IN MICHIGAN, A DREAM EMERGES - Hansons' Runners Take It Personally

by Marc Bloom

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw. I've come to look for America..." --Paul Simon

The Michigan of Kevin and Keith Hansons' dreams unfolds at Mott High School on a Tuesday evening in late May. The occasion is the Oakland County high school meet. The featured event is a special two-mile time trial for the members of the brothers' running team, Hansons' Olympic Development Project of nearby Rochester Hills, a group of eight post-collegiate athletes who have come alive in the last year and could soon become a force in American running.

Most of the athletes say they would not be competing at all if not for the Hansons' embrace. That includes the team's top man, Clint Verran, 27, an Eastern Michigan grad and physical therapist whose running was going nowhere after college. Since joining Hansons, Verran has improved his marathon to 2:15:19 as the second American at Boston last April and is shooting for 2:12 or better at Chicago in October. After that, says Verran, 2:10, then...

"Kevin and Keith are the best coaches for me," says Verran, who looks like a young Elvis without trying to. "I do what they say because their only interest is seeing me achieve. They're not making money off me or gaining anything other than personal satisfaction."

The Hansons' runners, like the Hansons themselves, never had much. Verran sold TV sets at Sears to put himself through grad school. One team member once lived with his high school coach because of family problems. But now they are united in a family, courtesy of Hansons, a throwback to an earlier time. With running in their blood, and Michigan in their soul, the brothers, functioning as professional amateurs, nurture their athletes with the intimacy of high school coaches, money out of their own pockets, and a comprehensive system to house and feed them.

The Hansons' mom-and-pop approach is rooted in their own running. As teenagers, they drove to road races from Saginaw to Stockbridge and slept on a mattress in the car near the start. They were good local runners and younger brother Keith ran a 2:59 marathon at 14. The boys ran in high school and college and had a blue-collar upbringing. At one point, when Kevin was at Oakland University, Keith and his mother lived in a trailer park.

The Hansons' dream blossomed when they opened their first running store on a shoestring in Utica in 1991. They worked day and night and would add three more stores in Oakland County in the Detroit suburbs where they grew up. They recruited family members to work in the stores. Finally, the Hansons were making a good buck. And success has not strained their relationship.

"We never argue about money," says Kevin, 41, as six Hansons' runners take the line for their two-mile. "It's not important. We didn't grow up with money. We grew up running."

Running well and making money are not mutually exclusive, but running does seem to get in the way, at least as a runner starts out. When Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers began excelling in the early seventies, they were practically penniless. The great African runners have nothing, not even running shoes, when they build the hearts and lungs and desire that can tolerate long distance.

So it may be no coincidence that American running started its two-decade decline at precisely the time it went fully professional in the early eighties. Then, all the wrong things happened: athletes raced too often for easy money, and instead of training in groups as Shorter did with the Florida Track Club and Rodgers did with Greater Boston, they separated, proud of their distinctly American individuality.

And the runners would suffer a distinctly American embarrassment: no U.S. men's Olympic medals in the distances since 1976 (except a steeplechase bronze in '84 by Brian Diemer, a Michigan boy), no victories in the New York City Marathon since 1982 or in the Boston Marathon since 1983. The last American man to win Boston, the Hansons point out, was another Michigan runner, Greg Meyer, who they now bounce ideas off.

Training in groups is perhaps the most fundamental idea in running. Kevin happened to sit next to the Ethiopian world recordholder Haile Gebrselassie recently on a European flight. "Geb told me he has not run three days in his entire career alone," says Kevin.

With others at your side, you run faster, feel less fatigue and are exalted by a common effort. Even U.S. 5,000 recordholder Bob Kennedy, often cited for his running apart, has done his important training in groups from London to Melbourne.

Seeing that athletes needed coaching and financial support, says Keith, 37, Hansons began in August 1999 with three athletes--Verran, Jim Jurcevich and Kyle Baker. Jurevich, an early success story who placed 6th in the 2000 Olympic Trials 10,000, has since left because he got married and moved away. Baker also left to become a college coach. The current group of eight has been in tact for close to a year and two more athletes are set to join.

At Mott High, there's no gun for the two-mile start, just "ready, set, go." The six Hansons runners--Jeff Campbell, Jason Hubbard, Brian Sell, Joe Gibson, Trent Briney and Verran--take off in their red-and-mustard-yellow uniforms. After a cold spell, it's the first warm day of spring and the runners will feel it. Preparing the team for an upcoming 5,000, Kevin orders 4:20 per mile pace and gives 200 splits--in fractions. The Hansons are fixed on precision. "If we do mile repeats in 4:40," says Kevin, "4:38 and 4:42 are both wrong."

Sell, 24, who recently ran a 1:03:57 personal best in the world half-marathon championship in Brussels, carries the group through the mile in 4:22. Sell was living in Altoona, Pennsylvania and struggling to run in the mornings before joining Hansons nine months ago. He has since set Prs in each of his events and increased his mileage by 40 percent to 130 a week. Echoing the Hansons' view, Sell says he expects to improve his 10,000 time 15 to 20 seconds a year. It now stands at 28:36.

In the heat, the pace slows to a 67.9 lap. "Gotta go, gotta go..." Kevin urges. Gibson now leads. "Gotta, go, Smokin' Joe." Sell and Hubbard, running together, pass Gibson. Verran, still recovering from Boston, is way back. On the homestretch, Hubbard surges ahead of a complacent Sell who then races to the finish. They cross the line as one in 8:53.

"This tells me I have to get used to the heat," says Hubbard, whose string of 100-mile weeks enabled him to lower his 10,000 best by almost two minutes, also to 28:36. Sell, who ran 10 seconds faster than last year's time trial, still says, "I have to get mentally stronger."

Though later at a team meeting Kevin calls the race "a little sloppy," at the track he has an encouraging word for each runner. "They need assurance, a pat on the back," says Kevin, adding, "In the U.S., we grew accustomed to thinking that needing someone was a weakness."

In '99, Kevin and Keith decided to take care of runners' needs with an ingenious plan. They would purchase two homes that could house ten runners and pay the mortgage themselves. The athletes would live rent-free. The Hansons would provide free health insurance for the runners as well as free gear and travel expenses.

All told, the Hansons say they spend $130,000 a year of their own money on the team. "Running's been good to us and we want to put something back," says Keith, who captained the Michigan State cross-country team in the mid-eighties. "We want American athletes to be able to train and shoot for their Olympic dreams."

In exchange, the athletes work part-time in Hansons' stores, earning $10 an hour, about $15,000 a year. The work adds to the runners' daily structure; they don't get bored and sit around waiting for the next workout. They also feel a stake in the Hansons' business and turn out to be excellent employees, whose running knowledge and good will boost sales.

Mixing with recreational runners at the Hansons' two weekly community workouts, the team members show humility and keep themselves grounded with self-deprecating humor. As Verran puts it after the time trial, "My last mile was the same as my last mile at Boston."

A year after Hansons started, Running USA, a branch of USA Track & Field, formed Team USA, a loose consortium of running groups nationwide. The purpose was to elevate American distance running worldwide. Hansons is under the Team USA umbrella along with Team BrownStone in Rochester, New York; Team Minnesota in the Twin Cities area; a Nike-sponsored elite Team California group working out of Chula Vista and the Mammoth mountains, and the newest contingent in Monterey, California.

Hansons has little direct involvement with Team USA, which provides publicity but little funding and no athlete recruitment. Keith and Kevin say while they were initially promised five figures a year in support, they have received only $3,000 in two years from Team USA, which has become two spheres in one: the California group composed of established stars like Deena Drossin and Meb Keflezighi and underwritten by the national organization; and the developmental groups like Hansons that pretty much fend for themselves.

Team USA president Allan Steinfeld of the New York Road Runners defends the favoritism, saying the California runners' success at the world cross-country meet and other high-profile events draws TV coverage and media exposure.

It's true: there will be no film crews chasing after Clint Verran at Chicago. Though a top-10 finish could make him hot property, Verran's happy to be increasingly self-sufficient--a "graduate," he says, of the financial end of the Hansons' program. Last fall, as the second American at the New York City Marathon, he earned $11,000. With other race fees and his part-time physical therapy job, Verran bought his own house, a corner plot on a third-of-an-acre he shares with his fiance, Christie Woelk, a Canadian.

Verran, who grew up in nearby Lake Orion and puts his muscle into installing a backyard Jacuzzi--"big enough for the whole team"--trains up to 140 miles a week and figures he's just about got his 2:12 goal at Chicago nailed down. At Boston, he lost a minute with a stomach ache that forced a pitstop behind a bush in someone's yard. And Chicago is considered much faster than Boston. "I'd love to break 2:10," he says.

Verran's ultimate goal is nothing less than an Olympic medal in 2008. The Hansons know their efforts can't stop with putting runners on U.S. teams; their runners have to be players on the world scene. Otherwise, what's the point?

To bolster their squad, the Hansons hope to attract higher quality runners out of college who, they feel, shortchange themselves signing with an agent and taking a modest shoe contract. The Hansons claim their services add up to $35,000 a year. They take no commissions and the athletes have a ready-made team to train with.

But the Hansons are up against two negative impressions--that the Michigan winters are miserable and that the group is situated in the urban web of Detroit. In fact, southeast Michigan gets little snow, Detroit is 45 minutes away and Rochester Hills has idyllic parkland and endless back roads for training.

With their growing success, the Hansons hope to attract sponsorship, perhaps from the nearby automotive industry, and with additional funds they would offer performance incentives and start a women's team. Edsel Ford shops in the Hansons' Grosse Pointe store, but so far Kevin and Keith have been shy in approaching him.

But the Hansons are not shy about shepherding their athletes with parental supervision. Each mile is recorded in daily logs. Each new recruit must fit in with the group's temperament. "We're not only their coaches but their landlords and bosses," says Keith.

The Hansons are as finicky and zealous as first-grade teachers. "Last year," says Keith, "we realized that in track work we were telling the guys, 'only two repeats left.' You don't say 'only two to go' to runners. You say, 'let's get after it, this is where we get our strength.' You should not be trying to hang on--but building."

The kernal of that strength is communal life in the two group homes, where the athletes commit themselves to pushing the pace. "We're running 6-flat or faster pace even on recovery days," says Jeff Campbell, 30, a 2:19 marathoner. "On our Sunday 20-milers, we're running 6:10s. I'd thought, there's no way I can do that."

Campbell lives in the Bloomer House, a backwoods dwelling on an acre of land. A bookcase displays a traded-for Kenya singlet and world cross-country race numbers. There are single rooms for all and a lived-in dorm feeling. The house is well-kept and the guys take pride in a pond with a rock design they made out front with their bare hands.

The other home, the Tieten House, is slightly smaller. Running shoes are piled up in the foyer and Richie Brinker, injured, snacks on a bowl of rice. The rooms are wall-papered with race numbers and the pantry is filled with runners' goodies: energy bars, oatmeal, Gatorade. And meat. "My dad's a butcher," says Brinker.

Though he can sleep in, Brinker's up at dawn to lend support at a 7 A.M. Friday workout, 3 x 2 miles, at Stoney Creek Metro Park, a sprawling site. Kevin says the team runs five S.O.S. workouts--"something of substance"--every two weeks. Also helping is the Hansons' assistant coach, Don Jackson, and a quasi-team member, Carl Rundell, a 34-year-old marathoner, who comes from a prominent GM family and lives on his own. He's the team booster and "Michigan translater" who's jogging today with a race tomorrow.

With a couple of the guys out-of-town, four runners--Jason Hubbard, Joe Gibson, Brian Sell and Trent Briney--set out on their reps. The goal is 10:00, 9:50 and 9:40, no slower, with mile jogs in between. They run on a concrete bike path that is marked in quarter-miles. Keith trails by bike calling splits. Kevin follows by car, jumping out at each quarter to holler encouragement.

In addition to building strength, the cutdown times simulate racing where you push harder to maintain pace at the end. "Even pace does not mean even effort," Kevin points out.

"Two minutes to the start," Keith announces. Then, "a minute and a half."

It's warm and thick and the athletes run shirtless. The first run goes in 9:59. As the sun rises above the open fields, the runners' wispy torsos glisten with sweat. The second run has an incline midway. "Don't be scared of it," Kevin calls out. Then, after a screaming downhill, the guys click off 9:33. "Too fast," says Kevin, but he accepts it.

The last two-mile means everything. "Control, control." The first mile is 4:44. "Stay up, Joe, no lapse," Kevin shouts to Gibson. Hubbard, Sell and Briney, running in unison, finish in 9:27. Gibson's two strides back in 9:31. Kevin hugs him, saying, "Still on target."

As the guys quickly change back to their training shoes, Kevin and Keith declare the workout a success. So does Gibson. "Waking up with the others who make the same sacrifices as I make," he says. "I know I'm not alone."

Hansons' Training Approach

*They do five S.O.S. workouts--"something of substance"--every two weeks. For example, 3 x 2 miles in under 10 minutes with a mile jog in between.

*They consider strength more important than speed. "You can't talk about kicking the last lap of a 10,000 until you're with the leaders with a lap to go."

*They believe in high mileage, 140 a week and more for the marathon. "Marathoners should never fear mileage."

*They race infrequently. "We don't believe in racing yourself into shape."

Postscript: Hansons' success has grown year by year and in 2005 they boasted three of the five men (Trent Briney, Brian Sell and Clint Verran) chosen by the U.S. for the world championship marathon in Helsinki.

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