Track and Field Blogs - Patrick Rizzo

Attitude is contagious. It spreads to your performance as well as to others around you, so you have to be careful with whom you surround yourself. My college coach used to tell us religiously, “whatever you surround yourself with, you will become.” It is ultimately true. If you look at groups who spend a lot of time together, they assimilate to one another and take on the group’s identity and personality as much as—if not more than—their individual traits.

A large reason for my initial interest in joining the Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project stemmed from the success of one athlete—and it was not the most obvious. In early 2006, I was coaching a junior college track team in Illinois when I started flipping through some results. On those results was a familiar name, Josh Moen. In Josh’s and my eight or so races together in college, my record stood at a paltry 3-5 (with him winning every NCAA Championship in which he beat me). Still, when we graduated I had faster track times; one year later he was almost a minute ahead of me in a 10k. I dropped Josh an email to congratulate him and find out how to set up a visit at Hansons. Surely there had to be some magical workouts and a utopian training atmosphere in Rochester Hills, Michigan that I was previously unaware of.

About a month later I took a visit to the program. But once here, I sensed that there was nothing special about the workouts or training philosophy. There was/is nothing particularly unique about southeast Michigan for training (not to a Chicagoan at least). The magic I noticed was the attitude of the team and community. On my visit, I ran one workout with the group and a couple of easy runs. It was just enough to feel out the team chemistry and camaraderie. The easy runs included some members of the community and some former team members still living in the area. The mood was jovial and everyone was supportive of one another. Much like five years earlier when I made the decision to go to North Central College, I knew I wanted to join the Hansons-Brooks team.

The hook for me was the team training in a post-collegiate atmosphere. Everyone was looking at getting better, achieving more, making world teams, Olympic team. It was such a reinforcement to my personal tastes and philosophy that these guys believed in team training as much as me. The team just keeps the balance of good pressure and bad pressure in check. It is good to feel accountable but know that there are still guys who have your back if it just is not your day. It also helps bring me up on days I might feel a little less positive. Although I consider myself a generally positive person, I know that I am not perfect and sometimes negativity does seep in. That is also where the “surround yourself with what you want to become” part comes in. With the right group, it ensures that negativity is the exception and not the norm.

One of the only times you will see me shut my mouth is when there is a “contaminator” around. A contaminator is the kind of person who is infectiously negative and tries to bring others down with him rather than keeping it to himself or even letting other people’s happiness rub off on him. Contaminators are the “glass half empty” kind of people. I know when I am around a contaminator that I will inevitably become more negative. My loose personal observation is that this also then has a carry-over effect into my running.

When I joined the Hansons team in 2006, we had the perfect blend of sarcastic bastard, seriousness, experience, hunger, and ability. It drew together into a great team atmosphere and a collectively positive attitude. Our expectations included nothing but success going into the Chicago Marathon that year and our achievements went to reflect that. Just now, I feel we are getting back to those basics that led to such a successful year for the team in 2006 (Boston before my arrival and Chicago after, plus some great track performances). We have really ramped up the grill outs, the concerts (Kid Rock ROCKED), there has even been a suggestion of restarting poker nights. None of those events make us better runners in themselves; they make for a better atmosphere and bonds people better…which makes us more willing to put our necks on the line for the success of the others…which helps ourselves as much in the long run. Being good friends is not a necessity on a team, but it certainly helps the atmosphere. Atmosphere predisposes a group for success or for failure. Right now success is in the air in Michigan.