Interview: Matt Tegenkamp

By Alex Hutchinson

Wisconsin senior Matt Tegenkamp is one of only a handful of U.S. athletes to garner top-10 finishes at the World Cross Country Championships in recent years. His fifth-place performance in the 2001 junior race in Belgium, along with Dathan Ritzenhein's bronze medal in the same race, Alan Webb's high school mile record, and Franklyn Sanchez's US junior 5,000m record, led many observers to hail the resurgence of American distance running.

In the years that followed, all four runners struggled with injuries. Tegenkamp got off to a good start in his redshirt freshman year at the University of Wisconsin with an eighth-place finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, but that winter suffered the first of several injuries that would cause him to miss significant parts of the next three years.

After Tegenkamp missed the 2003 cross country season with another injury, Wisconsin coach Jerry Schumacher changed his training regimen, emphasizing shorter, more frequent runs. Tegenkamp responded quickly, setting an indoor 5,000m best of 13:44.06 and an outdoor best of 13:30.90 in 2004, and more importantly, staying healthy. He now looks set to join 2004 Olympians Ritzenhein and Webb in fulfilling the promise they showed in 2001.

But first, the Missouri native will try to add both the individual and team NCAA Cross Country titles to his resume. The top-ranked Badgers competed at the Big Ten Championships on Sunday, October 31, with Tegenkamp taking third behind teammates Simon Bairu and Chris Solinsky. We interrupted his dinner the following evening.

MensRacing.com: So what did you have for dinner?
Matt Tegenkamp: I had one of those pre-made pasta dishes, like Lean Cuisine. I think it was actually Skillet Sensations. It was pretty good.

MR: Are you living off campus?
MT: Yeah, I live with Antony Ford, Tim Keller, Ben Gregory, and then two other guys who aren't on the team. I just lived on campus freshman year — that's the trend around here. I think there's only two dorms where they allow you to stay on campus after your freshman year. Most people just go out and get a house to live in.

MR: Do you find it a challenge to eat right and take care of yourself when you're training hard?
MT: Not too much. I spend the right amount of money to eat the right kind of food. I don't worry too much about it, but I definitely try to get the right nutrition. The only time it's really bad is when you come home from a workout and it's already late, and all you want to do is sit around for a little bit... Other than that, you can really choose what you want, and get a nice variety of food.

MR: Turning to running, what was your strategy going into Big Tens yesterday, and how did it play out?
MT: We knew that we were the best team going into it, especially with the unfortunate news of Michigan losing [Nick] Willis for the season. That was the only team that we thought might be able to run with us up front. Our team just feels strong this season, so all we had to do was run our race, and everything turned out the way we wanted it to.

Individually, we decided ahead of time to at some point open up the race. It was actually kind of done for us — Andrew Carlson of Minnesota pushed it at 2K. So Simon [Bairu] and Chris [Solinsky] and I went with him, and then at 4K we started to really push. Andrew Carlson hung in there really well until about 6K. Actually, we never really dropped him — he was right there until the end, so he ran great. Running with those three was awesome.

MR: Were you guys running all out?
MT: Yeah, this was the beginning of championship season, so Jerry didn't tell us to go out slow or anything.

MR: At earlier races like Jim Drews, where your top five had a spread of less than two seconds, did you have strict instructions?
MT: Yeah, it's kind of funny — I mean, I check the message boards, and it never fails that every year after Jim Drews, there's so many posts about how we shouldn't be playing games, and we shouldn't drop out... It's really funny. Jerry just wanted us to run as a pack at 5:00 pace. It's a workout, but it gets you on the grass in spikes, in a racing situation. So we just kind of chill out, and let the leaders go. It allows us to come back that next week, and get in a workout without having to back off.

MR: And is it the same rationale for the guys who sometimes drop out at 6K?
MT: Yeah, he tells us that we can drop out if we're struggling or if we're feeling tired. The point is not to kill ourselves.

MR: So now that you're in championship season, you won't be instructed to run as a pack?
MT: I would expect me, Simon and Chris for the majority of the race to be running together. Same for [Josh] Spiker, Bobby [Lockhart], Tim Keller, and Tim Nelson. Those are just kind of the packs that form. Jerry doesn't tell us to run together, we just go out and run and it works out that way.

MR: What teams do you expect to challenge you for the NCAA Cross Country title?
MT: Obviously Arkansas, seeing what they did over the weekend [winning the SEC championship]. They [have] that guy from Australia, Shawn Forrest. They're really tough up front, and with John McDonnell as their coach — he always gets them to exceed their level when it comes to the big race. Stanford is the defending champion, so you have to give them respect. I think that's really it. Colorado will be tough too, but they don't have [Dathan] Ritzenhein or Billy Nelson.

MR: Who do you expect to score for your team? Tim Keller was surprisingly far back [in 37th] at Big Tens.
MT: Yeah, Keller had a big cramp yesterday, he's definitely more in shape. He should probably be running between Spiker and Lockhart. There are different packs — a front pack of three, and another pack of four. It depends who's having a good day. I don't think our top three are set, and I don't think the other places are set either. We're really deep, so no matter what we should have five guys running well.

MR: What about Antony Ford [who transferred from Montana]?
MT: He'll redshirt this year, unless something happens to our top five — then he'll step in. He's training with us, and ready to go.

MR: Who do you see as the individual contenders for the NCAA title?
MT: [Josphat] Boit from Arkansas, Simon Bairu, Chris Solinsky, Robert Cheseret, Ryan Hall.

MR: Is there anyone there you figure you can't beat?
MT: I don't think so. I don't think there's anyone that can really drop any of our three guys. We've been running really well early, and we're getting race-sharp now. I think once we get into the big races, we'll all step up and be ready to go.

MR: Is it different approaching NCAAs as a senior?
MT: I would say when you're younger and running up with the pack, you tend to be a bit more oblivious, you don't really know when moves are going to happen. Now I'm more ready for that — especially this year, with it being back in Terre Haute, where I kind of know the course.

MR: Can you give a brief synopsis of what injuries you had when and how you dealt with them?
MT: My redshirt freshman year, I don't really know exactly what was going on, but I was really out of whack with my hips. I qualified for both indoor and outdoor nationals, but I couldn't go to either. I could only run one speed. Any time there was a hard move, I couldn't respond. I was in the training room forever, but we couldn't figure it out.

It cleared up eventually, mostly just from taking time off. I was also doing some strength stuff, like plyometrics to strengthen my hips — just little stuff like lunges.

Then the following cross season, which would have been at Terre Haute, I had an achilles problem, where it was bursitis. We took a proactive approach, so I had a cortisone shot which brought the swelling down. I had to take two weeks off, but I was able to run NCAAs.

MR: That's the year you came in 12th?
MT: Yeah. And then that indoor season I had a stress fracture in my femur. It was a little bit frustrating, because it really took a while for the training room to diagnose it. That's because it was down the backside of my femur — most stress fractures to the femur are horizontal cracks across the bone, but this one was vertical. So instead of being a dull pain in one spot, it was kind of shooting all over around my knee, and I could feel it up towards my hip. So it took forever to figure that out and finally get an MRI. I finally found that out just before outdoors. That's the year I finished 16th in the 3,000m at indoor NCAAs — I was running on a stress fracture. That's probably the most painful race I've ever run.

So then I got back, trained all summer, and then... I don't know what was wrong, but my shin started bothering me — I can still feel a bump on the shin where it was. I tried to run through it, but it wasn't working. I ran Jim Drews, and then I tried to run Big Tens, but I wasn't helping the team.

So after that cross season [in 2003], that was when Jerry made a 180 degree change in our training. Originally a lot of stuff was long mileage, maybe one double [two runs in one day] a week, one day of long strength repeats, and one tempo run.

MR: That's all through cross season?
MT: That was pretty much all through cross and track season. Track season we'd be broken into groups, so obviously the 1,500m guys would do quicker stuff. But the 5K guys would be doing six miles of work on the track, like six by a mile, or alternating miles and 1,200m reps, stuff like that. And then one tempo, maybe 10 miles.

MR: What was a typical off-day run like?
MT: A lot of it was how you feel, maybe 6:00 pace for 10 to 12 miles. That was just the thought process behind what we were doing — but we kept getting hurt. I've actually grown four or five inches since I started college.

MR: How tall are you now?
MT: About 6'2". So I had all sorts of problems with my bones, they just couldn't handle the mileage. Other guys were getting hurt too, so Jerry really spent a lot of time thinking about how to change things. We started the new program after last year's cross season, and we were doing it all through last track season.

Now we're doing three or four doubles a week, depending on what [each person's] mileage is. We do a fartlek on Monday, and then some strength work on Wednesday, four to six miles worth of work depending on what part of the season we are in. Our strength sessions usually start out at a controlled pace and as we get into the workout we get down to race pace. And then we do a tempo run or a longer progression run at the end of the week. If it's a tempo run, we'll start around 6:00 and get down to around 5:00 pace or under; if it's a progression, we'll cut down from 6:00 to maybe 5:20 or 5:30. Both the tempo and progression runs are about 10 miles long so we are getting good aerobic work in.

This may seem like a lot during the week but our workouts are adjusted to fit our time frame, if we have a race coming up or just need an easier week. I think the biggest benefit is that in the past we had a very strong aerobic base but never really became race sharp — this workout system, we are allowed to put on our spikes and turn over the legs more.

Don't get me wrong, we still have a great base and are very strong, but now we have a little more bounce in our legs and we are a lot sharper. It is a great system and we are starting to see the benefits of it.

MR: So is the total mileage pretty similar but just broken up differently?
MT: Right. Some guys are doing up to 90 miles, I'm doing 75 or 80, but it's broken up so my longest run is on the tempo or long run day. Every other day, I have no run longer than maybe 8 miles, so that helps to allow my body to recover between runs.

MR: You seem to be doing well with the new system so far.
MT: Yeah, I'm really happy with it. There was a while at first where I was a little skeptical, just because I'd been on the old system for so long. But we started to see the results right away in the indoor season. It was nice to feel race-sharp and ready to go, instead of always being tired and waiting for the taper for nationals.

MR: When you ran 13:30 at Mt. SAC last spring, were you expecting that?
MT: Yeah, I knew was in that kind of shape. I really wanted to get down around 13:25 — I thought if I could run that, then I'd be able to take a shot at the [Olympic] 'A' standard. I only started back training on December 1st, and then got back pretty quickly and had a really good meet at indoor NCAAs. So I knew that if in that short amount of time I could run 13:44 [indoors], then I could improve that outdoors. I really didn't have a lot of base, so I was a little bit worried about that, but I just kept doing the mileage and plugging along, and it worked out okay.

MR: You didn't go to Olympic Trials, though.
MT: I had some problems right after the second Stanford meet, where I ran a 1,500m. The week before, I had done a workout, and my Achilles was a bit sore. I had never had any problems with my actual Achilles before, as opposed to bursitis, so I didn't really worry about it, but the race really hurt it. I had to take time off from a couple days after the Stanford meet until the week of regionals. I had a two-and-a-half-week period where I didn't run at all.

MR: I was going to ask you what happened at Big Tens [where he finished second in 14:13] and NCAA Regionals [where he finished 14th in 14:59] in the 5,000m last year, but I guess that's the answer.
MT: Basically I hadn't run in two-and-a-half weeks, so...yeah, I got a lot crap for that, for getting into NCAAs without running fast at regionals. But that race [regionals] hurt really badly. I had just started to train again the week leading up to it, and my body was just not ready for that at all.

The race at Regionals definitely helped me to start getting back in shape. I was able to get some workouts in and have a good race at NCAAs. It was really hot there, so the race was pretty slow, which worked out well for me. But I had lost a lot of training, and I wasn't going to be able to find a race to get 'A' standard anyway, so there wasn't really a point to keep going [to the Olympic Trials]. So I just took my time off and started training for cross.

MR: You were looking ahead to this year?
MT: Like I said, I didn't really get a chance to build up my base at all for track last year. Now, I've had a whole summer to build my mileage back up, get a base. So hopefully that'll help me, obviously through cross but also through track this summer.

MR: Were you doing a lot of cross training when you were injured?
MT: When I had my shin problem last fall, I was working mostly on the bike and less in the pool, up to the point when I knew my season was over — then I just took time off to heal up. I don't really see a lot of benefit from biking or the pool in terms of strength. I get back in shape pretty fast if I'm healthy, so I just let my body recover.

MR: That makes sense...
MT: Like I said, I do cross training if there's any chance I can come back. But if it's a stress fracture or something acute, then I give my body a chance to heal. I remember Ritzenhein, when he was battling stress fractures — he said that the first stress fracture he had, he really killed himself cross-training, and then he came back and got another stress fracture. So the second time, he just took time off, and came back stronger.

It's my feeling that sometimes you just have to take some time off and get healthy, then come back and build yourself back up. If you're tired and worn down when you start off, it's going to be a lot tougher.

MR: What about the future — have you thought at all about next year?
MT: Yeah, I definitely want to stay in Madison and train. It took five years to figure out what works for me, so now that we've figured that out, hopefully I can make strides to show I'm going in the same direction as, say, Ritzenhein — towards making Olympic standard. I think I definitely have that ability.

MR: Are there any other post-collegiates around in Madison?
MT: [There are] more [women] than [men] around here — Sarah Schwald, Kathy Butler, Suzy Favor-Hamilton... Other than that, I don't know, but staying here, I can work out with the team. The way our recruiting classes have been, that's a pretty good group even if there aren't any older post-collegiate athletes. If I want to progress, I can run a little faster at the end of workouts, or add an extra repetition, but for the most part I think we've found something that works for me.

MR: Do you think you'll have to work, or will you get a sponsorship?
MT: I really don't know how the whole contract thing works, basically because we're not allowed to talk to agents. I've been going through Jerry [Schumacher] — he has some contacts, so we'll see how that works out. A lot will depend on how this cross season and track season go — hopefully I can make enough strides that I can get some sort of deal.

MR: How about beyond running — where does a major in human ecology take you?
MT: I haven't put a lot of thought into that. I'm not going to lie; running is what I want to do, and I've put a lot of focus on that. If I don't end up getting a contract, I'll do what I can, working a part-time job. Human ecology is a concentration in consumer science, so eventually I'll probably end up in some type of business. But I'm not really thinking about that right now.

MR: At World Junior Cross Country in 2001, you and Dathan Ritzenhein were competitive with the best in the world. Do you feel you can do that as a senior, or is there a level that Americans just can't get to?
MT: You know, I saw an article linked from your Web site, talking about how certain people are worried that high-school kids are overtraining. They're saying that you shouldn't run more than 50 or 60 miles a week — it seems like these days there are kids running 100-mile weeks. I was a 50- or 55-mile guy, because that's what my body could handle. But if your body can handle 90 miles a week, I think you should go for it.

I think we are getting better and better, and people are running faster. I was thinking about the US Championships next summer, and I can't think of a time when there were so many guys. You start out with [Adam] Goucher, a 13:11 guy in his prime, Meb [Keflezighi], and then [Bob] Kennedy, a sub-13:00 guy in his prime. I don't know if everyone will run the 5,000m, but they could. And there's [Jorge] Torres at 13:24, [Tim] Broe at 13:18, and Ritz should be a 13-teens guy if he focuses on it. I definitely want to be close to 13:20.

There's more and more guys who are pushing the times down. It used to be 13:30, maybe 13:20 was the standard to go for — now it's 13:20, 13:10. So we're definitely headed in the right direction. And I want to be in that group, trying to make the World teams and compete with the rest of the world.

MR: And is 5,000m where you're going to do it?
MT: I think I'm a better 10,000m runner, but right now I don't really have much experience with that. I might try it a little bit this track season, but my focus for this year is definitely the 5,000m.

MR: It sounds like you're pretty excited for the coming year, to see what you can do with the new training program.
MT: I'll say this: Jerry was to willing to adapt. He wasn't stuck with one tactic — he looked at the tactic and realized that he needed to make changes. Of course, to compete at the highest level, you're always going to have the risk of injuries. With the new program, even if you don't get as many long runs, you're still getting the mileage no matter what — but you're doing it in a way that your body can handle it. You're not breaking down the body as much — or at least, you're giving it time to recover.

(Interview conducted November 1, 2004, and posted November 14, 2004.)