Brett Gotcher: Building Speed for Rotterdam Marathon: RBR Exclusive, by Jon Gugala

Brett Gotcher Building
Speed for Rotterdam Marathon

by Jon Gugala

APTOS, Calif. – The Boston
Marathon is in the spring, as inevitable as death, taxes, and Red Sox fans (go
Giants). Everyone knows that. So every April American marathon fans turn east,
and the running media dusts off Greg Meyer, and with him still blinking into
the bright lights launches full speed into speculation of If This Year Will Be
It, when an American man will win again. (I imagine Meyer devolving into a
blubbering pile every March, rocking back and forth and moaning over his
Sisyphean task of doing the same interview every year since his win in 1983.)

And American elite
athletes look toward Boston with the same consistency. Boston’s elite program
leads domestically in appearance fees for a spring payday, and so if you’re a
U.S. marathoner you hope you’re brought into the John Hancock field so that you
can eat for the rest of the year.

But for McMillan Elite’s
Brett Gotcher, 2013 will be different, because this year he’s not going to
Boston. He’s not even going to London. This year, Brett Gotcher is going to
Rotterdam.

“It’s hard [not running
Boston] because it is a big part of your yearly income,” Gotcher, who was added
to the 2011 Boston field but withdrew due to injury, says, “but I feel like at
some point you just have to make a sacrifice for the greater goal, which is to
run fast. I feel like a lot of guys get caught up in doing races, chasing
appearance fees, when it doesn’t necessarily fit in with trying to run faster,
and they just keep running the same times. I don’t want to go to Boston and get
eighth place.”

For Gotcher, it is all
about the time–at least for now: “You can run fast [in Boston], obviously, but
it’s not set up to. My goal is still to try and run fast. I still have this bad
feeling that I haven’t broken 2:10 yet.”

Maybe shunning Boston for
Rotterdam shouldn’t be that much of a surprise for those who’ve followed
Gotcher’s career: the 28-year-old became the fourth-fastest American ever to
debut at the distance when he ran 2:10:36 not at Chicago, New York, or Boston,
but at the 2010 Houston Marathon, another fast race off the beaten path. In
fact, all three of his marathon performances have been there.

“I don’t feel like I can
go into Boston and compete with guys if I am not at that [sub-2:10] level,
mentally,” he says. “That was the main reason for looking outside of Boston for
a fast race.”

Rotterdam, this year on
April 14, is very, very fast. Three world records have been set on the course
(two men’s and a women’s’), the Dutch men’s national record, and the site of
the fastest men’s marathon times in the world in 2009 and ’10.

But Rotterdam doesn’t just
produce fast times, it produces breakout performances. Of the last six years,
five of the men who won had to set a PR to do so, and of those five, four still
hold that mark as their current best. Rotterdam is magic.

American results in
Rotterdam are inconsistent. James Carney, the highest-placing American man in
the last six years, traveled there in 2010 with goals similar to Gotcher’s, but
faded to 2:15:50 for 13th. Magdalena Lewy-Boulet, a 2008 Olympian, set her PR
of 2:26:22 that same year, finishing runner-up.

In 2013, there will again
be that famous main pack of men that will go out fast–three of the last five
years were won in 2:04:xx. But unique this year is a group of Dutch men who,
like Gotcher, will be looking to run around 2:09. And because the race will be
looking to support their domestics’ success with pacers, Gotcher says all he
has to do is “just sit on them.” 

Rotterdam has yet to
release its full elite field, though they have announced that Sammy Kitwara, a
2:05:54-marathoner who was fourth in the 2012 Chicago Marathon, will lead their
field. He has announced a goal of running in the 2:04s. Two of possible Dutch
nationals that Gotcher could be competing with are Michel Butter (PR: 2:09:58,
2012 Amsterdam) and Koen Raymaekers (PR: 2:10:35, 2012 Rotterdam). Both have
PRs from the 10,000m through the marathon that shadow Gotcher’s.

But regardless of who
shows up on race day in Rotterdam, this year Brett Gotcher can guarantee you he
won’t be with the rest of the American elites in Boston. That’s not to say he
won’t ever be. Maybe someday he will even win it, and Greg Meyer can stop
crying himself to sleep every spring. But in order to get back to Boston,
Gotcher will first go abroad.

“It went like this,”
Gotcher says. “I want[ed] to find a fast race. What else is out there?”