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Monday, May 01, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
When Alfredo Vigueras called home last week, his daughter cried.
Vigueras could barely bear it. Usually, he and 4-year-old Ana are inseparable. His wife, Katrina, is an agricultural researcher, so Alfredo cares for their daughter all day, taking her to favorite places like the park or the library. It's an excellent arrangement for an elite runner with a family, because he can run in the morning, before Katrina goes to work, and again after she gets home.
"He is really good with her," Katrina said. "He is the one who is really bringing her up."
Elite-level marathoning and family life, however, don't always mix. So Vigueras spent six weeks in March and April training in seclusion in Mexico, where he grew up.
The tactic worked last year. Nineteen years after he started running, Vigueras finally won a marathon, and it happened to be the UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon, which was the U.S. men's national championship. So the victory turned out to be a double thrill for Vigueras, who received his U.S. citizenship two weeks too late to compete in the 1996 Olympic marathon trials.
He is hoping to sacrifice pays off again this weekend at the Olympic men's marathon trials. At age 37, he is among the oldest of the top contenders.
"I'm happy I'm still running when I'm 20 years old in the sport," said Vigueras, who just missed the A standard in Pittsburgh with a time of 2 hours, 14 minutes, 20 seconds. "I'm happy I can still run. This is my first opportunity to make the team, and I'm sure it's my last."
Why? Because when he made his final call from Mexico -- there isn't a phone in the cabin near his training site, so he went to his sister's specifically to use the phone -- Ana said, "I want to see you." And because he wants to see her, too.
"It's too hard," Vigueras said recently from his sister's home, less than a half hour after he talked to his wife and daughter. "She is so young -- I hope when she's older, she understands. It is just so hard. She cries, she says `I miss you ...' well, in about five days I will be back home."
For other reasons, too, his career is winding down.
Vigueras' lower back hurt so badly after the Pittsburgh Marathon last year that he couldn't run for almost two months. "Sometimes when I walked I would feel the pain in my back," he said. "Pushing my plate back at the table too hard, too."
When he finally began running again, Vigueras did only one mile a day. Then two. He had to miss the world championships because of his back, and he has competed only once since his marathon victory -- in last summer's Parkersburg Half Marathon, in which he finished seventh in 1:05:53.
"There's a big difference from when you are 20 and when you are 37," he said. "A world of difference."
So, in some senses, Vigueras is a mystery man at the trials. The country's other elite runners can't track him through his race results or even see for themselves what kind of shape he is in because he does so much on his own. Plus, he is so low-key and soft-spoken that he doesn't even like to talk about himself.
Not even Katrina, a native of Scotland who met Vigueras when she worked for a year in San Antonio, where he was living at the time, understood how good he was. Her first clue came shortly before her husband received American citizenship, when he finished second in a photo finish at the Los Angeles Marathon.
"I knew he was a good runner," she said. "But I had no idea how fast he was and what his potential was. The way he talks to you, he doesn't say he's an elite runner. He doesn't say, `I'm better than that person.' It was as much a surprise to me as anyone when he finished second in Los Angeles."
In keeping with his philosophy, Vigueras doesn't think he has an advantages over the field because he is the most recent winner on Pittsburgh's course.
"It could put pressure on me," he said. "But this year, I am concentrating only on making the team. I have confidence in my running and in my training. I respect all of the people who are going to be there, and I think we are going to have a fast race."
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