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Monday, May 01, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
A decade after he first considered retiring from competitive running, two years after he fulfilled a life-long dream by competing in the Olympics and a year after hamstring injuries forced him to drop out several races, everything fell into place for Keith Brantly.
He won the 1998 UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon, which was serving as the national championship. Better yet, he ran a personal record, 2 hours, 12 minutes, 31 seconds. Still better, the race was offering a bonus to anyone who broke the American course record and, when Brantly did so with a time of 2 hours, 12 minutes, 31 seconds, he left Pittsburgh with a check for $100,000.
"Everything happened brilliantly," said David Martin, Brantly's coach. "And there aren't many times everything comes together in anyone's career -- you can count on one hand."
Brantly hasn't enjoyed another day like that one. But he didn't really expect to, considering he was 35 years old, and he isn't quite sure what to expect of himself Sunday, when he returns to Pittsburgh to run in the Olympic men's marathon trials.
"I was 35 and now I'm 37, and we know that athletes don't get better with age ... except Nolan Ryan," Brantly said. "I've had a really cool career. I mean, I look back at some of the things I've done -- which is hard, because I see a lot of things I haven't done -- but it really brings a smile to my face.
"I've done more things and lasted a lot longer than I ever thought I would. From that respect, it's a little selfish for me to ask, `I want to make one more Olympic team, run under 2:11.' Well, I can ask it, but it's arrogant for me to be angry if I don't get it."
Brantly thought getting to compete in the 1996 Olympic Games was an outstanding way to end his career. "Anything I do from here," he told himself, "is just gravy."
He struggled through his 1997 season and, when he entered the Pittsburgh Marathon in 1998, it was simply with thoughts of getting a qualifying time for the 2000 Olympic trials. What happened that day exceeded his wildest expectations.
"The main thing was I just kept the faith," he said. "I look back, and I think, `Gosh, this was one of those times I just dodged another bullet. I was able to pull it together one more time -- for no rhyme nor reason.'
"As you get older, luck plays more and more a factor," Brantly added. "Believe me, I'm not trying to trying to make my chances of making the team look less by saying I'm getting a lot older. I think I've gotten a lot wiser. Certainly, I don't make the same mistakes I made at 28, 29, 30. I'm much less impetuous. I'm able to control myself in races, not get involved in surging duels and stuff like that. In that respect, I've traded the physical for the intellectual."
Still, the physical matters a lot, especially in a sport like marathoning, in which the body has to hold up for 26.2 miles. For the past few weeks, back and hamstring injuries have hampered Brantly's training.
"If I don't have any pain in my back, I run like the wind," he said. "If I have pain in my back, it takes so much effort to stride out it's debilitating."
The hamstring problems are nothing new. The back problems are more recent but becoming constant. When he was younger, Brantly used to wonder if his knees would give out. He never dreamed his back would become a problem.
"There's not anything you can do about it," he said. "The doctors -- and believe me, I've got the best doctors -- say there's nothing anyone can do. You've got an industry that just caters to people with back problems. Acupuncture, chiropractors, crystals, magnets -- the bottom line is that while these may help in a tiny little way, you're really just buying time.
"I'm fine with buying time. The problem is, `Which one of these damn things is going to work?' "
All these little things have made Brantly face the truth: "I'm certainly not the athlete I was in '98."
For one thing, he doesn't recover as quickly from hard workouts. Once upon a time, his body could handle two hard practices per week. Now he's down to two in a 10-day span. So he has to start earlier to prepare for a race, and he tends to be more susceptible to injury.
"It's become a jigsaw puzzle," Martin said. "How little training can you do to be optimally fit without saying, `Gee whiz, I need to do more training' ?It's difficult to decide, especially when all around, everyone seems to be doing more mileage."
Brantly did, however, do fewer miles than any of the other contenders in 1998. And that worked out just fine.
Unlike most of this country's elite runners, Brantly has never worked at a traditional job. He decided early that he would be only professional runner -- "that way, I can never look back and say, `Geez, If I hadn't worked at McDonalds for three or four hours a day, maybe I would have gone faster' " -- but now he's starting to think about other career options.
He wanted no regrets when he finished his competitive running career, and no matter what happens Sunday, Brantly won't have any.
"There are many, many more things that I wish I had done and accomplished," he said. "But I just ran out of time. And ran out of ability. But I've very satisfied with the direction I took, and I'm very satisfied with the effort I put in."
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