NOW A MEDALLIST, CONFIDENT ROWBURY IS READY TO RACE
NOW A MEDALLIST, CONFIDENT ROWBURY IS READY TO RACE
By David Monti
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission
BOSTON
(05-Feb) -- Two years ago when Shannon Rowbury last raced at the Reggie
Lewis Track & Field Center here, she was recently out of college
and just getting over an injury. Competing at the USA Indoor
Championships for the first time, she was the surprise winner of the
3000m, sweeping to victory with a powerful 29.4 second final 200m.
"My coach always says once you go you don't look back," Rowbury told Race Results Weekly at the time.
Since
that cold February day, Rowbury has had no reason to look any direction
but forward. Running in her specialty, the 1500m, the former Duke
University star has won two consecutive national titles, finished
seventh at the Beijing Olympics, and earned the bronze medal at last
summer's IAAF World Championships.
"I think I have a higher
level of confidence, just because it's my third year running
professionally," Rowbury said in an interview here today. "I've gotten
used to competing with the best in the world." She continued: "I feel
like that this year I've come into it with a higher level of focus,
that higher level of confidence. With that, there's a lot more
responsibility to set higher goals and expectations for myself. I like
that. I like that challenge."
Rowbury will be running the 3000m
at tomorrow night's Reebok Boston Indoor Games at "The Reggie," as the
arena is commonly known. She'll be running in a solid field with
Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba, Canada's Megan (Metcalfe) Wright, Britain's
Hannah England, and her USA Olympic teammate Christin Wurth-Thomas.
Rowbury said she is ready to race, and that a fast time is definitely
possible.
"So, there's a rabbit, I believe, to 12 or 1600," she
explained. "The first half of the race is just to kind of see how the
race unfolds. I'm hoping that it's a fast pace, and that there's a lot
of girls going after it, and that when the rabbit drops out I have some
girls to compete against to go for a fast time. My PR is 8:54 from the
same track two years ago. I'm certainly capable of that. If things
play out well, maybe even something better. We'll just see."
Rowbury
hopes tomorrow's race will not just be a stepping stone to the IAAF
World Indoor Championships in Doha next month, but also lay the
groundwork for a different kind of track season than she's had the last
two years. Without a summer championship, Rowbury is hoping to be able
to peak for some fast races and focus more on running for time.
"In
talking to Coach (John) Cook we want to continue to practice the
schedule for Worlds and Olympic years, to always be refining that," she
said. "We can really taper my peaking for a couple of fast races,
whereas last year I had to focus on U.S. Champs and Worlds, and let go
of some of the other races I would have liked to have performed well,
but they weren't the two big ones. So this year, we can focus my
training on being my best at those races where there would be a good
field and a good rabbit, and really let all the training from this year
and last year shine through, because I didn't feel I had a chance to do
that last year from a time perspective."
Rowbury is the only one
of the Big Four USA middle distance women (Anna Pierce, Christin
Wurth-Thomas and Jenny Barringer being the other three) who has not
broken four-minutes for 1500m. Last year, Pierce, the former Anna
Willard, ran 3:59.38 in Zürich; Wurth-Thomas ran 3:59.98 in Rome; and
Barringer ran 3:59.90 in Eugene. Rowbury's best time last season was
4:00.81 in Zürich, just slightly slower than her personal best 4:00.33
set in Paris in 2008. Rowbury, the only world championships medallist
of the Big Four, savors being part of such a strong group.
"It's
so cool to be part of a dominant group like that," she said. "I've
always been impressed by the sprinters, that the top sprinters in the
U.S. are the top sprinters in the world. I didn't see a reason why
women's middle distance, why we couldn't be like that. We have loads
of talent, we have so many resources. We have everything at our
fingertips. I think it was just a matter of putting it all together
and believing that we could do it. I'm definitely proud to step out on
the track to have U.S. middle distance be recognized and to be pulling
our own weight. It's an exciting environment to be in."
Part of
Rowbury's success is her balanced, and fun-loving approach to training
and racing. She now shares a home with Bay Area Track Club teammates
Bolota Asmerom and David Torrence in San Francisco, and she trains
regularly with both of them at three area tracks. She also lives close
to her parents, and the offices of her management group, Peter Stubbs
Management. She said that the whole set-up is empowering.
"We
have a great group of athletes now to workout with," she said. "So,
for me, from a training perspective, it's been great. I feel like I've
gotten the best chunk of training so far, and just had a lot of fun
doing it."
Things are a lot more complicated for Rowbury now
than when she was last here in Boston racing --she now has her own
website, a business manager and a much bigger endorsement deal from
Nike-- but she seems to have no trouble retaining her passion for just
running and racing.
"I hope to keep that joy of my profession
through my entire career," she said. "Because if you're not having
fun, what's the point? I try to do that."
3 shares:New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, DyeStatPRO.com, ross | view all |