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| Three-time All-American Hassan Mead is back in action this fall after suffering a collapsed lung a year ago and spending 17 days in the hospital. |
(Editor's note: Led by Hassan Mead's third-place finish, the University of Minnesota finished third in the Big Ten Cross Country Championships Running Shoes - Gear.)
It was déjà vu all over again at last month’s Roy Griak Invitational in Minneapolis. Ditto at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational on Oct. 14. Prominent in the lead pack of both races, heading numerous All-Americans and a few recent high school standouts, strode a tall, lanky University of Minnesota athlete. While some up front looked uneasy and just might have been pushing the pace a bit too hard, this guy was obviously running well within himself. He was the real deal. And he was finally back after a prolonged absence.
The sight was certainly familiar to many, because Hassan Mead is himself a three-time NCAA Division I cross country All-American. But no one had seen Mead racing cross-country for some 22 months, not since his 16th-place finish at the 2009 national meet. Those who had written him off have been sorely mistaken.
Experiencing an extended injury or illness and being unable train or race is a hardship for any athlete. For Hassan Mead, one of the more promising collegiate distance runners to come along in recent years, the experience certainly had its frustrations.
But it all pales in comparison to several other life challenges he’s faced: a childhood spent laboring on a small family farm in war-torn Somalia; seeing his father leave for the U.S. in 1996 and being without him the next four years; traveling halfway around the world with his mother and sister reunite the family in Minnesota; moving again — without his mother or sister — to live with an uncle in warm Southern California, where he attended school for the very first time at age 11 barely knowing a word of English.
Hassan Mead more than survived all that; he thrived, virtually every step of the way. And in high school he discovered a gift for running that has helped keep his life on an upward trajectory.
But it wasn't until Mead and his uncle moved to the Seattle area that "the whole running thing began." He ran track at Emerald Ridge High School, "wearing basketball shoes and basketball shorts in the mile." As a junior he decided to go out for cross country at the last minute. On little summer training, he took 10th in the state cross country meet and realized he had a gift. But he was only in Washington briefly, eventually moving back to Minnesota during the winter of 2005-2006.
When Mead showed up for track practice at Minneapolis South High School, coach Mark Gross knew he had a real talent on his hands and impressed upon the precocious transfer that a solid summer of training would pay dividends. Sure enough, Mead won Minnesota’s 2006 Class 2A cross country title in a state record time of 15:10.7 before placing fourth at the Foot Locker cross country national championships. His senior track season was capped by a state meet runner-up finish at 3200m (9:03.29) and an 8:51.23 2-mile at the 2007 Nike Outdoor Nationals, good for fifth-place. The later mark stands as the third-best time in Minnesota high school history.
Minnesota head coach Steve Plasencia first saw Mead powering his way to the high school title at the 2006 Roy Griak invitational. That’s all it took for the two-time Olympian and former Minnesota All-American to determine that Mead could make an immediate impact as a Golden Gopher. And, a dislike of cold weather notwithstanding, Mead eventually warmed up to the idea of sticking around instead of moving once again to live somewhere else.
Everything rolled along smoothly during his first two and a half years under Plasencia’s tutelage as a Gopher, as Mead became a three-time All-American in cross country, progressing from 43rd to 31st to 16th at nationals. On the track he was more impressive, his many wins including five Big Ten titles. He also broke Minnesota’s 5,000m school record with a 13:28.45 at the 2009 Payton Jordan Invitational, closing that particular race with a 55-second last lap to finish ahead of Evan Jager and Chris Derrick (the latter of whom claimed an American junior record of 13:29.98).
But it was all prelude to a seemingly innocuous Achilles injury that cropped up in January of 2010. Surprisingly, the condition lingered for half a year, forcing Mead to redshirt both track seasons. And then the improbable happened early last September, as just when he was finally healthy and returning to training, Mead suffered a collapsed lung while out on an easy 40-minute run. The condition was so serious it required surgery, 17 days of hospitalization, and several months of recuperation, all of which forced Mead to redshirt yet another season.
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| Minnesota coach Steve Plasencia has helped Hassan Mead get back up to speed this season. |
To say Mead was tested would be a gross understatement. But he got through it all by drawing upon the patient, mature character he's built through all of the life challenges he's experienced.
“Hassan has a nice calmness about him, which I kind of attribute to his growing up in a different part of the world and traveling across cultures to be here,” Plasencia says. “And he’s always seemed to have a pretty good sense of perspective on things. There’s a maturity there with Hassan that you don’t always find in kids his age. So I think the combination of that kind of calmness and his perspective was extremely helpful to him, through what was definitely a frustrating period.”
Mead’s own reflections on the 15 months away from competition back up Plasencia’s comments.
“I got kind of down on myself during the Achilles problem, when we weren’t seeing any progress,” he admits. “The medical people here at Minnesota were very helpful, but it wasn’t responding. And then I kind of accepted it, because being a Division I athlete, especially in running, you really have little control over something like this happening. I decided we should just treat it naturally — let it heal on its own, take time off without any kind of training. Once I did that, things started heading the right way.”
The collapsed lung, of course, came out of left field. But whereas Mead’s Achilles injury was directly related to running and for a long while failed to respond to treatment, the lung condition had a relatively predictable recovery phase. So Mead focused his energies on completing his degree in communications, fully expecting to resume running, again, by around the first of the year.
Last winter Mead returned to purposeful training and then competition. His first race was a low-key 3,000m indoors at the Husky Classic in Seattle, where he struggled to finish 38th out of 123 total entrants in several heats. He improved outdoors, running a respectable 13:45.68 for 5,000m at Mt. SAC in early April. Another surprise came when he doubled at the Big Ten outdoor championships, winning what happened to be his first-ever 10K on the track (29:04.79) and following up with third in the 5K (14:03.21). He didn’t make it back to the NCAA championships — where he was sixth in the 5,000m in both 2008 and 2009 — but he wasn’t 100 percent fit, either.
“Hassan is a lean guy,” notes Plasencia, “and he naturally put on some weight [during the year away from running]. He carried that throughout last spring, and even at the Big Ten meet he wasn’t as fit as prior to the injury and lung collapse. So I knew that after a summer of training well he’d be ready for a very good cross country season this fall.”
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| The way he's been running, Mead could contend for a top-10 finish at the NCAA championships on Nov. 21. |
Minnesota’s annual home meet, the Roy Griak Invitational, served as a serious early season test for Mead as well as his teammates. And all responded well, with Mead covering the demanding 8K course in 23:48.7 to place third, leading the Gophers to finish fifth of 24 teams. Three weeks later the stakes were somewhat higher, as Plasencia took his squad to compete against perhaps the season’s deepest field at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational.
“The guys did a really nice job,” a low-key Plasencia remarked afterwards, pleased that the then-17th-ranked Gophers (now No. 12) outpaced four higher-ranked teams (North Carolina State, Oregon, Northern Arizona, Georgetown), finishing seventh in a field that included 21 of the nation’s top-30 outfits. Mead’s fifth-place performance served notice that he will be a strong contender in the season’s three remaining meets: the Big Ten championships (Oct. 30), the NCAA Midwest regional (Nov. 12) and the NCAA championships (Nov. 21).
But more to the point, Mead, now 22 years old, is confident his team can get to Terre Haute the third Monday in November, for that is the top priority. “I’m lucky enough that if I’m healthy, I should get to nationals by myself,” he says. “But that’s not our main concern here, and if we’re successful as a team I think that’s a better way to get to nationals. So I like to emphasize to the guys that we have to all work together to get the best results.”
Plasencia is quick to speak to Mead’s devotion to the Minnesota program and relative lack of self-interest.
“Hassan has always been a team guy,” he notes. “He’s our leader and he embraces that role. And I think he recognizes that the end of his college years will not be the end of what he’s going to do in running, and right now his goals are all within the team framework. I’ve been blessed with guys who are very team-oriented.”
As Mead and his teammates close in on the season’s big meets their training follows the pattern of previous weeks, but with more emphasis on turnover and sharpening and slightly lower volume.
“We usually like to get in our long run early in the week, Sunday or Monday,” he says. “That’s an hour and a half up to close to two hours. Tuesday will be a recovery day and we’ll have a workout Wednesday, maybe a long tempo [of] anywhere from five to eight miles. Thursday is another recovery day and Friday, if we aren’t racing the next day, is a mid-long run. Saturday we’ll do something a little bit quicker, it might be miles or 1200s or 1K repeats.”
With only a month of this year’s cross country season remaining and the training becoming more focused, Mead will soon find himself preparing for his final track seasons.
“We haven’t seen much of Hassan in the 10,000 meters on the track yet,” says Plasencia, “and that should be a very good event for him.”
It seems certain that Hassan Mead, now taking graduate level courses in sports management, will accomplish quite a lot during his remaining seven months as an athlete at Minnesota. He has already faced adversity and held up to it, overcome it — a necessary ability for any champion distance runner. And while Mead doesn’t consider his injury and pulmonary condition lost time, he is determined to be the best runner he can be throughout his senior year.
“When you go through a couple things like Hassan went through, obviously you’re kind of scratching your head because you’ve had something you’ve poured yourself into taken away,” Plasencia says. “That causes a person to do some reassessment, and I think I could see that in Hassan last spring. But then he had a really good summer of training and that helped refuel and recharge him. His first couple years, before his injury, he would get a little fiery in his desire to show people what he could do. And I think that fire is back.”
