The Long Unnoticed Road

Even for serious American Track and Field and distance running fans, Crosby Freeman (PO ’06) is a name that carries little recognition.  But Freeman has taken the first step to changing this: winning the 2009 Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon in an Olympic Trials Marathon qualifying time of 1:04:08. 

Winning is an understatement.  Freeman’s 1:04:08 (a 4:54 per mile average) nipped second place by over a mile.  The big news is that it was a 1 minute, 47 second best for Freeman, which under the new, stricter rules for qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials, gave him a qualifying mark by 52 seconds. 

This past Olympic Trials, the qualifying standards were 2:20:00 for the A standard and 2:22:00 for the B standard at the marathon distance, with 28:45 for the 10,000m or 13:40 for the 5,000m amounting to a B standard.  “A standard” athletes had their expenses paid, while “B standard” athletes were left to find their own way to the race.  The new qualification rules eliminated B standards altogether, and allowed for three ways to qualify by time: 2:19:00 in the marathon, 1:05:00 in the half marathon, or 28:30 in the 10,000m. 

“The goal first landed on my radar in the fall of 2006,” said Freeman of qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the marathon.  “I graduated the spring of 2006 and joined a local running club [The Asics Aggies] to continue competing.”  The fall of 2006 was quite a while ago.  One Olympic Trials has passed since then.  What happened in those three and a half years? 

Freeman had planned to tackle his first marathon in LA in March of 2007.  “About three weeks before the marathon and a week after my first victory at the Kaiser SF Half (1:05:55), I found out I had a stress fracture in the second metatarsal of my right foot.  Since the Trials were in the Fall of 2007, there was no way I would be able to get healthy and get a qualifier in time,” said Freeman of the 4-year-disappointment.  “The dream was dead temporarily.” 

“The five and a half months I had to take off from running because of the fracture were some of the hardest of my life. I had a lot of doubts about whether I could bounce back and be as good as I was prior to the injury,” admits Freeman.  And with good reason—five and a half months seems a long time for anybody to be away from the thing he finds himself passionate about.  But for a distance runner of Crosby’s ability, where the accumulation of training is the gold standard, five and a half months away from running replaces likely more than 2000 training miles with a helpless deterioration of fitness. 

But injury has not been the only obstacle for Freeman to overcome.

For starters, there is his full time job.  “Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day,” Freeman notes.  It should also be noted that many athletes of Freeman’s caliber do not have to work full time.  They find support in clubs and training groups, many of which offer housing, coaching, medical support, optional part time jobs, and a training group of dedicated runners.  Freeman has largely coached himself, though storied coach Joe Rubio serves as a mentor.  He supports himself, and fits his training in with his job and his more than healthy social life, which probably deserves an article of its own. 

Add to his job the fact that, like Batman, hardly anybody really knows what Crosby Freeman is doing when he steps out of the office.  They might be aware that he is into, you know, that whole road racing thing—but that is more often than not the extent of it.  Few are aware of the 100 mile weeks Freeman often puts in. 

Occasionally, Freeman gets together with two others from the Aggies for workouts.  “It takes me back to my PPXC days, but it's obviously not even close to the same,” Freeman said wistfully.  Take heart, current PP athletes. 

But it isn’t clear that Freeman would have it any other way.  “I do not envision myself as the type of runner who gets pampered and massaged daily and all that stuff,” says Freeman.  “I have fantasized about one day dropping everything and doing nothing but train, but it's hard to make a leap like that. Even so, it's one of those things where if I never end up doing it, I'll never be able to forgive myself. Ideally I would live in a small cabin in the woods, at elevation, and have nothing to worry about all day but my two runs,” says Freeman. 

It is safe to call Freeman a great chaser of dreams.  But Freeman has his own take on the matter with reference to Will Leer (PO ’07), his former middle-distance counterpart at Pomona: “He pursued The Dream while I became a desk jockey, and I really admire him for that. It's paying off, too, now that he has a contract with Nike. His dedication to the sport is remarkable and I think about him daily when I'm training.”  But like his racing distance, Freeman’s path has been longer than Leer’s.  (And much less traditional and noticed). 

Freeman, like Leer, continues to pursue the dream as best he can, and this Olympic Trial’s qualifier is one more goal checked off the list.  The next step?  Boston Marathon, April 19.  And who knows, we might see even less of Crosby Freeman:  “I tentatively plan on taking 2010 off from work to train full time. Location to be determined.”

By Torrey Olson (Pomona, '09)