is being likened to Eugene’s Prefontaine Classic for its top-level talent and great competitive fields. Six weeks earlier, at the Mount SAC Invitational, Famiglietti had run 5000 meters in 13:11.93 to tie Alberto Salazar for fifth on the all-time U.S. list.

The list in Fam’s hand includes such names as Tariku Bekele (younger brother of world record-holder Kenenisa and a 12:53 5000m runner himself), Edwin Soi (12:52 in 2006), Abrehem Feleke (12:54, ’06), Micah Kogo (13:00, ’06), Boniface Songok (13:06, ’06), Alistair Cragg (13:08, ’06)…

Anthony Famiglietti: This race is stacked. I was hoping it would be like this, and it is stacked. Finally, Americans are getting the opportunity to run record times on U.S. soil. It not only helps us, but it gives people here the chance to see first-hand what we’re doing.

MensRacing: Since your film Run Like Hell [available at runfam.com] came out, it seems like a few more people know something about what you do.
AF: I just wanted people to have an idea of what our sport is actually like. On TV, they’ll show the first half-lap of a distance race, then take a break, then come back and show part of the last lap…there’s a lot of minutes in between there, man. I wanted people to see what goes into running at a high level—the training, the whole race. The movie fills that void.

MR: People might get the wrong idea if they thought you were a typical world-class runner, though. You have other interests that you take seriously.
AF: I never wanted to be labeled “a runner.” I wanted to be this guy who just ran. I’ve always kind of separated my music-art side and my “jock” side. When I go downtown to hear a friend of mine, this older guy who was friends with [artist Jean-Michel] Basquiat, do a spoken-word performance, I’m not a runner at all. It’s good to have other aspects to your life. If you have just one aspect, and then you fail at that in some way, it can really crush you. This year I’m having a great season, but there’s always going to be a bad race, and if that happens, I can keep some perspective; I can back away and be involved in other parts of my life.

MR: It probably takes some of the pressure off if there are other things that you care about besides just the next race…
AF: I think to be a successful runner—to be a successful anything—you can’t be afraid of failure. Even at the highest level, you’re going to have more bad races than good ones. But then you have that one race where everything clicks. I think the first race I had like that was that 10K in Stanford [the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational in 2006; he finished third behind Alan Webb and Dathan Ritzenhein, but he closed on them in the last 800 meters and ran 27:37 in his debut at the distance]. I’ll take a thousand bad races to have one day like that. I was so happy after that race. But you know…I should’ve gone after those guys with a mile to go!

MR: You ran the mile in this [Reebok] meet last year, and I think you came from last to third in the final 100 meters or so.
AF: Yeah, I almost got second, but Nick Willis had that world-class miler kick and I couldn’t get past him.

MR: Have you seen the field for the mile this year? Lagat, Webb, Mottram, Willis…do you regret not being in there?
AF: The thing is, I know if I was in that race I’d have a chance of breaking 3:50. And in the 5000, I know I have a chance of breaking 13. And I thought, which would mean more to me? Well, how many Americans have been under 13? One. I decided it’s worth taking a shot at that. And if the weather’s right, and the pace is right…well, I may blow up, but I’m damn sure gonna fight, and it’s gonna be exciting. So, anyone who’s in New York City on June 2, come out to see that mile, and then stick around for the 5000.

MR: Actually, the 5000’s first.
AF: Oh, yeah? Well, good, then they’ll have to see the 5000!

MR: Is there anything you can point to that’s behind the big improvements you’ve been making lately?
AF: When I started, back in ’95, my mentality was that every workout is hard, every race is hard. I did that for ten years. Then, just last year, I started to be more careful—and my times took off. I’m finally learning where that fine line is. It’s easy to work too hard, man! Especially when there’s no coach standing there—my coach has to be down in Tennessee. Yesterday I was over at Icahn, and I was supposed to do 4x400 in 60, then an 800 in 2:02, then four more 400s. I came by the first lap of the 800 in 63, and I thought, “Oh, man…” I picked it up and did a 2:01, but that lap was a 58—harder than it should have been. So I made the decision to do two 400s and then four 200s instead of those last four 400s. You have to know yourself and know when to back off.

MR: Why is this so hard for serious runners to learn—that the right thing isn’t always to go harder or farther?
AF: Well, when people start out, they’re learning to be tough, so this is difficult to explain to them. And that’s okay; they can overtrain a little, because they have to figure out what they’re capable of. But now, at this point in my career, every second counts, and every race counts. So I have to learn the details.

MR: You had a pretty good race here in Central Park recently [he won the national 8K championship in March in windy, sub-freezing weather, in 22:35]. How’d that go?
AF: That was a tough day. I was in really good shape, and I wanted to go for [Alberto] Salazar’s record [22:04]. I guess I had a chance, because I just exactly matched his 5000 time! But then the weather got bad, so I decided to go for the win. I sat back for a while, and then Abdi [Abdirahman] made a move. I went with him and I said, “Abdi, let’s trade 800s at the front here, really try to get close to that record.” He said, “No, man, I can’t go!” [Laughs]. So I made my move and it was all over. Abdi’s the kind of guy to say that, though. He’s not all about the win; he’s about running the best he can on the day.

MR: From what you’ve been doing in the flat track events, it seems like you might have a shot at Dan Lincoln’s American steeplechase record.
AF: The steeple is a tricky event. You never know what’s going to happen. Yeah, Dan got ready by running fast on the flat—he had a great two-mile at Prefontaine—and then he got into those big European meets. I’m probably going to run the steeple this year. I feel like I might have one of those big times in me.

MR: So, except for the rare meet like this one coming up, Americans still have to go to Europe to race the top runners, and that’s mostly still the Africans.
AF: I think about the Africans, how well they run, and I wonder: What if there was a really high-level group of guys here—say, Abdi, me, Tim Broe, Adam Goucher—all training together? We’ve got groups now that take Trials qualifiers and work on getting them to the level of making a world team, but I feel like we should be taking people who already have the potential to make an Olympic final and then make them Olympic medalists. The hard part is, everybody’s got a wife, everybody’s from a different part of the country. But you could do a one-year camp to get ready for an Olympic Games, have it at high altitude—Flagstaff, or Mammoth Lakes—have it funded by the USOC, have good housing where people’s families and girlfriends can come, and have more than one full-time coach…I think you’d see a huge improvement. A lot of people who are thinking of maybe making the final in an Olympics or a World Championships would be in contention for a medal.

MR: You do hear more people talking about medals now, after what Deena and Meb [Kastor and Keflezighi, 2004 Olympic marathon medalists] did in Athens.
AF: It’s one thing to say it and another thing to really have a shot at bronze, silver, or gold. I was in the same suite with Meb in the Olympic Village, and he said he felt ready to medal. I said, “How do you know?” and he said, “It’s not any one big thing; it’s all the little things coming together.” You know, when I watched the Run Like Hell video, it gave me a snapshot of my whole last two years, and I saw all the mistakes I made: It was like, “Whoa, look how badly I overtrained before that Healthy Kidney 10K! I shouldn’t even have run that race.” Without all those mistakes, I could’ve started off with a 27:20 10K, gotten down to the low 3:30’s for 1500, and then possibly run under 8:10 for the steeplechase. Instead, I was just showing up at every race ready to run hard. I didn’t want to think about the details. This year is completely different. And I think we need to get our best runners to work together and think this way.

MR: So, would you move away from New York—the art scene, all the other things you do here—to join a training group like that?
AF: To represent my country, to have the chance to win a medal for my country? Would I sacrifice a year of my social life? Yes.

Interview conducted May 29, 2007, and posted June 1, 2007.