It’s one I’ve looked forward to for a while. – Jared Ward
The last time we heard from Jared Ward, he was delivering one of the surprising performances of the Rio Olympic Games. Since then, as marathoners are wont to do, he dropped out of sight to rest, heal and prepare for his next outing.
He resurfaced last month in the New York Half-Marathon, which was meant to be a warmup for what’s next: On Monday, Ward, an adjunct professor of statistics at BYU, will enter the most famed and storied race of them all, the Boston Marathon.
“It’s one I’ve looked forward to for a while,” he says.
Professional marathoners — at least the smart ones — run only two to three marathons a year to limit the toll the effort takes on their bodies. They pick their races judiciously. Ward, who has run only five marathons since taking up the longer distance in 2013, says he has been “anxious to fit Boston into my schedule,” but between U.S. championships and the Olympics he never had an opportunity until this year.
Ward, a BYU track and cross-country All-American via Davis High, has improved steadily since tackling the distance for the first time 3½ years ago. To wit:
2013: Chicago Marathon — 19th place, 2:16:17
2014: Twin Cities Marathon (U.S. championships) — 2nd, 2:14:01
2015: L.A. Marathon: (U.S. championships) — 3rd (1st American), 2:12:56
2016: U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials — 3rd, 2:13:00
2016: Rio Olympics Marathon — 6th, 2:11:30
Ward didn’t earn a medal in Rio, but his performance was a breakthrough. Since 1932, only five American-born runners have ever finished higher in the Olympic marathon (six if you count African-born Meb Keflezighi). The third- and sixth-place performances by Galen Rupp and Ward were the best showing by Americans since Frank Shorter and Don Kardong went 1-4 in 1976.
“Some of the media in Rio poked fun at me and said I was the most excited sixth-place finisher ever,” he says. “But I was so blessed to be in the best shape of my life and have one of the best races of my life. That doesn’t always happen. The Olympics are every four years — right on the day of the Olympic Trials and the Olympic Games.”
After the Olympics, Ward took a month off to heal a variety of chronic injuries that he had collected in the buildup to Rio, and then resumed light training for the next two months. He began training in earnest in December and resumed his 110-mile training weeks in January.
“That’s the longest offseason I’ve had since my (LDS Church) mission,” says Ward. “… By the time I hit December, I was rock bottom in terms of fitness.”
That is not ideal preparation for a world-class marathon. On March 17, Ward raced in the New York City Half-Marathon to test his fitness for Boston. He finished 14th in 1:03:14. “It was good for me to see my fitness was coming along at least,” he says, “and that I could roll out at marathon pace or slightly faster for a half-marathon and feel OK.”
Boston’s point-to-point course has a reputation for difficulty, largely because of the famed hills late in the race. Ward’s coach, Ed Eyestone, a two-time Olympic marathoner, knows the challenges of the course well. The 1987 Boston race was his first post-collegiate marathon and he had high expectations, having won four NCAA championships and set a collegiate record at 10,000 meters.
Just past the halfway point of the race, he turned to world-record holder Steve Jones and asked, “Is it always this easy?” Jones replied, “It gets tougher around mile 20.” As Eyestone tells it now, “Steve was wrong. It got tougher at Mile 17. I ended up crashing and burning. I was probably running six-minute miles at the end. I felt totally emasculated.”
After crossing the finish line, Eyestone told his wife Lynn, “If I ever want to do this again, talk me out of it.”
When asked earlier this month to assess Ward’s fitness heading into Boston, Eyestone said, “He was a little beat up after the Olympics, but he’s back running now and he’s healthy. He was very, very fit going into the Olympics; he’s not quite at that level now, but he still has a couple of weeks.”
Eyestone has put Ward through a variety of typically grueling workouts the last three months to prepare him for Boston: 4-5 x 2 miles @ 9:20-9:40 pace; a 10-mile run followed by repeat miles at 4:30 pace; 10-mile runs at marathon pace (5 flat or a little faster), followed by mile repeats on the track; 25-mile runs, the last 5-6 at marathon pace.
“It’s a lot of stuff that I tried on myself or heard from others that I tried to incorporate into his training,” says Eyestone.
Ward has the wherewithal to train and race full time, thanks to a contract with Saucony, the running shoe company. He originally signed a one-year deal in 2015 and a year later, after he claimed the U.S. marathon championship, he was awarded an extension through 2019. Among other things, it means he doesn’t have to over-race in search of prize money to survive financially.
“(Saucony) was very good in betting on me (in 2015),” says Ward. “They certainly have taken care of me since then. I hope to run with them for the rest of my career. I am blessed to have the deal. Not many have an opportunity like that in this sport. I can train and run races that are in my best long-term interest rather than short-term financial interest.”
Besides the Boston Marathon, Ward also plans to compete in two road races in July — the Peachtree 10K in Atlanta and the Deseret News 10K in Salt Lake City. He plans to enter another major marathon in the fall.
Meanwhile, Ward teaches a statistics class at BYU two times a week, which adds up to 10-15 hours a week for class time, office hours, student consultations and research.
During the buildup to Rio, the media often noted Ward’s master’s thesis, which was titled “Optimal Pace Strategy in a Marathon.” Ward’s conclusion was that elite runners do a better job of maintaining a steady pace throughout the entire 26.2 miles while other runners vary their pacing. That strategy seemed to pay off for Ward in the Olympic Marathon Trials, where he covered the first half of the race in 1:06:31 and the second half in 1:06:29.
Ward continues to focus his research on distance running. His latest research is a study of the biomechanics of marathoners in the Olympic trials; specifically, mid-race ground-contact time and stride rate.
“You could see which runners are running within themselves and which ones are going to pop,” he says. “The takeaway for me is that when you’re 16 miles into a marathon you can’t be feeling flat. You’re on the way out probably. It’s a matter of what I can do and how I need to be feeling to be able to maintain. It’s a metric for coachers. They can look at their runner and learn. It’s a predictor.”
On Monday, Ward will once again put his research to the test as he competes in the Boston Marathon.
Email: drob@deseretnews.com