A memorable debut - American Chris Solinsky clocks 26:59.60 Area record in Palo Alto (© Don Gosney)
Until very late in the season, Chris Solinsky led the 2010 performance list at 10,000m. This was a striking fact for several reasons, including that Solinsky is American - no American has led the world lists for the longest standard track event since the 1980s - and that so far he has run the distance only once on the track -- and is not necessarily in a hurry to do it again.
In fact, Solinsky's 2010 season established him as the fastest 10,000m runner ever born outside Africa, the first sub-27:00 runner not born in Africa, and with his 12:55.53 5000m in Stockholm in August, the second-fastest non-African ever at that distance. Had Bernard Lagat not run 12:54.12 at the Bislett Games in June, Solinsky's run would have been a US record. And he was a contender for the win in Zürich until the last 200m, finishing third there in 12:56.45.
It was an impressive season for an athlete whose previous international credential was a 12th-place finish in the 2009 World Championships 5000m final in 13:25.87, but Solinsky has every expectation that 2010 represented not a peak but a new level of consistency.
An image built on strength
Solinsky would prefer to describe himself with races run and honours won than with a recitation of PBs. His biography, then, necessarily begins with the 2002 Foot Locker Cross Country championships, the national competition for American high school students previously won by names like Bob Kennedy and Dathan Ritzenhein. The high school Solinsky built a reputation as a hard worker which included both his training, and his summer job at a farm supply store, where he loaded trucks with bags of feed and fertilizer and built a muscular physique of the sort more often associated with sprinters than distance runners.
"It doesn't take much for me to build muscle mass," says Solinsky today. "When my training partners will do three sets, I'll do two, or fewer repetitions in the set, because I don't want to bulk up any more. I don't want to put on muscle I can't lose. It's about reducing injuries now, about building muscle that helps us most. We want to hang on and be there at the end of the race."
After high school, Solinsky was recruited to run at the University of Wisconsin, where he joined a team that included Matt Tegenkamp and Canadian Simon Bairu, the core of the training group that still runs together under coach Jerry Schumacher today.
"Initially, I just wanted to make an impact on that team. I knew that team was so good, if I could have success there, I could have success in the NCAA." Solinsky won his first collegiate title in 2005 as a sophomore, taking the indoor 3000m title in a race where Nick Willis, then a University of Michigan senior, was favored to win. That fall, Wisconsin won the NCAA Cross Country title, behind Bairu's second consecutive individual win. Solinsky went on to win two more indoor titles and two outdoor, taking the 5000m championship outdoors in both 2006 and 2007.
That spring, his NCAA eligibility exhausted, Solinsky finished 7th at the USA Championships. Tegenkamp was second, and went on to finish fourth at the World Championships in Osaka, just .03 behind bronze medallist Moses Kipsiro.
"At Wisconsin," Solinsky explains, "everyone was focused on what we could do for the team. That raised our level very high. When [Tegenkamp] signed a professional contract, we all thought, if he's doing it, that's what we should do. Matt has always been the big brother, the one who did his homework and knows the answers." That summer, Solinsky lowered his 5000m PB to 13:12.24.
Solinsky's early professional career was not an instant success. Fifth at the 2008 Olympic Trials, Solinsky sat out the Beijing Games. In 2009, after moving to Oregon with Tegenkamp, Bairu, Schumacher, and precocious Wisconsin teammate Evan Jager, he made his first global championship team, joining Jager, Tegenkamp and Lagat on the U.S. team for Berlin. In the final there, Solinsky shadowed Kenenisa Bekele for much of the race.
"I get spiked a lot," says Solinsky. "I tend to run up on people's heels. Bekele looked back at me a few times, probably wanting to know why I kept clipping his heels. I was thinking, hey, don't slow down and I won't run up your back."
"Or maybe," grins the 1.85m Solinsky, who stands 11cm taller than the Ethiopian champion, "he was wondering, 'Who is this beast?'"
The running family
Schumacher's training group in Oregon is still dominated by his former Wisconsin runners: Tegenkamp, Bairu, Solinsky, Jager, Tim Nelson. It was Bairu, writing in the New York Times ahead of his marathon debut in New York last fall, who first characterized Tegenkamp as the older brother; Solinsky says Bairu himself is a classic middle child, "taking everything in stride, quiet, good for a laugh." He paints himself as the tag-along younger brother. "I always feel like I haven't accomplished anything they haven't done first. I have talent, but not the kind of talent they have."
Schumacher, Solinsky adds, "still treats me as if I was a little freshman."
The support of the group is a benefit not only in training, but in races. In his breakthrough 10,000m, Solinsky says, "I could look back and see Simon and Tim and know I was right where I was supposed to be." Tegenkamp's Osaka experience showed them all what was possible. "We could all say, the guy I train with every day just placed fourth in the world. Regardless of if it was [a slow race and] a kick or not, he had to be there, to be in position with the best guys in the world."
That kind of respect is largely unspoken, however. Solinsky tells the story of when his wife, Amy, a former Wisconsin pole vaulter, first met the whole group. Her comment to Solinsky was, "You guys are so mean to each other!"
"We ride each other, we give each other such a hard time," Solinsky admits. "In our group, if someone gives someone else a compliment, it gets really uncomfortable. Insults are a lot easier to deal with."
Bairu says Solinsky "prides himself on being the hardest worker in the country." Solinsky says, "There are definitely periods in training when I'm lazy. It can be hard to get out the door. My wife says I complain a lot. But on the days when I'm lazy I ask myself, how badly do you want it? And the answer is always, really badly. My talent is my durability. I'm not going to say I don't have talent, but compared to Matt or Evan, I don't have the talent they have. But I can put in the work, stay healthy, and see a steady progression."
Looking forward – ‘I see myself as a serious medal contender’
Once again, entering 2011, Solinsky can draw motivation from his own results as well as his teammates.
"I've finally gotten to the level where my physical ability is matching up with my confidence," he says. "I see myself as a legitimate medal contender this year in the 5000m and in 2012 in the 10,000m. Sometimes I feel arrogant saying that, but I need to believe it and be willing to say it and be accountable for it if I have any ambition at all."
Schumacher's team is not leaving medals up to confidence and heart, though. "We're studying the finals from Berlin, Beijing, and Osaka to consider what we need to be capable of," says Solinsky. "I have an idea in my head of what it's going to take."
"At some point, whether it's 2000m out or two laps out, it's going to be really hard and fast. We have to be ready to run 3:55 [for a mile] at the end of a 13:40. I need to get to the point where I can do that and still run 55 at the end [for the last 400m]. I ran sub-four for the last mile [at NCAAs] in Sacramento [in 2006]. I need to be three seconds faster than that and still have a kick at the end."
While his plans are still fluid, Solinsky says, "We're leaning towards the 5k [in 2011] because it's in Daegu, and in heat and humidity a bigger guy [like Solinsky] might be better off in a shorter race."
"I always tell myself, if I keep putting myself in position to win, one time I'm going to fall into it. You put yourself in position enough times, sometime it's going to be there. I enter these races to beat those guys [like Lagat or Bekele]. Obviously I'm going to have to have a great day and they'll just have a good day. But if things go my way, I'll be there to win that medal. Even if it wasn't supposed to happen, it could happen, and I'll walk away a happy camper."
Parker Morse for the IAAF
In fact, Solinsky's 2010 season established him as the fastest 10,000m runner ever born outside Africa, the first sub-27:00 runner not born in Africa, and with his 12:55.53 5000m in Stockholm in August, the second-fastest non-African ever at that distance. Had Bernard Lagat not run 12:54.12 at the Bislett Games in June, Solinsky's run would have been a US record. And he was a contender for the win in Zürich until the last 200m, finishing third there in 12:56.45.
It was an impressive season for an athlete whose previous international credential was a 12th-place finish in the 2009 World Championships 5000m final in 13:25.87, but Solinsky has every expectation that 2010 represented not a peak but a new level of consistency.
An image built on strength
Solinsky would prefer to describe himself with races run and honours won than with a recitation of PBs. His biography, then, necessarily begins with the 2002 Foot Locker Cross Country championships, the national competition for American high school students previously won by names like Bob Kennedy and Dathan Ritzenhein. The high school Solinsky built a reputation as a hard worker which included both his training, and his summer job at a farm supply store, where he loaded trucks with bags of feed and fertilizer and built a muscular physique of the sort more often associated with sprinters than distance runners.
"It doesn't take much for me to build muscle mass," says Solinsky today. "When my training partners will do three sets, I'll do two, or fewer repetitions in the set, because I don't want to bulk up any more. I don't want to put on muscle I can't lose. It's about reducing injuries now, about building muscle that helps us most. We want to hang on and be there at the end of the race."
After high school, Solinsky was recruited to run at the University of Wisconsin, where he joined a team that included Matt Tegenkamp and Canadian Simon Bairu, the core of the training group that still runs together under coach Jerry Schumacher today.
"Initially, I just wanted to make an impact on that team. I knew that team was so good, if I could have success there, I could have success in the NCAA." Solinsky won his first collegiate title in 2005 as a sophomore, taking the indoor 3000m title in a race where Nick Willis, then a University of Michigan senior, was favored to win. That fall, Wisconsin won the NCAA Cross Country title, behind Bairu's second consecutive individual win. Solinsky went on to win two more indoor titles and two outdoor, taking the 5000m championship outdoors in both 2006 and 2007.
That spring, his NCAA eligibility exhausted, Solinsky finished 7th at the USA Championships. Tegenkamp was second, and went on to finish fourth at the World Championships in Osaka, just .03 behind bronze medallist Moses Kipsiro.
"At Wisconsin," Solinsky explains, "everyone was focused on what we could do for the team. That raised our level very high. When [Tegenkamp] signed a professional contract, we all thought, if he's doing it, that's what we should do. Matt has always been the big brother, the one who did his homework and knows the answers." That summer, Solinsky lowered his 5000m PB to 13:12.24.
Solinsky's early professional career was not an instant success. Fifth at the 2008 Olympic Trials, Solinsky sat out the Beijing Games. In 2009, after moving to Oregon with Tegenkamp, Bairu, Schumacher, and precocious Wisconsin teammate Evan Jager, he made his first global championship team, joining Jager, Tegenkamp and Lagat on the U.S. team for Berlin. In the final there, Solinsky shadowed Kenenisa Bekele for much of the race.
"I get spiked a lot," says Solinsky. "I tend to run up on people's heels. Bekele looked back at me a few times, probably wanting to know why I kept clipping his heels. I was thinking, hey, don't slow down and I won't run up your back."
"Or maybe," grins the 1.85m Solinsky, who stands 11cm taller than the Ethiopian champion, "he was wondering, 'Who is this beast?'"
The running family
Schumacher's training group in Oregon is still dominated by his former Wisconsin runners: Tegenkamp, Bairu, Solinsky, Jager, Tim Nelson. It was Bairu, writing in the New York Times ahead of his marathon debut in New York last fall, who first characterized Tegenkamp as the older brother; Solinsky says Bairu himself is a classic middle child, "taking everything in stride, quiet, good for a laugh." He paints himself as the tag-along younger brother. "I always feel like I haven't accomplished anything they haven't done first. I have talent, but not the kind of talent they have."
Schumacher, Solinsky adds, "still treats me as if I was a little freshman."
The support of the group is a benefit not only in training, but in races. In his breakthrough 10,000m, Solinsky says, "I could look back and see Simon and Tim and know I was right where I was supposed to be." Tegenkamp's Osaka experience showed them all what was possible. "We could all say, the guy I train with every day just placed fourth in the world. Regardless of if it was [a slow race and] a kick or not, he had to be there, to be in position with the best guys in the world."
That kind of respect is largely unspoken, however. Solinsky tells the story of when his wife, Amy, a former Wisconsin pole vaulter, first met the whole group. Her comment to Solinsky was, "You guys are so mean to each other!"
"We ride each other, we give each other such a hard time," Solinsky admits. "In our group, if someone gives someone else a compliment, it gets really uncomfortable. Insults are a lot easier to deal with."
Bairu says Solinsky "prides himself on being the hardest worker in the country." Solinsky says, "There are definitely periods in training when I'm lazy. It can be hard to get out the door. My wife says I complain a lot. But on the days when I'm lazy I ask myself, how badly do you want it? And the answer is always, really badly. My talent is my durability. I'm not going to say I don't have talent, but compared to Matt or Evan, I don't have the talent they have. But I can put in the work, stay healthy, and see a steady progression."
Looking forward – ‘I see myself as a serious medal contender’
Once again, entering 2011, Solinsky can draw motivation from his own results as well as his teammates.
"I've finally gotten to the level where my physical ability is matching up with my confidence," he says. "I see myself as a legitimate medal contender this year in the 5000m and in 2012 in the 10,000m. Sometimes I feel arrogant saying that, but I need to believe it and be willing to say it and be accountable for it if I have any ambition at all."
Schumacher's team is not leaving medals up to confidence and heart, though. "We're studying the finals from Berlin, Beijing, and Osaka to consider what we need to be capable of," says Solinsky. "I have an idea in my head of what it's going to take."
"At some point, whether it's 2000m out or two laps out, it's going to be really hard and fast. We have to be ready to run 3:55 [for a mile] at the end of a 13:40. I need to get to the point where I can do that and still run 55 at the end [for the last 400m]. I ran sub-four for the last mile [at NCAAs] in Sacramento [in 2006]. I need to be three seconds faster than that and still have a kick at the end."
While his plans are still fluid, Solinsky says, "We're leaning towards the 5k [in 2011] because it's in Daegu, and in heat and humidity a bigger guy [like Solinsky] might be better off in a shorter race."
"I always tell myself, if I keep putting myself in position to win, one time I'm going to fall into it. You put yourself in position enough times, sometime it's going to be there. I enter these races to beat those guys [like Lagat or Bekele]. Obviously I'm going to have to have a great day and they'll just have a good day. But if things go my way, I'll be there to win that medal. Even if it wasn't supposed to happen, it could happen, and I'll walk away a happy camper."
Parker Morse for the IAAF
