Part 2: Zola Budd -
Beyond the Legend

She laces up her sneakers like everyone else.

Photo Courtesy of nytimes.com

That’s one transition in training for Zola Budd – from her life as an Olympian in world championships to her life as a masters runner today. She’s been wearing sneakers since 1989 when she got a stress fracture in her hip, an overuse injury. Coming back from it, she said, “I had to wear orthotics.” Orthotics without sneakers? Not even Budd could pull that off.

Her attitude, training, and her experiences with injury -- though changed since she was an open runner – are in many respects not dissimilar from those of other masters. It’s when she races, though, that her unusual speed emerges.

Budd’s family comes first, before running, now. Her attitude towards training, she said, is “much more casual. Before my whole life centered around running. I had to train and rest. Now I don’t get obsessive about it. I train when I can and how much I can. I fit it into my life schedule.”

Middle Distance Over the Marathon

While Budd, 43, runs because running has been a part of her life since she was 14 and days don’t feel complete without running, she’s also interested in competing occasionally.

“Although I love running, I still need some competition at some level to be competitive. I think that competitive edge will always be there. It can give you healthy competition without all the hassles.”

While she focused on distances from the 1500 to the 5k as an open runner, she has experimented with the marathon when she returned to running after her three children were born.

Training for as many as 60 miles a week, she entered three marathons: the 2007 Bloemfontein Marathon in South Africa (3:10), the London Marathon in 2005 (she dropped out), and the 2008 New York City Marathon (2:59).

What happened in London?

“I had problems with blood sugar,” she said. “I became hypoglycemic.” Budd says that although she eats much more healthily today than she used to (“when I was younger I ate what I felt like”), she has high cholesterol and high blood sugar levels.

Those health issues and the mileage required for a marathon are some of the reasons Budd is now focused on shorter races – anything from the 3K to the half marathon.

“Training for the marathon tired me out so much,” she said. “My body reacts more positively to shorter mileage with speed-endurance training than to the long, slow runs. It’s easier to focus on the 5k and 10k or even half marathon.”

Compared with her training as an Olympian and world-class open competitor, her training today is much more moderate. Except when training for a marathon, she generally runs about 40 miles a week – as opposed to around 100. Now she runs three or four days a week, sometimes twice a day, sometimes as much as 10 miles per run.

Zola runs fewer speed workouts. “Years ago we would do 5 x 1000 meters at race pace. Two days later I’d do 400s at 3k race pace. Then I would do hills, and there would be another hard session for four to five hard sessions a week. Now I can do half of that.”

While she never used to do weight training years ago, she now does about five minutes of core exercises and ten minutes of upper body exercises twice a week. “I don’t like doing that,” she said. “It’s very tedious. I try to keep my strength training as natural a possible, with hill workouts, she said.

A sample once- or twice-a-week hill workout might be 5 x 3 minutes, 10 x 1 minute, or 6 x two minutes depending on the training cycle.

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How about stretching?

Budd actually did more stretching when on the open circuit than she does today. “That’s because my training was more structured and I was with a group. Now there’s rarely time for a warm-up and cool-down. There’s always someone at home or who has to be picked up.”

A volunteer coach at Coastal Carolina University, she trains mostly on her own. “I don’t have that much flexibility with my kids’ schedules,” she said.

Injuries

Budd has had more injuries since having her children. “It took me a lot of time to get back into running again after my children were born. In the past six years, I’ve had a lot of injuries, including plantar fasciitis – first on one foot and then on the other.”

For almost two years, from 38 to 40, she didn’t run because she was having problems with her knees. “It’s always something,” she added. She cross trained by swimming two kilometers in a workout (“I hate swimming”) and on other days by mountain biking, which she enjoys.

She would bike 22 to 30 kilometers a day. “I don’t really like road biking because it takes ages for your heart rate to go up,” she said.

She had been planning on running the Melbourne, Florida half-marathon in February. She injured her knee in December, however, and didn’t have time enough to train. No, that wasn’t a running injury: “I hit my knee against the bathtub when I was giving the kids a bath,” she said.

Still Incredible

Coached by marathoner and Coastal Carolina’s men’s track and field coach, Jeff Jacobs, Budd still shows herself as a champion competitor. Last year, she entered the Myrtle Beach Half-Marathon. At 42, she won and set a course record in a time of 1:20:40, a 6:10 pace and an age graded percentage of 86%.

As a master, she’s won 5ks and 10ks. In August in Orlando, she won the Track Shack 5k in 17:43, as an example. She’s won cross country races against Division 1 college runners.

Her competitive spirit has “wowed” Alan Connie, Coastal Carolina’s women coach for track and field and cross country. “She jumped into a 5k cross country race with 294 Division I college runners at Appalachian State University,” he said, adding “it’s a difficult hilly course. It’s at altitude, 3500 feet.”

"She was incredible,” he continued. “She hadn’t been training that long or that seriously. We told her to go out conservatively – at about a 5:40 pace. She hit the mile at 5:18 and had a lead on the rest of the field by 30 meters. It’s not what we advised her but she’s a competitor. It’s hard to hold her back, even at 43.”

She finished in 17:58.

College runners, watch out.

Cathy Utzschneider Ed.D. (human movement), M.B.A., professor of goal setting and competitive performance, Boston College; coach, Liberty Athletic Club, MOVE and Women-Running-Together.com.

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This article was originally printed in National Masters News.

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