Quantcast
Home › Athlete Features › Interview with Michael Spence

Michael Spence on his way to a fifth-place finish at the 2007 USA Cross Country Championships in Boulder, Colorado.

Interview with Michael Spence

Posted on March 2, 2007, Interview conducted February 26, 2007

By Alison Wade

One of the biggest surprises at this year's USA Cross Country Championships was Michael Spence's fifth place finish in the senior men's 12k race. With the top four finishers opting not to go to the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa, Kenya, Spence will lead the U.S. men's team on March 24.

A steeplechaser on the track, Spence has competed in his specialty at the USA Championships for the past three years. In 2006, he had his most successful performance, advancing to the final and finishing seventh in 8:35.99, just off his PR of 8:35.26.

Though this will be Spence's first U.S. senior team, it is not his first time representing the U.S. in international competition. As a freshman at Princeton University in 1997, Spence won the USA Junior steeplechase title and went on to represent the U.S. at the Junior Pan Am Games.

Despite entering Princeton with modest PRs and mainly having focused on soccer in high school, Spence improved dramatically by the time he graduated in 2000. He earned All-American honors in cross country for his 36th-place finish as a senior, and qualified for the NCAA Championships in the steeplechase in 2000, as a senior.

Spence and his wife, Kristine Spence (nee Rosso) reside in Ogden, Utah.

We talked to the well-spoken Spence while he was visiting Princeton, New Jersey on business, and we'll let him tell you the rest of the story.

How long have you lived in Utah?
This is my fourth year training out there. I went out there in the fall of 2003, just before the [Olympic] Trials.

How did you end up living there?
I had an injury after college. I finished up school, I ran for a year, I traveled for a while overseas, and then I came back good and injured. I ended up taking about 18 months off from running entirely. I still wanted to get back to it, so finally, when my knee healed up, I started running again. I was in California at the time.

When I was in college, I had been introduced to Chick Hislop, the steeplechase coach at Weber State. My coach in college had introduced him as the best coach in the country for the steeplechase. I was a steeplechaser first and foremost, so that stuck with me. When I decided to pick up training again, I gave him a call and asked him where I should head. At the time, I was thinking that I would head to one of the established running meccas around the country, like Boulder, Flagstaff, or Palo Alto. But he said that if I wanted to learn to steeplechase, I should come to Ogden, Utah. I didn't know where it was, but I packed up my apartment about two months later and moved up to Utah, and that's where I've been ever since.

Have you been working ever since college?
Yeah, that's what brings me back to Princeton. I work for a company here in Princeton; I'm a vice president of a due diligence firm here...the company is International Business Research.

Where did you grow up and what is your running background?
I grew up in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. I grew up playing soccer all through high school and kind of ran on the side. My senior year, I had a breakthrough year. I went to the state meet in cross [country], running about 25 miles a week. I didn't really run full-time cross country, I just kind of ran in-between soccer practices, so really my mileage was 20 or 25 miles a week.

I did pretty well and that's where I got recruited for college. I made the decision that running was going to offer me a little bit more after high school than soccer was, so I started looking at schools for that...I was not a prize recruit, but a few [coaches realized] 'This guy didn't run much, so maybe if we make him run, he'll turn out OK.'

Do you remember your high school PRs?
About a 4:31 mile, 9:48 two mile, and 2:00 in the 800.

So nothing spectacular.
[Laughs] I kept those very quiet, because [during his freshman year at Princeton], I was by far the only guy that had times anywhere close to that slow, as far as the recruited athletes...I was definitely the slow guy on the team, the inexperienced guy.

Did you improve right away?
Yeah, I took to the steeplechase right away and that was actually the only other time I've made an international team. During the spring of that year, it was nothing spectacular, but I ran a 9:11 steeplechase and I made the Pan American [Games] team that year [1997].

Was there any point in college when you had a major breakthrough, or was your progression pretty gradual?
It was pretty gradual, but my big breakthrough was my senior year. I finally started to really put in some miles and I was All-American in cross country that year [1999]; that was probably my best race in college. Again, it was a huge race for me, but it wasn't noteworthy on the national scene. I was 36th, and it was my only All-America [honor] in college.

[Later] that year, I went 8:46 in the steeplechase, which felt like I was out there relaxed as could be. That was in the spring of 2000, so I was really hoping to go under 8:40 and go to the Olympic Trials, but I had an injury midway through the season and I never improved on that 8:46. That kind of stuck with me. I was really frustrated after that season; I knew I could run faster.

After I graduated, I decided I didn't want to go join the Wall Street crowd—I was an economist in college. I opted to take my Princeton degree [laughs] and my first job was at the running store across the street from the University. I was working there, just logging miles, and living with a bunch of track guys. I did that for a few months, and that was when I was offered a job at the firm I work for now. They brought me on board with the understanding that I was going to still continue to train. I worked for them about 3/4 of the time, so I put in about 30 hours a week and trained with the Princeton guys the rest of the time.

I still didn't really have an idea what it took to be a successful post-collegiate runner. I was still messing around with kind of a college style of training. Princeton has a great cross country program, but I had too many distractions with work and I wasn't putting in the 24-hour focus that I needed in order to make the step to the next level.

So when you moved out to Utah, you were able to keep the same job?
Yeah. I actually left the company a few times. The nature of my job is that most of the research we do is based online, so with online access and access to a VPN, I can do most anything that I can do in the office. The rest of it is phone calls which, again, I can do anywhere.

We had a guy who was a couple years ahead of me, an 800m runner for Princeton, who was working for the company. He had recently made a move to Orlando, Florida, and the company kept him on and let him work from home. It worked pretty well. I had moved out to California and had left the company, but they offered me the same opportunity out there. So I was working there when I finally got healthy again. I moved up to Utah in the late summer of 2003 and it didn't matter whether I was in LA or Ogden, Utah, it's the same online access.

How many hours a week do you work now?
I work 25 hours a week.

Does that work pretty well with your training?
Yeah. The nice thing about it is that it's totally flexible, so I tell them ahead of time what hours to expect me to be in the office. I go for a morning run, and then I sign on to work at about 10:00 in the morning. I work until about 2:30 in the afternoon, sign off again for an afternoon practice, and then if I have time, I'm on for about an hour or two in the evening to wrap up loose ends. I work about five hours a day, but it makes all the difference that it doesn't need to be one solid chunk of time. I'm able to get things in where I need to. It really gives me a lot of flexibility and it works well with my training.

Do you ever feel like there are other things you would do [in training] if you didn't have to work, if you could be a full-time runner?
Yes, definitely. That's one of the things I realized in Ogden. Coach Hislop has been really great and has really introduced me to the concept of immersing myself in running, which is something I really didn't do in college. I didn't know much about the national scene in college [laughs]. I could name the starting lineup of the English national soccer team, but I didn't know much about what was going on with other collegiate runners around the country. My vision was a bit shortsighted when I was in school, as far as athletics go. I was definitely training for conference championships, but not looking beyond that.

Since I went to [Ogden], Coach Hislop has gotten me to include all the little things—all the extra stretching that I had neglected sometimes, the lifting that I had thought of as unnecessary before I moved out there. There's so much that I do already, and there's still so much more that I could do, from sitting down and reading books on training philosophies to...sometimes I have to sit in the L7, which is a hurdle stretch for steeplechasers. I'll sit in that position while I've got my laptop on the floor and I'm running searches for work. It definitely takes some multitasking to get both done.

Certainly I could contribute a little more time if I [worked less]. It really becomes a problem when I've got a project due date. When I've got something due for a client, sometimes I have to reschedule my workouts. Occasionally I'll even miss a workout with the team. Even though running is my priority, when I have a due date, I do have to reschedule things and shift things around.

There's no other job I can imagine that would make it so easy, where I would still have a real corporate job and still be able to train. But at the same time, there are always things I would like to incorporate if I had an unlimited timeframe.

How much travel do you do for work?
I travel back to Princeton about eight times a year, for a week at a time. When I'm back here, I'll work out with the guys on the team. I still do workouts that my coach has given to me. If I can tweak them to fit with the Princeton guys' workouts, I'll do that. Otherwise I just do my own thing and run with them on my easy days.

And you train with the Weber State team when you're in Ogden?
Yeah, that's where 99% of my training is done, with the Weber State team. And we have a New Balance team that's just forming up there, too, that I work with.

Who else is in that group?
Trever Ball, who was an All-American cross country runner for Utah State, and Scott McGowan has just moved down. He was the 2005 [USA] Indoor 1,500m champ and went to Montana.

You were wearing New Balance gear at the USA Cross Country Championships. Are you sponsored by them?
I don't have anything official...they've given me gear. Paul Pilkington is my other coach, besides Chick Hislop. [Pilkington's] former agent, Bob Wood, has been working with me and he got me New Balance gear starting in about January of 2006. It's been very unofficial. I've been really happy with it, actually. I was a little unsure because they didn't have a steeple-specific spike, but the spike I've been wearing has been the best steeple shoe I've ever worn.

Will you run the NACAC Championships?
Yeah. Again, that's one of the things that gets tricky with work. I had already planned the trip back here to Princeton, but I have to cut it a little short because I was supposed to be in the office on Thursday and Friday. USATF is flying me down to Orlando on Thursday, so I'm going to miss a couple days of work. I'll still work remotely from my hotel room while I'm down there, but they would prefer that I be in the office.

I'm heading down there on Thursday, I'll join those guys and try to get used to [being at] sea level and the humidity and warm weather that we're lacking in Ogden, Utah.

When will you leave for World Cross?
I believe the 18th is our departure date.

I'm assuming you've never been to Kenya before.
No, definitely not. My wife and I have wanted to travel there for a long time, but how do you fit that in with running? So this is a nice way to take care of both.

A lot of people opted to give up their spots on the World Cross Country team. Were you nervous about going to Kenya at all?
No, not at all. I travel a lot and my event is short enough—it's not like I have a spring marathon coming up. The steeplechase certainly requires its own training and I'll miss some steeple-specific work that I would [normally] be heavily into by now, but it's certainly something I'll have plenty of time to do upon getting back.

As far as heading to Kenya, I've always enjoyed visiting hard-to-reach places. My wife and I traveled to Nepal right after college. She was there for six months and I was there for two months. We were backpacking in the Himalayas for 20 days and, unfortunately, that's when I hurt my knee. The reason I mention Nepal, though, is that they had State Department warnings when we were there, too. It's definitely something that you have to take seriously and be careful, but what we've found from our experience traveling is that if you take the necessary precautions, then it's not something that should deter you from making the trip entirely. So Kenya won't be an unfamiliar experience in the regard that we've done that sort of travel before. This time I don't plan on doing a backpacking trip through the mountains, so hopefully my knee will come back unscathed this time.

Is your wife going to be able to join you in Kenya?
Yeah, she's coming down with me.

Paul Pilkington mentioned that she's an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier.
Yeah. She qualified in Chicago [in 2006 with a 2:45:38].

Did you go to Princeton together?
Yeah. She was the women's captain. She was a year behind me, in the class of 2001.

Do you ever train together?
When we can. Usually we just train at the same time and do our separate things. If it's a workout day, if I don't have a coach with me, she'll give me my splits, and vice versa. If she's not able to work with Paul one day, I'll give her her splits. In fact, before Paul was out there, I was doing her coaching, because she was just starting to get back into it. Paul's taken over since then and he's just done an amazing job with her. When the circumstances are right, if she has a tempo run and I'm doing an easy day, we'll log some miles together. We were able to do that this weekend on my easy day.

I imagine that even if you don't run together, your lifestyles match well.
Oh it makes such a difference. I really appreciate that we both just have the understanding of where our priorities lie. On a weekend, when we would love to go skiing or completely relax, she understands that I have to go and log my miles, and the same with her...Especially for her, because usually my run is only an hour and sometimes she could be out there for 2-1/2 if she's got a marathon training run.

It really makes all the difference just to have that understanding and it makes it so much easier to log your miles when both of you have to get out there and do it. If one of you has any reservations about going out, the knowledge that the other one has to do it too is usually enough motivation to get us both out the door.

Now that you've trained with 'the best steeplechase coach in the country,' what have you found to be different about Coach Hislop's training? Is there anything special about it? Are there things that you started doing differently once you got out there?
It's a world of difference from what I used to do. We do a hurdle ritual, and it's called that for a reason. The techniques that we practice are really ingrained—it is a ritual. When you do your hurdle exercises, there's a set routine that starts out with your stretching, and your stretching is a part of your daily training. That's something that I'd never experienced before working with Coach Hislop. It's something that you do every day. You do the L7, you work on your flexibility.

It's really a grassroots approach to the steeplechase. Before you learn to hurdle, you have to have the flexibility to do it with the right technique, so that you don't learn improper technique. I'll do the L7 for 15, 20 minutes a day. We have a set routine, instead of going into a race and not really being prepared. We establish a routine in practice that we carry into our races. Just having that consistency makes such a difference.

Just the volume of hurdle work that we do has improved my technique dramatically [laughs]. I was not a good hurdler in college. And I still have learned so many bad habits from my early hurdling that I'm still trying to correct. I still have a ways to go before I'm an elite hurdler, as far as technique goes.

I've heard some 'experts' say that hurdle form doesn't really matter in the steeplechase. They point out that many of the Kenyans have terrible steeplechase form, and say that it doesn't really matter as long as you approach the barriers aggressively. Do you think that's true at all?
No, I don't. They're right, many of the Kenyans do have absolutely abhorrent steeplechase form, and that's a scary thing. If they had more efficient technique, just think how much faster some of those guys could be. I liken it to the [USA Cross Country Championships in Boulder]. 'Jonesy's Surprise' [a muddy ditch which the senior men had to cross six times] was my favorite part of that race [laughs]. That was something that I ran repeatedly the day before and found the best way through it. I really attacked it every time and I carried my momentum through every time, just as if it was a water barrier. I really felt like every time I moved through that, I could feel that I was moving up on guys and gaining on guys ahead of me. The psychological boost of feeling that movement through the race is immense.

In the steeplechase, it's magnified. You've got that five times a lap. If you're gaining half a step on somebody every time you go over a barrier, that's the difference. That's going to put you in the frame of mind that you can walk this guy down at the end of the race. The steeplechase is all about efficiency, and that's really one of the things that we focus on. It's all about saving every ounce of strength that you can, because you are burning so much extra energy to get over those barriers. Every little bit that you can save in the early laps is going to pay dividends in the last 1,000 meters of the race.

Speaking of Boulder, it sounds like you moved up quite a bit throughout the race. Do you think that was because you ran a smart race? [Ten of his 12 kilometer splits were between 3:09 and 3:15.]
Yeah, I talked to both Coach Hislop and Coach Pilkington the night before. I only got to town the day before, but I spent as much time as I could on the course the day before and really paid attention to the lines, where it was muddiest and where it was firm. I checked it out again before the race to see what effect the early races had on the course.

I really went into that race feeling like I had a plan, and that's one of the things we [focus on]. We always say, 'Plan your race and race your plan.' It was a great, great race for me. I felt very within myself the whole time. Those last three laps, after 6k, I knew that I was going to make the team. I felt so good and just had so much left. It was a great race.

Going into the race, did you think you had a good chance of making the team?
We went there with that goal in mind. To me, it wasn't as much of a breakthrough as it was to the rest of the running world. I knew what I'd been doing going into the race. We've been working out really well for 12 months. I've never had a major injury since that one that kept me out for 18 months right after college, but I've really had a lot of nagging ones that have come and gone over the past four years, since the 2004 Trials. It was never anything serious, but things that would keep me out for 2-3 weeks at a time, and those disruptions are really critical. You have to start over every time you miss a gap like that.

I'm on my 13th-consecutive month of training now and it feels so good. It's all the difference just to have that consistency. Every month of training has been able to build off the last month, and the workouts that we've done this fall and winter have just been terrific. Paul and I went in there with top 15 as a goal, with the idea that top 15 would have a shot at making the team. Top 15 was the acceptable finish and top 10 was the ideal. Fifth was beyond what even we expected.

You mentioned your uninterrupted training. Has something changed? Have you learned how to treat or prevent those little nagging injuries better?
Yeah, you know, this is just one of the things that comes just from being more a student of the sport. I've done more reading and I've read more of the training philosophies out there. One of the things that struck me this past summer when I bumped my mileage up—I'd never trained at over 100 miles a week before. As a steepler, in season I only do in the mid 70s to the low 80s, because the intensity is greater than the volume then. But I remember reading an article where [Matt] Tegenkamp was quoted on how he had his breakthrough this summer, and people were saying, 'Where did that come from?' He credited his consistency. That was something I was just starting to feel at the time I read that, how important it was. I remember him saying one of the big differences he learned was that when you have a little nagging pain, you take a day off. If something's wrong, listen to your body and take a day off. The day off isn't going to hurt you, but if you try to push through it, you risk something that's going to take you out for a week, two weeks, or more.

I've definitely taken that to heart this past year. A lot of times, things will come up, just a little twinge. I have no built-in days off, I just do it as my body feels. I don't have a set day once every three weeks that I take off. I just let that be a floating day off and if I have anything that creeps up, that's when I take it. I use that day off, and then come back the next day, even if it means postponing a workout.

Do you usually train with one peak each year, or do you have multiple things that you shoot for?
Yeah, one peak definitely. I hesitate to say that, because we don't train with the idea of peaking in mind. That's counter to Coach Hislop's training philosophy, but USATF Outdoor Nationals is definitely the high point of my season and it's really what we focus our training towards. So yes, that's definitely the one thing that we taper for during the year, but we don't peak in the sense that we definitely train beyond it as well.

Do you train throughout the year as a steepler, even when you're training for cross country?
This year, I switched my emphasis. I really started doing more mileage with Paul. I've always worked exclusively with Coach Hislop before this year, but this summer, he kind of gave me over to Paul. Paul's more of a marathon coach, so he had me doing much more mileage this summer. Again, this was the first time I've ever been consistently over 100 miles a week for an extended period of time. I did that in the fall, and during those periods, I was working mostly with Paul. Coach Hislop was still present for those workouts, but with Paul, there's more of a strength emphasis. Really, at that time, there was no difference between my training and what some of the other guys were doing, like Seth Pilkington, a 10k All-American who's a junior at Weber State.

Do you ever see yourself moving away from the steeplechase, or do you plan to have that always be your focus?
We'll see. That's something to evaluate after 2008, but definitely, right now, my focus is the 'A' standard for the steeplechase. That's what kept me running in college. The steeplechase is one of those events that you love it or you hate it, and I've loved it ever since college. I need to stay with [the event] where my passion lies, and right now, that's with the steeplechase.

After 2008, we'll reevaluate and decide, based on what's happened between now and then, if I should keep trying to lower that steeple time or if maybe I should move on and try something else either on the road or longer on the track.

What are your best times in some other events?
I don't like to talk about those much [laughs]. But I've run 14:01—that just came this year. I don't get many opportunities to run [other events], we really focus on the steeple. My first 5k since college was in Seattle a couple weeks ago, where I ran 14:01.33. I ran an 8:08 in college in the 3k. That was probably my best track race in college.

Do you not do many non-steeple tune-up races?
I've considered running other events but Coach Hislop is definitely of the school that the more steeples you can run during a season, the better. A lot of times when you look at the top Kenyans, when they go into the World Championships, that's their eighth or 10th steeplechase of the season. Certainly some guys will drop down and run other events or move up, but a lot of those guys are just steepling all season long. Again, it goes to the same consistency I mentioned before. We definitely want to emphasize that this year and gain some consistency and experience there.

It's just not as tough of an event on your body as the 10k, because the volume isn't as great. It's something you can run every other week and not burn out, if you've done the training to prepare for it. Our training is based on being able to come back and run steeples week after week, too.

Do you have your schedule mapped out for this season yet, beyond World Cross?
World Cross kind of messed up the plan a little [laughs]. I'll have to skip Stanford, which is where we were going to open up, but it's a worthwhile trade. We'll open up sometime in April. We haven't nailed down an exact schedule yet. I definitely plan on running more [steeplechases] than last year [when he only raced the event three times]. Last year we had trouble finding steeplechases. It was an off year, there were no World Championships and none of the Golden Spike meets had one. It was just difficult to find one that had fast guys in it.

This year, though, between getting back from Worlds and USATFs, we definitely want to run about five steeplechases in there, and have USATFs be about the sixth one of the season. They'll be there. We don't have a firm schedule yet, but all the usual suspects...Mt. SAC, and I heard [the Prefontaine Classic] may have one this year.