Interview with Matt McCue
Author of An Honorable Run

According to your website, you’re still running 10 miles per day. What kind of racing shape are you in now? Do you plan on competing at any major events?

I think I’m in pretty good shape…not razor-sharp racing shape, but that’s understandable because I haven’t raced since college. After college, I was mentally and physically burned out from the intense year-round racing. I needed a break, so I kind of took all of the energy and competitive drive from racing during high school and college and poured that into publishing An Honorable Run.

The running I do these days is gentler than it used to be. However, at Colorado, easy days were often 10 miles a day, so I figured that I could put in that amount of mileage every morning because it’s not nearly as hard as averaging the 15 miles a day at altitude that I was used to in Boulder. I have always wanted to run a marathon, so this fall I’ve decided to do my first. I didn’t register in time to run New York, so I’m creating my own marathon. It’s the inaugural ‘Matt McCue Marathon’. I’m having a bit of fun with it, but I also want to complete the 26.2 miles and feel strong. In a nod to how the New York City Marathon course used to be, I wanted the course to be pretty simple, so I’ll do two laps around the perimeter of Central Park (6 miles each) and then four loops around the Great Lawn (.55 miles each). Then finish with two more 6-mile loops around the perimeter.

As you could tell by the Olympic Trials marathon results, it’s a tough course, with lots of rolling hills that steal any momentum. I’ll have a friend of mine out there handing out water. If all goes well, I hope to do my marathon every fall for the next 50 years.

Have you “peaked” as a runner yet? Or do you think you could beat any of your college times?

I like to think that every run, I’m a little fitter than I was the day before. (Whether that’s true or not is another question.) I might not be as spry as I once was, and, being in New York, I don’t have the trails and mountains like I did in Colorado, nor do I have the time and resources—the three hours every afternoon to train and the training room to ice and get a massage. But I have the knowledge I’ve gained, and I balance hard and easy days a lot better than I used to, giving me hope that I can still PR in the future. In terms of my body, it’s the tautest it’s ever been, thanks to an emphasis on core work and four years of high mileage keeping it trim.

A lot of young runners get hooked in junior high or high school, then the next obvious step is college, whether DIII or DI. But many successful runners wonder about what to do after college. Do you have any advice on where to focus that energy once out of college competition?

That’s exactly what happened me. I graduated from CU, needed a break from serious racing, but still had all of this competitive energy. I would suggest that people follow their passions, and often those are things one couldn’t do during school because all of their free time was invested into running. I focused my drive on An Honorable Run.

Even better, there was my former teammate and good friend Eric Heinonen. During his senior year, he ran on the national championship cross country team at Colorado. Instead of racing professionally, which he thought he might do, he joined the Peace Corps and for the two years was stationed in Moldova. While there he started a project to build athletics field, a basketball court, and a small track for the school where he taught. It took a hell of an effort and he faced many obstacles along the way, but the lessons he learned from running—to not give up, for one—helped him do some good in this world.

The Fight Club sounds like an amazing place to live and grow as a runner. What did you guys eat to maintain the massive amount of calories you were burning?

Good question. People are always intrigued by what runners eat. It seemed like Dathan, the Torri, and I were always eating cereal. We had five shelves full of every kind you could imagine—both whole grain and sugary—and it looked like a mini version of the supermarket aisle. We’d buy a gallon of milk and we’d go through it in 2-3 days. To keep our iron count from dipping too low, we ate a lot of red meat, like steak and burgers 4-5 times a week. Dinner might be a plate-sized steak, a baked potato, sautéed spinach, and bread with butter. I’d eat ice cream every night, often with scoops of peanut butter on top. Jorge and Ed drank a lot of Coke. We didn’t drink alcohol, so it was hard to replace all of our burned calories. One of the things that might surprise people—it surprised me a bit—was that Jorge, Ed, and Dathan ate a pretty normal diet. No crazy things like bee pollen or fish oil. A multivitamin was their only real supplement.

What about other activities…early to bed? Any time to study?

We’d often host giant raging keggers from dusk to dawn on Saturday nights…no, just kidding. We definitely went to bed early compared to our college classmates. Lights were usually out by 10. We had a hot tub, so we’d often go in there at night. You could look out and see mountain ridges in every direction. We’d use the creek for ice baths. We had a big screen TV and for a while we were getting satellite TV for free, so we’d watch a new movie every night. I say this with no shame—we watched The O.C. religiously. For a while we also hosted a Sunday night dinner and we’d invite young runners on the team up for a home-cooked meal that we spent all afternoon making. BBQ’s happened quite frequently. We actually cleaned the place often. Every weekend we’d blast the stereo and go to work sweeping and scrubbing. Whenever any girls came over, they were always surprised that a house of all guys could be so tidy.

I saw that your former teammate Dathan Ritzenhein just set an American Record in the 5k. Any thoughts? And what was the 5k time you were proud of at the end of your book?

Dathan is the toughest runner I have ever seen. He has this ability to push himself to a physical pain that few people, I think, can reach. I always thought he had the ability and work ethic to run that fast. In the World Champs 10k, he had this intense look in his eye and I could tell his confidence had returned.

Here’s sort of a funny aside. He emailed me the morning of his American 5k record and congratulated me on the book. On that Friday, I had done an interview with Coach Joe Newton from York and the quote of the day on Letsrun was one from my article until Dathan ran his 12:56. I emailed him back later that night and, jokingly said, “Dathan, the one time my article is featured on Letsrun and you have to go and run the American record and steal my Letsrun thunder.”

The 5k time was nothing special, 14:57. It came around a day after the Big 12 10k, so a lot of people were hurting from doubling back. I was one of them.

In the book, during your freshman year you go to get your jersey and warm ups only to see Dathan and the Torres twins get a lot more gear than yourself. Do the guys on scholarship just get more gear or better gear, or how does that work?

Yeah, as I learned, the scholarship guys received a full set of gear and the walk ons received about half that. I understand it’s a function of college athletics and I was happy to get any CU gear at all. It’s just the way it happened. No one told me about the different “teams” within the team. It happened a few more times throughout college. I’d see my faster teammates wearing a new CU Dri-Fit shirt or pair of spikes that I had never seen before and was like, “Did I miss equipment day?” No, I just wasn’t meant to receive it. The whole idea of “Who has what” seems silly now, but, as a green 18-year-old, it took on a whole different meaning. I always read into it, probably too much. Like, if I didn’t get a new warm up suit, did that mean I wasn’t traveling to the next meet? Or was I being cut from the team? After a few years, when I had earned my stripes, Wetmore bumped me up to varsity and I got everything the fastest guys did, which was a big deal to me.

You made some big sacrifices to follow your dream to run with the Buffaloes, while as you said, your classmates were living for ski forecasts and internships. Any regrets?

Regrets? I really try hard to not look at it like that. I see it more as a tradeoff. I missed a lot of stuff normal college students get to do, like studying abroad and internships that lead to jobs. I moved to New York to find work as a journalist right after college and I was so far behind the people who were applying for the same jobs as me because they had worked for these magazines before, had connections, and I didn’t. So, it certainly would have helped me to have been in New York during the summers rather than training in Boulder. But, if you had told me that as a 20-year-old, there is no way I would have listened to you. To me, the trade off of doing anything else other than committing 100% of myself to the Colorado Buffaloes wouldn’t have been worth it. To answer your question: No regrets. How many people get to run for Coach Wetmore? He’s one of the two or three best distance running coaches in the country. I was fortunate.

You self-published An Honorable Run. Did you shop your manuscript to any major publishers first? What was the result?

I interned at Rolling Stone and worked on the business side of Vanity Fair for a few years, so I had some editorial connections and those people helped introduce me to a few big-time agents in New York. It was probably unrealistic to think that they would want to represent me, an unpublished 24-year-old. But there was just enough interest—they actually liked the story—to let me know a book might work. I had many conversations and meetings with the agency that did “The Four Minute Mile” and Michael Phelps’s new book.

But in the end they didn’t think there was enough of a market for An Honorable Run. I thanked the agent for his time, walked out of our final meeting, and asked myself, “Do I think people will read it?” I knew that two people—my parents—would, and I truly believed there would be more. (Although to actually have people I don’t know not only reading my book btw, but also writing me to tell me how much it meant to them is very humbling.) I think any stigma attached to self-published books should be gone these days. More of the industry is moving that way.

In the end, I decided it wasn’t really about how I got An Honorable Run published, but rather how people have reacted to it. So far the reviews and responses have been very, very good. Sports Illustrated recommended it! Of course, the problem now is how do I distribute it? It’s not like Barnes and Noble is knocking on my door. I’ve had a lot of success with running specialty shoe stores. They understand what I’m doing and the book has sold very well there. A coach from Australia ordered 11 books the other day. Another guy, an American who lives in Papa New Guinea, ordered a couple of copies. Never in my life did I think I’d be sending An Honorable Run to Australia and Papa New Guinea.

Can you give me your top five books of all time? Also, any plans to write another book?

Let me see…A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole because it makes me laugh out loud, Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe because it’s about my adopted hometown, New York, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner because it’s about my former home—the West. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because, as much Hunter S. Thompson loved his booze and drugs, he was a first-rate journalist, master storyteller, and a rebel. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger rounds out the top five.

I hope to write books for the rest of my life. I’ve been bitten by the storytelling bug and want to pursue that as my craft. I’ve met a lot of interesting character in New York, so possibly a book of short stories on them. There is a town in Iowa called Postville which had the biggest immigration raid in the country last year. A thick story of greed, corruption, politics, immigration, a rebel priest, and a town falling apart, that topic has a lot of legs.

What advice do you have for someone wanting to pursue a career as a writer? Has it been more difficult than training with the Buffs?

That writing is a lot like running. There are no secrets to becoming a good writer. You really have to do it daily to improve and it might take a few years before you start seeing the results you want. My advice would be to go for it—don’t let “no’s” get in your way. If you see a story, pursue it, even if you don’t have an assignment. My local butcher in New York City is Jeffrey, a fourth-generation proprietor of his family’s shop. He’s a gritty city character with a heart of gold, and my gut told me he had a great story. Turned out he did. How did I know that? I showed up at his shop one day and, after I bought my chops and ribs, I told him I wanted to write a story about him. I was dressed in a suit at the time, so, on the spot, he threw me an apron and butcher’s smock and for the next couple of weekends I worked in his shop alongside him.

Yes, the book has been more difficult than running with the Buffs. There all I had to do was run. Now I have to write the book, edit it, figure out how to publish it, publish it, market it, sell it, set up events, and cross my fingers that people show up at them. The hard part about writing is that you not only have to write a great piece, you also have to have a connection with an editor who will give you the time and look at it, and it also has to fit into the magazine’s or website’s schedule. There are so many factors you can’t control. You can write your best piece and it can be cut at the last minute because Michael Jackson died that day and the news follows him.

Any chance you will turn to coaching? It sounds like you have a lot of experience to share.

Yeah, that is something I want to do. Mark and Coach Brown certainly taught me well. They offered two different ways to go about coaching, and I’d pull from each of them. The truth that is that running changed my life, it’s given me a lot, and I love it. I want to share that feeling with a group of young passionate men.

What are Iowa City Regina’s chances this fall?

Good question. They are currently ranked third behind two very good teams. They graduated 8 of their top 11 from last year. The freshmen are contributing and those who were on JV need to fill in the varsity spots that are now open. Perhaps, more than victories, they will gain experience and confidence this year. We have a proud tradition. In the past 16 years, Regina has never finished below 4th place at the state meet. I hope they will meet that lofty standard again this year and then after that, who knows? Regina always peaks when it matters most.