NOW A MEDALLIST, CONFIDENT ROWBURY IS READY TO RACE
By David Monti
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission

BOSTON (05-Feb) -- Two years ago when Shannon Rowbury last raced at the Reggie Lewis Track & Field Center here, she was recently out of college and just getting over an injury.  Competing at the USA Indoor Championships for the first time, she was the surprise winner of the 3000m, sweeping to victory with a powerful 29.4 second final 200m.

"My coach always says once you go you don't look back," Rowbury told Race Results Weekly at the time.

Since that cold February day, Rowbury has had no reason to look any direction but forward.  Running in her specialty, the 1500m, the former Duke University star has won two consecutive national titles, finished seventh at the Beijing Olympics, and earned the bronze medal at last summer's IAAF World Championships.

"I think I have a higher level of confidence, just because it's my third year running professionally," Rowbury said in an interview here today.  "I've gotten used to competing with the best in the world."  She continued: "I feel like that this year I've come into it with a higher level of focus, that higher level of confidence. With that, there's a lot more responsibility to set higher goals and expectations for myself.  I like that.  I like that challenge."

Rowbury will be running the 3000m at tomorrow night's Reebok Boston Indoor Games at "The Reggie," as the arena is commonly known.  She'll be running in a solid field with Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba, Canada's Megan (Metcalfe) Wright, Britain's Hannah England, and her USA Olympic teammate Christin Wurth-Thomas.  Rowbury said she is ready to race, and that a fast time is definitely possible.

"So, there's a rabbit, I believe, to 12 or 1600," she explained.  "The first half of the race is just to kind of see how the race unfolds.  I'm hoping that it's a fast pace, and that there's a lot of girls going after it, and that when the rabbit drops out I have some girls to compete against to go for a fast time.  My PR is 8:54 from the same track two years ago.  I'm certainly capable of that.  If things play out well, maybe even something better.  We'll just see."

Rowbury hopes tomorrow's race will not just be a stepping stone to the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Doha next month, but also lay the groundwork for a different kind of track season than she's had the last two years.  Without a summer championship, Rowbury is hoping to be able to peak for some fast races and focus more on running for time.

"In talking to Coach (John) Cook we want to continue to practice the schedule for Worlds and Olympic years, to always be refining that," she said.  "We can really taper my peaking for a couple of fast races, whereas last year I had to focus on U.S. Champs and Worlds, and let go of some of the other races I would have liked to have performed well, but they weren't the two big ones.  So this year, we can focus my training on being my best at those races where there would be a good field and a good rabbit, and really let all the training from this year and last year shine through, because I didn't feel I had a chance to do that last year from a time perspective."

Rowbury is the only one of the Big Four USA middle distance women (Anna Pierce, Christin Wurth-Thomas and Jenny Barringer being the other three) who has not broken four-minutes for 1500m.  Last year, Pierce, the former Anna Willard, ran 3:59.38 in Zürich; Wurth-Thomas ran 3:59.98 in Rome; and Barringer ran 3:59.90 in Eugene.  Rowbury's best time last season was 4:00.81 in Zürich, just slightly slower than her personal best 4:00.33 set in Paris in 2008.  Rowbury, the only world championships medallist of the Big Four, savors being part of such a strong group.

"It's so cool to be part of a dominant group like that," she said.  "I've always been impressed by the sprinters, that the top sprinters in the U.S. are the top sprinters in the world.  I didn't see a reason why women's middle distance, why we couldn't be like that.  We have loads of talent, we have so many resources.  We have everything at our fingertips.  I think it was just a matter of putting it all together and believing that we could do it.  I'm definitely proud to step out on the track to have U.S. middle distance be recognized and to be pulling our own weight.  It's an exciting environment to be in."

Part of Rowbury's success is her balanced, and fun-loving approach to training and racing.  She now shares a home with Bay Area Track Club teammates Bolota Asmerom and David Torrence in San Francisco, and she trains regularly with both of them at three area tracks.  She also lives close to her parents, and the offices of her management group, Peter Stubbs Management.  She said that the whole set-up is empowering.

"We have a great group of athletes now to workout with," she said.  "So, for me, from a training perspective, it's been great.  I feel like I've gotten the best chunk of training so far, and just had a lot of fun doing it."

Things are a lot more complicated for Rowbury now than when she was last here in Boston racing --she now has her own website, a business manager and a much bigger endorsement deal from Nike-- but she seems to have no trouble retaining her passion for just running and racing.

"I hope to keep that joy of my profession through my entire career," she said.  "Because if you're not having fun, what's the point?  I try to do that."