Boulder Runners Band Together For Beijing
Boulder, Colorado had cultivated for itself an impressive reputation for raising and developing some of the most extraordinary talents in distance running. Alan Culpepper, Steve Slattery, and Jorge Torres, to name a few big names, have given performances and achieved personal records that still pump the blood of many fans. Despite this, and to the astonishment of the community, none of the above-mentioned names had qualified for this year's World Track and Field Championships held in Osaka, Japan back in August. The qualifiers, held in June 2007 (this same year) had apparently found these Boulder runners lacking; the only Boulder local able to go to Osaka was Jenny Barringer, who is a junior at the University of Colorado. It made many wonder if Boulder runners as they are now are capable of qualifying for the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
This was considered alarming by Boulder athletes, who take pride not only in their homes' reputation, but also their own skills – reputations and skills which are now seemingly compromised. Star runner Culpepper, along with national running elite Pete Julian decided to work on the problem. Dubbing it the “Boulder dilemma”, the two postulated that the problem is not the decreasing number and quality of runners, but the training habits. Americans tended to train alone, whereas athletes from the rest of the world who come to train in Boulder train in teams.
Culpepper mused on the situation. “I just feel like there's a lot of flailing going on with the American athletes here.” The solution they came up with? A group called Tempo Sports, which help Boulder athletes coordinate schedules for training sessions and the like, with added bonuses such as physical therapy and medical assistance. Along with marathon legend turned coach Steve Jones, Culpepper and Julian have begun testing out their system on themselves; Culpepper is currently training for this upcoming November's Marathon Olympic Trials, to be held in New York. The new system is reportedly doing Culpepper a whole world of good, and a total of twenty-five runners have already joined them over the past few months.
“If you're going to race at a world-class level,” the runner said, “you have to train at a world-class level, and it's hard to do that by yourself.” Despite running and training under different coaches for a myriad of events, the founders of Tempo Sports feel that coordinating schedules and working together would be beneficial to the athletes.
Julian has some encouraging words for their group and its supporters. “The goal is to run fast. Even if we are training with different coaches, even if we all have different plans, let's makes sure that come Beijing, some of us are going to China. Let's try to pool our resources a little better.”
It is a goal that is essential to Boulder. In order to salvage its damaged reputation as a running mecca, it has to have a significant number of representatives at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
