Bob Kennedy: In a Class By Himself

Last description of  When Running Was Young And So Were We inadvertently omitted ‘award-winning.’ 

Named Best Running Book of 2014 by the Track & Field Writers of America.  I have a plaque. – JDW

Bob Kennedy finds himself an American alone in an event dominated by Africans.

You go to Coos Bay, Oregon. Over to a tidy home with a sturdy fence at 921 Elrod Street, where you are greeted at the front door by his parents, Ray and Elfriede, who serve coffee and cookies.
Later you open a door in the back of the house and go into Pre’s bedroom. Pre’s bedroom is much smaller than you might guess. But you can feel him there still. In the quiet. The Prefontaine Classic and The Pre Legend remind us the truly great ones come along only so often. Not truly often enough.

Bob Kennedy annually makes a pilgrimage to Eugene, the fabled track capital of Lane County. This year’s 3000m is Kennedy’s first serious race of the season, heading outdoors after an injury-riddled spring. You expect something special from him. But the race is routine.

Unchallenged, no Africans, he runs a meet record 7:39.22 and doesn’t seem particularly winded. Head closely shorn, beard tightly trimmed, he prances through a victory lap, golden bouquet in one hand, waving with the other. Blowing kisses. He bows and smiles, playing to the crowd. He beams. Feels good to be fast.

“I know I am on track to have another great summer, another great season,” he says quietly. Kennedy is only 26 years old, already older than Pre ever got to be. And faster. Much, much faster.

In the quiet, sitting with Kennedy, you get the sense – you feel it – he has greatness about him.

You can see the Prefontaine influence, sure, but the man Bob Kennedy reminds you of most is Tiger Woods. Woods is the first black man to win The Masters. Bob Kennedy is the first white man to run under 13:00 for 5k. The first non-African even. Integrating the lead pack of the world’s great distance races, he is the Jackie Robinson of track’s X Generation.

Among American runners, regardless of ethnic considerations, there is no one remotely close.

“You run under 13:00 and you’re set,” says Marc (Don’t compare me to Dennis Rodman) Davis. “There’s nothing you can’t get.” You can decide for yourself what that might be.

Kennedy ran 12:58.21 last year, breaking his own American Record 12:58.75. He is now the No. 9 performer of all time. He set a couple of records at 3000 meters, the faster at 7:31.69. He knows he will run faster still. Kennedy knows what he wants. Fast times and major medals, medals at major championships.

Thinks he is getting closer. He was ranked No. 4 in the world in 1994. In ’96, he was ranked No. 6, but he was nowhere to be found in ’95. “I was 11th or 12th. It was just a mediocre year. I was flat. Don’t know whether I was resting on my laurels or whether my training was erratic. Whatever.”

He ran 13:03 and calls it mediocre. “The event moved and I didn’t move with it.”

You are puzzled why he is the only American running with the Kenyans.

“I wanted to find out what it would be like to be that fast,” Kennedy recalls. “In ’94, coach Sam Bell and I, thinking to break 13:00 and do something special, set the goal of a World Record at 5k in ’96.
“Two years later, right on schedule, I broke the mark that had been the WR when I set my goal. But by then the game had changed and suddenly I am 14 seconds back.”

Kennedy is behind the curve on the international scene and as much as a decade ahead of his countrymen.  You have some questions.

Fourteen seconds. What’s that worth? Haile Gebrselassie’s world record is a full second faster per lap.
“I looked at it as running 61 seconds per lap. That’s not unrealistic.” Kennedy is the fastest man never to have trained at altitude. He trains in Australia and London and Indianapolis. He has trained with Kenyans but never in Kenya.

12:58? “It doesn’t feel any different, no different than 13:05 or 13:50. It depends on if you are going for it all or not. I was going for it and it hurt. It hurt bad. It hurt from the second lap. No. It actually hurt on the first lap. You have to understand it’s going to hurt and hurt bad, so you accept that and move on.

“To be honest with you – and this may be part of the problem with the sport – all these races are really time trials. You run as fast as you can and that’s where you end up.

“A lot of times I find myself alone in no-man’s-land.” Can’t always stay with the lead pack, too fast for everybody else.

Does Kennedy have a better shot at the 10k record? Is the 26:38.08 by Moroccan Salah Hissou a more realistic target? You can’t help thinking, uh, that time is already craziness.

“I am going to race 10k. It’s going to happen, probably in ’98, probably in Oslo. The distance doesn’t scare me. I’ve run 12k at Worlds Cross-Country.” His 10k PR is a cross-country 29:10. He thinks he can go faster. It’s okay to go faster.

“I honestly believe I can run under 27:00, maybe even my first time out. I don’t mean to suggest it’s going to be easy, but,” he says with a shrug, “hey, it’s two 13:30’s.” And how tough can that be?

Kennedy is a big Utah Jazz booster. His wife knows the daughter of the coach of Karl Malone.

It’s okay to train fast. “I am always doing track stuff,” Bob offers. “Even when I am running 110 miles weekly, I’d want to run 800m repeats in the 2:00-2:04 range. Nothing slower. Usually I don’t do more than 5000m total in a track workout. Did a workout the other day: 2k in 5:15, 1600m in 4:10, 1200m in 3:06, 800 in 2-flat, 400m in 57. With a 300m recovery.”

The Atlanta Games? “I have been on three World Championship teams and in two Olympics, and Atlanta was the first time I was ever really in the race. The medal is right there, it’s not far away.”

Kennedy was right there when he took the lead with a half mile remaining in the Olympics. The heroic blue U.S.A. singlet, bib #2373, chasing after a major medal.

“I didn’t do it just to get the applause.  I have to put myself in the best position, the position that gives me the best chance to win the race. I knew if I waited until the final 400m, I had no chance. I went with two laps to go. Probably should have gone sooner.”

That’s about where Pre took off in Munich.

“No, he went earlier,” corrects Kennedy.  “Pre went with four laps to go. That’s probably what I should have had done.”

Pre did go early. That was one of his most compelling qualities. Kennedy placed 6th in Atlanta; he thinks gold in Sydney is not unrealistic.

Everybody wants to know if it’s scary to go so fast. “You’re lying if you say fear is not an aspect of what we are doing,” Kennedy admits. Pre hated to lose, couldn’t stand it. Pre feared losing. Kennedy loses many more races than he wins.

“I have handled losing well because I know what I am trying to do. I am patient. I can’t be patient or complacent about my place on the event’s totem pole, because I’m not. You do not want to find yourself falling into that trap.” One measure of greatness is your ability to rebound from defeat.

“My fear is getting into a big race and running 13:40, that complete failing feeling,” Kennedy admits. “My fear is not being competitive. Dealing with their fear is one of the reasons runners are either good or they are not good.”

You can look at Bob Kennedy and see Pre.

“It’s a different era, number one. He won more races. He had an aura that drew people to him. I don’t know I have an aura like that. I understand people are looking to be entertained by what I do. Pre entertained,” Kennedy points out. “His aggressiveness, the tenacity, the desire to win every single race, no matter what it took, that was what separated Pre from the rest.”

Wonder why the American public has yet to embrace Kennedy. Guess he has to win some big races. A Nike ad blitz wouldn’t hurt. “The thing about me is I’m boring,” he admits. “My entire life is, has been, and remains, normal.”

Kennedy is the highest paid American distance runner. “I make the most. There’s a lot of money in the sport if you’re one of the best.” If you’re slow, there’s little dough. “There’s no league minimum on the world circuit. They’ll pay you how you run.

“Morceli might make $40,000-$80,000 per race. Kiptanui might go at $20,000-$50,000. The numbers go up obviously for a Michael Johnson. And that’s just appearance money. Add shoe contacts, prize money… well, let’s just say I paid a huge income tax bill this year.”

Something Alberto Salazar said about Kennedy bears repeating: “He wouldn’t do so much as spit without thinking how it might affect his running.” You can look at Bob Kennedy and see Tiger Woods. Focused.

You are tired of hearing about focused, which is after all paying attention to paying attention. Simply paying attention, that doesn’t always get it done.

The problem with American distance running is simple. U.S. runners need to learn to run faster. The rest of the world – and Bob Kennedy – knows it’s okay to be fast.

Life is like breakfast. Really great running is all about ham & eggs. And you have to think of yourself as part of the meal. Are you a chicken or are you a pig? That’s the question an athlete has to ask. Am I a chicken or a pig? A chicken is involved; it supplies the eggs. But his neck’s not on the line. A pig is invested, he’s committed, because it’s a slice right off of his hide headed from the griddle.

Pre was fully invested. Salazar and Buddy Edelen were that way. Jim Ryun, too. Joan Benoit Samuelson and Mary Slaney and Lynn Jennings, the real deal. Tiger Woods is invested, so far. Bob Kennedy is invested.

“It’s hard to run with the Africans,” Kennedy admits, to no one’s surprise. We never thought it would be easy. “It is real hard, the effort during training and during the race, the actual running, but the plan itself is a simple one. It’s what everybody already knows. You take all you ever learned from your high school and college coaches and everything you’ve ever read and you come up with having an adequate base, speedwork, race, rest. Do more each year. Eat right.”

He has never looked so slender. He has achieved the level of fitness that causes mothers – not just your own – to rush to the kitchen to cook you a decent meal for a change. ‘Eat a burger, sweetie.’

“I am probably a couple pounds lighter than I have ever been. You need to be as light as you can be and still be healthy and strong. Let me caution younger runners, this is what is okay for me now at this time at this level. And it’s the result of a lot of miles and good nutrition.”

The road to greatness seems well mapped out, even adequately illuminated, for Kennedy, so he can’t help wondering why more runners aren’t following the same path.
“I am not so naïve I think the way I do things is going to work for everybody,” he opines. “But it seems to me it will work for a lot of people.”

Goal-setting is also simple. His goals are the same this year as last. A major medal at a major championship. “It’s gonna happen. I’m there.” The Kenyans can only run three men per event in the Olympics.

“Their dominance is not the Kenyans’ fault, it’s our fault. What are they supposed to do, go slower? What we have to do is go faster, how to keep up with them.”

Kennedy is now coached by his London-based agent Kim McDonald, who manages arguably the world’s top stable of distance runners. Many of them Africans. The mindset now is toward the world’s top level. The peak of the pyramid.

“There are Kenyans who don’t make it. There are more Kenyans who don’t make it than those who do. But you never read about the guys who wash out. It’s like pro basketball in the U.S.”

The winner of the Donovan Bailey/Michael Johnson race should have to meet Kennedy over 2500m. “I am the world’s fastest white man. I am the only one getting it done right now. But I hope there’s a bunch of young guys in this country who can run 13:10. You don’t have to run under 13:00, but we need to get people running under 13:20. That’s a start.”

The chicken doesn’t get to fly with the eagles. The pig, if he stay lean and works hard, will eventually run as fast as his legs and dreams will take him. “A perfect example is what happened at the Pre meet,” he offers. “When I was young, I was willing to test myself. At Pre I was in a race where the runners didn’t even try to go with me.”

Bob Kennedy finds that sad. “I do have something I want to say. The U.S.-only road circuit is ludicrous. Why pay for mediocrity? That’s really stupid, now isn’t it?”

What else?

“The million dollar marathon prize is exciting; it’s exciting for its possibility. There’s a realistic chance somebody might actually do it. I might drive up to Chicago to see Kempainen or Williams take his best shot.” Kennedy wouldn’t run a marathon right now for $5 million.

Kennedy dominates his generation in the U.S., but Kenyans rule the world of distance running. The 5K is probably the most competitive event in track right now and Kennedy might as well be an alien from a distant foreign planet. Or even Indiana.

You watch him run with the Africans and you realize he fits right in. “There’s not much that separates us,” he says. “The Kenyans respect the way I run. I race hard. I train aggressively. When I train with these guys, I am not merely hanging on. Just as often I am the one pushing the pace.”

You try to imagine Kennedy actually is African. Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes sense. “I only know about three words in Swahili. I know ‘hello’, ‘good-bye’ and ‘faster.’ That’s in case the rabbit is Kenyan, which they almost have to be when you are running a 13-minute 5K.”

He has made you a 5K fan again.

And you are wondering about something a friend said. Suppose rocket science is easy, she said. We have just been convinced it’s difficult, and it’s really not so tough. Suppose we have placed such limits upon ourselves that we are afraid even to try.

Suppose it’s not as hard to run with the Africans as we think it is. Bob Kennedy is doing it.

He has opened the door to possibilities many others only guess at. Like Pre, like Tiger, Kennedy makes a profound contribution. In raising the bars of expectation, he serves as an example.  Follow me.

Where are the rest of you?

July 1997