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Masters marathoner: Young builds for Boston

As 2013 gave way to 2014 and Jeff Young's coaches coaxed him into making his marathon debut later that year, they asked to see his training log so they could develop a workout plan for the intriguing masters-age runner from Anchorage.

Many serious runners keep a daily log, a diary of sorts, either written or online, in which they note each run by distance or elapsed time, or both. Hard-cores delve deep into minutiae: How they felt physically, their mood, their heart-rate, their aches and pains or lack of such, the weather, even which shoes they wore.

Young handed his coaches, Jerry Ross and Todd List, a wall calendar.

The marathon mentors were mesmerized -- by receiving a calendar, sure, but more by how seldom Young ran.

While most top recreational runners run five or six days a week, and some even occasionally mix in two-a-days, to build deep reservoirs of endurance, strength and speed, the majority of days on Young's calendar were blank. On days he had run, Young simply jotted down where he ran, the approximate distance and the time it took. He also noted yoga sessions.

"I remember Jerry called me a couple days later and said, 'Dude, I only counted three or four times in a year when you ran three times in a week,' " Young recalled. "I said, 'Yeah? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?'

"He said, 'We're going to start you out at four days a week and get you up to five.' I said, 'What?' "

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List remembers checking out Young's calendar and laughing.

"You know,'' List told Young, "a lot of marathoners run 10 times a week.''

And so began the evolution of a runner, now 56, who enters Monday's 119th Boston Marathon with a legitimate shot at finishing among the fastest racers in the 55-59 age group at America's oldest, most storied 26.2-mile footrace.

POTENTIAL UNTAPPED

By the time his coaches devised a specific training schedule aimed at getting him to peak fitness for the 2014 Mayor's Marathon in Anchorage, Young already had produced notable times.

He had raced five kilometers (3.1 miles) in 17 minutes, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in 35 minutes and a half-marathon (13.1 miles) in 1 hour, 20 minutes. Those times placed him among top-tier runners of any age in Anchorage, and were particularly noteworthy given his age and modest training. Young's peak training in preparation for the Boston Marathon had him running nearly 60 miles a week, more than double his previous mileage.

Ross said he is accustomed to looking at a runner's training log and viewing it as a ball of clay he can mold.

"Looking at Jeff's calendar, it was like a skeleton,'' Ross said.

When Ross and List discovered how infrequently Young trained, they glimpsed potential that had not been fully tapped. They saw a runner with a body built for speed and possessed with efficient mechanics. The 5-foot-9, 138-pound Young runs with spot-on cadence at the optimal rate of 180 strides per minute, and his streamlined gait, quiet upper-body and light feet do not waste energy or work at cross purposes.

Young had been turning up at their Wednesday night track sessions for a few years, using that workout as one of his few each week. The coaches knew him to be low-maintenance. Give him a workout and he simply did it -- no complaining, no negotiating. On the odd night when Young was tired and cut back his workout, they came to glean that he owned an intuitive sense about when enough was enough.

Ross and List also came to understand Young was tough and didn't shy from labor, not surprising for a guy who truly does labor for a living -- Young works construction, tearing down and renovating houses. Ross noted a day when Young did a 20-mile training run in the morning and then helped re-roof a buddy's house.

"He's so blue-collar he doesn't have the collar or the sleeves,'' Ross said.

After a day of throwing around sheets of drywall that weigh more than 50 pounds, knowing a hard workout awaits, Young concedes he has to psych himself up.

"I think, 'Oh, boy, I'm really going to have to focus,' " Young said. "But to be honest, I'm old-school.''

Ross said Young's physical strength, and his will, allow him to prosper on difficult training sessions Ross calls "buckle-down days,'' which put a runner "in the tracks'' for a strong performance on race day.

"In the last two years, it's uncanny how he's hit those runs,'' Ross said. "It's really exciting to see someone in the tracks like that.''

List said Young's ability to handle taxing training days allowed him to improve his personal-best in the half-marathon by five minutes in the last two years.

"That consistency, year after year -- you build on that progression, you're going to see results,'' List said.

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Young delivered such a result last June in his 26.2-mile debut with a blistering 2:48:07 that furnished him fourth place in the Mayor's Marathon in Anchorage. Young was 55 -- well, 55 and a half, as he said at the time. The three men ahead of him, a trio of Kenyan brothers led by winner David Kiplagat, the former UAA star, were 30, 36 and 28 years old, respectively.

As the miles went by in that race, Young was startled by the result, especially considering he had never raced longer than the roughly 16 miles at the annual Lost Lake Run on mountain trails outside Seward.

"I had to keep reassuring myself -- 'Yeah, I'm actually doing this,' " he said.

He delivered again in March, when he finished third in the Lake Sammamish Half-Marathon in Washington in a personal-best 1:14:58. Young finished 28 seconds behind the winner, a 30-year-old, and 15 seconds behind the runner-up, a 39-year-old.

AN ACTIVE LIFE

Though Young only in the last 16 months has trained seriously and frequently, he was never the sort to sit on the couch.

He grew up like a lot of kids of his generation, running and biking wherever he went. He did some cross-country running and track in high school in Spain -- his father was stationed there in the Air Force -- and played other sports too.

After a hitch in the Air Force and a few years living in Florida, Young in 1983 moved to Anchorage on the advice of a friend here.

Driving across the border from Canada into Alaska at night, the northern lights danced in the sky. Young marveled when he saw the Chugach Mountains surrounding Anchorage and thought, "I want to be up there, on the other side of those mountains.''

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Young said he spent much of the 1980s and 1990s playing softball, climbing mountains, and ice- and rock-climbing, in Alaska and Outside.

He said he climbed unguided with friends on Mount McKinley four times, reaching the summit in 1998 on his third trip. He had begun running occasionally as a way to get fit for climbing.

He competed in triathlons for much of the 90s, joining a swimming group because "I swam like a rock.'' He also skied, completing the 50-kilometer (31-mile) Tour of Anchorage in well under three hours.

"All I know is go, go, go,'' said Young, who is married. "I don't know how to be idle.''

And he always fished and hunted, going for moose, caribou, sheep and ducks.

"Hunting is cross-training,'' Young said. "It's just hiking with a backpack.''

Ross thinks the myriad sports and activities Young has packed into his life allow him to have fresh legs in his 50s and helped him develop an essential quality for a marathoner: Toughness.

"I think he's just used to suffering, just has a proclivity for it,'' Ross said.

Young said he trained occasionally for many years in a running group other than his current one. When he joined the group Ross and List coach, he was no longer the fastest runner in the group, which motivated him.

"I found a new drive,'' Young said.

He also found himself pocketing new personal records at various distances. He hopes to bag another one in Boston. Young said his training indicates -- pending race-day conditions, of course -- he should be capable of running of 2:45, which would be a three-minute improvement over his debut marathon. Anything faster would be especially delightful.

The men's 55-59 age-group winner at Boston in 2014 ran 2:41:38, and the age-group winners in that division in the previous two years clocked 2:42:12 and 2:48:36, respectively.

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Young arrived in Boston on Friday, well in advance of Monday's race, in order to recover from the four-hour time change and be rested for race day.

He's an old-school runner waiting to race the oldest-school of marathons.

Still, Young is adaptable. These days he wears a Garmin watch that delivers a treasure trove of information from each run, which he then downloads to his computer, allowing his coaches to access the data and assess his training.

Gone is the wall calendar that doubled as a training log. The old dog has a new toy in its place, and Monday he hopes, a new personal best in the marathon.

Reach Doyle Woody at dwoody@alaskadispatch.com, check out his blog at adn.com/hockey-blog and follow him on Twitter at @JaromirBlagr

Doyle Woody

Doyle Woody covered hockey and other sports for the Anchorage Daily News for 34 years.

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