Published: July 19, 2008 11:44 pm            

St. Francis grad to compete in the Beijing Olympics marathon

Brian Sell’s other job isn’t so glamorous.

“I’m in the garden department – loading bags of mulch all day,” he said of his part-time gig at a home supplies store.

It’s not all physical labor. He spends some time selling riding lawnmowers – he knows a bit about them from

buying one of his own not too long ago.

He puts in about 20 hours of work a week but gets paid for 40 because he’s in a special program. It’s a nice job, for now, and the Home Depot even put a sign up outside, letting folks in the suburban Detroit area know that he works there.

“They put a banner up, but 98 percent of people don’t know who I am,” Sell said. “When you put that apron on, it’s like you’re a regular schmo.”

But Sell isn’t a regular schmo.

He’s a United States Olympian.

‘St. Francis is a big reason’

The Northern Bedford High School and St. Francis University graduate qualified for a spot in this year’s Olympic marathon by finishing third in the U.S. trials in November.

He’ll be in the field in Beijing when the men’s marathon is run on Aug. 24.

“(Making the Olympics) was a goal I didn’t think was possible in high school or college,” Sell said.

After finishing high school in 1996, he went on to Messiah College for two years. But it wasn’t until he headed to Loretto that he started to see some potential for bigger things.

“I saw the most improvement there,” Sell said. “I came in from Messiah running 50 miles a week. I went up to 100 a week at St. Francis and saw some of the most improvement of my career.”

Sell’s career continued to build as a member of the Red Flash.

As a senior, he was a Northeast Conference champion in the steeplechase, the 10,000-meter run and the 5,000-meter run.

He even was an All-American in the 10k that year and qualified for nationals with a time of 28 minutes, 58 seconds.

“The area up there and St. Francis is a big reason for where I am,” Sell said during a telephone interview from his home in Rochester, Mich. “The team was great. I had a great coach, and there was great chemistry. The mountains in Loretto had an effect, and we were tougher than a lot of the teams out there, and it was a good area to train.”

After a decorated senior year in Loretto, Sell moved to Michigan, where he’s been running as part of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project since 2001. He’s sponsored by performance running company Brooks Sports, which put 13 runners, including Sell, in this year’s Olympic marathon trials.

“I’ve just been training and doing what they told me to do the past seven years,” Sell said. “Getting an Olympian was one of their goals.”

‘A few big marathons’

Sell and his wife, Sarah, a nurse, welcomed a daughter, Lilly, 14 months ago.

At 30, he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be running competitively. Maybe there’s enough for the 2012 Games in London, he says.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about opening a running store,” Sell said, “but dental school is still probably my top choice.

“I’m probably going to go another year and run the New York and Boston (marathons) – just to try to run a few big marathons again – then hang it up.”

So Sell thinks about the future.

He knows one thing for sure: He wants to move back home.

He hopes to bring his family back to Bedford County, near Woodbury, where he grew up, and not awfully far from Lititz, Lancaster County, his wife’s home area.

‘Training with blinders on’

The Beijing Games have become a lightning rod for critics of China’s human rights record and supporters of Tibetan independence, with some groups calling for a boycott.

And there were concerns about air quality in China.

Sell says he blocked out the “what ifs” and focused on training and qualifying.

The president of the International Olympic Committee said a few weeks ago that outdoor events longer than an hour could be postponed as a precaution because of air quality in Beijing that is so bad the government is taking nearly 2 million cars off the road in the month leading up to the Games.

“I hope they don’t postpone it,” Sell said. “We’re training for that particular day. Everything is set to peak in late August. But that’s the second time I’ve heard about it.

“They’re talking about the Tibet thing, and protesting, and I’m just kind of training with blinders on and hoping for the best.”

Surprisingly, the air quality isn’t what’s on Sell’s mind as the Games near, even if a recent trip to Colorado Springs had him testing out a pollution mask for possible use during the race.

“We have a training camp in South Korea that is out of pollution central,” he said. “There’s no real way to combat it or anything; it’s kind of a leveler for everybody.

“The heat and humidity will be a factor, and that’s something that I’m working on. We’re going to see what I’m capable of in 80- to 90-degree heat, since that’s what we’ll deal with in Beijing.”

To simulate the conditions, Sell and a few teammates are heading to Florida on Aug. 1 for two weeks of training. It’s not that Sell isn’t used to humidity, it’s just that the Sunshine State provides much more of it, at much warmer temperatures.

‘A few more perks’

Brian Sell speaks in the language of runners: Race results are spoken of in a shorthand that could be mistaken for a locker combination.

His personal best in the marathon? 2:10:47.

That’s two hours, 10 minutes, 47 seconds for the rest of us. He ran that at the Chicago Marathon in 2006.

The effort garnered him a sixth-place finish. He added a fourth-place finish in the Boston Marathon – one of the world’s premier races – that year by clocking a 2:10:55. He was the second American runner to finish the event.

Sell has won a couple of races this year, which he says will help prepare him for what is likely to be a very strong field in Beijing.

He set a course record at the ING Miami Half Marathon in late January (1:03:46), shattering the old mark by almost four minutes.

A trip to Texas produced a win at the AT&T Austin Half Marathon in February (1:04:11), and he also took the River Bank Run 25k in May (1:15:08).

“When you’re an Olympian, you get more respect,” Sell said.

“The Miami and Austin halfs, they were off the radar any other time, but they paid my way to go down there and race. The main reason they did that was to be able to say they have an Olympian in the race.

“You get that ‘Olympian’ tag and you get a few more perks.”

‘I have a set plan’

Sell isn’t likely to be shown on TV leading the Olympic marathon from start to finish.

It’s not his style.

The Beijing course, however, fits his style – it’s mostly flat.

“I have a set plan,” says Sell, who will let the leaders get away early in hopes of reeling them in later. “I want to go halfway in 1:07 and try to pick it up the second half. The course will benefit me because it is so nice and flat and I can get in a rhythm.

“At the trials, at the halfway point, I was eighth or ninth, almost a minute out of third place. At Helsinki (for the world championships in 2005) I was 60th at the halfway point and I finished ninth. I think China will be as bad, if not worse, because of the heat and humidity.”

So he’ll make the trip to Florida to prepare. And it’s likely he’ll still be there as the world turns its attention to the opening ceremonies.

“I’m actually going to keep it low-key,” said Sell, who will be joined in China by Sarah and his parents, Ed and Lois Sell. “I’m missing the opening ceremonies. I’ve heard it’s a lot of hours on your feet, and I have some key workouts about two weeks out.

“I’m not going to get there until the 12th or so, and we race on the 24th. It’s going to be more low-key for me than some of the guys that are going in and will be there the whole time.

“It’s worth it to run better.”

Sell is required to be in the athletes’ village at least five days prior to his event.

“It’s just trying to get on the schedule over there, getting used to the time difference,” he said.

“The other trips in the past, it took a solid week to get used to the time difference.

“Leading up, it’s kind of relaxing and just getting ready.”

‘It shows we’re all human’

Qualifying for the Olympics should be among an athlete’s happiest moments.

But it wasn’t quite that way for the three members of this year’s marathon team.

Trials winner Ryan Hall, runner-up Dathan Ritzenhein – Hall’s rival since high school – and Sell had only a few minutes to revel in their accomplishment before they were hit with a massive dose of reality.

One of the favorites to make the team, Ryan Shay, had collapsed about 51/2 miles into the race. The 28-year-old, in peak physical condition, was pronounced dead 40 minutes later.

The culprit was determined to be an enlarged heart, among the most common causes of death for athletes younger than 30.

Shay’s death was hard for Hall, who had just set a trials record with a 2:09:02, but had to deal with losing his former training partner. Hall also was close to Shay’s wife, a former teammate in college.

The tragedy also sent Sell to the hospital, after his wife insisted he get checked out.

“I went and got some tests done,” he said. “It was kind of sobering in the fact that Ryan was so fit and something like that happening was very disturbing.

“It shows we’re all human.”

‘Stepping it up a notch’

Sell is competing in only one event in Beijing, but that doesn’t mean it’s your only chance to see the star.

He’ll be one of a half-dozen athletes featured in television spots for Home Depot.

“They flew me out to L.A. for all of 18 hours to film,” he said.

The quick trip was made to help promote Home Depot’s Olympic Job Opportunities program, of which Sell is a member.

He’s been in the program for 21/2 years, working about 20 hours per week but getting paid for 40, plus benefits.

It’s a good program for Sell, who uses his work shift to break up his training runs.

He’ll roll out of bed by 6 a.m. and is out the door by 7. He’ll put in about 14 miles in that workout, spending an hour and a half or two hours in training. He’s home by 9 a.m. and at work by 10.

Slinging mulch and selling mowers takes the Olympian until mid-afternoon; he gets home by 3 or 4 p.m. and back on the road shortly after. This time he’ll go about eight miles.

He finishes in time for a shower and dinner, followed by a little family time until 8. He’s in bed by 9 – and ready to go again the next day.

One day a week, he does just one training run, but that’s because he’ll put in about 22 miles.

“We do a three-day cycle,” Sell says of runs with his Hansons-Brooks teammates. “We’ll do a hard workout, then two days easy, which is as fast as the fastest guy runs out here. And there’s a lot of competition on the team.

“Our easy days aren’t a walk in the park.”

Sell isn’t training with his marathon teammates, nor does he see much of any other Olympian, except for a quick visit to the track and field trials to fill out paperwork and get his travel documents in order.

“We’re sticking with what got us on the team,” Sell said. “We’re just stepping it up a notch for the Olympics. Ritzenhein is from Eugene, Ore., and Ryan’s from Big Bear, Calif. To ask all of us to uproot to train is a big request.”

Sell expects to hit about 155 miles during the coming week, and expects to be running 170 miles per week by early August. At that rate, he’ll be averaging nearly a marathon a day in training.

‘It’s still just running’

Less than a month out from the Beijing Games, Sell is still pushing mowers and marigolds to help make ends meet.

“It’s not like being an

NFL star or anything; it’s still just running,” Sell says of the extra attention he has been receiving from the running community.

And that’s OK.

“Making the Olympic team is sort of good enough for me,” he says.

Somewhere near Detroit, he’s probably running right now, preparing for his chance at glory on the world’s biggest stage.

Brian Sell is a United States Olympian.

        

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