Barquist Takes His Long Odds In Stride
Another great Kenyan is coming, fit and sharp.
One more hurdle.
The news hardly raised a blip on the meter. You could almost hear Brad Barquist shrug over the phone.
He will run his race Sunday, his first Bloomsday, mindful that strategy won’t soften the load in the men’s elite division of the Lilac Bloomsday run.
Tough enough as originally constructed, the race got tougher Friday with the addition of Joshua Chelanga.
“It doesn’t make any difference to me who shows up,” said Barquist, a 31-year-old ‘96 U.S. Olympian out of the University of Michigan and Interlake High in Bellevue. “It won’t change the way I run. All I can control is the effort I put into it.”
The effort will be considerable, although the timing is far from optimum. His focus is on track, the 10,000 meters, and a shot at next year’s Olympic Games in Sydney. It’s the thrust of his training, the point of his comeback.
The body talks back when pushed over 100 miles a week, but the pounding of the miles was only half of why Barquist was forced into a long and sometimes painful rehab.
It was another sport, hardly related, that may have pushed him over the edge.
Fly fishing.
Barquist crammed a Montana fishing trip into an already full load, pounding up and down the rockbeds of the fertile streams near Missoula, hardly noticing the rocks pounding the upper arch of his right foot.
High-mileage training, combined with the pounding he didn’t know he was taking when he was supposed to be taking it easy, battered a tendon.
“It was an odd injury - unprecedented from the physicians I consulted,” said Barquist, who lives on Bainbridge Island, a 25-minute ferry zip across the bay from Seattle. “I had to take most of ‘98 off. I’m not anywhere near my best shape, but I’m getting in better shape all the time.”
All that down time because of a fishing injury?
“The boots weren’t as supportive as I needed,” explained the three-time U.S. team runner in the world cross country championships. “The pounding over the rocks in the course of a week, in addition to the 100-plus miles a week - was too much for that tendon.
“Normally, it’s so strong you go a lifetime not realizing it’s there. But I couldn’t run. I’ve had lots of injuries I could run through. I couldn’t function with this one.
“It was four solid months of rehab, and that was after nearly six months of struggling, taking time off and going through lots of stuff that wasn’t working. Somewhere over that time it went away. Another group of doctors and trainers kind of hit it on the head, figured out the problem and how to take care of it.
“I avoided surgery.”
Bloomsday is a point of interest on the road back. Barquist comes in with an eye on the Washington state road running championship, a division of Bloomsday that guarantees a slice of the purse to the top-running local.
Barquist qualifies. He ran Hangman Valley in the snow one year in the state cross country championships. He was here a couple of weeks back on behalf of Nike to work Junior Bloomsday.
He works duties with Nike in with coaching distance runners at Klahowya, the newest addition to the Central Kitsap School District. Much of his time goes into promoting and planning for his summer cross country camp for high schoolers at Fort Flagler, near Port Townsend.
Although he hasn’t done the race, he did run the course while he was here for Junior Bloomsday.
“The first couple of miles are pretty darn fast and from there it’s a matter of being tough enough to keep the pedal to the metal up and down the hills,” he said. “You’ll want to finish strong with whatever you have left at the top. If you’re used to running splits with nice even pacing you can throw that out the window.”
Any chance of an upset?
“History is full of upset stories, but I would be incredibly surprised if I was that guy this year,” Barquist said. “I’m not sure I have the fitness yet. But I’m an optimist. I never count myself out anytime I toe the line.”
He’ll take care early, refusing to “run my whole race the first 2 miles.
“Anybody you talk to from Spokane, whether they run or not, is proud of Bloomsday,” he said. “I’m anxious to finally get to run it.”
ELITE MEN Favorite’s role draws crowd The impending showdown of the two Kenyans who’ve combined to win the Lilac Bloomsday run the last three years may turn out to be a battle for second. The 12-kilometer race attracted a late favorite Friday, Bloomsday founder Don Kardong announced. Joshua Chelanga, a 25-year-old coming off an impressive win in Sunday’s Sallie Mae 10K in Washington, D.C., will take on two Kenyan countrymen who had been favored. That would be Hezron Otwori, last year’s winner, and Lazarus Nyakeraka, who won here in ‘96 and ‘97. Chelanga beat Nyakeraka by 5 seconds to win the Sallie Mae, the week after he won the Crescent City Classic in New Orleans. Although he’s tackling his third major road race in as many weeks, Chelanga rates as the favorite in Sunday’s elite men’s competition, Kardong said.