Her head has always messed with her. For as long as she can recall, it's thrown hammers at her feet. Some runners have trick knees or fragile hamstrings. She has an undermining psyche. When she toes the line in a 10-K, the runners around her wonder if she'll set an American record. Inside her head, though, she's wondering if she can finish without walking. Her mind spits out doubts like a pulsating sprinkler. Chck-chck-chck-chck. It tells her she's not worthy to compete at nationals, at the World Championships, at the Olympics. Look at the women around her. She's out of her league. There's a world record holder. There's a gold medalist. Compared to them, who is she? She is Kara Goucher, one of the most accomplished American runners of her generation. A decade ago, she won NCAA national titles in 3000 meters, in 5000 meters, and in cross-country. Five years ago, she became the first woman to join the Nike Oregon Project, an elite squad coached by running legend Alberto Salazar and based at the company's suburban Portland, Oregon, headquarters. In 2006 and 2007, she was a monster in the middle distances: the top-ranked American at 10,000 meters, second at 3000 meters, and top-five at 5000 meters. In 2008, she decided to try her first marathon, an out-of-the-way road rally known as the New York City Marathon. She came in third. Last year she ran Boston—her second 26.2-miler ever—and missed breaking the tape by a mere nine seconds.
And still she has doubts.
"I have a lot of negative chatter in my head," Goucher tells me in a recent interview. "If I don't rein it in, my mind will tend to obsess about what everyone else is doing in the race around me. I'll start comparing myself to everyone else." When she does that, she says, she saps the strength from her own legs. She morphs from great into okay. When she can block out the critical self-talk, she runs like a champion.
Goucher's struggle exemplifies a hidden challenge that every distance runner faces: the wrestling match with the mind. I traveled to talk with her in Portland not because the struggle is easy for her but because it's hard. At 31, she seems to have it all: Top rankings, a long-term deal with Nike, a supportive husband (three-time national cross-country champion Adam Goucher, an Oregon Project teammate), and the beauty of a young Julia Roberts. Yet she's been remarkably candid about her battles with the mental game. "Everyone has their weakness," she says. "Mine is confidence. It's something I've struggled with for years."
Bright, articulate, and witty, Goucher operates with a high degree of self-reflection. She's one of those rare elite athletes who's comfortable letting the public peek under the hood. Goucher was a psychology major in college. So not surprisingly, she's curious about what's going on in there.
Goucher also represents the next evolutionary phase of the Nike Oregon Project. Nine years ago the shoe company hired Salazar to put together a dream team of American distance runners who might, at long last, challenge the dominance of the Kenyans and Ethiopians. In the past, Salazar has experimented with high-tech strategies to gain speed. From 2001 to 2005, he set up some of his runners in a house that used oxygen-thinning technology to simulate a high-altitude atmosphere, which accelerates the production of red blood cells. Now he's targeting the mind. Three years ago, the Oregon Project coach brought in a sports psychologist, Dr. Darren Treasure, as a consultant to tune up his team's mental game. Treasure's input proved so valuable that last autumn Salazar persuaded the psychologist to relocate to Portland and work with the Oregon Project full time.
A 40ish former rugby pro, Treasure speaks with a faint British accent and dresses business casual. He doesn't claim to be Goucher's personal guru or Svengali or even her coach. What he is, he says, is an important member of her support team. He works right alongside Salazar, making sure Goucher's mind can handle the training load the old marathoner puts on her. Over the past three seasons, their relationship—athlete, coach, and sports psychologist—has developed into one of the most fascinating teams-within-a-team in distance running.
"This isn't a linear process," Treasure says. "There are challenges. There is adversity. There are setbacks. But over time you learn to handle the adversity." He pauses and leans forward to emphasize his next point. "The Kara you see today," he says, "is a very different person from the young woman I met two and a half years ago."
The story of that evolution—the development of Goucher's inner game—is a tale that holds lessons for runners at all levels of the sport.
I DON'T EVEN THINK OF THE PROSPECT of not winning—it never occurs to me," two-time Olympic decathlon champion Daley Thompson once said. "I really am that confident." Thompson's rock-certain belief in himself demonstrates a kind of mental strength we often assume is standard equipment among the world's top athletes. But if you talk to sports psychologists, you'll hear another story.
"At the highest levels of running, golf, tennis—whatever sport—confidence is, if not the number one issue, then it's in the top two or three," says Jeff Troesch, a California-based mental trainer who's worked with distance runners, NBA players, Major League Baseball pitchers, and the U.S. women's soccer team.
Distance runners can be especially exposed to fear and doubt. "The longer the event, the more time you have to think and worry," says Gloria Balague, a professor of sports psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago who's worked for many years with USA Track & Field. "The marathon requires a lot of self-discipline, because there's so much training involved. So distance runners can often be perfectionists. That means that in their minds they always tend to look at what should have been better, and worry about potential adversity."
One of the keys to confidence, many psychologists say, is for runners to recall and trust their training. "The basis of confidence is performance accomplishments," says Treasure. Past performances can cut both ways, though. Triumphs can boost confidence. But disasters can rise up like ghosts. Goucher suffers from no shortage of past brilliant performances—and a few spectacular crashes.
There was high school, for instance. Born in New York City, Goucher lived in the area until she was 4, when her father was killed by a drunk driver on the Harlem River Drive. Her mother moved the family to Minnesota. Kara built her reputation at Duluth East High School, winning four state titles in cross-country. During her senior year, though, a growth spurt threw a kink into her biomechanics. She moved slower. College scholarship offers dried up. She failed to qualify for the Foot Locker Cross-Country Championships, the nation's premiere high school invitational. That was all bad enough. But then came the race with her sister.
"Kendall was only in eighth grade when I was a senior, but in Minnesota, eighth-graders can run for a high school team if they're good enough," Goucher says. "She was good enough."
How's this for a confidence killer. You're leading the race. You've gapped the pack. There's only one runner sticking with you. You can't shake her. And she's your eighth-grade sister.
"She was afraid of passing me, so finally I said, 'Just pass me!' and she did."
Sigmund Freud couldn't make this stuff up.
The psychic wound healed quickly enough. Goucher entered the University of Colorado as an anonymous freshman and stayed under the radar during her first two seasons. Chris Lear's book Running with the Buff aloes, an insider's look at the CU men's cross-country team's 1998 season, makes no mention of her. "She fought those demons a little bit even back then," says Kara's husband, Adam. Back then Adam Goucher, an NCAA mid-distance and cross-country champion, was an assistant coach with the CU team. "When she first started out [in college], I'd tell her, 'You may be a little nervous, but you're better than everyone else. You're on a different level.'"
Under the tutelage of CU coach Mark Wetmore, Kara blossomed. Within four years, she turned herself into one of the greatest athletes in CU history, claiming NCAA titles in the 3000 meters, at 5000 meters, and in cross-country.
All that training in the Boulder foothills took its toll. Goucher struggled with compartment syndrome, and cracked her kneecap in a fluke accident during a trail run. The injury took a long time to heal. "I trained through it, ran nationals with it, ran the Olympic Trials with it, ran my senior year of cross-country with it," she says. "But I pushed on it so hard for so long that eventually everything came crashing down."
Goucher had a year of big events in 2001. She married Adam a few months after college graduation. Nike signed her to an endorsement deal. And then injuries overwhelmed her. "Part of my patellar tendon ended up dying," she recalled. "I had to go on bed rest. I ended up sitting on the couch watching soap operas all day. It was a completely depressing time."
Her USA Track & Field stat sheet tells the sorry tale—2002: "did not compete."
"It was a tough time," says Adam. "When you're laid up with injuries like that, your mind knows how good you're supposed to be, but your body doesn't allow you to do it."
After a year of rehab, Goucher decided to make her comeback at the Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) Relays. The Walnut, California, track had good history for her. She'd set a number of PRs there. Though she'd never run a race longer than 5000 meters, Goucher decided to give the 10,000 a go at one of the nation's highest profile meets—after not running a competitive meter for nearly two years.
The results were disastrous. "I was hurting within the first three minutes," she says. "I wasn't fit. I've run a lot of races, and I'd never walked before. But at Mt. SAC, I walked."
Recovering from injury can be one of the toughest psychological challenges any athlete faces. "Part of it is lack of control over your own body," says Troesch. "And part of it is the unknown. 'How permanent is this? Where am I going to be able to go with this injury?' It's easy for a runner to fixate on what they used to be able to do, and there's a lot of fear about not being able to return to those top times."
Shaken by her poor showing, Goucher retreated to what she knew: the 1500 and the 5000. She threw herself into training. Her body couldn't keep up. Stress fractures showed up again and again. She'd been NCAA champion at 5000 meters in 2000, but in 2003, she couldn't qualify for the national championships.
Little by little, the fun drained out of the sport. "I grew to hate running," she says. "The fact that I had ever been good at it felt like a curse." She felt ashamed. "I felt unworthy to have the goals and dreams that I had. I wanted to be an Olympic champion, and I couldn't even qualify for local meets."
KARA AND ADAM BOTH WANTED A fresh start. So in the autumn of 2004, they went looking for new coaches. Alberto Salazar invited them out to Portland. They loved the place. The Nike training facilities were world class. And the chance to train with Salazar? It seemed crazy to turn down the opportunity.
Still, Kara wasn't sure. One of Salazar's assistant coaches hit her with a little tough talk. "Maybe you're scared because if you come here, you'll have the best of everything," he told her. "Then if you don't make it, you'll have to face the fact that you're just not good enough."
She realized he was right. What if her body recovered, she ran full strength, and still couldn't win? "That's a horrible thing to have to confront," she recalls.
She took on the challenge. Kara and Adam moved to Portland in late 2004. It took her another 18 months to fully heal.
By the summer of 2006, Salazar had her chasing the qualifying standard for the 2007 IAAF World Championships in the 5000 meters. Then came something of a minor miracle. Goucher and Salazar were in a hotel in Belgium, looking for a race to run. Salazar called all over Europe. There was no 5000. But there was a 10,000-meter race in Helsinki in four days.
She froze. "Ohhh no," she said. Memories of the Mt. SAC 10,000 walk of shame flooded her mind. "No way. You have no idea."
Salazar reassured her. "We're going to the track right now and you'll do some easy strides at a 10-K pace," he said. "You'll see how easy it feels."
They hit a local track. She ran. "It was so not easy," she says.
Salazar was firm. "This is what you need," he told her.
In Helsinki, the coach kept up his line of soothing nonchalance. "The first mile will feel so slow," he told Goucher.
Except it wasn't. The leaders went out in 4:58. Nevertheless, Goucher stayed on pace. The first 5000 meters were agony. But then something happened. She started feeling better. Running smoother. She thought, Well, I'm not dying... A little bit of confidence crept into her game.
Toward the end of the race, Salazar began shouting every lap. "They're gonna die!" he said, referring to her competitors.
God, shut up! Goucher thought, glancing at the other athletes around her. They seemed so smooth, so confident. They're kicking my butt!
But Salazar was right. Others were falling back. With a mile to go, Goucher found herself neck and neck with fellow American Jen Rhines. "If you can take it, take it," Salazar yelled at her. Goucher kicked. She crossed the line in third place.
Her time read 31:17.12, but Goucher didn't know what it meant. She hadn't looked at a 10,000-meter time in years.
After the finish, Rhines approached her. "Do you realize you just became the second fastest woman in American history?" Rhines said.
"In what?" Goucher said.
"At the 10-K!" Rhines said. Goucher had come within shouting distance of Deena Kastor's 30:52.32 American mark. And she had no idea.
DARREN TREASURE GOT THE PHONE call late on a Saturday night. It was early 2007. Alberto Salazar was on the other end of the line.
Salazar said he'd heard good things about Treasure's work. After a brief rugby career, Treasure left his native England in the early 1990s to study at the University of Illinois, the birthplace of sports psychology in the United States. By his early 40s he'd established a successful private practice, working with runners, wrestlers, major-league ballplayers, NFL stars, and members of the U.S. women's soccer team. When Salazar called, Treasure had just finished a season working with the UC-Berkeley men's water-polo team. Cal had ruled water polo in the 1980s and early 1990s, capturing seven national championships in 10 years. But the Bears hadn't tasted a title in 13 years. With Treasure's help, they won the crown in 2006—and again in 2007.
Salazar wondered if Treasure might have time to consult with Galen Rupp, the schoolboy phenom who was struggling through a year of physical setbacks. Salazar had coached Rupp, a Portland kid, during high school, and continued working with him as Rupp ran for the University of Oregon.
Rupp and Treasure hit it off, Rupp returned to top form, and soon Treasure was working with other Oregon Project runners. Kara Goucher was leery, though. She'd worked off and on with other sports psychologists, and she hadn't really clicked with any of them. "Look, I think you should just sit down and meet with him," Salazar told her.
Goucher and Treasure met in March 2007. It turned into a pretty heavy session. He asked her how she got into running. She told him about high school, her triumphs in college, all the injuries after that. She told him about the 10,000-meter race in Helsinki. "I did this great thing last summer and now I'm worried about it," she told him. "Maybe I won't live up to that race."
After Helsinki, Salazar had urged her to aim for the 10,000, not shorter distances. Now that she was training for the longer event, though, Goucher worried that she'd disappoint everybody. She questioned whether her body could withstand the increased mileage. And she was tired of the self-doubt on race day. "I know I'm really good, I just haven't been able to show it," she told Treasure. "Every time I go to the starting line, I doubt myself. I sabotage myself."
By the end of the session Goucher was in tears. But she also felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. For years she'd struggled inwardly with all the demons of confidence. It was a relief to finally say it out loud.
THEY HAD THREE MONTHS. AFTER that meeting with Treasure, Goucher and Salazar set their sights on the USA Track & Field Championships, scheduled 12 weeks later in Indianapolis. The top competitors would go on to the IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan. Salazar wanted Goucher to compete in the 10,000. A race she had run, in her lifetime, twice.
"First we had to establish belief," Treasure recalls. "Belief that she could actually run a competitive 10-K." She'd already done that—hello, Helsinki—but Treasure and Salazar had to convince Goucher that Helsinki wasn't a fluke. Salazar systematically increased the volume and intensity of Goucher's workouts, a little more every week. Treasure reinforced her ability to handle the work, forced her to acknowledge what her body was doing.
"We realized very early that Kara was capable of handling an awful lot of volume and intensity from Alberto," Treasure says. "She has an incredible ability to handle the pain and discomfort that come with those longer distances. Alberto and I came to the conclusion that she could go to some places that very few athletes are capable of going to."
When Treasure talks about "some places," he's talking about some very dark places. Years ago, he worked with collegiate wrestlers. "Wrestling is simply seven minutes of hell," he says. "The agony is just unbelievable. It's very similar to distance running." Steve Prefontaine used to warn his rivals that he'd take them to a place they really didn't want to go. "Our athletes [in the Oregon Project] have that ability," Treasure says. "They're willing to go to those places. We look for that as a critical part of their psychological makeup."
Treasure and Salazar strengthened Goucher's psychological foundation using a number of established techniques, including affirmations and key words. "I am a world-class runner. I deserve to be here," Goucher would tell herself. Affirmations can sound silly, and it takes a certain amount of courage to get over the embarrassment factor. Think of Al Franken's old Saturday Night Live character, Stuart Smalley: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. But here's what sports psychologists will tell you: They work.
"The body is very suggestible," says Jerry Lynch, a sports psychologist based in Boulder, Colorado. In Running Within, Lynch's classic book on running psychology, he describes working with an American runner training for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, a woman who was struggling with confidence issues. Lynch gave her this affirmation: "I am a member of the Olympic team. I deserve to represent my country at the Olympics." Simple stuff, but effective.
Treasure also worked with Salazar to plant a key word in Goucher's mind. "The key word concept hinges on stimulus and response," Treasure explains. "There are moments in a race that are choice points. You could either give a little bit, or step it up. Ideally, when you invoke the key word, you'll get a behavioral response in the race, a boost." Just saying the word doesn't work. Salazar and Treasure plant the word deep in training sessions. On heavy, intense training days, when they're pushing an extra lap, "that's when I want them to think about that key word," says Treasure. "So when they invoke that word at a critical moment in a race, they get the response they're looking for."
Goucher's word that season was simple. Fighter.
"I wanted to fight," she says. "I wanted to scrap all the way to the finish."
In the weeks leading up to the USA Track & Field Championships, Treasure worked with Goucher on strategies to forget about the other athletes and focus solely on herself. "When it's all about Kara, she becomes a world-class athlete," Treasure says. "When she's worried about the runners around her, she becomes very average." Treasure pauses. "Of course, 'average' is a relative term with Kara."
On race day, the runners around Goucher posed a formidable challenge. Deena Kastor, who was dominating American distance running, wanted a fast race. Katie McGregor, the 2005 USA Outdoors 10,000 champion, wanted to reclaim her crown. Goucher just wanted to make the team. So she blocked them out.
"We knew Deena was going for the A-standard," says Treasure. "And we wanted none of that. From the outset, our plan was to let Deena go, and concentrate on making the team." Survive this race, fight another day at the World Championships in Osaka. That was the game plan.
She followed it. When Kastor broke away from the pack after 1,200 meters, Goucher let her go. "That was the hardest thing we've ever asked Kara to do," says Treasure. "She wants to compete. When she toes the line, she's there to win." But neither Salazar, Treasure, nor Goucher knew if she could sustain Kastor's torrid pace.
The hang-back strategy paid off. Goucher came in second, a little more than 30 seconds behind Kastor, and qualified for Osaka. After the race, a reporter asked what she considered her best event. "Well, I consider myself a 1500-meter runner, but Alberto is desperately trying to turn me into a 10-K runner," Goucher said, half joking. "He's even brought in a sports psychologist to try to convince me."
Two months later on the hot, humid opening day of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Osaka, Goucher convinced herself. The women's 10,000-meter final featured plenty of potential distractions. The world champion, Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia, looked like a good bet to defend her title. Deena Kastor, who planned to devote herself exclusively to the marathon the following year, lined up for her last hurrah on the track. But Goucher stayed inside herself. She blocked out her opponents and focused on her game plan. While Dibaba outdueled Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse over the final kilometer, Goucher used her inner game—fighter, fighter—to break away from the secondary pack and clinch the bronze.
She was finally, officially, a 10-K runner. Goucher thought that was the limit. 10,000 meters! Twice over what had been her longest race!
But Alberto Salazar had other plans.
NOT LONG AFTER KARA AND ADAM moved to Portland in 2004, Salazar took Kara aside and gave her a glimpse of her future.
"You're going to do amazing things in the 5-K," he said. "But some day you're going to be a marathoner."
Yeah, right, Goucher thought. She wanted no part of that. As a girl growing up in Duluth, she'd witnessed the aftermath of Grandma's Marathon, the annual weekend-long celebration that ended with nearly 10,000 people running 26.2 miles, puking their guts out, and limping for weeks afterward. "I never wanted to do it," she recalls. "Never."
But Salazar had planted the seed. Every once in a while he'd nurture it. "You're going to be a marathoner some day," he'd tell her. It became their little joke.
It became something more serious after Osaka. Race promoters began offering Goucher appearance fees. The Great North Run, a British race that's become one of the world's most popular half-marathons, offered her a huge stipend if she would attempt the distance. Goucher recalls that her eyes popped at the sum. "Alberto was like, 'DO IT!'" she says.
"You have nothing to lose," Salazar told Goucher. "You're in great shape. You can run 5:10s to 5:15s. Worst case, that's going to be top five."
Back in Portland, Goucher got in two workouts for the half-marathon, then caught an overnight flight to Heathrow and lined up against...British runner Paula Radcliffe, the marathon world record holder. "It's Paula Radcliffe; she's like my hero," Goucher says. "My whole goal for the race was just to run with her as far as I could."
Goucher stuck with her through most of the race. At a certain point, Goucher's competitive drive overtook her awe. She pulled away. "Somehow I gapped her," she says, "and I kept thinking she was going to just go roaring by me." Radcliffe didn't. Goucher hit the tape alone.
Ironically, Radcliffe may have been racing under heavier psychological weather than her younger competitor. The British runner was coming back from a painful injury. The Great North Run was going to be Radcliffe's first competitive race since sitting out half of 2006 and most of 2007 to have her first child and heal a stress fracture at the base of her spine. And Goucher's appearance added another tricky mental dynamic to the race: The unknown versus the champ.
Jeff Troesch has seen this dynamic before. "I've worked with players who've risen to the number one ranking in their sport," he says, "and often what's tough isn't performing against another top player. It's playing an athlete you perceive as not being as good as you." It's easy to get up for a match against, say, Roger Federer. Sometimes an unknown athlete can have a mental edge because they're playing loose, it's house money, nobody expects them to win. "When the top player is surprised that the unknown is keeping up with them, or winning," Troesch says, "that can create a panic: I'm not supposed to be losing to this person!"
Five weeks after winning the Great North Run, Goucher flew to New York to watch the New York City Marathon. There, she rode in the pace car and stood among the roaring crowd and saw Radcliffe win her second NYC laurel crown. A thought occurred to Goucher. Wait a minute. I just beat her.
Goucher took in the whole scene: The crowds, the adulation, the glory. I want that to be me, she told herself. I'm coming back next year. And I'm racing.
WHEN DARREN TREASURE TALKS about the evolution of Kara Goucher's mental game as an ongoing process, always changing, never linear, he's not spouting some airy theory. He's seen firsthand the blind alleys and wrong turns that athletes can take. Case in point: Beijing, 2008.
Beijing should have been Goucher's coming out party. At the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, just down the road from her home, Goucher won the 5000 meters and was second to Shalane Flanagan in the 10,000 meters. Working with Salazar and Treasure as an integrated team, she'd brought a new level of fitness and mental confidence to her game. She should have been ready to take on the world.
She wasn't. Her husband, Adam, faltered during his own 5000 and 10,000 races and failed to make the Olympic team. Though he accompanied her to Beijing, he wasn't allowed inside the Olympic Village. Isolated without her husband and overwhelmed by the spectacle, Goucher felt her newly won confidence slowly seep away.
The old negative chatter came back. I don't belong here. I'm not good enough to be here. Outwardly, she looked great. Her workouts with Salazar had her running strong. Inside, though, she was already losing the race.
As Goucher warmed up for the 10,000 meter final inside Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium, she was trying not to cry. I'm not in it, she thought. When the gun went off, the shock of the hard pace delivered one final blow to her psyche.
"We really made some bad choices in Beijing," Treasure says, reflecting on the 2008 Games. "Alberto had trained Kara for a specific race—a slower race—that just didn't end up happening. It was a lot quicker than we'd anticipated."
In fact, it was the second fastest women's 10,000 ever run. Tirunesh Dibaba and Elvan Abeylegesse repeated their duel from the previous World Championships final (with the exact same result—Dibaba taking the gold), but this time there would be no bronze for Goucher.
"I'm ashamed of how I raced that day," she tells me. "In the Olympics, it's so much about winning a medal. And when I realized that wasn't going to happen, I just stopped fighting." With four kilometers to go, she found herself far behind. This stinks, she thought. This is my worst nightmare. Goucher had run 32:02 in Osaka. She dropped that to 31:37 in the U.S. Olympic Trials. To compete for bronze would have required shaving 1:15 off her prerace personal best. She wasn't physically ready to run 30:22, the bronze time posted by fellow American Shalane Flanagan. All the old voices came into her head. I don't know how I got here. I don't deserve to be here. And she quit. She didn't walk off the track physically. Goucher finished 10th in 30:55, a personal record. But mentally, by the time she stopped the clock, she had long since left the Bird's Nest.
Adam consoled her. Alberto tried to ease her pain. "This isn't your event," Salazar told her. "You're not suited to run this."
Then Treasure gave it to her straight. "Look," he told Goucher when they were alone. "I know you quit."
With the tough love out of the way, Treasure and Salazar scrambled to salvage Goucher's Olympics. She was emotionally devastated. And she had a 5000-meter semi in just four days.
"In that situation, we had to take into account that Kara's a very smart woman," Treasure tells me. "If she wasn't in condition to run a very fast 10-K, she knows that dropping down to a 5-K wasn't exactly going to be easy."
"We all got caught up with the whole concept of medaling," he adds, "and got away from the process that had gotten Kara a medal in Osaka. That was my mistake. If we had our time over again, we'd do things a lot differently."
So Treasure and Salazar helped Goucher focus on the most basic psychological reason for running: personal satisfaction. "What are you going to get out of the 5-K semi and the final?" Treasure asked her.
She came up with a new goal for the 5000 semi: Prove to yourself that you deserve to be here. That you want to be here. That you'll do what it takes to make the final.
The semi went off slow. It was more rugby scrum than footrace. Pushing, shoving, elbows thrown. Goucher gave as good as she got. She made the final and placed ninth. It was only one better than her 10,000-meter showing, but she knew the difference. So did Salazar and Treasure. She ran all out. She enjoyed the race. She enjoyed running.
BY THE TIME THEIR FLIGHT from Beijing touched down in the States, Goucher and her coaches had come to two conclusions. One: They would learn from their mistakes. They vowed that Kara would leave the London Olympics in 2012 with completely different memories. Two: Officials at the New York Road Runners Club were expecting Goucher to compete in the ING New York City Marathon in less than eight weeks. Reporters were prepping stories that would promote a showdown with Paula Radcliffe, the world record holder and reigning New York City champion.
There was only one problem. Goucher had never run 26.2 miles in her life.
Salazar immediately began pushing Goucher to her physical limits, piling up weekly miles like grain in a silo. Meanwhile, Treasure worked to rebuild the foundation of a collapsed psyche. "Alberto was running her really, really hard," Treasure says. "Physically, she was hanging on by a thread. And mentally she didn't know if she could complete all 26 miles."
The surprise was this: Goucher loved it. "I loved asking so much of myself," she says. "I loved spending time with Alberto, who'd bike with me on all my long runs. No one else in the [Oregon Project] was running the marathon at the time, and I loved that this was something that was all mine."
Treasure pounded home the proof in performance. She was running 120 miles a week. That's almost five marathons in seven days. Don't just believe you can do it, he told her. Look at yourself: You're already doing it.
During the week leading up to New York, media requests kept Goucher hopping all over the city. A posse of relatives—mom, two sisters, brother-in-law, aunt, and niece— flew in to watch her debut. Through it all, she struggled to keep negative self-talk from overrunning the ramparts. The outside world saw a radiant, confident young athlete. Back at the hotel, she'd fall into an overstuffed chair and tell Treasure, "I don't even know if I'm going to finish."
Not enough pressure? Consider this: Twenty-eight years earlier another world-class 10,000-meter runner had entered the New York City Marathon. It was his first 26.2-miler, too. His name was Alberto Salazar.
He won.
On the morning of the race, Salazar and Treasure chaperoned a sleepy-eyed Goucher onto the bus that takes racers to the starting line on Staten Island. "It's a little like the first day of school for your child," Salazar later said. "You're putting her on the bus with your fingers crossed."
She did just fine. On a blustery November day, Goucher drafted Radcliffe and let the reigning champ cut through the wind. She shadowed Radcliffe so closely that when Radcliffe tossed a used gel pack, it grazed Goucher before falling to the ground. She made some rookie mistakes. She had a hell of a time grabbing water bottles from the table, a skill you don't think much about until you have to do it.
At the 12-mile mark she thought of her father, who lived in Queens and died across the river. It gave her a little lift. Helped her stay strong. And feel like she wasn't alone.
Six miles from the finish, her body began to rebel. Her stomach hurt. Her calves began to cramp. As if sensing Goucher's weakness, Radcliffe broke away.
"I had to recoup," Goucher said after the race. "I told myself, It's a 10-K. You can do this. Pull it together."
This wouldn't be a repeat of the Beijing 10-K, though. Goucher called on her key word—this time it was confidence—to find the fortitude to continue on and claim third place, one minute, 57 seconds behind the winner, Radcliffe.
As in Helsinki, the significance of her time took a while to sink in. She had just run 2:25.53, the fastest debut marathon for an American woman, beating Deena Kastor's 2001 mark by a little more than a minute. Her third-place run was the first podium finish in New York for an American woman in 14 years. But the big one was this: No American woman had ever posted a faster time in the New York City Marathon. Not Deena Kastor, not Miki Gorman, not Joan Benoit Samuelson.
Adam greeted her at the finish wearing a T-shirt that read, "Mr. Kara Goucher."
This time she didn't ask for a picture with Radcliffe (as she had at the Great North Run). She'd proven to herself that she deserved to be here. "I want to run against the best people," she told reporters after the race. "No hiding from anyone. As much as I was hurting the last five miles, I'll be back for more."
Five months later, at the 2009 Boston Marathon, Goucher came out swinging. Before the race, she announced her intention to end the 14-year winless streak for Americans in Boston. And she nearly did it. After an unusually slow start, Goucher shattered the pack and surged into the lead from mile 20 to 25. But Kenyan marathoner Salina Kosgei and 2008 Boston winner Dire Tune of Ethiopia stayed tucked in behind her until there was a mile to go. When they kicked less than 800 meters from the finish line, Goucher couldn't stay with them. She finished third again, nine seconds behind Kosgei's winning 2:32:16.
This time she wasn't just happy to finish. She was visibly upset. In tears, actually. Third place was no longer good enough. "I'm proud of how I ran," she said in a postrace press conference. "I raced the best that I could. But I wanted to be the one who won for everybody."
She would run one more marathon before shutting down her 2009 season. At the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Goucher placed a disappointing 10th, more than 2:30 behind the winning time set by China's Xue Bai.
A year earlier, a ninth-place finish in Beijing had shattered her world. This time, a disappointing 10th was...well, it wasn't so bad. During the past year, Salazar and Treasure hadn't just trained her to become a marathoner. They'd helped her become a different athlete. More mature. Confident. Maybe even a little more zen, a woman able to enjoy the ride as much as the destination.
This, too, is an important part of the sports psychologist's toolkit. "One of the things I work with athletes on is helping them recognize and enjoy the sensation of their bodies in motion," says Gloria Balague, University of Illinois professor of sports psychology. "Get in touch with that. When you enjoy the feeling of your back in good posture, your arms and legs perfectly in sync, then it's very hard to be tight."
In his forthcoming book, Spirit of the Dancing Warrior, Jerry Lynch encourages athletes to embrace a more Eastern philosophical attitude toward their competitors. "The word competition comes from the Latin competere, which means 'to seek together.' So look at your competitor as your partner. You seek greatness together."
"Let's say the world record holder lines up next to me," Lynch writes. "I'm thrilled. And I hope he brings his best game. Because if he does, I'll find out how good I am. I know for certain I will run my best, because the greatest competitors have shown up."
That's kind of how Goucher felt. The night before the World Championship marathon, she told Adam: "No matter what happens tomorrow, this is the happiest I've ever been in my whole life."
Even during the race, as she watched her chance to medal slip away, Goucher never lost her confidence or her enjoyment of the physical act of running. "The feeling of lining up against the best women in the world, that was amazing," she later recalled. "I loved the idea that we were all going to be out there for a while. I loved the challenge of shutting my mind off and just enjoying the race. I loved it all."
Salazar's prediction had come true. Some day you're going to be a marathoner. That day had arrived. Six years after hitting bottom, Goucher had climbed back close to the top. Where once she despised running, now she reveled in it. Her fear of long distances had been replaced by anticipation. Long runs in a weight vest? Bring it on. Working with Salazar and Treasure, building up her confidence day by day, she'd beaten back the demons of self-doubt.
At the end of the 2009 season, Goucher decided to follow Paula Radcliffe's example. Radcliffe won the marathon at the 2005 World Championships, then took half of 2006 off to have a baby. She returned with a vengeance, winning the New York City Marathon in 2007 and 2008. "Adam and I have always talked about starting a family," Goucher says, "and this is the time to do it." 2010 is an off year in elite running—no Olympics, no World Championships. So she's ramping down, running 50 miles a week instead of 120. There will be no second chance at Boston or New York in 2010, but she vows to return in plenty of time for the 2012 London Olympics.
"I'll be back," she says. "I can't wait to do another marathon."
At which point Goucher will take another big step in the evolution of her inner game: the comeback.
Use Your Head
Top sports psychologists share five ways to run with mind over matter
1 Worry early, not late
"Athletes sometimes think anxiety has a protective value, that it motivates them to avert disaster," says Gloria Balague, a sports psychologist at the University of Illinois. "But you want to prepare for adversity well in advance. Identify your worries and train to overcome them. As you get closer to race day, focus on your strengths and the body of your training work."
2 Employ a key word
Chanting "win, win, win," over 26.2 miles won't do it. "The concept is one of stimulus and response," says Nike Oregon Project sports psychologist Darren Treasure. Treasure's athletes focus on a key word during intense training moments. "Then when they get to a critical moment in a race, they can invoke that word and get the response they're looking for."
3 Embrace your competitors
Sports psychologist Jerry Lynch uses the term "competitor," not "opponent," to think about running with others, not against them. "When the toughest competitors show up for a race, I'm thrilled," says Lynch. "It means I'm going to run together with the best, and they'll help bring out the best in me. That neutralizes my anxiety about my own confidence."
4 Enjoy the motion
Athletic movement provides pleasure. Enjoy it. "Get in touch with your body," says Balague. "Notice how nice the motion feels when it's all in sync—arms, legs, back, posture. The idea is to relax, not tense up, and if you're in touch with the positive feeling, you're much less likely to be tight."
5 Define success by your progress
"My goal for every athlete is to help them get one day better every day," says mental trainer Jeff Troesch. "I want them to measure their success in terms of their personal progress. If I can do a couple more reps than I could yesterday, that's success. I look for ways to get the athlete into the now, to strive for day-to-day victories." --B.B.
