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TCS NEW YORK CITY MARATHONOctober 30, 2014Deena KastorNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Q. Your running has been tremendous. You weren't sure you'd run any more marathons, and what's happened this year? DEENA KASTOR: I think I just had great momentum. Having fun some of the early season rock 'n roll marathons, and those performances got me excited to see what other fitness I could get myself into. Really this year was just about being joyful in the sport and riding that moment up of fitness. It's been a great year, injury‑free, and running with my Mammoth Track Club teammates and allowing a great year of fitness to keep building and building on each other. Q. Heading into the half marathon, you had some ideas. DEENA KASTOR: Going into Philadelphia, I actually thought I was in 1:08 shape. The humidity got to me a little bit and some reckless early miles. So I was a little slower than I wanted to be, but still able to get that other goal of breaking the world record in the half marathon. Q. Are you look at 2:25 here? The course record is only 2:23:30 or something. What do you think you can run on a flat course? DEENA KASTOR: I think just a few minutes faster, but I feel that with all of the workouts that I've done over the summer, the mileage that I've done, and the speed that I've been able to run with, which has surprised me the most that I could still break five minutes in mile repeats and just benchmarks along the way that make me and my coach believe that I have that in me. Q. And it was early in the summer. [No microphone]? DEENA KASTOR: Yeah, it was early in the summer. If I was going to do a marathon, New York was going to be the marathon. It's the marathon that excites me and ignites something in me and that's what it takes day in and day out to put in the work. So it was definitely going to be New York. I just needed to get that summer of mileage in to know that I could still put that type of work in, and my summer went beautifully. And I was able to execute a great half marathon and feel that I'm in better marathon fitness. So pretty excited about this weekend. Q. Was your last marathon was L.A. last year? DEENA KASTOR: Last marathon was the World Championships. So L.A. and then World Cup Championships and then the World Championships and that was hell. That was an absolute hell for me. So I anticipate the marathon hurting like it did in Moscow. It's my intention to handle it with a lot more grace this time. Q. Heading into Moscow, what sort of fitness level were you at? DEENA KASTOR: I bet I was in 2:28 shape, nothing fantastic. I didn't feel confident going into the race, and I also had some skin cancer issues going into that race, and running in the middle of the day when it's 80 degrees and sunny was making me paranoid about my skin. So it was just a lot of ‑‑ a mental battle while the race was going on. Q. Anything serious? DEENA KASTOR: No, it's just what I battle on a yearly basis. I was born with terrible skin. My profession is in the sun, so it is something I always have to take care of. I've had melanoma on three occasions and other forms of skin cancer every year since I've started going to the dermatologist. It's always something that I just have to look out for. Q. So this year versus the last three years or something? Better training? DEENA KASTOR: I think it's consistent training, but I'm also in a really good place mentally. I love my teammates. I love where we're going. I love the young energy in our group, trying to keep up with my young, fast teammates. I'm just happy with my place, with my new sponsor Asics, my role as brand ambassador and traveling around the country for them. I'm happy with the place I am in my life, and I think that joy has unlocked a well of energy in my this year to be able to feed off of that I really, really enjoyed everything about the training and representing the track club and trying to build that up, and trying to write grant proposals so my teammates are funded and getting sponsorships for the club so that they can be well taken care of so we can get the best out of them as 2016 rolls around. So just a fun year of dabbling in and having different hats, and maybe not doing the 140‑mile weeks that I used to do in about 10, 15 years ago. My mileage is cut back, but it's so that I can have energy to fulfill these other roles that I also enjoy. Q. What mileage are you doing? DEENA KASTOR: About 110 is what I capped at. A few weeks ago I did 110, and that was pretty much it. Other than that, just hovered around 100 miles a week. But really tried grouping my long tempo runs and my long runs together to try to build that marathon strength. Q. If you had one run, a signature workout, who do you do the long runs with? DEENA KASTOR: Mostly the guys. Trying to run with my male teammates on a lot of my long runs. So I never look at one specific workout. For me, it's making sure that I have a great speed workout, great tempo runs, and great long runs. I feel like I was able to piece those together week in and week out. So it's certainly given me the confidence coming off of months of being able to do that. Q. Up in Mammoth Lakes, do you train with Meb at all? DEENA KASTOR: I don't train with Meb. He's no longer part of the Mammoth Track Club. He comes up to Mammoth Lakes to do his training. So, although we meet on the same roads and the same parks to do our workouts at the same time, we're not actually working out together. His Coach, Bob Larsen, is in charge of his workouts, and Andrew Kastor, my husband, is in charge of Mammoth Track Club workouts. Q. What's the best advice you've received personally as an athlete? DEENA KASTOR: Oh, wow, that is a loaded question. I feel grateful that I've been able to work with great coaches. My first professional coach Joe Vigil and now Terrence Mahon, who's now coach of the BAA, and my husband Andrew Kastor. And the advice I've gotten from all of them is more of running as a lifestyle, and I really enjoy that. But to call it a job is a joke. This is a lifestyle of progress, and that's why I'm still in this sport. Although I don't believe I could ever run a 2:19 marathon again, I believe that running still makes me a better person on a daily basis. So continuing to get that out of myself has made continuing to run year after year, going on 31 years as a runner, quite a lot of miles on these legs. Q. That's amazing. What piece of advice did you give to the thousands upon thousands of nonprofessional runners who are toeing the line on Sunday? DEENA KASTOR: I think I would just encourage everyone to make this a lifestyle, that the finish line is certainly not the finish of this journey, but the beginning of a lifestyle, bettering yourself one step at a time, maybe getting faster times, but seeing that the improvements infiltrate every nook and cranny of your life. Q. Have you noticed many changes in your body? Some athletes say they notice they feel better. Some say they feel the same. DEENA KASTOR: I would love to have gotten that empowerment that came with pregnancy. I don't know why I got cheated out of that, but I did not feel stronger right away. I felt exhausted. More exhausted being a parent for that first year than any marathon training I'd ever done in my past. But I also believe that the rewards and the richness of having a child and sharing‑‑ showing by example that you can follow your passions is so much more empowering than anything I could have ever imagined. So to lead by example, I thought maybe after being a parent, that I would want to retire and be a stay‑at‑home mom and really immerse myself in that, but realized that leading by example and following your passions with joy is my greatest gift I could give to her. Q. What about the potential to get those Masters and American records? Is that something you're targeting? DEENA KASTOR: I'm not targeting a record in this race. I am really targeting like a time block. It's the time that I believe that I could run, but I'm saying that very loosely because I'm also here to race. That my watch is going to be my governor maybe that first half marathon on Sunday, and once the second half rolls around, I hope to be racing. Q. Can you talk about how the American field is dominated by the foreign runners? DEENA KASTOR:  As usual, the New York Road Runners have put together a great field, on the men's and women's side. And looking at the women's side specifically, we have a great range of American distance runners from newbies, to the distance to veterans that are all here and happen to have gotten in very good fitness. I feel like that usually you get to a starting line, and there's some people that have had hiccups along the way, and you can count them out. You can count everyone in this time around, which is pretty special to be able to do that. And so I really feel that the Americans have a great chance of being up there on the podium this year, both on the men's and women's side. So it's going to be‑‑ it's going to make for real exciting racing. Q. After your last marathon at Worlds, did you feel like maybe there might not be many more marathons in your career, but now after‑‑ DEENA KASTOR: There would have been none at that point, yes. Q. My question is looking forward now, the Olympic trials are a little more than a year away. Are you thinking about doing that? Do you think you have a good chance? Is what do you think of the women's field in that space? DEENA KASTOR: The 2016 Olympic trials are coming up. They'll be in Los Angeles. I'm pretty narrowly focused on this race right now. I know that I want to run a marathon in the spring of 2015. So coming up, but I haven't pinpointed one at all. It will be a discussion when I'm laying on the beach in Hawaii next week with Mai‑tai in my hand. But 2015, I'm already looking at a spring marathon, and then probably wouldn't run one until the Olympic trials, if that's on my target. So it's going to be a tough race to make. It's going to be a tough team to make. But I believe we have a great venue up in Mammoth Lakes, great coaching, and a great team to go the distance with. So every single one of my Mammoth Track Club teammates have qualified for the Olympic trials. So it's going to be an exciting, exciting year to be able to build up and go that distance with them. Q. In Philadelphia, I thought that was one of the most hottest most miserable ‑‑ DEENA KASTOR: No, I thought the humidity was awful. Coming from the mountains to humidity was really tough. I thought the day before was perfect conditions, and then the morning of the race, the air was so thick that you actually felt the mist on your body. So it was tough conditions, and I had a couple of pretty fast miles in the beginning of the race that even made it more of a reckless race for me. But I think, when you're in good fitness, you can handle those situations a little better. Q. Like an athlete. DEENA KASTOR: Yeah. So the more fit you are, that was something I learned from a physiologist down at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. You can train for heat and humidity or whatever inclement weather and altitude or not altitude, and really the fitter you are, the better you can handle anything. That's always our refrain in the house, get as fit as possible. That's what we aim to do each time we get out there. Q. Does the same thing apply when you're dealing with probably the opposite on Sunday, cold, winds? DEENA KASTOR: Right. The tactics‑‑ when the wind comes into play, tactics also come into play, trying to find a niche to get into so you're not breaking the wind for everybody else, but I'm sure all the other women are going to be searching for that same wall in front of them. Q. Just find the fast runner. DEENA KASTOR: Yeah. Q. Are you hoping the wind will slow down the main pack and you can run with them? DEENA KASTOR: I don't think the wind is going to help anybody, but it's what cards we're dealt on marathon Sunday, so you just go in with the same mental strategy. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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