By Don McLean

Craig Godwin, 49, 5-10, 140, a five year veteran on the OTC Masters board, arrived in Eugene in 2003.  Previously, he attended Channel Island High School in Oxnard, CA, and obtained his college degree at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, "a not particularly distinguished runner at either," he admits.  Got a great job, but Los Angeles was driving him crazy.  He quit his job to move to Eugene, but on his last day the boss asks if he would continue as a remote employee, working at home in a man loft.

Good work if you can get it, we think. 

1.  Soon to be 50, you are licking your chops over some old, somewhat soft American age group records, such as the 25,000 meter on the track.  See http://www.usatf.org/statistics/records/masters_trackLDR.asp  

This is definitely a case of cherry picking some relatively easy records. Long distance track races used to be fairly common, with guys like Bill Rogers and Dick Beardsley still holding some of the American records, and Moses Mosop breaking the world records for 25K and 30K on the track at the Pre Classic in 2011.

But now even 10,000m track races are rare, and finding a record-legal track race longer than that is nearly impossible. That means I have to stage my own race specifically as a record attempt, making sure all the USATF rules are followed exactly. The race will need a number of volunteers and officials to do lap counting and timing. And of course a few other people crazy enough to race 62 ½ laps! 

Right now I’m working on finding a track we can use and setting a date.  Details will be on the www.OTCMasters.org website as they come together.

2.  Almost as important, you nearly died about six years ago, though just weeks before, at 43, you had just raced an impressive 33:11 track 10K.   Details, please.  Including that call to USATF from your near-death bed.

As a relatively young, fit, distance runner with no significant family history of heart problems, having a major heart attack was completely unexpected. But I was a high stress guy, burning the candle at both ends and the middle. I was at the on the road at the tail-end of a business trip when it happened.  I got a stent placed in my heart and spent 4 days in a hospital before I was allowed to return to Oregon.  If I hadn’t been a lifelong runner, the heart attack likely would have killed me.

At the time I was pretty certain my running days were over, but being fanatical about being anti-PED’s, I called the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from my hospital bed just to make sure all the drugs they were giving me were okay.

Physically I bounced back surprisingly quickly from the heart attack, and was running well enough to be national 10,000m champion in my age group a little over a year later in 2012. My three foot surgeries in 2013, 2014, and 2015 were actually much harder to recover from and I’m only now getting back to full strength.

3.  Of course runners are often strange, obsessive, compulsive, weird, quirky, and invariably funny people.  You have some stories.

I think all runners have some great stories! What I enjoy most about the OTC social events is people sharing the interesting things they have experienced over the years. I have enough after all these years to fill a book - but many I probably wouldn’t want to put in writing!

4.  Proudly, you reported, you were drug tested for the first time in the past month.    The story, please.

After over 600 races I had never been drug tested. But I ran 4 national championship races in 2 weeks and won 3 medals, so that greatly increased my odds of being picked. Right at the finish of the USATF indoor mile a group of testers and escorts pulled me aside. It was a long, interesting, and sometimes uncomfortable process. It was the exact same process and officials who test the top athletes across many sports, so it was actually kind of cool to experience and feel like an elite runner briefly.

5.  As it happens, Craig and Don were both in the Santa Clarita Runners (in California), and after that we became Oregon Track Club members.  Board members at each.  Compare and contrast, please.

The Santa Clarita Runners is very much a traditional running club with training runs and road races. Especially back in 2003 when I arrived in Eugene, the OTC was mostly a booster club supporting U of O track and field - something that has changed somewhat in recent years. In the era around when I moved, Southern California was much more of a hotbed of elite track and field athletes than Eugene - again something that has changed. But the difference was that in Eugene track and field permeates everyday life, and there are actual fans here. The first meet I attended at Hayward Field was an emotional experience for me.  I had never seen anything like it before.

6.  Personal daily exercise routine?

I run 7 days a week, usually twice a day. First thing in the morning I’ll do any easy run, at least partially with my dog. At noon I’ll do a second run, either easy or hard depending on the day. I rarely do any stretching, cross training, or weights. I almost always train alone, which keeps me from overtraining, but also because it is hard to fit a group run into my schedule. I just keep it simple and run what I want, when I can.

7.  Advice to your younger self at 20 years?

I’ve often wondered how good I could have been if I trained more seriously when I was younger. Through high school and college, 35 miles was a really good week for me and I often did a lot less. Age 20 would have been the perfect time to work up to the level of training other college runners were doing. But I didn’t have the right mindset back then to dedicate myself to running, and I was busy having other adventures. I think I was always destined to be more competitive as a masters runner.

8.  Quotes you live by, or quote often?

“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”  I’ve followed that advice many times.

9.  What special moment or insight caused your devotion to running?

I wasn’t an obviously talented runner. I was born with both feet twisted 90 degrees to the left, and wore braces as child to twist them back to something approaching normal. That explains my unusual running form, which actually used to be much worse than it is now.

Going into high school, I wanted to play football but I wasn’t any good and I had bad knees. I didn’t know what cross country was. I incorrectly assumed the races were like what we did in PE class - run to the playground fence and back for maybe a minute total distance. But being an unpopular sport, all you had to do was show up and you were on the varsity XC team, so that is what I did. I was terrible, so by track season I tried unsuccessfully to be a pole vaulter instead.

The breakthrough for me was a 2 mile race where I accidentally went out much faster than I ever had before and kept going taking over a minute and half off my PR. It was then I realized how hard I could push myself, and I made the jump in one step to actually being competitive. Learning to love training and running in general was a more gradual process, but I always loved to compete.

10.  How do you coach mental toughness?

I think that is the hardest thing I try to do as a coach. It is especially difficult with the runners I coach remotely. Some people have it naturally and as a coach the struggle instead is to get those athletes to hold back and save it for the race. But many people just aren’t wired to embrace the extreme discomfort that comes with getting the absolute maximum out of their body. I do a lot of work on getting the athlete in the right mental state before a big race. There needs to be a healthy dose of an “I’m either going to win this race or get carted off in an ambulance” mentality. I also assign a lot of race simulation workouts - not as hard as a race, but long grinding efforts to develop a feel and a tolerance for what the race itself will be like.

11.  In your recent years, what has become more important and less important?

I’ve learned to slow down (in life - not in running!), relax, and take things less seriously. Having a largely stress relate heart attack certainly caused me to reset how I approach life.