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Deena Drossin tries to make the best of a challenging season by Bob Ramsak
After a less-than-stellar three-race early August tour of Europe, Deena Drossin gave a blunt self-assessment on the eve of her appearance at third appearance at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics. "I'm not in the best shape of my life," she said frankly, after finishing a distant tenth in the 3,000-meter race in Zurich's Weltklasse August 15. "I don't feel as well prepared for this as I usually am. I seem to run fast in the springtime but can't seem to pull it together for a solid track season the past few years." Indeed, her performances last spring gave no indication of her back-of-the-pack finishes in August. She began the summer by winning her third national 10,000-meter title in late June, on the heels of her third-consecutive win at the Bolder Boulder 10k in late May. In April's Flora London Marathon, she broke Joan Benoit Samuelson's 17-year-old American Record by five seconds, running 2:21:16 and finishing third behind the two fastest marathoners in history, Paula Radcliffe and Catherine Ndereba. Two weeks earlier, she won her second-consecutive long-course silver medal at the World Cross Country Championships after controlling much of the race. After consecutive 11th-place finishes at 10,000 meters in the last two World Championships, Drossin seemed poised to make a dramatic improvement in Paris. But a series of circumstances, some self-inflicted and some entirely out of her control, have left her unable to bring her momentum from the spring to her three appearances on the track this month. Her biggest frustration, she said, is from "The season just not coming together, and not putting it together in workouts, taking it easy, not being very focused. Just a combination of a lot of different things." "It's crazy to be in the sport for 19 years and still be learning so much about the sport and about myself," she continued. "Just learning that I need people around me. I need the positive energy of a good support system." For Drossin, that support system includes a strong core training group, a key component of her preparation that was conspicuously missing this year. "It's always been a theme of mine," she said after her Zurich race, where she clocked 8:48.66, about five seconds shy of her personal best. "Whether it was my high school team, or choosing to go to Arkansas which is very team-oriented, to joining coach Vigil's group in Colorado to [training with] the Running USA group. I love training with people, and I didn't have that at all [this season]." Another important element was the absence of coach Joe Vigil, who has spent the summer recuperating for a heart attack and a subsequent triple bypass surgery. With most of her training group on different timetables preparing for different events, Drossin said, "There wasn't a solid group that was preparing for track season, and coach Vigil [wasn't] around to organize any of it. He's a great group motivator and he wasn't there to put it together." And then, in the waning days of July, came word that she had skin cancer on her back, and needed to have it removed immediately. "It was a bit of a shock," she said. "I was actually on my way to the LA airport and got a call from the dermatologist to come in right away." She asked the doctor if the surgery could be postponed until after her season, but her plea was answered with a stern "No." She didn't want to wait a day. "So we did a U-turn from the airport and went to the hospital and had the surgery four hours later. Everything went really fast." She was entered in the mile at August 2nd's KBC-Nacht Grand Prix II meeting in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium — "To try to get my legs under me," she said — but her surgery delayed her return to the track. Her return came on August 5 at the DN Galan Super Grand Prix in Stockholm, on the same track where she ran her personal best of 14:51.62 in 2000. With bandages covering the still-tender wounds and stitches on her back and lower shoulders, Drossin finished eighth in 15:15.53 in her first race since the USA Championship 10,000 meters. "I felt really stale out there," she said after the race. "My legs felt really heavy. There's always that first race you have to get out of the way, and I knew it was going to be a painful one, but I thought I could pull off a fast race regardless." In spite of competing just four days after her surgery, the 1996 Arkansas grad was not pleased. "I thought, even not feeling well, that I could break fifteen minutes. The effort felt like a sub-15 effort, but then I was looking at the clock, and I thought, 'Oh my God, is that lying to me or should I be feeling this bad?' It was just shaking the cobwebs out," she decided. "It'll get better from here." It did get better, but, ten laps into her next race, the 5,000 meters in London's Super Grand Prix on August 8, it became evident that just two weeks prior to the World Championships, her fitness was lacking. At one point as close as third, she dropped back dramatically with three laps to go after her shoelaces became untied. "I started gripping a little and my calf was getting tight," she said. "Ideally, I would have liked to have run under 15 minutes, but it least it's better than my effort a few days ago." She again finished eighth in 15:08.14, in a race won by Kenyan Edith Masai in 14:50.78. Her last test prior to Paris came in Zurich. "I felt really good [in the first few laps]," she said immediately after the race, "But I think the latter part of the race just showed my lack of fitness. I had the excitement coming into this race, I wanted to run aggressively, so I felt very happy with how I came focused into this race. But I just wasn't fit enough to carry out what I started." But she adds that much of the blame for her mediocre season lies with herself. "I guess it's just a lack of maturity on my part for not being able to do it by myself," she said after her Stockholm race. "It's just been a huge challenge for me and I can't say I rose above it. It was a tough training session. I'm trying to rise above it at the last minute, but you can only do so much when there's only a few weeks left." Now, she says, it's time to simply make the best of her situation. "I didn't have great preparation this year and so I'm trying to make the best of whatever I can out there, trying to be aggressive, but not having the confidence from any stellar workouts behind me whatsoever." Perhaps adding to her self-professed lack of focus this season is her biggest event of this year, which will come off the track — her wedding on September 14. "It could be [a distraction], but it's a pleasant one," she said, smiling. "I'm really trying to enjoy it. I'm not stressing out at all, I'm trying to enjoy it, and if it means taking a little bit of time away from my job, then that's OK, I'll take it." With a fully-recovered Vigil returning to action in the fall, Drossin promises that next year will be much different on the track. "I know getting ready for the Olympics next year, no matter which event I choose, the 10,000 or the marathon, I'm going to have to do things right next year. Not just going through the motions of the season." With the three races behind her, Drossin remains upbeat as she prepares for this weekend's 10,000 meter final. "I just made the best of the situation," she said of her pre-Worlds competitive prepwork. "There's no sense trying to cram in two months of training into one week, so I'm just going to prepare the best I can — relaxing a lot, trying to sharpen up, and just feeling good." Her race plan? "To just go out there and make the best of it. I'll just go out hard and try to hang on as long as I can." The women's 10,000m final is Saturday at 8:15 p.m., the only final scheduled for the first day of competition.
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