LA SELVA BEACH >> Brett Gotcher has been around the block more than a few times.
At the peak of his training for Saturday’s USA Olympic Marathon Trials, the La Selva Beach resident ran 130 miles a week. That’s a little less than 20 miles a day, every day. And it doesn’t factor in his weight lifting, cross training and stretching routines, nor the fact that he’s been logging these kind of workouts for the past five years.
Most mortals would declare their legs dead after such a slog. Gotcher prefers to think of his as well seasoned.
“I’m hoping to have so many consistent years under my belt that that will help guide me forward,” Gotcher, 31, said. “If I do have some bumps, I can bounce back because I have so many miles under my legs.”
Only the top three finishers in Saturday’s race in Los Angeles will earn the right to run the marathon for the USA during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this August. The fourth and fifth runners will serve as alternates.
That’s where Gotcher, an Aptos High alum, found himself in 2012. He came in fifth despite finishing the 26.2-mile race through Houston in 2 hours, 11 minutes and 9 seconds. It was the first time a sub-2:12:00 hadn’t earned an American trials racer an Olympic bid.
That won’t happen again, predicted longtime Aptos High distance running coach Dan Gruber, who has served as an advisor of sorts to his former Mariners pupil. If Gotcher repeats his time, he should win a spot, Gruber said.
“It’s hard to get that many Americans under 2:12:00 in the same race. There are a lot of 2:12:00 marathoners, but the marathon is a crap shoot,” Gruber said. “One thing Brett does have, Brett is a marathoner. He’s built for it and he has the mental capabilities. He doesn’t have the track pedigree that some of these guys have, but he’s a marathoner, and that’s one of his aces. And, there’s three spots.”
For being a marathoner, Gotcher actually hasn’t been in that many races. He hasn’t run a marathon in competition in two years and said it has been four years since he’s run one he’s content with. The break wasn’t necessarily by choice — a recurring neuroma in his foot that sprung up shortly after the trials and several other injuries that stemmed from it kept him from training and running at his peak.
A friend suggested he try running in Hoka One Ones, a sort of anti-barefoot running shoe that has gathered a large following in recent years. Gotcher, who is unsponsored, did and noticed an immediate difference.
With improved health, Gotcher added miles, and with the miles, he added confidence. For the first time since his debut — when he ran the 26.2 miles in 2:10:36 for what still stands as the fourth-fastest marathon debut time in U.S. history — he put together nine solid months of training.
“His injuries were dings against (his confidence),” said Greg McMillan, Gotcher’s coach since he graduated Stanford in 2006, “and now he feels he’s come full circle and has a chance to make the Olympic team.”
During those nine months, Gotcher logged miles upon miles through the back roads and trails around Santa Cruz County. He moved back home from Flagstaff, Ariz. — where he had been working with McMillan’s now defunct McMillan Elite team — shortly after the 2012 trials. It proved a smart move for many reasons. Not only is he closer to the support of both his family and that of his wife, Valerie Panzich, whom he initially dated while attending Aptos. But, the lower altitude actually proved better for putting in the speed work he and McMillan, who now lives in Mill Valley, feel is necessary for success this weekend.
“It’s hard with this race because it’s so much about pace. It’s 1, 2 or 3. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter,” Gotcher said. “I took the approach to get into as fast of shape as I can get in that will allow me to get the best place I can get.”
The trick will be to maintain that pace on a course that consists of 89 turns over four six-mile loops and one 2.2-mile loop. It’s a course so crowned, Gruber said, that runners must choose between running on the bumps in the middle or in the gutter to find flat footing. The heat could also be a factor.
But that’s exactly why Gotcher has been putting in the long hours callousing his body to the pounding it’s about to take.
That said, Gotcher is far from having logged the most miles in the field of Olympic hopefuls. That honor likely goes to Meb Keflezighi, 40. The two-time Olympic marathoner and trials favorite is the only runner in the field who also ran a marathon in the fall — just as he did before qualifying in 2012. Others being bandied about as frontrunners include Dathan Ritzenhein, who finished fourth in the 2012 marathon trials but reached the London Olympics in the 10-kilometer race, where he finished 13th; and Galen Rupp, the 2012 10k silver medalist and U.S. record holder and who will be making his marathon debut.
Even the name of Gotcher’s friend and old McMillan Elite teammate Nick Arciniaga has come up as a potential Olympic qualifier.
Gotcher, meanwhile, hasn’t gotten much attention despite his 2012 trials performance. Much of that stems from his lack of results over the past four years. Still, Gruber said he thinks it burns Gotcher a little to be left off the contenders lists — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“That’s a long way to suffer, a long way to muscle through. You have to be on and you have to be fit,” Gruber said. “I do know he’s fit. He’s not overworked. He’s not underworked. He’s fresh and he’s hungry.”
And he’s been around the block.
Contact Julie Jag at 831-706-3257.
