From being a stand out runner for Huron high school, to being a decorated runner at SDSU, Rod DeHaven is one of the most well known running athletes in state history. And this doesn't include his olympic appearance in Sydney, Australia, or his sixth place finish in the 2001 Boston Marathon. He's now coaching cross country at SDSU, a place he's called home for the past 17-years.
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He's traveled the world. He's run thousands and thousands of miles, from running famous marathons in the Twin Cities, Chicago, Boston, and of course, the Olympic marathon in Sydney, Australia. He still has a South Dakota high school state track record. He has a Howard Wood Field Stadium record, and he has a Howard Wood Dakota Relays record which still stands today. And after all of this, he is still a successful track coach at South Dakota State University. Our guest today is Huron native Rod DeHaven. Rod, welcome to In Play.
Thank you, Craig, for having me on.
You know, some people are just born to run. Sorry for the Springsteen song reference there. But you started running at the age of 10. How did you get interested in running at such an early age?
The Huron public schools had a grade school track program that occurred that spring, and I think grade five would have been my second year of doing that. In the apartment complex that I lived in, there was a young man who was an eighth grader who was going to run the Jackrabbit at 15, and that sounded really cool to try and run that far and get a few training runs. I think I topped out at maybe four miles, and we went after it and got maybe 11 miles. Had to walk a bit, ran a bit, all that kind of stuff, and finally made it across in about, oh, maybe two hours and 40 minutes or so, so it took a long time, but I was pretty sore. And my mother was pretty concerned about what that might be doing to my body. In retrospect, I don't advise 10-year-olds running 15-mile road races. But I was definitely hit and definitely at that age, I was probably... That was 1978, so I was definitely influenced by watching the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and specific seeing the marathon on TV and probably even I think I was playing, of course, the McDonalds game things when you try and get the right thing for fries or burgers or whatever they were doing. So yeah, the influence of television and witnessing that Saturday afternoon marathon certainly had an impact on me.
So during your middle school years, you were still dabbling with running long distance?
Yeah, traditionally, the Jackrabbit at 15 was right after the track season, and traditionally would have included a lot of high school kids coming right off the state beat and because of its ability to draw some of the top road racers in the Midwest, I think a lot of high school kids were attracted to it. So did the race, I think, every year up until... my junior year in high school was the last year i did it as a high school student, and it got better. A lot of times, the last three miles were always a struggle, as you could see the canopy out in the distance. But I wasn't quite as sore as I was after that first time back in '77 or '78, whatever year I did it.
Was cross-country in the fall and track in the spring? Were those the only sports you were involved with in high school, or did you dabble in anything else?
I think I played basketball in the seventh grade and maybe didn't finish out the year, and then of course, I was one of those kid who still thought he could play but certainly wasn't on a team and really couldn't play. I think all my high school coaches probably could have schooled me pretty easily most of the time, especially after if we were going to wager any money, I'm sure they would have upped their game and took me to the cleaners, so...
1984, though. State track meet. You run the fastest time ever in the 1,600 meters. Just over four minutes and nine seconds. What was that day like?
The one thing with that spring in particular was kind of a long winter that delayed the start of the track season, seemed like probably maybe the first three or four meets canceled, and finally got some luck from with a meet maybe in Pierre, and then ran Howard Wood and ran fairly fast, and then it was very windy on Friday, so maybe kept me from running significantly hard in the Open 2,300-meter run, and I think we won the 4x8, which was a lot of fun. And got a perfect day on Saturday, so I just decided let's go for it, and I think was out in 61 seconds, and just kind of held on after that, and then once we got to a lap to go, maybe it was I know I needed another 61 to break 4:10, and that was a goal, and go tit done, and yeah, that was I guess it was kind of a good way to cap off high school career.
It's been 38 years, Rod. Kids today, we all know they're bigger, they're better, they're stronger, they're faster. So why has your record held out all these years?
I think a lot of it... Kids at that level took a greater chance, expect a lot out of them. And the way that the schedule was configured at that time, it wasn't possible to maybe do as the 800 as well as the 3,200. So didn't attempt it or just didn't work out. And timing, weather, maybe peaking at the right time. Lots of different factors, but probably the weather is maybe the biggest thing. When you just think of what happened in South Dakota, difficult to run super fast. You're battling 15 to 20 mile an hour wind, as we've seen this month in this state, so...
When it came to college, SDSU and Nebraska, I know, where amongst the schools you considered. Were there a bunch more?
Oh, there were others, but I didn't really seriously entertain them. And the recruiting process was a lot different then. You have coaches who send you letters, and they kind of relied on you sending the postcard back so they could hunt you down or via phone.
And yeah, I just hadn't really run that fast to elicit a lot of attention outside of the Northern Plains, and Jay Dirksen, who was the coach at Nebraska, was aware of the difficulties of running fast in South Dakota, being a South Dakota State coach for a long time, and yeah, I think Indiana University had shown some interest because Steven Heidenreich had been so successful for the Hoosiers back in the early '70s in kind of what would have been a golden age of high school distance running in the early '70s with Heidenreich and Schimmel and Jim Reinhart, and then South Dakota State, of course, when they had established themselves as a pretty good program and ultimately kind of a team environment culture and their overall goal is trying to win a national cross country championship were very alluring, but the big thing was just how well the guys got along, and that was really the deciding factor. Not being a financial genius, I would have not paid anything to go to Nebraska than paying to go to school at SDSU.
You still have a couple records at Howard Wood Field. You have a Howard Wood Stadium college men's record. 1,500 meters, which you did in 1987, and Howard Wood Dakota Relays record in the 5,000 meters, which you did a couple years after you got the record in the 1,500 meters. Surprised you still have those records when it comes to the college end of distance running with the 1,500 and the 5,000?
I think the one thing with the 1,500, because there hasn't been a lot of college championships with the NCC dissolving and don't know how many Northern Sun meets are going to host it there, but seems as though that meet maybe doesn't make a stop at Howard Wood like it used to, so that helps. Again, later in the season, chances are better weather, less wind and athletes being maybe on top of the game, and yeah, I think the 5K at Howard Wood, I had pretty good competition. I think actually that night, it might have been snowing, as Howard Wood weather can go, but yeah, my fitness level's pretty good, and I think University of Nebraska had a couple of men in that 5K that I think went on to be... they weren't All Americans in the steeplechase at Division I level that year. I think within one or two years after that, they did so, so it helped to be pushed that night, and I did certainly enjoyed competing at Howard Wood. There's no doubt about that.
When did you make that decision that you wanted to try to qualify for the Olympic trials?
When you're too dumb too quit shortly after college, then you get the question constantly, especially if you're working part-time, full-time, whatever, and people know you run a lot. "Are you in the Olympics? You're going to be in the Olympics?" And you know that it's not typically a serious question, but I think I'd done a lot of things that were successful, but the big thing, making the Olympic team, was certainly the gold star on the resume, and timing, again, was essential. It may not have been the deepest time in U.S. history in terms of the marathon.
A hot day, and I played it conservative enough to allow me to come through in the end, and that's a huge part of it. Unfortunately, the Olympics games didn't go as well as the trials did, but making that team is certainly something I'll be very fond of.
1988, you qualify for the trials, 1,500 meters. What happened that year?
The Olympic trials were late July, and as a college student that went through... I think I registered in the spring of '88 but still ran a number of races. It was just difficult for me to stay focused, and there weren't a track races in the upper Midwest in the month of June or July and had to rely on time trials solo, and those that remember the summer of 1988 also remember it was a scorcher in the prairie, and that didn't help with training either, as somebody who insisted on ... trying to keep working a job at the same time as training for the Olympic trials. Yeah, led my heat for most of the race and then just got rolled by seven or eight guys at the end who were very thankful that I took the heat out very hard and let them all advance to the next round.
You tried again in '92 and again in '96 but didn't make the trials. What kept you going to keep running during those years? Because you didn't have a coach. You were self-coached this whole time, right?
Right. '96, I did run in the Olympic trials, and I think I was 10 in 10K. Unfortunately, kind of developed an injury in the two months preceding that trials related to running in the Olympic trials marathon in '96 where I ended up dropping out. And I think after '96, just figured out a way to train a little bit more efficiently and had a good marathon in Chicago in fall of 1998 and was still making a little bit of money, running maybe somewhere between 25 and 30,000 a year typically. And then with that run, I was able to run the world championships in 1999 in Seville, Spain. Finished 21st, and even though the time wasn't very good, kind of felt like, if you can be 21st in the world championships, maybe there's certainly enough of a carrot there to keep going at least for another year and get to the Olympic trials and see what happens.
It seems in '98 was maybe a turnaround for you, because you were the first American to finish, and you did win some cash for that. Were you training more or less in '98 when you compare it to what you were doing in '92 and in '96, trying to make the Olympic trials there?
I think in '96, I made some mistakes training-wise and ended up getting hurt. I think I had taken a couple weeks of absence from my work and really tried to jack up on miles and didn't really maybe think it through. Clearly, I'd run on a half marathon in San Diego and then piled in a huge mileage week right after that on account of... set me back and ended up getting dinged up and set me back and then dropped out of the marathon trials, and then it bugged me a bit, adding to the track trials as well as i could tell that my body was not in the best of condition, and it showed I could get through one round and make the final, but in the final, I really was a non-factor, as they like to say, so there does come a point where I kind of had to either really up my game or probably pull it off to the sideline, and I used to joke that if you had three bad races in a row, it was time to retire.
May of 2000, it's the Olympic trials in Pittsburgh, hotter than you know what that day. It was humid, and runners all know that you don't like hot days when it comes to running. But you want it and you qualified to be on the Olympic team, and you won a bunch of money that day, because you needed to place pretty high, if I remember, to qualify for the Olympic team. What was that day like running in the heat and knowing what you had to do to try to qualify for the Olympics?
The tough part of it was heat that just kind of came out of nowhere. It wasn't a particularly warm spring, and as it turned out, it ended up being the hottest day of the entire calendar year in Pittsburgh, where it was almost 80 degrees, or it ended up being 88 degrees. At race time, I think the starting temp was maybe in the mid 60s and very humid, and ended up being close to 70-plus degrees by the time we finished, and again, just kind of stupid humid. And then given the other factor, I believe, the winner had to run under 2:14, and when the winner couldn't run under 2:14, that meant only the winner was going to go.
And that's what you did.
Yeah, I didn't end up running that, so instead of the normal three athletes, there was just run that was sent, and that was...
So you won a bunch of money. I think it was $75,000, which, of course, a lot more being that computer tech for that insurance company in Madison that you were working full-time. What were you feeling at that time? You had made the Olympics, but you got rewarded for a great job that day.
Yeah, I think the money was nice, but certainly the making the Olympic team was the crowning achievement and the big thing, and then certainly a lot of people that knew I ran a lot didn't realize maybe the level that I was running at, whether that be coworkers or people who lived in my neighborhood back in Wisconsin, and again, it was something you dream about and you hope for, and it worked out.
Let's talk about that flight from America going to Sydney, Australia, to represent the U.S. in the marathon. What was that flight like? What were you thinking about?
Yeah, as a marathon athlete, I was asked to go over, I think, probably 20-plus days prior because of the time change and all that kind of stuff, and they just wanted to shut down the processing center as well. So I had a lot of hard training left once I got over there, and so I was probably more concerned about how I was going to execute some of that in an area that was kind of foreign to me, and I think the workouts went well. The Opening Ceremony was tremendous, just the awe of 120,000 people and 200-plus countries and walking in with Tommy Lasorda, all that was a big deal, and again, I'm just super fortunate to have been able to experience that.
How about the day of the marathon? Was it bad timing that there was an illness involved the day of the marathon?
Yeah, looking back, certainly mistakes maybe in things that where I ate from, still ate in the Olympic Village, which was obviously they shut that down towards the end of the Olympic Games, and I think a lot of food maybe wasn't as fresh as maybe what it would have been earlier, just rookie-type mistakes. But rookie Olympian mistakes I shouldn't have made and should have used probably some of those funds that I won at the trials to think about private lodging, private food, all that kind of stuff. And great experience being in the Village and can't go back and change that, and yeah, just the way it worked out. Afternoon races sometimes can be a little tricky, because obviously, you eat a little bit normally. In marathon races the morning of, you wouldn't eat very much, so chances your stomach's going to be super irritated would be pretty low.
You still have the uniform that you wore that day?
Yep, yep, still got a lot of gear. Certainly the U.S. doesn't short you on things that they provide for you.
Did you talk to any other coaches or athletes about your training prior to the Sydney, Australia, Olympics in 2000?
Mm, not particularly. It was a pattern I followed prior to the Olympic trials and felt pretty confident that I would be in a good spot, and everything indicated that I was pretty fit. I had done a half marathon on two and a half, six weeks out, and it went very well, and really thought I was capable of at least maybe a top 15 finish. I didn't really harbor crazy aspirations I was going to be in a medal hunt but knew I was going to be realistic and still think that was probably likely, seeing the results of the race.
For a long time, Rod, you were running more than a hundred miles a week. How did you handle the injuries when they came, and which injury was the most nagging for you during this whole time?
Typical injury stuff would have been kind of low back, groin, glute type related stuff, so usually it was a combination of chiropractic and physical therapy that was able to get me past that, but sometimes it took longer than I would have liked, and certainly those are the setbacks that you deal with as an athlete.
Were you a quick healer, for the most part?
As you get older, not so quick.
I hear you on that. I was a runner about five years, late 40s to my early 50s. I ran five half marathons from 2007 to 2011, and in my training anyway, I had to have headphones and music on for my runs. When I didn't have music to get in the zone when running, I was awful. How about you, Rod? During those miles and miles and miles of running by yourself, no earbuds to listen to music, what were you thinking about during those long runs throughout the career?
Hmm, there's always plenty of stuff to think about. It wasn't anything that is very distinctive that I remember. I was fortunate at times to have people to run with, so conversation carried things along, and then some of the training venues in Wisconsin were scenic enough where you weren't looking off to a far abyss and thinking, okay, I've got a long way to go.
I was thinking that all the time. Oh, all those days you didn't want to run, did not want to run, but I was one of those guys that used Runner's World and used their training for a half marathon, since I didn't know any better. But it was fun. It was some of the best five years I enjoyed when I was running. I can't do it anymore, but it gets you, doesn't it? It's hard to get out of that system, but you did it for so many years.
Yeah, once you get into a groove and you get fit, it's a lifestyle that certainly feels pretty good and is certainly the feeling of accomplishment is always a big part of it as well.
If you were to do it all over again, would you train any different?
I think certainly things have evolved over the last 20 years, and some equipment evolved as well to help athletes do better and certainly see that as it relates to times now that a person has broken two hours for the marathon and that it is possible to make that happen, and yeah, there definitely are some changes in training, but I don't know that I would have been somebody that would have not tried to work a job the same time as running.
Rod, this is your 17th year as director of track and field and cross country at South Dakota State. When did you get that itch to coach? Or did you get persuaded to get into coaching?
I think it was a conversation with Paul Danger, who was the coach at the time at SDSU on the eve of what would have been SDSU's last Division II national cross country meet, and I was just playing 64 questions with him, and then he goes, "You sure ask a lot of questions. Do you ever want to coach?" And I hadn't really thought about it too seriously before then, but I certainly had time to contemplate it. I was trying to get ready for the 2004 Olympic trials, which I still thought perhaps I'd have a reasonable shot and was having some problems with my SI joint, and that clearly was going to heal in time. Thought more and more about potentially collegiate coaching, and Paul was pretty instrumental in continuing to feed that bug to me and instrumental in helping me ultimately get the gig at SDSU.
17 years. You've been conference coach of the year 13 times. Lot of success for Jackrabbit men and women. But what's been the biggest change that you've seen for you coaching over these past 17 years?
I think I don't have to be nearly as creative as I was when we didn't have a Sanford-Jackrabbit Athletic Complex, when your training venue in the dead of winter might have been the balcony of Frost Arena, compared to the ultra modern, ultra large Sanford-Jackrabbit Athletic Complex. I think that's the biggest thing, allowed us to kind of take some of the "what if?" factor out of things.
You were running a hundred miles a week. Has that gone away if you want to be in the marathon or whatever long distance you want to be? Is more miles better when it comes to training?
I think most world-class U.S. and world-class athletes who are running the marathon are going to run somewhere between 110 and 140 miles a week very consistently. I don't think that's changed too much. A lot of them go to higher altitude to do that as well, and that's the standard formula, and that's why you see athletes walking to Colorado and Flagstaff, Arizona, and other places of similar altitude.
Rod, you're in the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame. You're in the Jackrabbit Sports Hall of Fame. What does that mean to you?
It means I was very lucky I have an extended career that people noticed, for the most part, and those are big honors, and a lot of people helped me get to that point, and again, I was super lucky and super fortunate to have opportunities, and again, timing was a big pat of that.
Do you still run today?
Very irregularly. I've struggling with some heel problems at the moment and unfortunately not Plantar Fasciitis. Perhaps maybe a degenerative heel pad, but trying to work through that and hopefully be able to get back out there more consistently than what I have been over the last six months.
Have you ever run with the family? Did you get the wife and the three kids all out at one time and just go out for a 10-mile run? Did you do that at all?
No, no, not so much. Yeah, when my two boys were running, I really didn't get an opportunity to run that much with them, and they like running with their friends a lot more than they like running with me, so and that's fine. I mean, that's a big part of running if you can enjoy it particularly at the high school and collegiate level, there is the social aspect, being able to go out and run with your friends is a pretty big one, and don't fault on their offer doing that.
There have been very fun South Dakotans to run in the Olympics. Of course, Billy Mills won the 10,000 meters in Tokyo in '64. Have you ever met Billy Mills?
Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Mills a couple times, and obviously, he's a very, very iconic figure, and yeah, what he did was still one of the greatest sports moments in U.S. Olympic history when you think about what he was ranked coming in and his ability to win that gold medal in the way he did it.
What do you tell people today, no matter what their age is, no matter what their experience is, what do you tell them about getting into running and the best way to go about it?
Usually, I preach to them patience and consistency, that it will be difficult at first. It might even suck, but if you can be consistent with it, then it gets better and obviously more enjoyable at that point.
When you're standing there watching your athletes go through the motions at South Dakota State in spring track, and maybe there are some memories that pop into your brain of things that you did, is there one that always keeps coming back? Is it always the Olympic experience, or was there another race somewhere at another time that you think about, "Boy, I really was good that day"?
Yeah, there are a few races that obviously were good, and a lot of times those aren't races that I necessarily won, but there are a lot of races that a few stick out in my mind, running 3:40 in the 1,500 at the Division II national meet in '87 and losing to two guys who would be in the Olympics the following year for Kenya in Seoul, Korea, and one would go on to win the gold medal in that same event. That was a lot of fun. I certainly wished the result might have split, because I wasn't able to ever win a Division II outdoor title, but yeah, it was a very memorable race, and there are others like that, but yeah, I try not to dwell too much on what I did. It's more of like if I made mistakes and emphasize, okay, people make mistakes, and there's way we can potentially avoid making those mistakes now.
I did run the Mickelson Marathon. When I ran the Mickelson half, it was the beauty of the landscape. I tried to take it while I was running. Which place had the beautiful landscape that you go, "Wow, this is great" while you were still competing while running? Anywhere in the world.
In an actual competition, I'm not sure. I was fortunate to run plenty of races in Europe and obviously a lot of stuff all throughout North America. I guess, yeah, I never really paid too much attention to landscape during a typical competition, but yeah, very fortunate to get... Running was a great way to explore a lot of places in this country, and again, throughout North America and Europe, just to be able to go out and about and just kind of chart my own path and see things that maybe the normal tourist wouldn't necessarily see, so I think that's the one thing that I've always been fond about running that gives you a great deal of freedom to see things that again, maybe not be able to see from the car or even on a bike.
Last one for you, Rod. As a coach, with the program at South Dakota State, now that they have been Division I now for several years, what kind of an athlete do you look for? What athlete do you look for, and is it any different than when they were Division II? The kind of an athlete that can be a long distance runner.
I think just in general, not just distance runners but all across the track team, I think the types of kids that end up coming to SDSU haven't changed dramatically or are lost during a lot of the same hometowns pop out, is what would have popped out 30 years ago, and the difference now, obviously the facility helps a ton in terms of tracking maybe a little bit higher level of athlete, but a lot of those same kids have the same demeanor as kids in the Division II era had that maybe they felt as though they were looked over a little bit by our higher level programs and want an opportunity to compete at high level meets and compete against higher level competition, and that's what we hopefully are providing our top-end kids to be able to do that on a fairly regular basis. And we've been fortunate to have some All-Americans both in cross country and track, and kind of hope to keep going and build on that and win a few more Summit League titles, both in cross country and during track season as well.