Mar 29, 2009
A Brief Chat With Brian Sell Views- 1417

March 27, 2009
A Brief Chat With Brian Sell
Provided by Runnersworld

By Peter Gambaccini

Brian Sell of the Michigan-based Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, a 2008 U.S. Olympic marathoner, will compete in the Sell_brian_hous_2 Boston Marathon on April 20. Sell was fourth in Boston in 2006 in 2:10:55; later that year, he improved his personal best to 2:10:47 with a sixth place in Chicago in 2:10:47. He was third at the U.S. Olympic Men’s Marathon Trials in November of 2007 in 2:11:40 and then 22nd in the Beijing Olympics in 2:16:07. Sell was ninth in the marathon at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki in 2:13:27. In his only major race of 2009 thus far, Sell was fifth in the USA Half Marathon on Houston in January in 1:02:36. In 2008, he won his third USA 25K title in May in 1:15:02, won the ING Miami Half-Marathon (a course record 1:03:46) and AT&T Austin Half-Marathon (1:04:11), and was fourth in the USA 15K (44:47). He won the 2006 USA Half-Marathon Championship in Houston in 1:02:38. He was 13th in the 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in 2:17:20 after being the early leader. Sell was a Northeastern Conference champion in the 5000, 10,000, and 3000-meter steeplechase while at St. Francis College in Pennsylvania. Now 30 (he'll be 31 in April), Sell is married and the father of a daughter, Lily, who will be two in May. After a stint with Home Depot, he is once again working about 25 hours a week in the Hansons Running Shops.

When you ran 2:10:55 in Boston in 2006, was it a good day, weatherwise? And are there some things you did that day that you'd like to do differently this time?

Brian Sell: It was a pretty good day. I would give it probably a seven out of ten. It wasn't a blazing tailwind, but it was probably a ten-mile-an-hour wind from the side, our left side most of the way. It certainly wasn't bad. The temperature was pretty well perfect - 50 or 60, something like that.

As far as doing things differently, no, it went about as perfectly as i could have hoped for. I was pretty well out of it at halfway and even through 16, 17 miles, and then guys started coming back and I climbed the leader all the way up to fourth. I kind of ran out of race. The top three guys were pretty far up; Meb (Keflezighi, who finished third) was about a minute ahead of me or more. I think I did about as good as I could have that day.

Leaving the fitness aspect aside, which we'll get to in a bit, would your approach to the actual race be much different this time? Would you run the first half pretty much the same way you did last time?

BS: Yeah. I've been pretty much doing the same thing pacewise and everything (in training). We've been running the same course that I did before. I'd be happy with that kind of time again there. Maybe a minute faster or so would be ideal. Ideally, I'd like to through 1:05 low (for the first half) and come back negatively - that would be great, but another 1:05 low would be good, too. A 2:09 high, 2:10 low would be perfect on a good day.

One thing to be wary of in Boston is the effect of the downhill miles on your quadriceps - not just in the long stretch at the beginning but in a couple of miles near the end. How did your quads feel in the 2006 race, and this is something that you and Keith and Kevin (Hanson) do something about in advance to minimize it as a problem?

BS: My quads felt pretty good. It was partly physical, partly mental, because I was passing so many guys in the last half. A lot of that kept me motivated, and kept me rolling through the uphill and the downhill parts. We started the segment out (ie, this current training segment), basically a three-month segment, with a month or a little more of all downhill workouts - pretty screaming downhills. We were really pounding our quads on those and then we transitioned into more rolling hills. Now we're in the last month here and doing a lot of uphill stuff. We're doing some of our workouts on the same course we used for the Olympic Trials in New York, which is a pretty hilly course. It's an out-and-back mile and a half (each way). It's probably a 300-foot elevation gain out to a mile and half and you turn around and come back.

Did you head down to Tallahassee with the rest of the Hansons group this winter?

BS: We went down to the Orlando area - actually Davenport, a little town out in the orange groves. The orange groves are just a nice place to run. There's about an eight-mile road through there that we did. For the majority of our workouts and long runs, we'd go out and back for 18 or 20 miles on that. It's sand. It's not perfect by any means, but it's soft on the joints and there's absolutely no traffic on it. It's very rolling for Florida. The first trip out in January and February was just more or less a break from winter. And then we're going to out again the week before Boston, just in case it's 70 degrees (in Boston on Patriots' Day), just to be acclimated.

Who have you mostly been running with in training? We read that you were sort of missing Clint (Verran) this time.

BS: He got a stress fracture right after Detroit (the fall marathon). He's kind of transitioning into triathlon, like Ironman type stuff. He's really getting into biking. Yeah, I do miss him. He was a 2:14 Sell_brianflaustin08_2 marathoner. He would take off. He was wanting to run 2:11, 2:12 and take that next step above. He was always somebody that I could count on to not only push me from the side but from the front. On a lot of long runs, he'd take off and I'd try to catch up to him. This year, it's come more from the back. It's a group of guys with anywhere from 2:15 to 2:20 PRs. A couple of them are having really great segments and they've pushed me pretty well. A guy on our team to watch is Todd Snyder. He's run like 2:20. We just did our simulator run the other day, our 16-miler, and he ran the equivalent of a 2:12. He's definitely fit.

At this point in your career, when you begin a week's training, or just when you get up in the morning, do you feel THIS much stronger and THIS much more fit just because you're one more year down the line, with that much more training behind you? Are you feeling like a stronger and fitter marathoner each year, or are you getting weary?

BS: I'm definitely feeling wearier. The beginning of this segment was one of the hardest ones that I've had in awhile. I think it was a little bit of a mental letdown after the Olympics and so forth. Physically, too, in dog years, I'm 60 years old as far as mileage goes. I mean, I've been averaging 140 miles a week for the last five, six, seven years. Todd on our team is 31 years old so he's actually older than me, but as far as mileage on the legs goes, he's kind of a spring chicken. I'm definitely feeling that I'm getting towards the end in my career here. But I'm still feeling pretty good. The last two months, it's coming along pretty well.

Are you still hitting around 150 miles a week?

BS: Yeah. The last three have been 150, 155, 155. This week will be about 160, and then we'll start to taper down. I don't think I'd be able to do much more. I guess I could, but it would hit the law of diminishing returns. For me to do 200 miles a week, I'd be wiped out.

Have you ever tried it?

BS: I got up to 165 or 170, probably the highest I've ever done. But I did pretty high mileage going into the Olympics and it didn't turn out well. I think I sacrificed quality of workouts and long runs trying to hit my mileage goals. High mileage became more of a focus than the actual race and workouts.

You roomed with Dathan Ritzenhein at the Beijing Olympics. Even if he has a stress reaction or something like that and has to take time off, it seems like if he gets three good weeks or so, he pops back into shape. Do you envy guys like that?

BS: I do, yeah. It kind of disgusts me. He's a great guy. We still keep in contact a little bit over e-mail. He's just an unbelievably hard worker. Just looking at him five years ago, I just thought he was this Nike-sponsored punk who did a couple of yoga exercises and ran 30 miles a week and just was so talented that he was able to pull stuff out like that. But he's a very quality over quantity-oriented guy, and it really works for him.

There's talk about you being "under the radar." Is that something you're happy about, or does it gall you at some way? People are so excited that Ryan Hall is going to Boston. Do you care that they're not talking about you as much?

BS: Not at all, nope. I like going in as one of the also-rans, kind of. That's exactly the way it was in 2006. (Alan) Culpepper and Meb were both coming off of the Olympics, and they were spotlighted. There was a whole raft of fast Kenyans. So it was kind of nice. It was nice to work my way up through the field and finish as high as I did. I'd like to do that again. I think the field is probably even stronger this year than it was in 2006. Deriba Merga (of Ethiopia) is running and (Robert) Cheruiyot and the guy that won Chicago (Evans Cheruiyot).

If you get a good enough time in Boston, would you want to go to the World Championships in Berlin?

BS: I kind of doubt it. I'll play that by ear and talk to Kevin and Keith. I honestly haven't even really thought about that. That might be a possibility. I wouldn't mind running something in the fall. It (the Worlds) might be a little bit quick (soon). I don't really come back like I used to, three or four months after. But it would definitely be a possibility.

What big races have you done in 2009 so far?

BS: I did the Houston Half, the USA Championship (in January). It was pretty good. The winter was pretty rough on us, and I didn't get a whole lot of quality workouts going in. I was honestly expecting about a 1:03:00 flat or so. I PRed by about two seconds (in 1:03:26), but it would have been a prime year to really go low 1:02, high 1:01 because it was such a good field this year. On the one hand, I was sort of happy, but also disappointed as well.

You have a young child Are you a "house husband" part of the time? Is your wife (Sarah) working, too?

BS: Yes, she works two days a week at a hospital today, 12 hour days. She's upstairs taking her nap. I'm just sitting around stretching and stuff.

Is the idea of going to dental school still something that's down the road for you?

BS: Yeah, definitely. Running's been good to me, but there's no retirement plan to it. I'm definitely going to have to move on to get areal job to support my family.

Do you have a timetable on any of this?

BS: A lot of it depends on how the races go, as usual - how Boston goes, how I feel and so for. I would say within the next year or so.

Do you have anything solid planned for after the Boston Marathon. Do you want to go back to the USA 25K or anything like that?

BS: No, I don't have anything really solid. We're going to go home (to Pennsylvania) and visit family for probably two or three weeks, at least, after the marathon. I've got a couple of cousins getting married. We'll take it day by day. If the marathon goes really well, I might want to turn around and get in a few things this summer. If not, I may just want to lay low and rest up for a fall marathon.