RETURN OF THE KING

Trail titan prepares to defend his national crown

By Nathan Dinsdale

PUBLISHED 09/10/2009

Photo: Nils Nilson/XTERRA

Click here for photos and results of the 2009 XTERRA Trail Running National Championships

Max King is taking it easy. After all, the defending XTERRA Trail Running National Champion is still recovering from an injury that's kept him from competitive running for months. He's also a new father balancing diaper changes and training runs with his full-time job as a biochemical engineer in Bend, Oregon. Now would seemingly be a perfect time for his life to assume a more gradual pace ... which is why King was about to embark on a 40-mile run around Mt. Hood one morning in August. By his standards, that is taking it easy.

"It's just a long run on the weekend," King said. "A friend called me up and asked if I wanted to do it so I said, 'sure.'"

For most people, a walk in the park is a walk in a park. Only for an athlete like King does a mud-spattered stampede around Oregon's tallest peak constitute a leisurely warm-up before this year's half-marathon-distance XTERRA Trail Running National Championship race, which took place on Sunday, September 13. Then again, there's a reason why King—rehabilitated leg injury, newborn son and all—is favored to defend his title, and it's not just because the race is being held in his adopted hometown of Bend.

"Max is an animal," says steeplechase specialist Ben Bruce, who placed second to King at Nationals in 2008. "He's run everything from steeple to half-marathons to marathons to ultras. He's already tough to beat, and then when you throw in the terrain of a trail race, it really becomes a tall order."

"Trail running is almost easier for me than a road or track race," King says of his affinity for the trail. "You have to constantly adjust to adverse conditions—bad weather, rough trails, steep hills, sharp corners—and for me that kind of adversity is what makes a good race. The tougher the course, the better."

A former steeplechase All-American at Cornell, the 29-year-old King has competed in three World Cross Country Championships as a member of Team USA and also qualified for the US Olympic Trials in steeplechase in 2008. But something about off-road half-marathons (or "Xduros," as their called by XTERRA) seems to resonate with his particular skill set and personality.

At the 2008 Nationals, King finished in 1 hour, 8 minutes, clocking close to five-minute miles over the half-marathon distance on trails.

"In a trail race you're constantly shifting gears and that would throw a lot of track guys off their game," King says. "Your constantly changing pace. It's easier for me to piece a race together in sections, rather than trying to get into a groove and sustain it throughout. And in a trail race, there's also a good chance you're going to fall and scrape your knees and get bloody, but you have to be able to get back up and keep running. If I see a little blood that just makes me go harder."

Trail running has been around at least since Pheidippides hoofed it from Marathon to Athens, but only in recent years has the sport seen a significant growth spurt. The organizers of the popular XTERRA off-road triathlon series sensed—and maybe partially created—the wave. For the last decade, they've held trail running races in conjunction with their triathlons (5K and 10Ks, held the day before the triathlons), and five years ago, created a stand-alone trail running series. In 2008, they introduced the Xduro distance—21K, or 13.1 miles—as the National and World Championship distance. The nationwide series features races from 5K to 22K, and though regional series champs are awarded a free entry into Nationals, anyone can sign up and race.

The first trail running race that Bruce—a former two-time All-American at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo who finished fifth in the steeplechase at the 2009 USA Track & Field National Championships—ever ran was at the 2008 Nationals, where he finished second to King.

"A lot of track runners wouldn't go anywhere near a race like that," Bruce says. "It's just a totally different atmosphere. It's more relaxed than a typical track or road race but at the same time it still gives you a good opportunity to test yourself."

Bruce attempted to dethrone King at the inaugural XTERRA Trail Running World Championship last December in Hawaii. But while the two have run neck-and-neck in past steeplechase skirmishes, King's penchant for the grit of trail racing became apparent as the dueling duo bore down a precipitous incline on the rugged Kualoa Ranch course.

"He practically threw himself down this steep hill," Bruce laughs. "He seriously put 50 meters between us in one minute-and-a-half section. He's probably one of the best in the world in those sorts of circumstances because he's basically fearless."

King eventually ran away with the title (Bruce finished second) but his hellbent style caught up with him a few months later. After running four races in five weeks during March and April, King's leg locked up during a training workout and he was shelved from competition for months recuperating from tendinitis in his iliotibial band. Sunday's XTERRA nationals will be his first major race since the injury, but he expects to come back even stronger.

"I knew that I needed time off but the racing schedule was such that I just didn't want to take a break," King says. "Eventually your body will tell you when you need to take a break and I think being injured like that will be good for me in the long run, because it allowed me to learn a lot about what I was doing wrong with my training."

King will be the men's favorite this weekend, but he's not a complete lock for a repeat trip atop the podium. The Bend course is faster than most trail runs and thus more palatable to track specialists like Bruce and Ryan Bak (who joined King on the 2008 US Cross Country Team and also finished third at last year's XTERRA nationals). The fact that runners like King, Bruce and Bak, along with ultramarathon stalwarts Susannah Beck and Kami Semick (who finished 1-2, respectively, on the women's side last year), are competing in the fledgling national championship is a testament to the growing prominence of the XTERRA races.

Still, many of the top runners will use this year's Nationals as a training tune-up for bigger and more lucrative races (King is targeting November's New York City Marathon and Semick will race the Twin Cities Marathon in October). It's simply a matter of economics and logistics. With scant prize money (King earned $3,000 for his national and world championship wins combined) and little-to-no travel support, the XTERRA Series still has plenty of room to grow.

"When you have top-notch runners like Max King competing, it's obviously attracting elite talent," Semick says. "It's fun to have a national championship and to get to compete against runners across the country but I think if the prize package was upped and there was greater awareness the talent pool would definitely be deeper."

Having the National Championship in Bend doesn't hurt, given that so many elite distance runners have adopted Oregon as their home. The killer B's (Bruce, Bak and Beck) all reside in Eugene while King and Semick both hail from Bend.

King credits the XTERRA Championships for helping boost the prominence of trail racing but is nevertheless reluctant to wear his crown as ostensibly the best trail runner on the planet. At least until he hits the trail with the true crème-de-la-crème of the running world.

"I might start losing if the best runners in the world started competing, but I think that'd be great for the sport," King says. "I've had some success with trail running but I'd love to be able to compete against some of the top guys in the world and see how I stack up against the very best."