Scott Has His Mind Set on a Carlsbad Comeback

Steve Scott in person is a little different from Steve Scott in a news release for the Carlsbad 5,000 meter road race.

Scott is in an unusual situation for this time of year, anyway. The Carlsbad race is Sunday, and Scott--who has twice run world 5,000 bests in it--is attempting to regain his championship rather than defend it. After three consecutive victories, he slumped last year and finished sixth as Yobes Ondieki lowered the world best to 13:26.

Which leads to the news release, which contains this quote from Scott: “I’m coming back with a vengeance this year. I was embarrassed in 1989 in front of my hometown crowd, and it’s a very important 1990 goal to win this race. It’s my race, I designed the course and helped create the event. I will win it again in 1990.”

Strong words, and they came up again one morning earlier this week. It was a postcard-perfect day, warm and sunny, and the light was shining through several large windows in Scott’s open, airy house.

The man who uttered those words was sitting in a chair in his living room with a 4-week-old boxer puppy on his lap. The puppy was sound asleep. Scott chuckled.

“Oh, that,” he said. “I think I’ll revise the press release a little. I think I’m physically and mentally ready enough to win. I’ll go out and race, and if I don’t win, I will have been beaten by a better person on that day.

“What I don’t have physically, I think I can make up mentally.”

Scott, the thinking man’s runner, has been working on his mental approach during the past year. He found himself a local coach who stresses the “mental and spiritual side” of running and even took some time off. Neither a San Diego-area coach nor a break had been on his itinerary before.

Not that anything was wrong with his way. Way back when, the four-minute mile used to be magic. Scott has broken it 125 times. He has run in two Olympics. Scott, 33, was the top-rated miler in the United States for 11 years before slipping to second, where he is now, behind Jeff Atkinson of Palo Alto.

He has a nice house, a high school sweetheart as a wife, two children, three dogs, two cats, two chinchillas and a boa constrictor named Larry. Larry Boa.

Trim and barefoot, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, Scott stretched in his chair and looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He talked, he smiled, he laughed.

You looked hard. It didn’t matter. At a glance, in these surroundings, you wouldn’t know that the past year has been one of his most difficult. Starting, roughly, with Carlsbad a year ago.

“Outside of last year, Carlsbad has always been fun,” he said.

Scott has always been proud of his consistency. He has never suffered a major injury. His body has always obeyed the commands he gave it, through interval training, long distance runs and weights.

“Faster,” said the mind, and faster the body would go.

“Harder,” said the mind, and harder the legs would pump.

But toward the middle of 1989, suddenly, his body wouldn’t go faster, and his legs wouldn’t pump harder.

“By the end of the year, when you’re supposed to be at your peak, I totally fell apart,” he said.

After finishing fifth in the 1,500-meters in the 1988 Olympics, he kept on pushing himself. He didn’t take a substantial break. He thinks he paid for it in 1989.

“Everything is different in an Olympic year,” he said. “The stress, strain, travel and expectations. I think it’s very important to take a complete break for a substantial period of time after a year like that.”

But he did not take that break. He finally hit the wall during the European season last summer.

“That’s where I’m supposed to shine, and I sputtered,” he said. “I was running on empty for so long, and finally I reached the end and just stopped.”

At first, he kind of semi-stopped. He would take a couple of days off, start training again, not feel right and then take a couple of more days off. He tried running intervals, he tried running distance. He was without a coach, drifting along, confused.

“You reach that point where there is nobody there to advise you, and you’re just lost,” he said. “That’s when I decided I needed someone.”

He had someone, Arch Jelley, from New Zealand. But it was a long distance relationship, and Scott wanted someone closer to home. So, when he was in London in July, he looked up Al Gilbert, a 62-year-old retiree who lives in Leucadia and formerly taught and coached at Chula Vista High School and Southwestern and MiraCosta Community Colleges.

Gilbert was in London to visit his daughter Cindy, a high jumper on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team and friend of Scott’s. Scott worked out under Gilbert’s supervision once in London and then came home and took two months off. He worked out in a pool six days a week during September and did nothing in October.

“It was wonderful,” he said. “The quickest month of my life. It was tough to get motivated again, which probably shows I should have taken more time off.”

But the Scotts were having an addition built onto their house and, well, they had to pay for it somehow. That meant Steve had to get back to work.

But during his time off, he learned a valuable lesson.

“There are situations where you have to force yourself to take time off,” he said. “In future years, I’ll take off as much time as I need.”

He called Gilbert when he was ready to start training again, and he now works in front of Gilbert a couple of times a week.

“We’re tackling more the mental approach to running,” Scott said. “A lot of form work. At the same time we work on form, we’re working on the mind. We’re trying to open up mentally and not be restrained by our own thoughts.

“We haven’t even come close to understanding it, but we’ve let it work for us, and I think that’s one of the biggest positive changes that have occurred this year.”

So once again, he thinks he is running in the right direction. And now, for the first time, he isn’t under pressure to repeat in Carlsbad.

“It’s probably a blessing in disguise,” he said of the 1989 loss. “It wasn’t a close loss; it was a blowout. Now, I can have fun. Last year, it wasn’t as much fun going into the race because I felt the pressure.”

Because Carlsbad is one of his pets, he talks world-class acquaintances into entering. But because the race does not pay appearance fees, only prize money, nobody is obligated to show up. So Scott will have a difficult time sizing up his competition until he steps to the starting line. He mentions Doug Padilla, who dominated the indoor track season this winter, and the kid from Algeria, Nourredine Morceli, a student at Riverside Community College who ran a personal best 3:55 mile in The Times’ indoor meet in February.

“But I don’t know if (Morceli) is coming or not,” he said. “Time-wise, I think it will take a 13:30-type effort to win. Maybe faster, depending on who shows up.”

Then he paused.

“I don’t worry about what everybody else is doing,” he said. “I have no control over that. My own mental fitness and preparedness for the race are the only things I have control over.”

Race Notes

The Elite Race, featuring world-class men and women runners, is set to start at 9:50 a.m. Among the men scheduled to run: Steve Scott, Doug Padilla (holder of U.S. bests at 3,000 meters, two miles indoors and 5,000 meters indoors), Terry Cotton (San Diego’s top road racer in 1988), German Silva (Mexican record-holder for 3,000-meter steeplechase), Hector Perez (Mexican 1,500-meter champion), William Musyoki (from Kenya, runner-up here in 1989) and Ignacio Fragoso (from Mexico, third last year). . . . Among the elite women expected: Elly Van Hulst (from Holland, winner of the European Indoor 3,000-meter championship), Patti Sue Plumer (a 1988 Olympian and winner of the 1986 Carlsbad 5,000) and Mary Knisely (3,000-meter national champion in 1986 and 1987). . . . The winners of the men’s and women’s races will each receive $5,000, plus a bonus if they run a world best. There is a total of $32,000 in prize money. . . . Other race times Sunday morning: Masters (40 and over) 7:30, women’s open 8:15, and men’s open 9. The races are expected to draw about 9,000 participants and 30,000 spectators.