Marshall fits two global meets into summer

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Myles Marshall started his outdoor track season in February in Texas and will conclude his junior campaign at the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China.

Marshall, who will be a senior at Kingwood HS in the fall, is the son of two great U.S. 800-meter runners and is now starting to approach his own potential in the event.

He is carefully trained by his mother, Debbie, who competed in five Olympic Trials and missed making the 1988 U.S. team by .04 of a second after running 1:59.97.

His father, John Marshall, made the 1984 Olympic team and competed in one of the most historic 800-meter races in U.S. history at the Trials in Los Angeles that year. Marshall was an underdog who held off favorite James Robinson in a photo finish.

Those bloodlines are at work in young Myles, who was never pushed into track but found his way there naturally. He ran a personal best 1:48.43, a U.S. 16-year-old record that edged his father's long-standing mark by .01 seconds. It was also good enough for US#2, at the U.S. Junior Championships in Eugene on July 6. He has run 47.5 on a relay split for 400 meters.

"My dad and mom didn't push (track)," Marshall said. "I started running in the seventh grade and I liked it and kept going with it."

John Marshall and the former Debbie Grant met when they were both stars at Villanova. Their first child, Kyle, is a professional dancer. After they had Myles, the couple divorced. Debbie remarried, moved to Texas, and has three additional children.

At World Juniors, Marshall gained valuable racing experience against older competitors but didn't have a great prelim and ran 1:53.98. In China, he will get a rare second chance to represent the country in the same summer. (He joins Haley Showalter as the only members of the U.S. track team in both global events; Stephanie Jenks will represent the U.S. in China as well, but in the triathlon).

Marshall won his second straight Texas 5A state championship in the 800 but was really focused on the international meets all along. The four fastest races of his live have come since the Texas state meet.

"I usually go to spend the summer with my dad (in New Jersey) but this year I decided to stay in Houston, with my mom training me," Marshall said. He also gets training input from his father and has the good fortune of world-class instruction from both of them.

"I've got two of America's prominent figures in track and field working together to help me out," Marshall said.

Despite the long season – one of the longest of any track athlete in the country – Marshall said he feels good heading to China.

"I'm holding up pretty well," he said. "One good thing is that even though I did a raced a lot this spring, it pretty much stopped after the state meet (for a while). I was not necessarily racing every week and after mid-June it was all 800s. It helps that my mom coaches me in the summer, making sure I recover. I'm not in the hot sun and grinding it every day. I run on trails or get in the pool. I do a track workout two or three times a week only."

By making two U.S. national teams in one summer, Marshall has two valuable opportunities to gain experiences that will continue to accelerate his progression.

In Eugene at the IAAF World Juniors, Marshall traded a few items of his U.S. team kit with an athlete from Australia – knowing full well that he was going to get a second uniform.

In China, Marshall will be competing with a slightly younger group of athletes (18 and under) and feels that he is ready to give another PR-quality performance.

"It's not asking too much," he said. "I haven't run a fast (800) in a month and I have a lot left. Even after my race at World (Juniors) I wasn't in any pain. It was just a bad race. If I need to run a PR (in China) I hope I can."

 
Either way, it's been a monumental summer and it raises expectations for a big senior year back home.

"I think it's huge," Marshall said. "I'll be in really good shape going into (the fall). This being my senior year, it's a confidence booster. Wearing the (USA) jersey is always good."