	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

Lauren Fleshman

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

LAUREN FLESHMAN: When I found out I made the world team it was right after a big win in London, and a dramatic turnaround. So I think I was partly delusional from that, being on a high, feeling very invincible like I could do anything. So it sounded like a great idea to try both.
I'm still really glad I made that decision. I had such a late start, that I wasn't having the kind of mental crash that you usually get at the end of a track season. I still was fresh and feeling enthusiastic about training. So I said why not? No better time to try something new.

Q. It's kind of a counter-intuitive decision to sort of stay healthy by running a marathon?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah, I know. It's more like I think if you are honest about your weaknesses and realize that you're only going to make it so far being the kind of athlete you currently are. Especially at 30, I'm not going to get dramatically better doing the same thing. This is sort of my last go.
I thought if there was a chance to gain some extra strength, it was going to be in an eight-week period. It was going to happen by the New York Marathon. Hopefully I get more resilient going into this year's track season.

Q. Are you going to run 5?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah, 5K is my true love. I didn't train for this the way I guess you would assume marathon, professional marathon runners always train. I had to do things tailored to my strengths and weaknesses as an athlete and really define my own course. My coach and I worked together on that really hard.

Q. You're not doing a hundred something miles a week, right?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: No, you're not going to ever see me running a hundred something miles a week. I think you have to be about 5'4" and a hundred pounds to handle that kind of thing. I'm about a head and a half taller than most people and carrying an extra 30 pounds or so.
I think for me running about 70 miles a week to a high of 80 is plenty. And I try to supplement on the elliptical for cross training to get some aerobic fitness.

Q. You're using a new elliptical, aren't you?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: It's called an ElliptiGO. It's an outdoor elliptical. It works as a bicycle and an elliptical meshed into one, or if you're cranking away on the elliptical in the gym, and when you're miserable because you're stuck staring at a mirror, if you could actually take it outside and move. It moves. It's like 18 miles an hour or so.

Q. So you're cruising down the street on this contraption?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah, you should look it up online. It looks pretty neat.

Q. How do you spell it?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: ElliptiGO, so it's the closest thing to running.

Q. Do you need a license for it?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Nope, no. No, but you just take it anywhere you can take a bike. I tried to use that as a way to supplement volume, and take pounding off my legs.
Other than that, I just wasn't ready to dive into a 21-mile tempo like Kara Goucher did, but I did 16 miles, which was pretty far for me. That is the longest I've gone at race pace.

Q. That is the longest you've gone?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: It's the longest I've gone at race pace. I've gone almost 22 on a long run.

Q. How did that feel?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Long, yeah, but great.

Q. What did it do to your legs?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: It shredded up my quads pretty good. I was in the hurt shop for about a week after that. Nothing serious, but just the kind of thing that I hear marathoners talk about a lot, where you get that quad breakdown and you're aching and all of that. So it was almost like I'd run a marathon before the marathon.

Q. How many of those long runs have you been doing?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: That was by far the longest. So I think I've done maybe four runs of 18 miles or further. So not too bad.

Q. So what will be your approach on Sunday? Will you just go out very cautious?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: I still haven't decided. I'm a very competitive person, and it's hard for me to imagine not going with whoever is in the mix and seeing what I can do. On the other hand, this is a marathon, and you've got to respect the distance. You can't pull a miracle out for 26.2 miles if you've never done one.
I'm going to be going through some feelings of serious doubt and pain, and they'll be extended and exaggerated and amplified from anything I'm used to.
So I think I need to give myself a little bit of a chance to get familiar with the event before I can expect to breathe down the neck of the fastest Kenyans and Ethiopians. But I still don't know what I'm going to do on the day. I don't have a plan. Right now I'm trying to talk myself into being reasonable.

Q. Are you at 2:35? Is that what you'd like to run?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Anything under 2:35 would be incredible. I'm imagining best day of my life would be 2:30, a really good day would be 2:35. I know that's a big window for a professional marathoner. A lot of times Bobby was telling me about this thing called the point of -- my point of indifference he said was 2:13 and all this stuff. Point something.
I'm like, I don't know. I'm not familiar enough. Five-minute window is what I'm going for. To be totally honest, finishing a marathon would be the first priority. I mean, if something crazy happens to me in the race, which happens to people, it's out of your control. I just want to find a way to finish the race.
I'm sort of like expecting the best but preparing for the worst and trying to cover all of the possibilities. The last thing I'd want to do is if something bad happened to be so caught up in a negative situation in my mind that I don't just enjoy the fact that I'm in a marathon and I'm here, and I made it this far and I want to try to get to the finish line.

Q. Even though you're faster than almost every first time marathoners, you still have the same hopes and anxieties?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Oh, yeah. The people that I've talked to that have run in that time range, it seems like it's a pretty similar universal experience.
I think Paula Radcliffe said something about that once in that movie "Spirit of the Marathon." Did you guys see that? It's a documentary about Chicago. A really cool movie. Sort of the first thing I watched when I decided I was going to do a marathon.
But she said something about how the beautiful thing about the marathon is you've got these thousands of people all going through the same range of emotions in this time window from nerves, pre-race nerves, to excitement, to getting to the point where you don't know if you can finish, somewhere around mile 20, 21, from what they say, then pushing through and feeling extremely proud of yourself. The kind of elation that you can feel at the end, I just want to go through that experience. I want to join the club, dang it.

Q. Would you use the word fear for the distance? Do you have any fear in the distance do you think?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: No, I wouldn't say fear of the distance. It's like a respect for the distance. Cautious respect. It's a long ways, man.

Q. What is the name of the documentary?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: It's called "Spirit of the Marathon ."

Q. What do you feel about the setting of the marathon? I saw you guys getting a tour.
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Gosh, it's beautiful here. It's obviously an incredible day. I've heard nothing but fantastic things about the atmosphere of the New York Marathon as far as the people. I mean, the place, to me, honestly, the place can be anywhere. It's about the people for me.
The people at the New York Marathon that are running it, the people that are supporting it, that are taking care of us, all the way down to the people participating and that will be lining the course, everyone says wonderful things about all of those people.
I've only been here a day, and it's been great so far. So that's what I look forward to the most. I want to see what kind of atmosphere New York can put on.

Q. How did you become a runner, how old were you, why, and how did you get into this?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: I was 13, and I got in trouble in PE class in middle school. My punishment for being late was to either collect recyclables, I had to collect 100 recyclables from my peers during lunch break, or I could do the eighth grade track meet. So the PE teacher gave me that option. I took the 8th grade track meet.
I was a dedicated softball player, so running was not something you did for fun.

Q. How did you get in trouble?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: I was late. Which is pretty much my MO.

Q. What was your middle school?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Sierra Vista.

Q. So often people think of running as punishment. So right away, it was good, you liked it?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: No, I didn't, actually. I didn't really like it that much, but I was good at it. I finished second in the junior high track meet in the 80, the mile, and I don't remember where I finished in the high jump. It's embarrassing, because I was only 4'10", but I think I jumped 4'8", and we won the four by four. I loved the feeling of winning. That was incredible when we won that.

Q. What city was that?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: It's in Santa Clarita, California. I met the coach, and he told me about all the social thing that's they do, and honestly, that's what sold me.

Q. You just evolved into distances or how did that work?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah, we did cross country in the fall. Cross country has to hook 95% of high schoolers that give it a try. The atmosphere is great. The kids are such good kids. They stay out of trouble for the most part. It's like a wonderful union of high school dorks, and I was leading the charge of that.
We had a great time. I still thought I'd go out for softball, but I didn't grow. I was still 4'10", so I wasn't even 80 pounds, so the coach kind of told me you should stick with running. You're good at that.

Q. So you're the only teenage girl in America that didn't play soccer?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah, I have no idea how to kick a soccer ball.

Q. So this is a loaded word, but I'll ask anyway. Is running an addiction, sort of?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Oh, yeah. I think any endurance sports are addictive. I'm sure there is science to back that up with the endorphin release. You get used to that. Whether or not you're getting a runner's high, you're getting a certain amount of positive feed back from getting out there and working hard and getting that sweat and all that stuff. So when I take a break, it's like the worst three weeks of my year.

Q. In a typical year, do you miss a few days?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: I take about three to four weeks off.

Q. Of not running at all?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: Yeah. Maybe the last week I'll mix in a couple of easy runs and I'll do things like go on a hike or a bike ride or something like that.

Q. What is a typical week now for training for this?
LAUREN FLESHMAN: About 70 to 80 miles of running and two to three hard workouts, one of those being a long run.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297