Keeping Track of... Weldon Johnson

By Alison Wade

Despite never qualifying for a NCAA Championship race while in college, Weldon Johnson has gradually worked his way up in the running world since graduating from Yale in 1996. In 2001, he finished fourth in the 10,000m at the USA Track & Field Championships. He holds a personal best of 28:10.14 for 10,000m, set while winning the McGill International in July 2001. He and his twin brother Robert are co-founders of the immensely popular http://www.letsrun.com/. We caught up with Johnson to find out where he's been in 2002.

MensRacing.com: Is Flagstaff your permanent home now?
Weldon Johnson: I guess I've been here permanently since January 2001.

MR: How many people are living in your apartment? We saw the Survivor Flagstaff piece on your web site...
WJ: For a while we had five people in one bedroom. We moved May 15th. Now we have four bedrooms. We have four here today, but we had seven last week. This summer was the first time a lot of other people have been out here. It's usually been one or two others, but I think maybe because of the web site, a lot of college kids came for the summer. There are probably 20 people out here. It's nice to have some sense of community.

MR: When was the last time you raced?
WJ: [The New York City Marathon]. (Laughs) I guess I've been in denial or something. In February I paced a part of the Vegas Marathon but I didn't finish it.

MR: Are you injured now?
WJ: I'm on the way back to being healthy. This past week was the first week were I was back up to training at 100% intensity and volume. I thought I had plantar fasciitis since about last September. After New York, I figured a month off would heal whatever it was, because I could run on it. But when I started back up, it felt worse. This spring I decided I wasn't going to race until I got rid of it. It's a good year to get rid of something completely.

My roommate, Paul [Stoneham] was telling me that he had had plantar fasciitis and I needed to go see this doctor in Boston. I said, 'Is he the best in the world?' and Paul said, 'No, the best in the world is Gerard Hartmann, everyone knows that!' So Robert said, 'Why don't we try to see him?' Within 10 days, we were in Ireland for three weeks. We went to World Cross Country. The whole experience was incredible. I was still injured when I got back, but I'd go see [Hartmann] again in a second. He's so thorough, and seeing what he does, hearing him talk about all his athletes, it was definitely worth it. He fixed a thigh problem I had in two days.

Gerard thought I would need orthotics and to get a cortisone shot to heal my plantar because I had so much scar tissue. He said, 'Go see Perry Julian in Atlanta. Bob Kennedy was here about three months before you, he's got plantar and that's who he sees.' So I saw [Julian], got the cortisone shot, but it started bothering me again. By that point, my roommate was saying, 'You need orthotics, go see this guy in Boston.' So I went to Boston to see him. He thought I had a bone bruise, got me a pair of orthotics and told me to take it easy for three months. That wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, but was glad to have a new diagnosis, because for 6 months I had been told I had plantar and nothing was helping.  

But I ran into Brian Fullem a podiatrist in Connecticut who comes to my website's message boards, at a track meet while I was in Boston, and after hearing about my symptoms, he thought I had an inflamed nerve instead of plantar. He was at USA Nationals, and gave me a cortisone shot into the nerve instead of the plantar. He told me, 'This one's in the nerve, it's a different deal. You could be completely healthy in five days, 100 percent.' And I thought, 'This is great, a miracle cure!'

That's kind of what I expected Gerard to do, just touch me and I'd be healed. But when you see him, he just rips your body apart for days on end. He was working on Robert too, because Robert has achilles problems. You almost have to be there to [witness] the kind of pain he puts you in. I mean, people are yelling in there, it's just kind of bizarre.

MR: So did the miracle cure work?
WJ: Nah, it wasn't 100 percent better, but he also mentioned the possibility that I might need physical therapy and a second shot. So it started hurting a little bit about a week later and I kind of freaked out and was ready to take an extended period off, but after running for a few days, I realized it was definitely a lot better. It didn't hurt nearly as badly when I ran, I could train a little more. I also started wearing a different pair of shoes, that have almost like a mesh siding... that made things better so I was encouraged. I then went and saw Brian again about two weeks ago and got a second cortisone shot. Since then, I've been basically 100% cured, maybe I should say 98% because I think about my foot a lot, and keep waiting for the pain to come back and it doesn't.  So I'm ready to start racing again.

MR: What kind of mileage are you doing right now?
WJ: This week is probably over 120, but it's my max for sure. I'm not keeping much of a log.  I got up around 100 this summer with those guys out here and was a little more tired than usual.  But now that they're gone, and I'm 100% healthy, I'm running more and feeling better. But that's just because I can run whatever pace I want every day, which is pretty slow some days, especially at the start.  I even ran 3.5 hours total today, but that's another story as I ran three times today for the first time ever in my life.  The Japanese Sanix women's coporate team is here and I wanted to see what it was like. It was pretty tiring.

Even though I've been hurt and missed the whole year, I don't really view myself as an injured athlete. I think a lot of people get into the mentality of, 'I'm injured, I can't race until everything's perfect.' Whereas at first I was thinking, 'Oh, I won't run Mt. SAC, I'll just be ready by Nationals.' This year all I wanted to do was run a fast 10k and then run a fast marathon in the fall. [I wanted to] get the World Championships standard in the 10k, that was going to be my goal. And Nationals were at Stanford, so I didn't need to be ready until June because that race was going to be fast. Once I missed that, I kept pushing things off. I thought, 'Well, I'll just get ready for a fall marathon.' So now I don't know where it's going to stop. I'm always just thinking two or three months ahead.

MR: You took that one month off after New York, but you haven't had any extended period of time off other than that, have you?
WJ: No, in the early spring I was still training a lot, I just thought, 'I'm not going to race until I'm 100 percent.' Paul Stoneham who used to be in the Fila Program and has known my coach longer than me had moved out here to be my training partner and it was going great.  I was really excited, but decided to get my foot 100% healthy this year as the #1 priority. I may not have a sponsor and be off the radar of a lot of people, but I realized that if I want to be at the top of the sport, I've got to act like I'm there and make maintaining my body the #1 priority.  Then once I went to Ireland, Gerard said, 'Just run an hour a day.' I got used to doing a little bit less. When I got back, my foot was not doing any better and Paul got mono so I just was running 45 minutes or an hour most days. After I saw Brian Fullem the first time, around the middle of July, I realized that my foot was a little better and I could start training more.

It worked out well having the young guys out here this summer. I kind of felt a little bit old for the first time in my life, they have so much energy. Every run, they're just joking around, doing stupid stuff. It was fun to run with a lot of other people again and just kind of see their enthusiasm and passion for it. When I was coming back, I didn't need a whole bunch of intensity or anything, I just needed to enjoy it again. One of the guys, Bruce (Hyde), he's just a talker. When he first got out here, he said, 'I need a refund. I was promised a training partner, you're not even training. If I wanted to go visit a washed up runner, I'd go to Frank Shorter's house for the summer.' And then he'd say stuff like, 'But there's a difference there, Frank Shorter actually accomplished something in his career,' kind of egging me on. He'd say, 'You need to get the fire back!' It was fun, just joking around every day.

One thing I think is underestimated is the kind of mental energy it takes to run really well. Even though I haven't been running the whole time, it's still in the back of my mind. I never just took off and didn't think about running. That's just kind of a low level of energy. But when I'm really training, that's what I'm thinking about most of the time, and that kind of focus is underestimated.

MR: Do you have your eye on any races in particular at this point?
WJ: I'm going to to do the Cow Harbor 10k in Long Island in September as my first race.  I have no idea what I'm going to do after that. I rabbited Chicago last year, I would do that again, because it's a great race. I like going out there, it pays well, I need the money, but I haven't even talked to them about that. In terms of me doing a marathon, at this point I just want to get in shape and kind of see where I am [in my training]. Even if I'm three or four months behind, that's fine. My coach and I agred that I just need to get back in shape and see what's going on. It's not going to bother me to go out there and run some really slow time.

I can't force myself to be in shape for some race right now, there's really no point. The whole goal is the 2004 Olympics. I decided not to go to school (he had been accepted at Stanford Business School for the fall of 2001 and deferred until the fall of 2002). I wrote to them this past spring just to see if I could get another deferral for a couple years, until 2004. They said, 'No way,' I figured that's what they'd say. I was pretty honest with them, I told them, 'At this point I don't think I'm going to go to school, I'd like to get another deferral if possible, but if you can't grant that, hold my spot for the fall, just in case I get injured.' Right after I wrote that letter, it seemed like my [medical condition] was getting worse. In my mind, I just couldn't [make the decision to go to business school]. I've invested too much time in this now, now I'm starting to kind of getting a groove going out here, and have the training partner I want.

I still haven't run a good marathon. I think a lot of that is just the circumstances. You train six months for a marathon and one or two things go wrong. In Pittsburgh, I thought I was in good shape, but it was really hot, a lot of people had a bad day, I'm not as experienced as [many of the competitors]. In New York, I think my foot was bothering me more than I thought.

Looking ahead to 2004, they're having the Marathon Trials in February, so that rules out a marathon next fall, unless you do it really early. But then, if I'm also trying to get a track time, I have to get that early next spring, or maybe at Nationals. I don't have a qualifying time for Nationals, so I may have to run a 10k before Nationals as well, so maybe that throws out a spring marathon. I like the fact that I still think of myself as doing both events, but time-wise, maybe that makes trying a marathon this fall or winter a little more important, but I can't really think that far ahead. Now I just really want to get in shape, start racing well again and see what happens.

MR: Has it been hard going to meets as a spectator and reporter, or do you get used to it?
WJ: I'm a fan that runs, so I love going to meets. I think that's why I started the web site. We had it in mind before I had that good year in 2000. We didn't start it until I moved out here, but we'd always talked about it. Whether I'm running 27 minutes or 32 minutes (for 10k), I love doing the web site. Going to the meets is just fun.

At Nationals, during the 10k a lot of people were coming up and saying, 'Oh, this has gotta hurt.' And I'd say, 'No.' And after the race they asked, 'Where do you feel you're at?' and I said that in the 10k in this country, things haven't changed that much. Alan (Culpepper), Meb (Keflezighi) and Abdi (Abdirahman) are still way better than everyone else. When I left, there was a big gap to them and no one filled that gap this year either. The weather was perfect at Nationals and those three guys ran fast and everyone else didn't. I like going to a meet like that because it gets me motivated again. I picture myself out there, and I think that helps.

MR: How long do you plan on keeping up your web site?
WJ: At least as long as I'm out here running. Robert left, he's going to be the cross country coach at Cornell this year. So that's kind of different. He decided to come out here to help me, then he could work on the web site more because he wasn't teaching, and then start trying to train himself, but he's even more injured than I am. So he decided to go to Cornell. I think he'll do a great job. It should work out well. [The site] has grown so much more than we thought it would, there's no way I'm going to not keep doing it.

MR: What are some of the more rewarding experiences that you've had as a result of the web site?
WJ: One, you go to a meet and people say, 'Oh, you guys are doing it right, you're going in the right direction.' Or just when someone tells you they go to the web site and they enjoy it. On the internet, if someone doesn't like what you're doing, you'll hear from them, even if 98 percent of the people agree and two percent disagree. So just if someone says, 'You're doing a good job,' that means a lot because I put a lot of time into it.

There's also the times when someone writes and says, 'Oh your stories inspired me,' or 'I really look up to you.' And the third aspect is helping people with their training. We haven't put up as much advice as we should, just helping people get faster and enjoy their running more. That aspect we probably need to do more formally, but it's a combination of those things. It's a good avenue to reach out to people, no other runner really has that.

MR: Do you have any sponsors at all?
WJ: No. After last year, we talked to a bunch of people, and we wanted to tie something into the web site.  Getting an equipment sponsorship wouldn't be hard, but no one really wanted to pay us any money. I'd like to officially deny the rumors that I have ever been offered any cash contract ever by any shoe company.  My roomate was telling me he had heard I turned down a nice cash offer. It's just not true.  As for just getting shoes, at the time last year, I thought, 'What's the point, I can get shoes anywhere.' In some ways, since I haven't raced this year, I haven't really needed it, I haven't gone through many pairs of shoes. We'll probably do something now, but since I haven't been racing, it just hasn't been a concern.

MR: So it's not like there haven't been any offers, there just hasn't been anything good enough to jump on immediately?
WJ: The way [we thought] was, 'Well, if I'm not going to get paid, I might as well just keep promoting the web site [on my racing gear].' Someone might let us combine the two, but at the time I was trying to focus on my running, run well and get rewarded. Maybe we did it the wrong way, but looking back on it this year, I haven't done any races, so I would have a bunch of gear sitting in my closet. The shoes that I think are now helping me, I bought for $19.99 at an outlet mall, so I'm sure some shoe exec is rolling over right now.

I made a little money this year doing some internet marketing related to the Olympics and World Cup that was not related to my own website, I coach a few people, and seem to do just enough to get by without going into debt.  My best running days are ahead of me.  If I run under 27:30 or say 2:10, I'll get rewarded.

(Interview conducted August 15, 2002, Updated & Posted August 29, 2002)