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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 7, 2006 Max King shattered the course record at last year�s Pear Blossom Run and is expected to compete for the title again Saturday. Unconquerable King Former Crater High standout shoots for his fourth straight crown By DON HUNT Mail Tribune In the 30-year history of the Pear Blossom Run, only a handful of national-caliber runners have participated. Add Max King to the group. The Crater High and Cornell University graduate, fresh off a third-place showing at the USA National Cross Country Championships and a trip to the world championships, will shoot for his fourth straight Pear Blossom Run title Saturday. Nothing short of a severe side ache or some other physical malady is expected to keep the 26-year-old chemical engineer from the winner’s circle in the 10-mile event. King, who shattered the course record by 20 seconds last year when he clocked 49 minutes, 29.38 seconds, said Wednesday from his home in Bend that he won’t attempt to re-break it this year after competing at the World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka, Japan last Sunday. Advertisement "We’ll see how it goes, but I’m coming off a hard cross country season and I’ve only had six days to recover from the worlds," King says. "I’m going to go out and run a comfortable pace. If someone’s up there with me and we’re on record pace, then maybe it could happen again. But I’m not going to kill myself." Since his memorable Pear run last year in which he squelched runner-up Tim Julian of Ashland by more than two minutes, King has excelled on the national stage. He placed fifth in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the USA Track and Field Championships in Carson, Calif., last June; took fifth in the Houston Half-Marathon in January; and, most impressively, finished third in the USA National Cross Country Championships in New York on Feb. 19. "I didn’t expect to do that well," King says of the national meet. "My goal was to qualify for the world meet (top six), but I ended up doing quite a bit better. I beat some guys I wasn’t supposed to beat." King hung with top finishers Ryan Hall and Jorge Torres until the final three kilometers of the 12K event. When he turned around, the next pack of runners was barely in his sights. "I kind of surprised myself," says King, who ran at a 4:42 mile pace and hit the tape in 35:20. The national race was contested in temperatures that hovered around 20 degrees, with a wind-chill factor of 10. King planned to wear gloves, but inadvertently left them at the starting line. "All I had on were my shorts and my singlet," he says. "I couldn’t feel my hands the whole race." King didn’t fare so well at the World Cross Country Championships in Japan last weekend. But he felt honored just to rub elbows with the top long-distance runners in the world that included Olympic champions and world record-holders. "We stayed at the same hotel and ate dinner together," says King, who at one point rode down an elevator with Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele, the world-record holder in the 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs. King began to emerge as a national-caliber runner in college. He earned All-American status at Cornell, an Ivy League school in Ithaca, N.Y., during his senior year when he finished ninth — seventh among Americans — at the NCAA Championships in the steeplechase. After graduating from Cornell in 2002, King took a break from competitive running for more than a year, changing his emphasis to triathlons and cyclocross. But he never lost his zest for running, and he’s been on a tear for the past couple years. "It’s a good feeling to know that all the time I’ve put into running has paid off," King says. "I’m starting to reach some of my goals." King has been tutored by Tim McLatchie, a retired coach in Bend who mentors runners all over the country, for the past year. A typical training day finds King taking a brisk 5- to 6-mile run in the morning, biking for an hour on his lunch break and running 10 to 11 miles or doing interval work in the evening. He considers his best race the steeplechase, a formidable event that features five 36-inch hurdles and a water obstacle. Each barrier must be conquered on each of the 7½ laps. "It’s a tough race and that’s why I like it," says King, who clocked a lifetime best of 8:33.0 at the USA Track and Field Championships last June. "I like the hurdles and the water hazard. I seem to do better when there’s something to break up the monotony." King will encounter no such obstacles Saturday, and there likely won’t be anyone who can keep up with him. The next two fastest runners entered are Julian, who clocked 51:40.96 to take second last year, and Eugene’s Todd Braje, who was third in 54:16.75. Saturday’s weather forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of showers and a high of 59 degrees. Reach reporter Don Hunt at 776-4469, or e-mail Unconquerable King ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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