"The beauty of Joe Driscoll was that he was a sleeper coming out of high school, and he’s essentially a sleeper coming out of college," says Rob Conner, Driscoll’s former coach at the University of Portland. Don’t be misled by that description, however. Driscoll has run 28:48 for 10,000m, he’s set school records and earned All-America honors. Few Americans can match those credentials, but still fewer make a living from their running.
Throughout his career, Driscoll has run with—but rarely ahead of—the leaders, steadily improving every year. He joined the Central Kitsap High School team as a sophomore, and as senior he placed 12th in the Washington cross country state meet. He was the fourth of four scholarship recruits at the University of Portland, yet by his senior year he was 23rd at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. "I attribute that 100 percent to Joe’s motivation," says Conner. "The other people [on scholarship] were still more talented, but they never ran a harder run, they never ran more consistent mileage."
Motivation doesn’t sell shoes, though, and while large contracts were signed by some of the athletes ahead of Driscoll at the 2001 NCAA Cross Country Championships—most notably Jorge Torres and Alan Webb—there’s not much of a trickle-down effect in distance running these days. After graduating, Driscoll moved into his brother’s basement and bounced from job to job while continuing to train.
"I was doing well until the fall after I graduated, [then] I got mono," Driscoll recalls. "I came back and just worked myself too hard coming back." Shortly after a failed attempt at returning to racing—he DNF’d at the 2003 USA Cross Country Championships—Driscoll visited ZAP Fitness in Blowing Rock, NC, where he met the staff and athletes who live and work there. A week after returning to Portland, Driscoll was accepted into the program, and he quickly packed his stuff and headed east.
"Probably the main reason I wanted to come here was just coaching," says Driscoll. "I feel better if I have someone who can tell me, ‘well do this,’ or more importantly ‘don’t do that.’"
The stability that ZAP provided, and the guidance of Pete Rea’s coaching, quickly became apparent to Driscoll after he moved in. "Running became the focus. When you get here and you’re around people who are doing the training, everything gets better. Your diet gets better, your rest gets better, your daily runs—the hard days are hard, the easy days are easy."
Though Driscoll initially intended to take advantage of his new surroundings to build a solid base before returning to racing, he ended up competing in outdoor track. Just weeks after arriving in Blowing Rock, Driscoll ran a 5,000m PR of 13:53.67 at the Cardinal Invitational. The Stanford track has become something of a good luck charm for him, having been the site of his 28:48.42 PR in 2002, and another 5,000 best of 13:48.39 in 2004. With several years of steady progress on the track now behind him, Driscoll is looking ahead to his next goal.
While he chuckles at the memory of being a freshman in college, telling his coach that he was a miler, Driscoll has adjusted his sights and now sees his future in the marathon.
"You have to realize that 28:50 is fairly good in college . . . but it’s nothing on the world scene," Driscoll says. He sees his limit as being in the neighborhood of 28:00. "If you have that kind of speed for a marathon and you combine it with the right training, and you’ve got the right temperament, then you can be a really great marathoner," he observes.
Keith Hanson, co-founder of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, knows something about developing marathoners. Hansons’ runners placed fourth and fifth in the men’s 2004 Olympic Trials Marathon, as well as 13th, which is where Brian Sell finished after breaking open the race in the early miles. "We do not have an athlete in our program, and never have had an athlete in our program, that finished top-20 in the NCAA Division I Cross Country [Championships]. Nobody. Where are those one through 19?" Hanson asks.
"I think if you polled everybody coming out of college, probably 95 percent of the people would like to continue running, but when reality sets in, you know, that’s probably the first thing to go," says Rob Conner, who has watched a number of his top runners drift into the real world after graduation. "As the nomadic post-collegiate distance runner, there’s a new idea over every horizon," he adds. "It’s real easy for people to bounce around."
The journey from aspiring miler to top-notch marathoner is a long one, and most runners are sidetracked before realizing their potential. But with a number of programs offering coaching, housing, jobs, medical care, and other basic necessities, an increasing number of athletes like Joe Driscoll have been able to forsake that nomadic existence and focus on their running. Whether the results of these efforts are visible in 2008 remains to be seen.
