Rainy London won’t bother Rupp
Foul weather should help him contain many allergies, asthma
BOSTON – Galen Rupp might be the only Olympic hopeful who’s looking forward to the rain and fog of London.
The American 10,000-meter record-holder has exercise-induced asthma, along with severe allergies to pollen and other airborne particles that can make it difficult for him to breathe. Although his training and competition schedules can be captive to pollen counts, he isn’t concerned about the Olympics because they will be held in an urban area with a wet climate.
“I don’t think London should be very bad,” Rupp said Friday as he prepared to run the mile today in the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston. “The rain and stuff knocks everything out of the air.”
Rupp has had asthma since he was 9, and is susceptible to most of the common allergens – he tested positive for 28 of the 30 in a common prick test, he said. It doesn’t help that he lives and trains in “the grass seed capital of the world,” an Oregon valley where pollen gets trapped between the mountains and hangs there like a choking fog.
“His No. 1 allergy is grass pollen,” said his coach, 1982 Boston Marathon winner Alberto Salazar.
So, in addition to monitoring things like stride length and split times, Salazar always visits a pollen-monitoring websites to check the forecasts for sites where Rupp will be training and competing. Salazar always travels with an epipen in case of a severe attack; one time he nearly called 911.
Rupp, who was the first NCAA athlete to win six distance championships in one academic year, won the 10,000 at nationals last year for the third time in a row. In September, he broke the American record in the 10,000, finishing in 26 minutes, 48 seconds, at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels.
In the U.S. Championships last June in Eugene, he stayed on the coast, driving inland the morning of the race. He ran with a black cloth mask, attached in the back with velcro; when he felt comfortable enough during the race, he tore it off and discarded it.
Rupp said the mask did not bother him at all. Perhaps most important, it helped him avoid the kind of asthma attack that would have taken him up to a month to recover – without competing or training.
“I’m not scared to try something if it’s going to help me out,” he said.