Interview With OTC Runner JULIA LUCAS

Photos of Julia Lucas by Victah Sailer

Julia Lucas, 25, is on a mission to put her injuries behind her and race to the top. Lucas made a name for herself at North Carolina State where she excelled as both a cross-country runner and 5000m speed demon; she was an Atlantic Coast Conference XC champion and she placed 5th in the 2006 NCAA XC Champs. She won two conference titles in the 5000m and placed 4th in the 2007 NCAA 5000m. Lucas left NC State with a 15:50 5K PR and a degree in linguistics.

Lucas quickly made a splash as a professional runner, demolishing her 5K PR, running 15:33.05, and qualifying for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials.  She joined Team Running USA (now Mammoth Track Club), worked with famed coach Terrence Mahon and met her eventual husband, 5000m Olympian Ian Dobson.

But things didn’t shake out quite as well as Lucas had hoped.  Her Olympic dreams ended with an injury and she needed a break from running.  In 2009, she and Dobson left Team Running USA, took an extended vacation from running, and moved to Oregon. While Adidas decided not to renew Dobson’s contract, and Reebok dropped Lucas, both enter 2010 with a renewed energy and passion for running.  They recently moved from Portland to Eugene and joined the Oregon Track Club.

Lucas is ready to spin her legs toward a sub 15:00 5K and chase her Olympic goals. Lucas and Dobson blog about their lives as professional runners at http://ianandjulia.com/. If you haven’t bookmarked this page then you’re missing out on some great training advice.  Lucas is tremendously witty, funny, serious and insightful.  In this in-depth interview, Lucas talks about training, injuries, married life, body image, barefoot running and much more. We can’t wait to catch up with her later this season!

EliteRunning: Eight months after leaving Team USA (Mammoth Track Club), you and your husband, Ian Dobson, recently announced that you are joining the Oregon Track Club.  You and Ian have both written about self-coaching.  While Ian seemed to trust “Coach Ian,” you had a harder time trusting yourself as coach.  Did this factor into your decision to join the OTC?

Julia Lucas: Enormously. I’m an over-thinker. It doesn’t matter how well I plan workouts, I will always second- and third- and fourth-guess myself. I’ll finish a good workout and think, “maybe I did that too fast, no, too slow.  Maybe I should do more. Maybe I should take tomorrow off.” It’s very irritating. Really, though, it makes sense; why would I trust myself as a coach? I’m not a coach. I have no credentials.

So, in coming to Eugene there were three factors:  Being a part of a team, being a part of a community, and having a great coach.

The first two were easy.  In a team I need a group of fast people with a good vibe. I knew in two minutes they were a good group of people. And the community, well, this is Track Town, USA. The coach was the toughest.

We drove down from Portland, where we were living, to Eugene in January to meet the OTC coach, Mark Rowland, and basically express our real interest.  On our way down we talked about what we wanted in a coach. Ian wanted someone with a good resume, someone who knew how to coach us technically. We knew he fit the bill there. He was the steeplechase bronze medalist in the 1988 Olympics and he has coached lots of world class athletes. He knows what he’s doing.

My requirements weere a little less explicit. I wanted someone with grit. Someone who would yell at me when I needed it. Someone who wouldn’t coach me like a girl.  I wanted someone who was a straight-shooter. Someone who doesn’t play mind games. I wanted someone authoritative, someone I wanted to impress, someone I was maybe just the tiniest bit afraid of. And, someone who would give me a loose rein.

So, we met in the Bowerman building on the University of Oregon campus. He was a tall, hard faced brit in a sweatsuit. He had a good handshake. He sat us down in the stairwell, spoke gruff and fast, simply and without pretension. Half an hour later we were sold. In the end, it was all about feel.

ER:  Will your current training plan shift much with this change?

JL: Well, yes, in that I haven’t had much of a plan lately. I took 6 months off beginning in April last year. It was my first break longer than two weeks in the past seven years, and it was sorely needed. Everything hurt. I was just pathetic, a mess. And, while it took me way too long to realize what I needed to do, I eventually took the time off. And, during those 6 months a lot of things healed that needed to heal, but I also got really, really, sadly, pathetically out of shape. Like, I became skinny-fat. You know the look, someone who’s thin but completely devoid of definition.

It’s really different, I learned, coming back from that kind of break than it is coming back from my typical 2-week break. It happened very slowly. So, until not long ago I was just waiting for my body and fitness to come along at their own rate. Now that I’ve caught up to myself, and I have a coach, it’s time to change gears.

ER: In addition to the OTC, you and Ian recently experienced a shake-up: you both lost your running contracts (Ian with Adidas and Julia with Reebok). Did this come as a surprise to you?

JL: No, it wasn’t a surprise. For Ian, we wouldn’t have been surprised either way, him having a bad year last year, and the economic climate being what it is. For me, it wasn’t a surprise at all. I would have dumped me too if I were I shoe company. I didn’t do a thing last year. I haven’t run well since May of 2008. This is a performance sport. That is why I’m so grateful to get a second shot here with the Oregon Track Club. Coach Rowland and the OTC are taking a chance on me, and I intend to make it up to them.

ER: Back to training. What does a typical week of training look like?  Are you back up to a full training load?

JL: Yes, I’m back to a full load. I run maybe 80 miles a week, typically in 2 runs a day and one day off. I’ve been at about that mileage for the past 5 years, so I anticipate taking a step up. I typically do 2 or 3 workouts and a long run a week. I do 3 days a week of lifting, with some light calisthenic or dynamic flexibility stuff on the other days. I’m just stepping into Mark’s program now, though, so I’m about to change around my specifics, but he has made it very clear that he wants our program to be in our hands, and for the transition to be gradual.

ER: You opened your season with a “rust buster” in the NYRR Emerald Nuts Midnight Run.  In your post-race recap, you felt that you had given away 2nd place. Looking back–and after not racing for almost a year–do you feel better about your performance?

JL: Oh, I didn’t run very well, but I really wasn’t too disappointed either. I knew I wasn’t in shape. When you’re training by yourself without any goals in the near future, it’s easy to get lazy, thinking you have all the time in the world. Having that race on the horizon during the holiday season helped us keep our noses to the grindstone. So, I knew I wasn’t going to run great. I wished I would have been a little tougher at the end, but, it was one of those races where I spent the day kicking myself, and then came back to training with a new resolve.

ER: A lot of people are really excited to see you healthy again.  When can we expect to see you racing this season?

JL: I’d love to tell you but I really don’t know yet!  Obviously a big goal is Track Nationals, and I’m sure I’ll do some road championships. Really, I’m excited to hand some of the responsibility over to Coach Rowland. Also, I’m looking more at the next 18 months than just the next 6. Because I took all that time off,  because we’re coming to a new coach and program and because I need to get faster to be a contender, I’ll be keeping next season in mind at least as much as this one.

ER: You’ve run 15:33 in the 5K. Is your primary goal to run sub 15:00 and look ahead toward making the US Olympic team in 2012?

JL: Running sub-15 is one of my goals, but it’s also very likely that I’ll have to run faster than that to make the Olympic team.  Really, I’ve got to get to a fitness level where I can not only run 15:00, but race 15:00, get on the track and really be able to fight the studs.

ER:  Where do you see your future in distance running?  Do you see yourself moving up in distance?

JL: I want to do what I’m best at. I get really excited watching the 1500 and I get really excited watching the marathon. I really don’t know.

ER: You have struggled with several injuries in the past 11 years and you candidly wrote that professional running is “not all sunshine and great legs.”  In your words, your biggest roadblock has been inconsistency and injuries. In September, you outlined 10 significant changes that you plan to make going forward, from thinking of yourself as an athlete to running on softer surfaces to ditching your watch every now and then.  How have those goals shaped your 2010 training season, and have you been successful following them?

JL: I’ve talking about being patient and taking things slow, but the truth is that that is not the sort of runner I am. I figure out what I want, and then I chase it down and beat it into submission. Now, I like that about myself, that I’m a go-getter, but I’ve got to learn to manage it better, and that’s mostly what my goals were about. Ian has taught me a lot in that regard, about allowing workouts and fitness and goals to come, instead of bullying them into being. So, the goals mostly stemmed from being a little more laid-back about running. And, yeah, I’m mostly sticking to them. It’s hard.  It doesn’t come naturally, cause I want to be good and I want it now. But, it just doesn’t work that way. I’m being like water, taking the middle path, embracing my inner hippy. Eugene’s a good place for all that.

ER:  Have you discovered the root of your injury problems?  Have they been biomechanical?  Training?  A combination of many factors

JL: Oh, there is never really a root. I’m not biomechanically perfect, but no one is. It’s not a problem if you’re smart about listening to your body. I wasn’t. I’m learning this time around to not always push through everything.

ER: The fact that Ian had put in 15 serious years of running, you had tallied 11, and you were both struggling with injuries eventually prompted you to take a real break this past Summer. You mentioned that you both needed a break where you “ceased to be runners.”  What did you mean by that, and how did you spend your down time?

JL: Well, that was a real transition period.  At that point I wasn’t sure if I was going to come back to competitive running. I was broken. I didn’t want to run. It didn’t make sense to me anymore. It wasn’t worth it. Ian wasn’t in such a bad place, but he wasn’t in a good place either. He hadn’t improved since college. He’d been with the Mammoth group four years and not PRed. We needed to make some changes but we didn’t know what to do. Normally, a break is a part of training. It’s written into the calender along with all the races and workouts. Breaks are an important part of training, and we viewed them as such. This was not a break that was written in on the calender. I did not X though the days until my first run back. I threw out the calender and took a step back and had no idea what I would be doing a month or a year from then. Again, Ian was not wavering in his running career but we both needed a change, and we didn’t know what to do.

So, in July we packed everything we owned in the back of our ‘87 4Runner. We spent the next 2 months counseling high school cross country camp, camping, running sometimes, sometime not. Then, at the end of August we drove the truck, and all our stuff, from Chula Vista, CA, 6 miles north of Mexico, all the way up the Pacific coast highway. We were sleeping on the beach, exploring Big Sur, winding all the way up to Oregon, our new home. It was a transformative sort of time. We spent a lot of time reshaping our plans, our ideals for the future, figuring out what we wanted. All those days in the car, those nights in the tent, we had a lot of time to think and to talk. For the first time in a long time we let ourselves take a step back, look at how we were doing things.  And, when we got to Portland we knew what we wanted.

We wanted to be all in. We would only be happy if we were all in. Not going though the motions, not giving it a good shot, but totally, absolutely all in.

ER:  Is there a particular moment over the past 8 months where you remember falling in love with running all over again?

JL: It didn’t work exactly like that.  It came back little by little, and not at all the way I expected it to. When I first discovered running, when I was 14, I was mostly in love with being good at it. I liked winning. Over time I learned to love running and training, but I primarily ran to race. I was very aggressively competitive. So, then, I went through this bad patch, when everything was wrong. My body, my life direction, my head, my heart, I was just wrong, and nothing was working. So, I took this step away from running and I hoped, but I did not know, that I’d come back to it. I did, but I was drawn back in a different way than when I discovered it in the first place. When I was counseling camp, when I was jogging along mountain trails with a bunch of wild kids,when I was running in dense winding trails in Oregon, and in dark night runs around the city, I just started to love running for running.  And then, after a few months of allowing running to come back to me that way, every once in a while I’d find myself thinking of some old race, and my adrenaline would start pumping. I’m still very competitive, and don’t mean to paint myself as some hippy running barefoot in the forest talking to the animals. I’ve just toned down the anger. It’s not a healthy or sustainable way to be.

ER:  It seems like you and Ian have been extremely supportive of each other through the ups and downs the past two years, but does it ever get hard being married to another professional runner?

JL: Before Ian, I had no interest in dating other runners.  I liked my training life and social life to have at least some degree of separation. But, well, I fell in love with him, and principles like that went out the window. I still believe in the segmentation of my day, though. When we’re not in training mode we typically don’t talk about running.

ER: Ian has mentioned the occasional tedium of living life as a professional runner.  How would describe your life as a professional runner to others?

JL: I can only tell you what it’s like for this professional runner. I spend about 30 hours a week running and supplementary things like stretching, lifting and massage. I work about 30 hours a week at various freelance writing and design projects. I sleep 8-10 hours a night. In short, I work very, very hard for maybe 30 minutes a day and rest very, very hard for about 20 hours.

ER:  Coming back from your break, you wrote about liking a softer, less toned version of yourself.  A lot of runners might be surprised to read that, especially given the concerns many have about weight and staying in shape (even while injured). Do you ever worry about your weight or about getting back into fighting shape?

JL: No, I don’t. It’s just not that important.  If we work hard, and treat our bodies well, and fuel them right, they will be strong and fit and shaped exactly as they should be. And, they’ll run their fastest.  Bodies, like everything, go in cycles and it’s not productive to look and weigh the same all the time, just as it’s not productive to try and be in the same kind of shape all the time.
Before college I had never considered that someone my size would want to be any smaller. But, it is a problem with every high level women’s college team in the country. Anyone who says it’s not is lying or just wrong.  So, in college it was a big source of stress with some of the people around me, and that stress would sort of rub off on me. I’d find myself eating more, or eating junkier food, just to kind of prove to them it was OK. I’d eat for them. After a few years of seeing girls I cared about being pulled into eating disorders I started to vilify the disease. I’d see it as my mission to beat girls on other teams who were losing too  much weight. It was a huge source of motivation. I saw it as a good versus evil battle. I could not let the anorexic girls win. And, when they did beat me, oh, it just tore me apart. Anyway, it’s less of an issue now. Those girls just aren’t running in a sustainable way, so they don’t last long. I don’t know any high-level post-collegiate runners who don’t eat like horses.

ER: You’ve had some experience with barefoot running. Do you consider yourself a minimalist, or do you still believe in running shoes?

JL: I still believe in running shoes. I like running barefoot, and I think it’s a really good foot strengthening and injury prevention tool. However, demanding so much from our feet and then providing them no support is just dumb. I don’t claim to understand the science behind it all, but I do have my own experiences to draw from. I have strong feet and I run about 20 miles a week barefoot. If I tried to run 80 miles, with workouts, barefoot, I would hurt myself.

Besides that, say I could run 80 miles a week barefoot. I still wouldn’t. One of my favorite things about running is the freedom it endows. I can go anywhere, as far as I can see, as far as I can think, on the strength of my legs and my lungs. The thing is, though our feet are just like our barefoot ancestors’ where, our world isn’t. I’d hate for the power of my legs to be limited to undeveloped land. I want to run through cities as well and mountains and fields. I want to run from here, not take a half hour drive to a dirt trail outside town.

Quickfire Questions with Julia and Ian (J=Julia and I=Ian)

My favorite winter Olympic sport to watch is:
J: I like them all in 10 minute doses.
I:Curling.  Just kidding, the XC ski sprint.

My favorite book is:
J: The Rabbit books by John Updike, or Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oats, or The Master and Margarita by Vladamir Bulgakov, or, err, a lot.
I: The Road-Cormack McCarthy.

My favorite song is:
J: Also really tough.  Lots of things by Paul Simon, Queen, Iron and Wine, Okkervil river, Nina Simone and um, other people.
I: Hallelujah, the Leonard Cohen version sung by Jeff Buckley.

My favorite meal is:
J: Dangit.  Am I cheating here?  Maybe my dad’s lasagna, or tiramisu, or root vegetables, or espresso afogato.
I: Something that’s easy to clean up after.

I indulge in:
J: Cheap red wine from the bottle.
I: Nutella and Marmalade sandwiches.

The word that best describes me is:
J: Tenacious or obstinate, depending on your perspective
I: Not sure; I would say probably brilliant or charming.

My favorite workout is:
J: 150 flys when I’m in good shape—Fast 200s with lots of rest.

The one thing that people would be surprised to find out about me is:
J:I have a very real fear of carbon monoxide poisoning and travel with a carbon monoxide detector.
I: Until two years ago I couldn’t burp.  That’s a much bigger problem than you might think.

My life philosophy is:
J: I have no idea.  Do you know yours?
I: Get a smaller glass.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be:
J: Princess Lolly, from Candyland
I: The Crow, you know like Brandon Lee

The most miles I have ever run in a week is:
J: 89
I: 115

My worst injury was:
J: A sports hernia that required surgery in 2007.
I: A broken calcaneus (heel bone) from steeple chasing in 2003.

My worst running moment was:
J: Waking up every morning dreading practice from October 2008-April-2009.
I: Pretty much all of 2006 and most of 2007 when I just couldn’t put together any good running.

My greatest running moment was:
J: Winning my first conference championship my sophomore year of college in a big kick past girls I’d never beat before.
I: Making the World Champs team in 2005; it wasn’t really expected and I was just having fun running.

My number one professional running goal is:
J: To beat everyone and then be smug as hell.
I: To beat everyone and be gracious.

Keep up with Ian and Julia at their blog: http://ianandjulia.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.