Post by RUNsd MAG on Jun 29, 2012 13:04:10 GMT -5
Rapid City Journal
Padraic Duffy
Rod DeHaven will always remember spending the opening ceremonies at the 2000 Olympic Games wondering if Tommy Lasorda was going to make it.
Here was DeHaven, a couple of weeks before his 34th birthday and in many ways just happy to finally be an Olympian, worrying if the U.S. baseball team manager was going to need medical assistance to make it into the Stadium Australia.
"Like everybody else, I was kind of looking around for some basketball guys,” DeHaven laughed. “I found a few, and then I lost them. Then I look up and I’m standing next to Tommy Lasorda. Tommy, at the time, was a Slim Fast spokesman, and it was a good walk from the arena into the stadium with an incline. Tommy’s visibly perspiring and we’re walking in, slower and slower, and I’m actually starting to get worried about his health.”
DeHaven and Lasorda both eventually made it into the ceremony, but their Olympic journeys took quite different turns after that. DeHaven said he would have liked to have soaked in a little more of the spectacle, but Lasorda’s health and childhood memories were on his mind.
“There’s Tommy, and his assistants are propping him up and he’s OK, (the U.S. baseball team) end up going on to win the gold medal. But that’s what I always remember about the opening ceremonies,” DeHaven said. “Everybody’s trying to get on TV, and I’m next to Tommy Lasorda wondering, ‘Did you really need to pitch to Reggie Jackson repeatedly in 1977?’ That was going through my mind, but it probably wasn’t a good time to ask him.”
While Lasorda and the baseball team went on to beat Cuba for the gold medal, the Huron native struggled with illness and finished 69th in the marathon.
“The Games themselves, it just wasn’t my day. I had some gastrointestinal problems, probably made a rookie mistake eating in the Olympic Village that late in the Games that may have done me in,” DeHaven said. “It definitely was not the storybook ending.”
But even a disappointing finish wouldn’t wipe away all the memories that DeHaven racked up over his career.
“My fondest memories are more the journey of getting there than actually what happened at the Games themselves, because I did not have the fairytale ending,” the current South Dakota State head track and field and cross country coach said. “The things I really enjoy looking back on are really the grind of the training. People look at me like I’m crazy and ask, 'How that could be a fond memory?' But there’s a sense of accomplishment from putting in the amount of work that you need to get to that level.
"There were plenty of people who were more talented than I was and plenty of people I trained with who were more talented than me, but the combination of enough work, a little luck and being on on the right day got me to the Games.”
If DeHaven had never competed for the United States at an OIympic Games, he still would have had an amazing career. From setting the South Dakota state track and field meet record in the 1,600-meter run while at Huron High School to a record-breaking career at SDSU, DeHaven went on to compete in numerous international competitions and U.S. Olympic trials. He twice won the United States half-marathon championship. Two of his most impressive accomplishments aren’t even related to the Olympics: He owns sixth-place finishes at both the Boston and Chicago Marathons.
But that win at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic marathon trials in 2000 resulted in the lifetime distinction of Olympian. And that's what DeHaven says is at the top of any list of achievements he puts together.
DeHaven became well-acquainted with how fickle fate can be when it comes to peaking to make a team once every four years. His first trip to the Olympic trials came in 1988, when he finished ninth in his 1,500-meter heat.
After graduating from college, DeHaven had an epiphany in the early '90s.
“I was living in Wisconsin post-collegiately and I realized that I was going to have to move up (in distance) to survive in the sport. I wasn’t going to make it as a miler without a shoe contract and I wasn’t going to attract it running 3:44 or 3:40, or whatever I was running, so I kind of turned to the roads and started making enough money in the 5K and 10K to kind of keep me going,” DeHaven said. “One of the things when I was watching the (1992) Games themselves, they were doing an up-close and personal thing with (200- and 400-meter gold medalist) Michael Johnson and he said, ‘Well, if you can’t win a medal, you might as well get a job.’
"And here I am kind of working part-time (as a computer programmer) and not even qualifying for the trials. So I was kind of like, ‘Well, if I’m going to keep this going, I’m probably going to have to continue to move up.’ Certainly, the marathon trials are easier to get into than the track and field trials.”
Still, holding onto that dream didn’t come without some amount of sideways glances and sacrifice. DeHaven says he would advise any young runner to understand just how much hard work -- and luck -- go into competing at a world-class level.
“You think about some of the things and you’re like, ‘This is not a normal lifestyle.’ You go on vacation and you’re going to be driving 10 hours and it’s like, ‘Hey, I need to run 15 miles before we jump in the car,’” DeHaven said. “Those are the types of things that you look back on now and think there’s no way you could do them. But there was a sense of power that you had then that allowed you to do things that most people would say were impossible.”
DeHaven emphasizes the joy of the journey more than the final destination.
“I think it’s a testament to perseverance,” he said. “For some kids, who have their parents footing the bill and are maybe deferring something like graduate school, there is a lot of pressure for some people to say, ‘Well, I don’t think you’re going to make it.’ But there are examples of guys that do make it, besides me as well. I’d definitely be one that would say it’s worth chasing that dream, but there may be others that would say that’s ridiculous -- what are you doing? You can’t live off of credit cards and ramen noodles forever.
“I had a great support system with my wife (Shelli) and my family … there are plenty of people who were more talented than me who never made it. To drive that even closer to home is that there were guys who would beat me eight times out of 10 that I trained with who didn’t make it, either.”
Padraic Duffy
Rod DeHaven will always remember spending the opening ceremonies at the 2000 Olympic Games wondering if Tommy Lasorda was going to make it.
Here was DeHaven, a couple of weeks before his 34th birthday and in many ways just happy to finally be an Olympian, worrying if the U.S. baseball team manager was going to need medical assistance to make it into the Stadium Australia.
"Like everybody else, I was kind of looking around for some basketball guys,” DeHaven laughed. “I found a few, and then I lost them. Then I look up and I’m standing next to Tommy Lasorda. Tommy, at the time, was a Slim Fast spokesman, and it was a good walk from the arena into the stadium with an incline. Tommy’s visibly perspiring and we’re walking in, slower and slower, and I’m actually starting to get worried about his health.”
DeHaven and Lasorda both eventually made it into the ceremony, but their Olympic journeys took quite different turns after that. DeHaven said he would have liked to have soaked in a little more of the spectacle, but Lasorda’s health and childhood memories were on his mind.
“There’s Tommy, and his assistants are propping him up and he’s OK, (the U.S. baseball team) end up going on to win the gold medal. But that’s what I always remember about the opening ceremonies,” DeHaven said. “Everybody’s trying to get on TV, and I’m next to Tommy Lasorda wondering, ‘Did you really need to pitch to Reggie Jackson repeatedly in 1977?’ That was going through my mind, but it probably wasn’t a good time to ask him.”
While Lasorda and the baseball team went on to beat Cuba for the gold medal, the Huron native struggled with illness and finished 69th in the marathon.
“The Games themselves, it just wasn’t my day. I had some gastrointestinal problems, probably made a rookie mistake eating in the Olympic Village that late in the Games that may have done me in,” DeHaven said. “It definitely was not the storybook ending.”
But even a disappointing finish wouldn’t wipe away all the memories that DeHaven racked up over his career.
“My fondest memories are more the journey of getting there than actually what happened at the Games themselves, because I did not have the fairytale ending,” the current South Dakota State head track and field and cross country coach said. “The things I really enjoy looking back on are really the grind of the training. People look at me like I’m crazy and ask, 'How that could be a fond memory?' But there’s a sense of accomplishment from putting in the amount of work that you need to get to that level.
"There were plenty of people who were more talented than I was and plenty of people I trained with who were more talented than me, but the combination of enough work, a little luck and being on on the right day got me to the Games.”
If DeHaven had never competed for the United States at an OIympic Games, he still would have had an amazing career. From setting the South Dakota state track and field meet record in the 1,600-meter run while at Huron High School to a record-breaking career at SDSU, DeHaven went on to compete in numerous international competitions and U.S. Olympic trials. He twice won the United States half-marathon championship. Two of his most impressive accomplishments aren’t even related to the Olympics: He owns sixth-place finishes at both the Boston and Chicago Marathons.
But that win at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic marathon trials in 2000 resulted in the lifetime distinction of Olympian. And that's what DeHaven says is at the top of any list of achievements he puts together.
DeHaven became well-acquainted with how fickle fate can be when it comes to peaking to make a team once every four years. His first trip to the Olympic trials came in 1988, when he finished ninth in his 1,500-meter heat.
After graduating from college, DeHaven had an epiphany in the early '90s.
“I was living in Wisconsin post-collegiately and I realized that I was going to have to move up (in distance) to survive in the sport. I wasn’t going to make it as a miler without a shoe contract and I wasn’t going to attract it running 3:44 or 3:40, or whatever I was running, so I kind of turned to the roads and started making enough money in the 5K and 10K to kind of keep me going,” DeHaven said. “One of the things when I was watching the (1992) Games themselves, they were doing an up-close and personal thing with (200- and 400-meter gold medalist) Michael Johnson and he said, ‘Well, if you can’t win a medal, you might as well get a job.’
"And here I am kind of working part-time (as a computer programmer) and not even qualifying for the trials. So I was kind of like, ‘Well, if I’m going to keep this going, I’m probably going to have to continue to move up.’ Certainly, the marathon trials are easier to get into than the track and field trials.”
Still, holding onto that dream didn’t come without some amount of sideways glances and sacrifice. DeHaven says he would advise any young runner to understand just how much hard work -- and luck -- go into competing at a world-class level.
“You think about some of the things and you’re like, ‘This is not a normal lifestyle.’ You go on vacation and you’re going to be driving 10 hours and it’s like, ‘Hey, I need to run 15 miles before we jump in the car,’” DeHaven said. “Those are the types of things that you look back on now and think there’s no way you could do them. But there was a sense of power that you had then that allowed you to do things that most people would say were impossible.”
DeHaven emphasizes the joy of the journey more than the final destination.
“I think it’s a testament to perseverance,” he said. “For some kids, who have their parents footing the bill and are maybe deferring something like graduate school, there is a lot of pressure for some people to say, ‘Well, I don’t think you’re going to make it.’ But there are examples of guys that do make it, besides me as well. I’d definitely be one that would say it’s worth chasing that dream, but there may be others that would say that’s ridiculous -- what are you doing? You can’t live off of credit cards and ramen noodles forever.
“I had a great support system with my wife (Shelli) and my family … there are plenty of people who were more talented than me who never made it. To drive that even closer to home is that there were guys who would beat me eight times out of 10 that I trained with who didn’t make it, either.”