WSU’s Layman goes the distance by not going distances

So Washington State University is a research institution, right? And a dandy one. Breakthroughs by the bushel – from accelerating the development of vaccines to uncovering health dangers in plastics used in food and beverage containers to extracting DNA from a 10,000-year-old tooth.

And now this: training a distance runner without any actual distance running.

Will the Nobel committee take notice? Will Scientific American hold next month’s cover?

Not likely. But it’s still a grand experiment in salvaging the gifts of an extraordinary athlete whose college athletic career otherwise might have been over before it really got started.

The guinea pig in this case is Anna Layman, a wispy Cougars freshman from Spokane who runs today in the preliminaries of the 800 meters at the NCAA Track and Field Championships in Des Moines, Iowa. The mad scientist is Mark Macdonald, a WSU assistant who coaches sprinters and hurdlers, of which Layman is neither.

But then, no law says a pastry chef can’t grill up a pretty good steak.

Besides, the labels and categories here are indistinct.

“You take a sprinter’s brain and put it into the body and genetics of Kenyan distance runner and that’s Anna Layman,” Macdonald said. “The sprinter part is: She hates to run. But to be clear, she also works very hard.”

Something must be working. Still just a freshman after redshirting in 2007, Layman has the ninth-best time in the NCAA 800 field – 2 minutes, 4.87 seconds, from her third-place run in the Pacific-10 Conference championships. She didn’t earn automatic entry to the NCAAs via the West Regional – she was sixth, with the top five advancing – but her Pac-10 time ranked high enough on the yearly list to get in through the back door.

And by now, she knows to appreciate a second chance.

“I think I’ve surprised a lot of people,” she said, “but mostly I’ve surprised myself.”

Well, she’s not a complete surprise. Layman was one of Spokane’s better high school runners, a state top-20 finisher in cross country for Central Valley three times – including third as a senior in 2005. She also took third in the State 4A 800 as a sophomore, when she ran a 2:13.6, her high school best. Those results and a strong impression at WSU’s summer track camp were enough to earn her a scholarship offer – even when injury wiped out her junior year.

And even when Macdonald, WSU’s recruiting coordinator, fielded a phone call from her asking if the offer would still be good if she didn’t run senior year. She wound up running after all – and also going to state in the long jump – but it should have been a signal.

She showed up in Pullman and, like all half milers, was expected to put in a fall on the cross country team.

Fall lasted a day.

“They dusted me,” Layman remembered. “I couldn’t keep up. It was terrible.”

At which point WSU distance coach Jason Drake turned to Macdonald and said, “She’s all yours.”

To Macdonald, it was clear that the distance part of running no longer held any appeal for Layman. What was appealing was excelling at something – so some research into alternative methods would have to be done.

A ridiculous run of more bad health – mono, the removal of her appendix, stress reactions in her knees and feet – interrupted the experiments for more than a year, though Macdonald noted that “even in the little pockets of training she was able to get in, she blew me away.” And in this year’s second outdoor meet, she ran 2:08.31 – and the times kept coming down.

This with a training approach that includes, well, zero mileage. None. She does repeat 200s and 300s with the sprinters, but she’s just as likely to be on the VersaClimber or in the pool.

“I wrote myself a note,” Macdonald said, “that says, ‘If Anna Layman runs more than twice a week, you’re an idiot.’ “

Layman acknowledged that she “wanted to quit so many times.” Macdonald, however, thinks she was looking for reasons not to quit, and found them.

One was the social aspect – Layman found friends and kindred souls among the Cougars’ sprinters “and finally felt connected,” he said. The other is a training approach she could invest with her passion.

“Is she high maintenance?” Macdonald asked. “If you asked J.D. (Drake) and Ellannee (Richardson, another WSU assistant), they’d laugh and say, ‘It’s a world record.’ And she would drive some other coaches crazy.

“But that sounds bad, like she’s a prima donna. She’s not. This isn’t her being a princess. She’ll run repeat 200s until she pukes. What she likes is being good.”

Yet she is still trying to believe it. She stumbled somewhat at regionals because she couldn’t make herself go when the top runners, like Cal’s brilliant Alysia Johnson, made their move. Barely 100 pounds and just 5-foot-3, she sometimes feels overwhelmed.

“I don’t think they know who I am,” she said. “They’re probably thinking, ‘Who is this little girl?’ I don’t think they expect me to be anywhere near them. But neither did I. For a long time, I was thinking the same thing they were.”

And then somebody thought to think differently. At college, no less.