Bulletin E-Edition:
Marathon man
Bend’s Andy Martin has won four of the long-distance races in a six-month span
By Mark Morical / The Bulletin
Published: June 07. 2008 4:00AM PST
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Andy Martin, resting after a foot injury, has won four marathons since November.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
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Andy Martin wondered if he could make as much money running as he did teaching school.
So he tried it.
Martin has competed in eight marathons in the last six months, winning four of them and finishing no worse than fourth in any of the races. Twice during the stretch he has run marathons on consecutive weekends.
“A lot of runners have accused me of being a little crazy, but I’ve always thought I could recover well,” he says. “I experimented.”
Martin earned $23,000 in prize money and sponsor bonuses during the six-month period, compared with his yearly salary of $38,000 as a former elementary school teacher in Bend.
The 33-year-old won the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon on May 4, just seven days after winning the Big Sur International Marathon in Monterey, Calif. Both races included about 5,000 runners.
But Martin paid for the victories. He is reasonably sure he had a stress fracture in his right foot during the Big Sur race, and 22 miles into the Flying Pig, he could feel a bone on the outer part of his foot break.
“It felt exactly like stepping on a twig and the twig breaks under your foot,” he explains, “but the bone in my foot was the twig that was crunching.”
But he kept running the final four miles to victory.
“It got worse and worse,” Martin says. “The worst was half an hour after, when the endorphins wore off.”
Though he typically piles up 100 miles per week, the fit, youthful-looking Martin has taken a break from running, giving his injured foot a chance to heal. He will not compete on Sunday in Bend’s Dirty Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile race in which last year he set the course record of 1 hour, 13 minutes, 37 seconds. But he will be there at Phil’s Trail, west of Bend, to cheer on his wife, Megan Martin, who plans to run in the event.
Martin — who runs for the Asics Aggies, a distance-running team based in San Luis Obispo, Calif. — won the Birch Bay Marathon in Bellingham, Wash., in February, and the Seattle Marathon last November.
Also in November, Martin competed in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in New York — for which he had qualified the previous January by finishing the Houston Marathon in a time of 2:20:17. In New York, he finished in 74th place. He failed to qualify for the Olympics, but the trials were a highlight of his running life.
“It was fantastic,” he recalls. “It was a great experience, just to be with your heroes you read about in running magazines and race against them. That was a special moment in my career.”
Since the Olympic Trials, Martin has traveled to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, California and Washington to run marathons. He has earned anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 at each race.
No longer teaching, Martin has started a business as a coach for runners: fastforwardrunning.com. He also works as a personal trainer for WillRace Performance in Bend.
Martin makes time to train and run marathons and still spend time with Megan, an assistant principal at Bend’s Seven Peaks Elementary School, and their three sons: Charlie, 7; Nate, 2; and Miles, nearly 1, who got his name “because of the running connection,” according to Andy.
“I’ve tried to see if I can make a living being a full-time runner,” Martin says. “It’s been awesome … if you can stay healthy. There’s no health care or retirement plan, but you can scrape by.”
Over his career, Martin has run a total of 23 marathons, winning five. His personal-best time came in 1999, when he finished eighth in the Las Vegas Marathon in 2:20:04.
Martin doubts he can keep up his pace of the last six months, and he says he might get back into teaching.
“I don’t know if I can continue to run as many marathons year after year,” Martin says. “I’m looking at finding a job to supplement my career as a runner.”
But Martin has plans to run in the new Cascade Lakes Relay (a team running event from Diamond Lake to Bend) in August, and possibly the Portland Marathon in October and the Seattle Marathon again in November.
Growing up in Seattle, Martin began running as an 8-year-old when his father was training for the Seattle Marathon in 1983.
“I started running with him to keep up,” Martin remembers.
Martin went on to run cross country and track at the University of Portland. He qualified for the 2000 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, but he was unable to compete after being struck by a car while riding his bike near where he lived at the time in Boulder, Colo. He badly injured his back and shoulders in the accident, and he could not run for three months.
The Martins moved to Bend in 2001, and shortly thereafter Andy began competing in triathlons. He has raced in four full Ironman triathlons (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, 26.2-mile run).
He had some success in triathlons, placing fourth at Ironman Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) in 2004. But by 2005, he was burned out.
“It was just so time consuming,” Martin says of Ironman triathlons. “I’d be training 30-plus hours a week, and I wasn’t making the money for it to be worth it. I lost the drive and the desire.”
He switched his focus back to running, and he has never looked back.
“Running’s always been a passion of mine — a joy and a release,” he says. “I’ve given it up a few times, but it called back to me.”
Mark Morical can be reached at 383-0318 or at mmorical@bendbulletin.com.
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