(photo courtesy of Ben Bruce – bbjamin15 on Instagram)

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Our guest on the STRIVE-Cast is American professional runner Ben Bruce.

Ben has been running professionally for close to a decade and in that time has produced a series of impressive results across a number of distances and surfaces. Best known for his performances in the 3000m steeplechase, Ben has a personal best of 8:19.10 from 2011, and represented the USA at the World Outdoor Track and Field Championships in that same year. Ben has also represented the USA at the World Half Marathon Championships and the World Cross Country Championships, both in 2010.

Ben has trained with a variety of high level groups, including the Oregon Track Club, the McMillan Elite Team, and now the Hoka One One Northern Arizona Elite team under coach Ben Rosario.

Our conversation with Ben starts with his personal life, including how he and his wife Stephanie Rothstein-Bruce (also a professional runner) have balanced raising a newborn with still trying to train. We then cover his eclectic running background including 5 marathons in 2014, his ability to perform well in a variety of events, his specific training, and his hopes for the future.

We spoke with Ben the night before his 5000m race at the Stanford Invitational, where he would go on to run 13:35 – a great early mark as he begins his quest towards making the US Olympic team in the steeplechase for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Text highlights from our conversation are presented below.

 

On being a father and a professional runner

Before having Riley [out first child] life was pretty simple. We just did what we needed to do during the day. Sometimes that meant running together or other times one of us was going to the gym, and we got what we needed to do done and then met up and had dinner and watched a movie and hung out. With the baby now there’s a little more planning on who’s going to train when…. It’s something new but you just plan your schedule a little differently than you used to.

You just roll with the punches. Before you would have two runs on the schedule and if something happened or if something came up you would have either run later or maybe you missed a run here and there. I didn’t want to miss many runs – I don’t think I did as a whole, but once in a while you just change around the schedule.

When Riley was really little and Steph was getting around to getting back into training I did what I could to make sure she could get what training or what rehab she needed to do to get back to running. It takes a little more time out of the day but you get it done. Instead of playing a video game on my iPad in the middle of the day, I’d just get what work I need to get done when the baby’s sleeping.

[I probably got] a little less sleep. Now that Riley’s nine months old, he’s on a pretty good sleep schedule. For the most part he’s asleep by 6:30 PM and gets up at 6:00 AM. So that’s almost a twelve hour period where he’s down. In the beginning with any newborn it’s kind of chaos. They’re on no rhythm, no schedule. A lot of nights in the beginning I would sleep in a separate room.

 

On running “off the track”

Some track runners want to run track and only track and when the season is over, they just train to get ready for the next track season. I’m doing the same thing, except I explore other races and distances to break up the training.

A lot of the races or weird events that I’m done are in the fall or winter [between track seasons]. Most years from April through June or July, I’m just on the track, and once my track season is over, I figure I might as well go out and try something different – do some road racing, try a trail race, stuff like that.

On training and loving the sport

With training, I’ve always believed in consistent training over the years that can keep you fit and strong. When it comes to specific training and racing, if you’ve had a good amount of that over the years, you don’t necessarily need as much time to get ready for a specific event. So, if it’s track season and I’m running the steeplechase, I don’t need a 6 or 7 month period to slowly focus on everything; because if the training has been going well, you just put in a few workouts geared towards that event.

Running a lot of different events keeps me really excited about the sport. It’s always kind of a new challenge. The nerves I feel running a mile are very different than the nerves I feel running a half marathon. Because in a mile, those nerves are based around the question “Can I run fast enough to even hang on here?” Where standing on the line of a half marathon, the thought is – “Well, I know I can run fast enough, but can I run it long enough?” Those just bring in different sets of excitement and that keeps me coming back for more!

 

On winning 5 marathons in 2014

I didn’t start off 2014 saying “I’m gonna run 5 marathons”. That was never in the plans. I always thought when I make my debut [at the marathon distance] I’m going to go to one of the majors and run super fast, and each year for some reason I wouldn’t do a marathon. So, I got to the point where I just thought “I have to do one.”

So, I just picked New Orleans – it was a flat course and good to get my feet wet. With Stephanie pregnant and due in the middle of June, I didn’t want to do a whole track season just to have the baby come out a few days late and miss USA Championships anyway.

Then, coming from San Diego, I decided it would be fun to try to win that race [the Rock n Roll San Diego Marathon]. Didn’t really have a time goal there, just wanted to run to win and took care of that.

And then the plan was that after the summer, I’d focus on a fall marathon and try to run something pretty decent. So, we went up to Montreal. I was like, “Okay, my first two marathons, the weather was hot, not good to run a marathon. I’ll go to Canada at the end of September – it’s gotta be cool, it’s Canada, right?”

So, I had a really great summer training block with Scott Smith and Matt Llano. Scott Smith was 3rd at the US Champs at Twin Cities and he raced just a week after I did. But I went to Montreal and got – once again – hot weather, 70 degrees at the start. In Canada. At the end of September – which probably never happened before.

So, that planted the seed. Coach Ben [Rosario] and I were like “We’ve already run 3 Rock n Roll [marathons], it’d be kind of fun to see if I could get to 5 before the end of the year.”  Five just seemed like a good number. So, we went to St. Lous really quick and ended up in Vegas on the strip… I was glad to finally get to the finish, though, and be done with marathoning for a while.

 

On what’s next

The goal is 100% to be back at USAs this year, ready to go in the steeplechase. So, I ran at Texas Relays last week to just get one under my belt and then a 5k here tomorrow night in Stanford. And then, I’ll plan to do a steeple at Mt. Sac and then a steeple back here at Stanford for the Payton Jordan meet in the beginning of May. And then most likely just another Steeple at the [Hoka One One] Oxy Meet, May 14.

Then, a mile at the Festival of Miles Races in St Louis which Ben Rosario, our coach, puts on. So that’ll be fun to just go out and go about as hard as I can for about 4 minutes and see what happens. Then going to USAs!

Hopefully, by the time the steeplechase final lines up, I’m there and thinking I can be top 3 [and qualify for the World Championships team].

 

The week’s show is a great one, as Ben has tons of insight into the world of American professional running. Our conversation is great and in depth, at 52 minutes, so give it a DOWNLOAD and take it out for a run, walk, stretch, commute… whatever!