	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

November 2, 2011

Bobby Curtis

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Q. I was reading on your Twitter account, you got pulled over for speeding?
BOBBY CURTIS: Yeah, yeah.

Q. Where were you?
BOBBY CURTIS: When you go to Mammoth lakes, the airport is very unreliable, so it snows a lot and it's very windy. So like 50% of flights get cancelled. So what a lot of people do, they'll drive to Reno, so it's a three-hour drive through a desolate area, and I figured just bomb as fast as I can to Reno.
There are a lot of ranchers in the area and they don't like speeding because if a cow were to cross the road, you'd be kaput if you were going pretty fast.
So anyway, I got pulled over in a really small city called Walker. There are probably 200 people that live there. And got a massive California speeding ticket.

Q. Did you try to plead with him?
BOBBY CURTIS: Hey, I'm going to the New York City Marathon.

Q. Did you tell him you were an elite marathoner?
BOBBY CURTIS: I don't think he would have cared.

Q. Did you tell him you could run faster than the car was going? Maybe he would have bought that.
BOBBY CURTIS: No, no, he wouldn't have been impressed by endurance, I don't think.

Q. So how long ago was that?
BOBBY CURTIS: That was two days ago.

Q. How much is that going to cost you?
BOBBY CURTIS: I was reading online, probably like between 500 and 700 bucks.

Q. How much over were you going?
BOBBY CURTIS: I can't say that on record, an unspeakable speed.

Q. So you being a northeast guy, did you come right to New York?
BOBBY CURTIS: No, I didn't stop in Philly. I wanted to spend as much time at altitude as possible, so, yeah, I was in Mammoth, then Reno for one night and straight to New York.

Q. Obviously you do some of your training in Philly, but this particular build up to the marathon, were you down there?
BOBBY CURTIS: What I did is I did all my training in Philly before the Philly Half, then I took like sort of a down week after the Philly Half, and did four really quality weeks in Mammoth in preparation to be ready for this. So that's how I scheduled it.

Q. Can you give us some indication of what you've been doing and how that's been going? Can you elaborate a little more on what you've been putting in the past couple of weeks?
BOBBY CURTIS: My biggest week was roughly 130 miles, so that was like a really career week, I guess, in terms of volume. Other than that, it's mostly been like a hundred to 110 miles a week, a lot of long tempos. So just bread and butter marathon sort of stuff. Nothing too crazy, just a lot of volume.

Q. Have you been doing these runs by yourself or have you been running with other people?
BOBBY CURTIS: Up in Mammoth, there are a few people to train with. So I was running a lot with Meb, running a lot with Alistair Cragg and Pat Smyth just a few of the people at the Mammoth Track Club.

Q. When you're training with a guy like Meb who has won this race before, what insight has he given you into strategy and the whole marathon?
BOBBY CURTIS: Yeah, he's been pretty quotable, really. He's given me a few gems. He just said it's your first marathon, so you have to balance. You have to respect the marathon, because it's a difficult distance and a lot of people have failed at it, but you can't be afraid of the marathon.
If you can balance those two and come in not scared, but respecting the distance, I think he was saying you'll do pretty well.

Q. So what is your strategy for Sunday?
BOBBY CURTIS: I guess it depends on what the top guys are doing. I just don't want to go out too fast and blow up. That is my biggest fear T happens to so many people at 20 or 22 miles they just fall apart. I don't want that to happen.
I think it will mean going out sort of conservatively and hoping I can stay on pace and make it to Central Park in one piece.

Q. Do you see yourself going out at a specific pace, or do you see yourself going off however the pack is?
BOBBY CURTIS: I think basically in my head I'm thinking all right on the best day of my life, 1 in a million day, I think I can run maybe 2:09 something. So I'm thinking that is the best I can do.
So knowing that, it would be foolish to go out in 63 minutes. If that's what the leaders do, I know I can't make it.
If the leaders are going out in a pace that I perceive to be reasonable, I'll go with them. But if I think it's too fast you've got to say to yourself, look, pick another day to fight that fight.
I won't go out any faster than 64:30, that is the line in the sand. If the pack is going slower than that, I'll be with them. If they're not, then I'll be by myself.

Q. Why do you want to do this?
BOBBY CURTIS: Why do I want to do this. I guess the marathon is becoming sort of the glamorous event for distance runners nowadays, and there's more money to be made in marathoning. There is more opportunity.
So as a young distance runner, I'm 26, so I'm not that young, but I want to see if I can be good at the marathon because that means a lot of good things for my career. So I figured it was an appropriate time to test out how I would do over the marathon distance.

Q. So it's not a one time thing?
BOBBY CURTIS: No, no, because I hope it goes amazing, and then I hope I can become a career marathoner, because there is just much more opportunity in the marathon.

Q. What would be a standard that you think you'd have to hit to continue with this? How well will you have to do Sunday?
BOBBY CURTIS: Even if I dropped out, I'd still do another one.

Q. Are you happy with the 61 you did at Rock 'n' Roll Philly?
BOBBY CURTIS: Yeah. I didn't think my training was anything special at that stage. I didn't think I was in great shape. So to know that I could run 61:50, and that was roughly worth 2:11, 2:12 in a marathon, then I went in and put in some more work, I was pleased with that.

Q. Can you talk about long-term after the marathon, how long will you stick to the track?
BOBBY CURTIS: I don't think they're mutually exclusive. You can do well on the track, and then marathon preparation can lead to good things on the track. I'm definitely trying to make the 10K for the Olympics. I'll be doing track this spring.
Even if I did make the transition to being someone like Ryan Hall or Meb, where what they do is marathons, two a year, I would still go back to the track just because I think it's good for you as a runner.

Q. Which would be unlike those guys because they don't seem to go back at all.
BOBBY CURTIS: I guess it's hard to turn down some of the money they get for road races, and you can't blame them.

Q. You expressed the fear of going out too fast. What are some of the other pitfalls of marathons that you have to look out for?
BOBBY CURTIS: There are a million things that can go wrong in a marathon. A guy that I train with in Mammoth lakes, Alistair Cragg, he was in Boston at great pace and got a blister and dropped out. Then people who missed a drink bottle and were depleted and then bonked and then they had a bad race.
Then you hear of people who for some reason their body couldn't make it. It could be their hamstring, their calfs. What I've heard is make sure you have your fluid replenishment strategy down, because once the monkey jumps on your back and you're trying as hard as you can at 23 miles and you're already toast, you're probably not going to make it.

Q. You've run very fast in the 10K and Half Marathon. Do you feel you're a little bit under the radar, perhaps?
BOBBY CURTIS: Oh, yeah, definitely. I have run fast times and I've accomplished a lot of things, but I think I'm still -- like I haven't really made a big jump. I haven't made an Olympic team. I haven't won the National Championships, so I think that would make me under the radar.
So, yeah. I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't think it's a good thing, but it is true, I would say, yeah, I am a little under the radar.

Q. Compared to maybe other guys with similar times.
BOBBY CURTIS: Yes, exactly.

Q. Are you looking at this as fun and not putting a lot of pressure on yourself? It's your first time. How high are your expectations?
BOBBY CURTIS: Yeah, my expectations are high. My preparation has been really good going into the race so, I'm looking at the workouts I've done, and times that I've run and thinking, Geez, if I get this marathon thing right, it could go well.
Expectations are high, but I'm not stressed out about it. It's not the end of the world if I don't run well. But I want to run well because this is a great event, And if an American runs well here, everyone in the running community will hear about it, and it's good for my career.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297