MARATHONER DAVILA ON TRACK FOR WORLD INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
By David Monti
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly all rights reserved
While distance runners have been known to step down in distance from
time to time, what American Desiree Davila will be attempting at this
weekend's IAAF World Indoor Championships in Doha has to be considered
more of a plunge.
Davila, who finished 11th at the IAAF World Championships Marathon last
summer in Berlin in a personal best 2:27:53, will be running less than
one-tenth of that distance when she lines up for the first round of the
3000m on Friday afternoon. She may not be a favorite for a medal, but
Davila hopes that her willingness to shake up her training and try
something different will make her a better competitor and a faster
marathoner.
"We were hoping that we would be able to get some speed and focus on
something new," explained Kevin Hanson in an e-mail message who, along
with his brother Keith, coaches Davila. "The indoor season provided
both of those."
Hanson huddled with Davila after her four-minute personal best in
Berlin last summer, and they mapped out a plan for the next 12 months.
Going indoors, especially since Davila lives and trains in Michigan
which has harsh winters, made sense.
"We sat down after the World Championships and started working out my
race schedule for the next year," Davila wrote in an e-mail from Doha.
"We decided it would be best to skip a spring marathon, and so I
pitched the idea of an indoor season. Last year I hopped in an indoor
3-K, just to have a tune-up race before the Yokohama Ekiden, and I ran
9:07. I thought I could run a bit quicker if I spent a little more
time focusing on the event, so the goal for this segment was to find
out how much quicker I could go."
Davila got an invitation to compete in the Reebok Boston Indoor Games
last month, and found herself surrounded by track athletes like Shannon
Rowbury, Hannah England and Kalkidan Gezahegn in the 3-K. She came
home seventh amongst 11 finishers in a personal best 9:00.73, scoring a
qualifying time for the IAAF World Championships.
"Honestly, it wasn't a big surprise for me," Davila said of her
performance. "I went into the race knowing that the standard for the
World Championships was 9:03 and my initial goal for the season was to
get under nine minutes, so it was about what I was looking for."
But to guarantee her spot on the USA team for Doha, Davila had to
finish in the top-2 at the USA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque two
weekends ago. Running in an unusual race where eventual champion Renee
Metivier Baillie ran alone with a huge lead before nearly being caught
by both Sara Hall and Shannon Rowbury in the final 50 meters, Davila
managed to finish fourth. Metivier Baillie, who clocked 9:14.90,
didn't have a Doha qualifying time, so couldn't be selected for the
team. Hall, who finished second, claimed her team spot, but third
place Rowbury, last summer's bronze medallist at 1500m at the World
Championships, did not, preferring instead to go to Mexico to train for
her outdoor season. That put Davila next in line for the team.
"Heading into the race, I knew I had a decent shot to make the team,"
Davila continued. "Because of the altitude I knew it would be
difficult for anyone else to run the time standard that day. "I put
myself in position to finish as high as possible amongst the people who
could possibly take the team."
Rowbury didn't inform officials of her decision to decline her team
spot right away, and Davila found out she had been selected just as she
was leaving Albuquerque.
"I got the word that I was in when we were boarding the flight back to
Michigan on Sunday night," Davila recounted. "There was no hesitation
at all; I was pretty excited to get another shot at a fast 3-K and
World Championship experience."
Davila, 26, ran for Arizona State University and graduated in 2005
after a solid, but not stellar, college career. She left the NCAA
ranks with modest 3000m and 5000m personal bests of 9:34.81 and
16:17.45, but the Hansons saw her potential at longer distances. Under
their coaching, she dropped her 10,000m best from 34:35.48 in 2006 to
32:25.78 last year.
But the Hansons realized that Davila's compact stride, physical and
mental strength, and excellent endurance signaled her destiny would be
in the marathon. In 2006 she qualified for her first global meet, the
IAAF World Road Running Championships, and made the same team in 2007,
running a personal best 1:12:54 for the half-marathon in Udine, Italy.
That was the same year she tried her first marathon, finishing 18th at
the rainy and cold Boston Marathon in 2:44:56.
Eighteen months later, Davila had her big breakthrough, finishing fifth
at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon and dropping her personal best by
13 minutes to 2:31:33. That performance put her on the U.S. team for
Berlin, where she ran most of the race alone, nearly catching teammate
Kara Goucher at the finish who only finished five seconds ahead of her.
That race whetted her appetite for more high-level competition.
"In Doha I'm really just looking forward to competing," Davila said.
"Hopefully, I can knock a few seconds off my PR and get myself into
the final."
Kevin Hanson thinks that Davila's best bet is to be aggressive, and leave the tactics to others.
"We will run the prelim heat as if it is a final," Hanson reasoned.
"After all, if we don't attack it that way, it most certainly will be
the final."
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