Interview with Matt Downin

by Duncan Larkin

It’s been nearly four years since Mensracing.com last caught up with the versatile road and track runner, Matt Downin. Since that time, Downin, now aged 30, ran a four-minute marathon PR at the 2005 ING New York City Marathon (2:14:28) which garnered him the fifth fastest American time that year. 2006 was a monumental year for Matt. He ran no marathons and instead focused his energies on parenting. He and his wife Angela, had their first son, Jackson, in July. Despite the challenges inherent in parenting a young child, Downin still managed to round out 2006 with a win at the USATF Club Cross Country Championships in San Francisco in December. This victory was Downin’s second first-place showing at these championships in his career.

Downin’s resume before 2005 is equally impressive: a four-time All-American at the University of Wisconsin where he graduated in 2000, the Big 10 Cross Country Champion in 1999, a representative of the United States in the 2001 and 2002 World Cross Country Championships, and two, top-seven finishes at the national championships in the 10,000-meter track event.

Matt currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He is planning to race the USA 8K Championships in New York City on March 17.

MensRacing.com: Why are you running in the 8K Championships?
Matt Downin: Road racing is kind of my thing—a thing that I’ve done for the last couple years, primarily as a distance runner. I had a good fall in training and things have gone really well. The 8K for me was kind of the first big thing on my radar screen. I didn’t run the cross country nationals in February and skipped the national half-marathon championships in early January and so I’ve decided to open up and go after some big time racing in mid to late March and that’s where I’d like to get things started.

MR: I see that 2006 was a pretty good year for you. You won the USATF Club Cross Country Championships last year.
MD: Yeah. That was in December. We had the baby in July and, as you can imagine, it took me a while to get used to the training and everything. We moved out here to Wisconsin, which is where I went to school so it was a good move for my running, but it just took me a while to get everything figured out and to get into the right rhythm with training and everything and by the time I got it all figured out it was a little too late to run a fall marathon. I cancelled those plans and so I just geared to get everything ready for the winter and the spring, [beginning with] the [club] cross country nationals. There wasn’t much going on [in the winter] and so [I] had to just pick and choose which race to get ready for.

MR: How has your training been going as you get ready for the 8K Championships?
MD: Everything’s been going great since about early November, I would say. I’ve been working out here with a couple different groups of people. I work out with my brother [Andy] quite a bit. He’s a former 1500-meter national champion. I work out with some of the college guys and some of the post-collegiate group in town [like] Simon Bairu, Matt Tegenkamp, and Jonathon Riley. It’s a really big, sort of diverse group of people who train together. There’s always someone doing something different, so I can pick and choose where it fits the best for me to work out—which group is the best one for me to work out with.

MR: So to get ready for the 8K Championships, would you say you’ve been doing 10K-type workouts?
MD: Yes.

MR: I went to the New Balance website and saw that you described some of the workouts you do to prepare for 10K races—workouts like 1K repeats and in-and-outs. You also talked about a workout that you like to do which is three minutes hard, two minutes easy. So you are doing those types of workouts?
MD: Yeah. I do that kind of stuff. I do a lot of those fartlek workouts like that—you know three [minutes] on, two [minutes] off and things like that with my brother. In the winter it gets a little dicey, because it’s a little tougher for us to be outside sometimes running hard so we do a lot of work on an indoor football field at the University [of Wisconsin]. Those indoor workouts aren’t fartlek style; they are usually more repeat style so you do 1K to 2K repeats up to six or seven miles worth of volume. I’m a very strength-oriented runner so things fall into a couple different categories, mainly a lot of strength stuff: a lot of long runs, a lot of long repeats kind of stuff.

MR: Because you consider yourself a strength-oriented runner, does that mean that you seek to minimize your recovery during your repeats?
MD: Oh yeah. Mainly for the strength stuff, you keep rest to a minimum. I’ve just always come from the strength background which means low rest, long repeats, and lots of volume. I mean I’m not super fast, but I’m fast enough hopefully.

MR: I’d like to go back in time. In 2003 you debuted in the marathon with a 2:18 at the ING New York City Marathon. In 2004 you ran another 2:18 there [at the ING New York City Marathon]. But in 2005, you ran a four-minute PR in New York [2:14] which was good for the fifth best American time that year. What did you do differently in 2005?
MD: I got some things right in training that I hadn’t gotten right the first two years. The three [ING] New York City Marathons are the only marathons that I’ve run. The first one was obviously my first marathon. Obviously, with most people, when you talk about their debut marathon, they can give you their horror stories. Mine was awful [laughing]. I mean it was a great experience, but obviously, you know a very hard and challenging experience. But I feel like I succeeded very well at it. The second year was very much the same [laughing]. From the word ‘go’ I don’t feel like I did the things in training that I did in the race. The race didn’t go as planned. Not that I would take either of those experiences back. Things happen. The hard thing about the marathon is that you can’t come back two weeks later and run another one. You gotta build up and you gotta do the best you can. For most people, they schedule it, show up for it, and then see how it goes. So those first two—they were rough. I didn’t feel like I was anywhere near getting out of myself what I thought I could do.

And so 2005 was different. I did some things in training that I felt a little better about and got a little closer to where I thought I could be training-wise. Obviously in the race, I was able to do some things smarter and be conservative and have a little clearer idea of what I was capable of doing. Then I ran smarter and things didn’t go badly the way they had in the two previous years. Certainly, I don’t feel like I did it perfect. I don’t feel like I got everything out of myself. But I got closer to it than I had the two previous years.

MR: Why were you running the ING New York City Marathon every year?
MD: In 2002, I actually had the chance to rabbit the [ING] NYC Marathon. I love[d] the experience. I’m a New Englander. I’m from the East Coast. I love New York City and have always loved New York City and so I loved the experience of running the [ING] New York City Marathon in 2002. After the rabbiting experience, I knew I wanted to debut there. I felt like it was the best thing for me. I had experience on the course. I knew the city really well. I had lots of family and friends that lived nearby. I just felt like it was the smart thing for me to do. I know it’s not a fast course, but I like that it’s a challenging course. I think that the bridges and the difficulty of the course make it a little bit more of a level playing field. For someone like myself who’s not a big mega-mileage guy, it was a better choice for me. But I still have never run another marathon other than New York. I don’t regret those decisions. I loved running in New York. Each of my three years was a little different. I felt like it was the right decision every time for different reasons. It was fun. It was the kind of experience that I want to have in the marathon. I’ll probably keep coming back to New York City. I love the city and love the marathon—I love everything about it. So, hopefully it will keep working out. We’ll see.

MR: So do you plan to come back to New York City for the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials?
MD: Yes.

MR: I read an interview of you in Runner’s World a couple years ago. In it, you described yourself as a tough runner. Earlier in this interview, you talked about how you do a lot of strength workouts and that you depend on these for your training. Do you think that your toughness and strength can only carry you so far in your running? What can get you to that next level of performance—what can get you to move up to possibly placing in the Olympic Marathon Trials or placing at the 8K Championships? Is there some mental or physical element that you have to still address to get to that next level of performance?
MD: I think probably for me--if I understand your question correctly--the gains that I have to make and the way that I can get better as a runner are in the physical side of the sport. I mean I’m not a high mileage guy. My body breaks down when I train too hard. It breaks down very quickly—probably more so than most marathoners or elite, national-class distance runners. I’ve just never been able to hit high mileage: I can’t handle big time intensity for many weeks in a row. I just break down, or I get sick; something goes wrong. I think as I get older, I am figuring that out and the more I learn about the way I can train and the ways I can push my body, the better it will be for me. That was a big part of the success that I had in the marathon in 2005, was that I figured out what I could do and couldn’t do. I was able to put some pieces of the puzzle together a little better. I’ve always been very focused in racing. I’ve always been a smart racer when I’m ready for it physically.

The biggest challenge for me, as an athlete, has always been really finding the right amount of training that I can do. It isn’t always the most. Sometimes it’s a little less so that you can have some energy going into races. I think that’s the big thing for me: continuing to figure out what the right level of training is on a daily basis and how far I can take it every day, and that’s where I lack is in fitness, because I’ve never been able to push my body the way I think a lot of people can. I just break down. The more that I can continue to push that level and not go over the edge, the better it is for me.

MR: Along those lines, for this racing season, are you going to experiment with other dials, like your diet and rest?
MD: Not specifically, but by virtue of being a human being with an 8-month-old and having moved back to place where I lived before, things are going to be different. By having a new training group, a new group of guys that I need to get used to working with, things will be different. The biggest challenge as an athlete is trying to make everything work together really well. I think one of the things that I’ve been able to figure out really quickly in the last four to five months is what does work for me here from a training standpoint. And obviously, based on the race at the end of the fall in December, I got a lot of that right and I’m hoping that that will continue in being able to do some more stuff as the year progresses. Hopefully things will keep getting better for me.

MR: You mentioned your child, Jackson, many times during the course of this interview. Are the challenges of being an elite runner and the challenges of parenting a new child at the same time what you expected?
MD: It’s been more challenging in some ways than what I expected it would be. I did expect it to be a very hard thing in general. But more specifically, when talking about my running, it has been more challenging because, runners in general work best when they can have a schedule and I think any parent will tell you that trying to have a routine and a schedule day in and day out is almost impossible with a baby, with someone his age. So it’s been a gigantic challenge. There have been nights where you won’t sleep and I have a workout scheduled for 8 in the morning and he decided that he wasn’t going to sleep and he decided that he wanted to wake up at 3:30 in the morning. When that happens, you have to make a decision: Will I go and do this workout off three hours of sleep or do I change it up? I’ve had to make a lot of decisions like that—changing the [workout] on the fly because Jack just didn’t quite get the schedule down right. But it also gives you perspective. For athletes who are able to train and give 100 percent of their efforts on their performance and training—it’s hard to maintain perspective. That’s one thing about something outside of running—being able to go and do what you do and leave it on the track and come home and enjoy the rest of what you do in life. That’s very valuable I think because it gives you meaning and purpose other than putting one foot in front of the other.

MR: You mentioned moving back to Wisconsin. I know, from reading up on you, that you had been back to New Jersey for a while and before that you trained for a while under Coach Larsen out in California. It sounds like you’ve moved around a lot in the past couple years. Do you think that your going to stay put in Madison for a while?
MD: Yeah. We are going to be here for I guess the rest of my running career. Leaving here [Wisconsin] when I did in 2000, it was a decision sort of based on Madison having, at the time, not much of a post-collegiate running scene. I had a feeling like, if I was going to really do something, I had to go out and challenge myself a little bit and not stay in my comfort zone here. So that’s what being out in California was like for me, to see how far I could take it. I stayed out there for about four years. I had a great time and learned a lot about what it takes to be a great runner. I was able to spend a lot of time with Meb [Keflezighi] and Deena [Kastor] who have obviously taken it to a level where few have been to. I really learned a lot about this sport and about what it takes to go to those levels. I was ready for a change in 2004 after the Olympic year and New Jersey was were my parents were living and where my [then fiancée] was living at the time and so it just sort of made sense to go there [New Jersey]. Yeah I’ve moved around quite a bit, but being back in Madison has really opened my eyes to the fact that I only have a few more years in this and its really time to buckle down. I’ve done enough learning. I just sort of need to apply all that, get into a groove and work at it and see how far I can take it now.

MR: Let’s go to the Millennium Mile. In 1999, you, your brother Andy, and John Mortimer put this race together from scratch. Since then, it has turned into quite an event with nearly 800 runners and running celebrities like Deena Kastor making appearances at it. Tell me about the experience.
MD: Yeah. I’m not sure how much reading up on it you did. In 1999 we were going to have a New Year’s Eve party at my parents' house in New Hampshire. We were sort of lucky enough to have John Mortimer and myself and a pretty big group of people come to the party. A lot of people were coming from out of town. We sort of thought it would be a neat idea to take the group of people who were runners and go to a road race. But what we ended up doing was deciding to create a road race. The first year was really neat because we were able to start [planning for] it early enough and get some of the local community involved. We were able to have this race that was so relaxed and so down-home-small-townish, but yet probably the first year’s elite field was the best of any of the eight years. I mean they ran 3:51 or 3:53 that first year. Scott Anderson who at the time was a 3:38/3:37 1500-meter runner was there. My brother was in there. Chris Graff, Chris Severy, myself, John Mortimer were there. So it was a really deep field. In the years since then, we’ve tried to do something a little different with it—we’ve tried to add a little something and just continue to let it grow and be something fun for every kind of person that comes to it. We try to keep it a small town/family event. We get a lot of young kids coming to it with their parents. We get lots of families show up where the whole family comes and runs the race, so its been really, really cool. Obviously, we had Deena [Kastor] one year and Kevin Sullivan has come. We’ve had great elite fields and have had a lot of fun doing it. Starting last year, I’ve started separating myself from it because I don’t have the time or the energy to do as much with it as I’d like to and John Mortimer is basically fully the director of it now. But it’s nice to still maintain some involvement with it. John [Mortimer] does a really good job at it; he works very hard at it. It’s a pretty big event for the area. I mean you don’t get 700 people in that neck of the woods to run a one-mile race in the middle of the winter. It’s pretty cool; it’s fun.

MR: You had a good 2006. You came from a solid PR marathon (2:14) in the fall of 2005. You had a child in mid-2006 and still finished the year off with a win at the USATF Club Cross Country Championships. Still, it will be a challenge to place at the 8K Championships or make it on the Olympic Marathon Team because of the stiff competition at those races. In light of all this, do you look at yourself ever as an underdog?
MD: You know, I look at myself as someone who’s had quite a bit of success but never consistently at the level where I’m really capable of. I would like to think that this is the year that I figure out whatever it was that was holding me back from reaching the level that I know I’m capable of being at. But that is the [mindset] of every runner in America, probably. That’s not any different than the guy who’s trying to get his Boston qualifier in the spring or next fall. So from that standpoint I still think that I can make the Olympic team in the next two years and I still think that I can be the runner that I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve figured out a lot in training in the last couple of years and think that I’m in the right place. I’m probably an underdog on most people’s list. Most people wouldn’t put my name in amongst four or five guys who they think can win the 8K Championships. I think I can. I think I can run with anyone in the country when things go well for me. I’ve always believed that; I’ve proved that on a few occasions. But you got to do it consistently and you got to do it at the right time. It’s a tough sport, but hopefully I can take it to the level that I know I can.

Interview conducted February 25, 2007, and posted March 3, 2007.