Shadrack Biwott at the start line before the 2018 New York City Marathon.
On the face of it, a marathon is 26.2 miles long.
To those who run them, though, the distance is considerably longer.
Those 26.2 miles come after months of a grueling training regimen that includes regularly running 20 miles a day, logging between 120 and 140 miles in a week—the equivalent of running from Eugene to Bend. Ever run a 5k? Run 45 of them every week for several months, and you’ll have some sense of what life is like for Shadrack Biwott, BA ’09.
Little wonder then that he sometimes finds it hard to stay awake during dinner.
Biwott is one of the world’s top marathoners, with a top-10 finish this week in the New York City Marathon capping his fifth-place finish in the same race in 2016, a fourth place in the Boston Marathon in 2017, and third place in a squall in Boston earlier this year.
But for all his recent successes, his outings in the green and yellow of Oregon were a little less auspicious. Notable, yes—he helped the Ducks win two NCAA cross country titles, won an individual and team Pac-10 cross country title, and in 2007 earned All-America and Pac-10 Athlete of the Year honors—but nagging injuries prevented him from reaching the giddy heights of such teammates as Galen Rupp, Andrew Wheating, and Matt Centrowitz Jr.
“Unfortunately I was always injured after cross country season, so I didn't really show off what I really could have run during my years in Oregon,” Biwott said. “Until my last year I was able to run outdoor season okay, but I was still having an Achilles problem. I don't know what it was.”
After earning his sociology degree from the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences, he joined the Oregon Track Club and set out to run professionally. Realizing that his future more likely lay on the roads than the track he started running longer distances, and one year after graduation entered the New Orleans Rock ‘n’ Roll Mardi Gras Half Marathon, finishing third in 1:01:40.
Emboldened by that success, the following year he headed to Los Angeles to try the marathon for the first time and, well, we’ll let him tell it from here:
“I thought maybe I could be a very good marathon runner, right from the get go,” Biwott said. “But it was the opposite—I was horrible. I had never been in so much pain in a race that I felt like I just wanted to stop every step, but I guess I can look back and say I have been through hell and back.”
‘Horrible,’ of course, is a subjective term. Biwott finished tenth overall in LA, but was so disappointed by his 2:20:28 time that he swore he would never run another marathon. That promise lasted all of nine months, and in November 2011 he found himself at the starting line of the New York City Marathon, the largest marathon in the world and one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. If Biwott thought his tenth-place finish in LA was bad, he was in for a rude awakening—he only made it through 22 miles in New York before dropping out of the race.
“I didn't know what I was doing as far as training was concerned,” said Biwott. “I gave up on that and went back to running just half marathons and doing the USATF running circuit, and it took me a few more years down the road before I could really figure out how to run a marathon.”
Following his “Did Not Finish” in New York, Biwott made changes to, well, everything. To start with, the Eldoret, Kenya, native left the Oregon Track Club, became an American citizen, and moved to Folsom, California, with wife Katharine and son Xavier.
He also evaluated what went wrong in Los Angeles and New York, and identified that the issue lay in his approach to training.
“I realized that I wasn't doing enough mileage, and I wasn't giving myself enough recovery,” said Biwott. “With marathon training, everything is like a puzzle. Each piece is part of the whole picture. Once I realized that was the key to success, I started improving a lot.”
A marathon is both grueling and tactical. A runner needs to pace themselves for the 26.2 miles, but also has to be prepared to accelerate in bursts along the course to account for what the lead group is doing. Training consists of both long, slow runs, and shorter, faster runs, to prepare the runner for everything they could encounter during the race; and while diet is important, so too is putting your feet up to rest.
They are pieces of the puzzle, as it were.
In 2013, Biwott entered 13 races, traveling as far afield as Connecticut and Bermuda. He won a 10k; placed second in a 12k, a 10-miler, a 20k, and a half marathon; finished third in another half marathon; and took home fourth in a 5k and fifth in another 10k. Part of his hectic schedule was out of necessity, as he needed prize money to pay the bills—not least because he and Katharine had welcomed a second child, Eve, to the family one year prior. But as marathon success requires mastery of different running styles, excelling in so many different distances meant Biwott was mastering them all.
Towards the end of that year, he entered the St. Paul Twin Cities Marathon, his first attempt at running 26.2 miles since the 2011 New York City Marathon. He didn’t just finish; he finished third overall, and took seven minutes off the time he set two years prior in LA.
He placed seventh in the 2016 US Olympic Team Marathon Trials, failing to make the cut for the Rio Olympics; college teammate Rupp not only made the squad, but went on to win the bronze medal in Brazil. Biwott instead set his sights on running the New York City Marathon again, and avenged his 2011 DNF with a fifth-place finish and a new personal best time of 2:12:55.
Last year saw Biwott enter the Boston Marathon for the first time. Boston is more than just one of the world’s most well-known races of any distance—it is also the world’s oldest continually-run marathon, debuting in 1897 the year after the event appeared in the first modern Olympiad. In 1896, 17 runners ran from Marathon to Athens, with Greece’s Spyridon Louis finishing the 24.8-mile course in 2:58:50. One year later, American John McDermott won the inaugural 24.5-mile Boston Marathon in 2:55:10.
One hundred and twenty years after that, and a decade after running his last race for the UO, Shadrack Biwott finished fourth on the 26.2-mile Boston course in 2:12:08, two places behind Rupp.
Biwott’s performance caught the eye of shoe company Brooks, and the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project running team. Hansons-Brooks is based in Rochester Hills, Michigan, while Biwott is more than 2,000 miles away in Folsom, so the coaches—whose stable of runners also includes 2018 Boston Marathon winner Desiree Linden—coach him remotely.
More important than providing him with elite coaching, though, the sponsorship also provides financial peace of mind.
“My family is not going to go without food, and they will have a roof over their heads,” Biwott said. “If you’re stressed while running, then forget about it, [success is] not going to happen. Brooks sponsoring me and allowing me to train means I’m not looking for races to run each month so that I can pay my bills—it’s a huge help. Honestly, I think that is one of the reasons I am running better now.”
Without having to chase paychecks from coast to coast, or spend his own money on shoes—his training regimen means he needs a new pair every other week, an expense that adds up quickly—Biwott only entered three more races in 2017 after the Boston Marathon, logging top-10 finishes in the Boston B.A.A. 10k in June and the New York City Marathon in November, with the latter also producing a new marathon personal best of 2:12:01.
When he wasn’t running he was volunteering in the community, giving talks and partnering with Brooks to deliver running shoes and equipment to local school children to help inspire them to achieve their own goals. As much as Biwott enjoying running—a necessity, given that he trains alone without teammates to motivate him—he is deeply passionate about motivating others.
“That’s what I care about, encouraging and motivating young people—anybody, for that matter—to just believe in themselves and bring out the best in themselves,” Biwott said. “If I can be a small part of their dream come true, that’s all I care about.”
And while he is helping others achieve their own goals, he is continuing to log the miles necessary to achieve his own.
Heading into 2018, Biwott had made the podium twice in a marathon, but never in one of the six Abbott World Marathon Majors. The AWMM is the world’s championship for marathon runners, and comprises six annual races held around the world. Due to the physically demanding nature of the marathon, most runners don’t run more than two in a year.
The 2018 Boston Marathon was Biwott’s second race in the AWMM Series XI, following his appearance in the 2017 New York City Marathon. For the runner who moved from Oregon to California in part to escape the rain, there was no avoiding the bad weather on race weekend.
This marathon was run in a freezing cold torrential downpour and 30-mile-per-hour headwinds, and more than 20 elites—including Rupp and Kellyn Taylor, the latter of whom began displaying symptoms of hypothermia during the race—dropped out entirely due to the conditions.
But Biwott pushed on, powered by stubborn determination and the 140-mile training weeks that had left him nodding off during meals. As he neared the finish line, the driving rain impaired his vision and he could not see who was ahead of him. Yuki Kawauchi, the race winner, did not know he was even leading until he saw the finish tape across the road 100 meters in front of him. Hot on his trail was Geoffrey Kirui, the reigning world and Boston champion. Right behind him was Biwott.
Only, he had no idea.
As Biwott slapped his cheeks in a desperate attempt to keep warm, Katharine—watching on television back in Folsom—shouted for him to run harder. She could see Kirui slowing down. Unfortunately Biwott couldn’t, and he was slowing as well because he thought his place had already been decided.
“I didn’t know how close Kirui was until later,” Biwott told the Sacramento Bee after the race. “I couldn’t see anything.”
Biwott finished third, 12 seconds behind Kirui. He was the only American on the podium, and returned home to Folsom to a party his neighborhood threw in his honor.
He ended the AWMM Series XI in 17th place, tied with, among others, four-time Olympic gold medalist, six-time world champion, and three-time Prefontaine Classic champion Sir Mo Farah.
After sitting out the first two races in Series XII, Biwott entered the third, the New York City Marathon, run on November 4.
He felt his training had been going well, logging between 120 and 140 miles each week along Folsom’s American River Park bike path and in the surrounding hills. He spent four days in New York with Hansons over the summer, doing course reconnaissance: identifying where the hills were, where to push the pace, and when to sit back.
Fresh off his first major podium, and heading into his third NYC Marathon, Biwott knew exactly what to expect. The tough field included defending NYC champion and three-time half marathon world champion Geoffrey Kamworor; and Lelisa Desisa, who made a name for himself by winning the 2013 Boston Marathon one year after the bombing and gifting his victor's medal to the city of Boston. The five boroughs the 26.2 miles winds through, though, present a challenge all of their own.
“With New York, you know, time is really irrelevant,” Biwott said. “New York is all about places, competing, and doing the very best to try to be in the best place at every moment, and then try to finish as high as you can. If I can do that, then the time will take care of itself.
“If you go with the mindset of trying to run faster in New York, you are in a different race. New York is not that race. Chicago, Berlin, London, and the other European races, that’s where you go for time. But for New York or Boston, you just have to compete and try and place as high as you can.”
Held in much better conditions than this year's Boston Marathon, the race was a fast one. Three runners duked it out over the final mile, with Desisa taking home the title. The top three finishers crossed in the second-, third-, and fourth-fastest times in NYC Marathon history. Biwott lost the lead group early and was never able to make up ground, but still lodged another top-10 finish, finishing tenth overall in 2:12:52.
- Damian Foley, UO Communications