Back on track for podium finish

Ian O'Riordan talks to the talented Geraldine Hendricken who, after showing great promise on the US collegiate circuit 10 years ago, has re-emerged as a possible medal contender at the European Championships next week

Ten years ago the whole bright future of Irish women's distance running could be traced to the east coast of the US. Between the States of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania a new breed of scholarship athletes were emerging, talented and already capable enough to take on the world.

Sonia O'Sullivan was coming out of Villanova University and on the road to stardom. At Providence College there were four Irish athletes who just set a world best for the 4x1,500 metre relay. In Boston College, too, there were several more Irish groomed to be champions - Anita Philpott, Natalie Davey, Geraldine Nolan and Sinead Delahunty. But the one who came closest to O'Sullivan on the US college circuit was Geraldine Hendricken. A clean-cut talent from Carlow and part of the Providence record breakers. A winner too.

But in the intervening 10 years most of those names disappeared from the annual ranking lists of Irish athletics. Some reached the end of the line and some were just left to lament their wasted talent. By the start of 2002 it was O'Sullivan alone who still carried championship medal hopes.

Then someone came back. At the end of May Hendricken ran two minutes 04.06 seconds for 800 metres in Tullamore and word was out of a return to form. She then ran 4:09.56 for 1,500 metres, an improvement of some seven seconds on her previous best set in 1994. From there it went to 4:05.72 in Lausanne and a stunning 4:03.18 in Monaco and suddenly only O'Sullivan had ever run faster on the Irish all-time list.

Now she goes to the European Championships in Munich next week as a possible medal contender over 1,500 metres. At 32 years of age it all sounds like an athlete's dream comeback but talk to Hendricken about it and it all sounds like a logical progression.

"I was definitely ready to quit last year," she says. "I was having such a bad time. I ran five races in total and was sick with a virus for half of the year. It was very hard to get back into it come September and October. I was still coughing most of the time and had this virus in the lungs. I was getting fairly fed up.

"And my love of the sport was going away. It was just too hard to do it. But I suppose I was like Mick O'Dwyer. Just when it's time to walk away you can't do it."

It was a friend in Carlow, football coach Bobby Miller, who kept her thinking about the sport, told her she was too good to quit and an inspiration to the Stradbally club where she helps out with the fitness training.

But the thought of slogging through the distance training was still too much. So she forgot about 3,000 and 5,000 metres and started thinking like a 1,500 metre runner, and training like one too. "I always had my own ideas about what a 1,500 metre runner should train like. And it would have differed from what all my previous coaches would have taught me to do. Most people go out and do, say eight or 10 times 400 metres in around 68 or 69 seconds, with maybe a minute and a half recovery. And that's fine, because in most races you'd be lucky to run 68 seconds laps.

"But I had the feeling you should be going a lot faster. As fast as possible really, say 59 or 60 seconds, but lowering the volume as well. That's what I changed over to in April. And doing sessions as well like 12 times 200 metres. I wouldn't have been doing that before. And I do that with the guys in the club now because there's no way I could do it on my own."

It wasn't planned this way but Hendricken is practically back to where it all began, running for fun at school and then Providence and making it a winning hobby. She spent the last year teaching in Dublin but the long commute from Carlow and all the sacrifices in between were worthwhile.

"I did have to cut back on the socialising and things like that. I'd say on a scale of one to 10, last year I was probably socialising nearly at 10. Now I'm down to around two. People are starting to notice now as well. I was up paying my parking fines the other day in the county offices, and they asked me if I was the runner.

"It's not as good as the four years I spent in America but I am enjoying the buzz. And it's much more like a hobby now. I train when I want to. Before I would have been thinking about training as soon as I woke up. And I'd plan everything around training. It's more the opposite now.

"And I'm not going down the road of a full-time athlete. I've never got a grant before but then I've never deserved one. I may be entitled to one now but I wouldn't be able to live on it. I must have expensive tastes. So I'd always have to work as well."

Even in those US collegiate days running was never obsessive. She studied biology at Providence and never missed a class, and was no stranger to the late-night track parties that were the bane of coach Ray Treacy (brother of John). Success came easy and she reckons she was on the road to the Barcelona Olympics when she graduated in 1992 before injury got in the way.

"They were great times in America. And it definitely made me. I got disciplined. I got tough. I learnt how to train really hard and I learnt how to race. I nearly got disqualified in my first major indoor championships for pushing the race favourite out of her way, but when you race in America you learn how to get your place and you hold onto it."

The high point was her NCAA indoor title over 3,000 metres in 1992. Outdoors, too, she was second to O'Sullivan, who ran a personal best of 8:56 to Hendricken's 9:02.

"We raced a lot and I did get ahead of Sonia a few times. But she was mostly coming back from injury then. I mean she would beat me much more obviously. And the world relay record was another high point, and I felt I had made it to world class after that year."

A knee injury in 1992 was the first setback, and she was sidelined for much of 1994 as well. She made the European Championships in Helsinki that year but got knocked out in the heats. From there it went rapidly downhill.

"I was back in Ireland in July 1995 when my father died and it all started to go wrong then. It was just too difficult to continue at that level. The family started to become more important and then I went back to college in Dublin in 1996. It wasn't like America anymore where everything is on a plate for you. It just wouldn't come together for me."

Now all the regrets have been buried and she's looking forward to Munich: "It will be hard out there. I could run well and still finish 10th or 12th. I just didn't want to drop off and die. I suppose we're used to watching Irish athletes on the TV near the back of races, and dropping off. I've been thinking about that and I'm determined not to let it happen."