Interview: Adam Goucher

By Scott Douglas

Adam Goucher will try to defend his 5,000m title from 2000 at next month's U.S. Olympic Team Trials — Track & Field. Suffering from achilles and abdominal injuries at the 2000 Trials, Goucher seemingly willed himself to the win, and finished 13th in the Olympic final later that summer. That year marked the beginning of repeated injuries for Goucher; he didn't compete at all in 2002 because of what was eventually diagnosed as a sports hernia.

In 1999, Goucher became the third fastest American ever at 5,000m when he set his PR of 13:11.25. In 2001, he became the third fastest American ever at 3,000m with a 7:34.96 PR; that year, he also set his 1,500m PR of 3:36.54. In addition to his 2000 Trials victory, Goucher won the national 5,000m championship in 1999, the 4K and 12K national cross country titles in 2000, and four NCAA titles while at the University of Colorado. At the time of this interview, Goucher had run three races this year, two 1,500s and one 3,000, none of which exactly struck fear in the hearts of his upcoming Trials competition.

Goucher's wife, Kara (nee Grgas-Wheeler), won three NCAA titles while at Colorado. She will run the 1,500m and 5,000m at next month's Trials. The Gouchers live in Superior, Colorado.

MensRacing.com: Let's start with your three races so far this year — why you chose them, and how you think they went.
Adam Goucher: I guess you're wondering why I went to Mexico. My coach, Coach [Mark] Wetmore and I pick what we think is a good progression of races. Originally the plan was to race every two weeks before the Trials. That's a little more than normal for this time of year, but we felt I needed more races under my belt this year given where I'm at.

So, first race, 1,500 in Eugene. An absolutely unbelievably bad race. I expected to open up there in 3:43, maybe 3:45, and I ran 3:55, and I had no idea what the hell was going on with me. All I knew is that in the race it was kind of like my muscles went anaerobic. Cardiovascularly, I wasn't anaerobic, it was kind of like my body just couldn't go. That being my first race, I thought, 'What's going on?' My last two races last year were not good — they were similar to that 1,500, just kind of like my body wasn't working right. Back then, I thought maybe I was anemic, but that checked out okay.

Last year around that time I was also having some depression issues, and the meds were kind of inhibiting my ability to dig deep, to dig deep into my psyche toward the end of a race and kind of go berserk. So in my mind, I thought the medication was to blame for the bad races. I was starting to come off them anyway, before the 1,500 in Eugene, for that reason. My coach said, 'That's great, but let's see if something else is going on.' Kara and I flew down to Houston to see an endocrinologist. I had this hour-long test — they took massive amounts of blood! [The doctor] said my symptoms indicated hypothyroidism, an underactive thyroid, and the results showed I do have that. It had thrown off my entire metabolism, given me low testosterone, made me borderline anemic, and contributed to depression. Last August my LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol, was 80. Eight months later it was 110, almost a 50 percent increase. It shows my body was just not working right.

MR: So what now?
AG: I take Levoxyl. It stimulates the thyroid and makes it work correctly. I've been on it for five weeks. The doctor said within two weeks I should have more energy during the day, and that in four to eight weeks I would be back to normal. My workouts have already turned around, like night and day. Before, I was kind of getting through them. They were okay, not great. They'd been like that for so long that I got used to thinking, 'Well, that's good for me.' Now I can get through them feeling better, able to maintain that intensity to the end of the workout, and at a faster pace. It's like going back in time, like, 'Wow, I remember this. I remember feeling this way in workouts.'

I was supposed to race in Modesto, but the doctor said there'd be no point in racing because of all the blood they'd drawn. So the 3,000 in Mexico City [on May 22] was the first one of, 'Let's see if things are working any better.' It's a fairly low-key meet — Kara and I went trying to have some fun. Mexico City, it's 2,000 feet higher than Boulder, but I figured I'd probably still do okay. It ended up being a pretty good race. I was dead last going through in 63 at the quarter, but I thought, 'These guys are crazy, they can't hold that,' and after a lap and a half or two laps I started moving up. [Goucher finished third in 8:15.40.] Coach Wetmore was pretty satisfied with 8:15 up there. There are lots of ways to look at that time, lots of conversions, especially with the pollution. Man, is it polluted. I could really feel the elevation — I had that iron taste in my mouth, that taste you get when you go anaerobic, a mile into the race. The altitude gets exponentially worse the higher you go.

And so then I had the 1,500 last weekend. [Goucher finished 14th in 3:44.83 at the adidas Oregon Track Classic in Gresham, Oregon.] I was disappointed with my race, but looking at everything...it was my first sea-level race where my blood chemistry was probably back to normal. My training has been completely geared toward 5K race training. So the gun goes off and I'm dead last — 100 meters into it these guys had 10 or 15 meters on me. I ran very consistent, it wasn't like I died, I just didn't have those extra gears to go after it.

I'm sick of getting in races and having sub-par performances. I'm just so sick of it. I have the 1,500 at Pre in two weeks, so the next week and a half I'll get into deeper anaerobic work and hopefully at Pre go 3:40 or faster. I have the strength right now, it's just those extra gears [I'm lacking].

MR: What else will you run before the Trials?
AG: On the 26th I have a 5,000 in Lille, France. Hopefully I'll get the [Olympic] 'A' standard there. If I don't get it there, I'll do a 5,000 in San Sebastian, Spain a week later.

MR: So if you get it in Lille, no San Sebastian?
AG: Yeah, if I get it in Lille, I'll come back home, get back into my routine, relax a bit before the Trials.

MR: So what did the doctor say about why you have hypothyroidism?
AG: One, it's hereditary; my mom has it. Two, when it is hereditary, sometimes all it takes is a traumatic event to set it off. He thinks it could have started back in 2000 at the Trials when I basically ran myself to death. That was sick what I did there.

MR: I remember watching it on TV. The sound of gears grinding was coming through the speakers.
AG: Man, I ran way beyond my fitness in that race, and I paid the price. I remember I'd be out on a 7-mile easy run and my pulse was 178, and that's at 7:45 or 8:00 pace. Between that and these little setbacks, the constant stress of struggling with pain throughout the years, really pretty much every day for three years, 2000 through 2002. I can probably count on one hand the number of days that running felt good in that time. That takes a lot of your fire away.

MR: This would be when you went on anti-depressants?
AG: Yes. It's weird — they helped me as a person in day-to-day life, but they didn't help me as an athlete. They kind of made me sit back and think, 'Oh, okay, life is good. What's to worry about?' That's not really who I am. I'm a pretty edgy person.

MR: What were you on?
AG: Effexor. It just made me, I don't know, I couldn't really dig down. The doctor said there's no reason it should do that. I said, 'Come on, do you have studies done on vast numbers of elite athletes? How do you know?' I had to listen to myself, and I realized, 'I need to get off this stuff.'

MR: What do you do now to address the abdominal and other issues?
AG: Core strengthening, stretching. Back in February, Kara and I started doing Pilates. We were a little unsure about it at first, but it's become very routine for us. It's amazing the difference in my overall flexibility and core strength, compared to how much lower back pain and tightness I had. I feel it adds to making us better athletes.

MR: Do you tell the young bucks there in Boulder, 'Listen, you should be doing this stuff. Don't wait until you have problems'?
AG: Not really. Not many people know we've been doing it. No, I don't really do that — this is something that's for Kara and me. So many times I'm the first one in our group to do things, to try something new. If I find something that helps me and I hand it on to everybody else, who am I handing it on to? Jorge Torres, Dathan Ritzenhein. They're my training partners, but they're still my competition.

MR: In general, do you tell these younger guys, 'Here's something I've learned that I wish I'd known five years ago'?
AG: Yeah, because I'm a sucker. What I'll do is give them a pretty good idea, enough to allow them to open the door to see if it might work for them. But I still want to maintain certain edges — with the last few years I've had, I don't have the luxury of giving away anything to these guys. It's a hard balance, how much I just lay it all out and say, 'Here's everything I know.'

Of course, when someone gets hurt, I'm the first one they come to for advice.

MR: How often do you run with those guys?
AG: Dathan and Jorge, two or three times a week, usually Tuesday and Friday on the track, maybe Sunday for a long run. Dathan is at the end of his college season this week, so after that we'll probably go together at least Tuesday, Friday, Sunday.

It was really hard for me last year to go from being by myself to all of a sudden running with Jorge three times a week. That brought in a completely different realm — it threw me out of my groove a little bit. But now we have a pretty damn amazing group, if you think about it. We work together really well. There's seven years between Dathan and me. That's a nice range.

MR: Can you clarify Wetmore's training philosophy? You hear all the time about how he's different from a lot of coaches, especially in regard to doubles.
AG: Well, I can try. People in general don't have a full understanding of his approach. He doesn't stress 'no doubles ever.' When I'm at my peak mileage, I usually do doubles twice a week. But I guess it's different in that a lot of coaches might say do two runs in a day, maybe 8 and 5, and Mark will say, 'Let's get in 10 or 11 and call it a day.'

MR: Why?
AG: It really varies from person to person. It's not like he has everyone do the same thing. Jorge, when he's at 100, 110 a week, he's doing doubles three or four times a week. I've experimented with it over the years, and it just doesn't work best for me. But Mark doesn't necessarily say, 'This one way is how everyone trains.' What I do is what works best for me. I can get pretty damn good results off of 85-90 a week, while Jorge needs at least 100. So does Dathan. It depends on who it is — some people don't necessarily need doubles. If I can get 20 weeks straight of 80, 85, I'm psyched. If I did four weeks at 70, then four weeks at 75, four at 80, and just kept going up to 110...what works for me is not pushing that envelope, because then I'll get some flare-up that will set me back.

MR: What have you been at over the last three months?
AG: I've averaged 80-85 a week, usually workouts Tuesday and Friday, middle distance Wednesdays, long distance on Sunday. I think last week was my 26th week since I started running again in December. I had some issues with my quads in late fall — turned out I had stress reactions in my femurs, and was out for three weeks. Twenty-six straight weeks without injury...sad to say, but that's good for me. I've had little setbacks, but I've had that consistency.

MR: Did you consider yourself injury-prone in high school and college?
AG: No. I think what's happened is that I was training so well in 1999, 2000, that once I got hurt I kept trying to get back to that right away, and probably rushed it. And I had a lot of undiagnosed things going on. I'm talking intense abdominal pain, not just when I was running, but even if I sneezed or coughed. That slowed me down.

MR: Before all this started, when you ran 13:11 in 1999, was your plan at that point to have moved up in distance by now, or to still be at the shorter races?
AG: No, at that point I never planned to move up to the 10,000 by now. My plan was to stick with the 5,000, 3,000, 1,500. I assumed I'd have both American records, in the 3K and 5K. In 2000, before the achilles trouble, after I'd won both cross country national races, I figured I'd get the records that year. I was in sick shape. Once I got hurt, I still had the confidence and strength, but I think I redlined it too much. Five years ago, where I thought I'd be now is not where I am now. But it's coming around. It takes patience.

At this point, I'm 29, I'm getting a little older. I'm still not thinking about moving up — I want to keep running the 1,500 through 5,000. I can still develop my speed at this point. If I stopped doing 1,500s, I would definitely get slower. Maybe in two or three years I'll jump up to the 10K.

(Interview conducted June 7, 2004, and posted June 11, 2004.)