The Great American Training Experiment That’s Paying Off Big-Time – Runner’s World
In nearly four decades of working with and coaching runners, Kevin Hanson has achieved more than his share of success. But ask him what he remembers most about the state of running in the US 20 years ago, and Hanson’s head sinks.
“Disappointment,” he says.
After years of success in the ’80s, buoyed by icons like Joan Benoit Samuelson, Bill Rodgers, Greg Meyer, and others, the well of US-bred talent ran dry. Kevin Hanson, along with his younger brother, Keith, both long-time coaches and running store owners, saw the writing on the wall early. Around 1996, they first started brainstorming what they might be able to do to help turn things around. By 1999, those in the know were all in agreement: American distance running had bottomed out.
In August of that year, with the 2000 Olympic Trials just six months away, the Hanson brothers decided they were finally in a position to take some of the money they were making from their four Detroit-area running stores and “invest back into the sport.” They wanted to create something that tapped into a core tenet of long distance running that Kevin felt had disappeared over the previous decade: the power of teamwork.
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Using limited funding pulled from their own pockets, the Hansons purchased a house in Rochester, Michigan, a suburb about 26 miles north of Detroit home to quiet dirt roads and creekside trails. They recruited three relatively unknown athletes who had competed for local college squads and, emulating the legendary Greater Boston Track Club under coach Bill Squires, provided them with housing, equipment, health insurance, and travel funds.
But the Hansons knew they weren’t creating a traditional team. This was something less defined. A lifestyle. An experiment. A work in progress. They dubbed it the “Hansons Original Long Distance Project.”
Under the Hansons’ coaching and guidance, the trio of runners lived, breathed, and embodied the mantra: The team that trains together, competes together, lives together, and wakes up early for a day of running together is also a team that wins together.
It didn’t take long for the project to start delivering on its promise. At the 2000 US Olympic Trials, one Hansons athlete made the finals in the 5,000 meters, one surged to the lead for four miles of the 10,000, and still another finished eleventh in the marathon. No, the Hansons hadn’t fixed American distance running in six months, but they had proven beyond a doubt that their program was sorely needed.
“All of a sudden people are asking, ‘Who is Hansons?’” Kevin remembers. Soon, more athletes wanted in. As demand increased, the brothers bought a second house and filled it with five more runners. In 2003, Brooks joined as a sponsor, giving further momentum to the already growing group, which became officially known as the Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project.
“Brooks provided more than just equipment for us,” Kevin says of the shift ushered in by the partnership. “They did all the things that hadn’t allowed us to compete with the big boys before that,” like performance bonuses and athlete stipends. With the new funds, which Kevin says matched (and continue to match) the $250,000 he and his brother pour into the club annually, the Hansons were also able to buy a third house and expand the program to finally include female runners. “Brooks wanted us to raise the level of what we were doing and allow us to get even better athletes coming out of college,” he says.
And raise the level they did. To date, the program has produced two Olympic marathoners—Brian Sell in 2008 and Desiree Linden in 2012 and 2016 (Linden also won the 2018 Boston Marathon)—and propelled dozens of other elite runners to varying degrees of success.
As Hansons-Brooks has grown, Kevin says he’s also witnessed an overall shift in American long distance training culture, with more and more runners adopting the “better together” mindset and elite programs forming around the country.
“Almost everybody is out training with somebody else now and sees the value in that,” says Kevin, who identifies East African and Japanese runners as two groups who inspired his long-held belief in the team-driven philosophy.
“There’s all kinds of ‘projects’ now, but you can go back and look: [Before Hansons] there was no such thing as the word ‘project’ used in anything to do with running,” he says. “The fact that people thought that was such a novel idea that they duplicated that word, ‘project,’ is a source of pride for us.”
Brooks
In addition to the power of the team, Kevin also believes in the power of strength. “My [coaching] philosophy has always been: How do you make people stronger?” he explains.
“How many people walk in that can run a 5-minute mile?” Kevin asks. It’s a rhetorical question, of course. If you’ve made it through the door at Hansons-Brooks, you’re definitely very fast. “Now, how many can run a 2:11 marathon?” he continues. “We’re talking about the same pace. So I don’t need to make them faster. I need to take the speed that’s already in them and enable them to carry it over a longer period of time.”
The Hansons tailor their workouts and recruiting accordingly. For example, rather than 3-mile repeats at 10K pace, Hanson might have his athletes do 6-mile repeats at about 20 seconds per mile slower than 10K pace to build endurance as opposed to speed.
“The athletes we bring in have that mindset and thrive off that kind of thing. There are lots of real talented athletes that I’ll say don’t make sense for us,” Kevin says. Currently, the program supports 20 athletes, including about 13 who live among four houses dubbed “the track shack.”
Throughout the years, as the program has swelled to nearly seven times its original size, there have been several defining moments, says Kevin. Like the 2004 US Olympic Trials, when Brian Sell led the marathon for 22 miles and two other Hansons-Brooks athletes—Trent Briney and Clint Verran—finished fourth and fifth. “Des [Linden]’s win at Boston is another that brings tears to my eyes,” he adds.
Yet despite the program’s successes, Kevin wouldn’t say the group has arrived yet. “There’s always something to keep you motivated in this sport, so I never feel like, ‘okay, I can retire and say that was good,’” he says, pointing out that the program has yet to produce an Olympic medalist. “I’m going to be proud of what we did at the end of all of this, but I’m certainly never satisfied.”
As the veteran coach looks ahead to the 2020 US Olympic Team Trials Marathon next February, he identifies three of his athletes that he believes have a real shot at making the team: Dathan Ritzenhein (“He’s still running 61 minutes for a half marathon”), Shadrack Biwottt (“It’s certainly not far-fetched”), and Brendan Gregg (“He’s run 28:03 for 10K, and his training is going as well as anyone’s right now that I’ve coached”).
Today, 20 years after the inception of the Hansons Original Long Distance Project, Kevin’s feelings of disappointment over the state of American long distance running have morphed into something much more potent: pure drive—and pure passion.
“I’m not too old to be motivated right now,” says Kevin, who recently turned 59. “I don’t know how long we’ll be doing it, but right now, I’m every bit as passionate as I was on day one.”
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Contributing Writer Jenny is a Boulder, Colorado-based health and fitness journalist.