A couple weeks ago former Jayhawk runner Charlie Gruber sprinted onto the Kansas football field and waved to more than 50,000 fans during a break in the game against Kansas State. A few hours before, he’d cruised down Jayhawk Boulevard as the grand marshal of the homecoming parade.
The University of Kansas alumnus was getting the Olympic treatment after competing in the 1,500 meters in Athens this past summer. It might sound like a dream come true, but it wasn’t exactly Charlie Gruber’s dream, at least not when he finished up his running career at Kansas.
For Gruber, a runner of untellable talent, believing in his abilities has been a constant challenge. Following a disappointing senior season in 2002, he was ready to hang up his spikes.
In Gruber’s career at Kansas, he earned All-American honors five times, counting both indoor and outdoor track. He twice won the 1,500 meters at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships and became the first Kansas runner to finish a mile in under four minutes since Jim Ryun in 1968.
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Then Gruber went out on a sour note. In his final season, he placed seventh in the 1,500 meters at both the Big 12 Championships and the NCAA Outdoor Championships. At the NCAA meet, he finished one second behind the winner and felt let down: He wanted to bring Kansas a first-place medal in his final race.
After graduating with an undergraduate business degree in information systems in May 2002, he cut his long hair, packed up his medals and quietly stepped away from the track. Gruber said he was burned out.
“I hated running,” he said. “I just didn’t want to do it. I was fed up.”
He tried to live like a normal American. He sat on the couch, watched TV, ate potato chips, went out with friends on Saturday night and gained weight. He and the girl he’d been dating for seven months, Courtney Deutsch, a year younger and also a Kansas distance runner, split up.
Gruber kept in touch with Doug Clark, Kansas assistant track coach, his coach his junior year. While Clark would’ve liked Gruber to keep running, he told Gruber that the decision was up to him.
Gruber thought about it: throwing away the years of sweat and sacrifice. He wondered what all the work was worth.
After two months away from the track, Gruber’s perspective gradually changed.
“Before, I felt a lot of pressure,” he said. “I wanted to please everybody else. I realized that I needed to do it for myself.”
By and by, the urge to get back into the sport tugged at him. Every now and then, he’d find himself lacing up his running shoes and racing out the door for a run on the pavement.
He decided to give track another shot, assuring himself that things would be different. He gave Clark a call.
“Once I realized that running was just part of my life and not all of my life, I could handle victory better and accept defeat easier,” he said.
Clark told Gruber that if he wanted to come back, he would need goals. So they sat down and talked.
Clark remembers being captivated by Gruber the first time he saw him, when Gruber was a sophomore and Clark was the distance coach at Tulsa in the spring of 1999. Gruber ran the lead-off 1,200-meter leg of the distance-medley relay at the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa.
“Charlie handed off in the lead for Kansas,” Clark said. “And I thought, ‘That guy’s good. I wouldn’t mind coaching him.’ I remember that vividly.”
Clark said Gruber’s biggest obstacle was believing in his potential. At 26 years old, Gruber is currently ranked 33rd in the world in the 1,500-meters by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body of international track and field.
Clark said Gruber was capable of running the mile, about 1,600 meters, in under 3:50. No American has done that since Jim Spivey 13 years ago.
When the two sat down together, they talked bigger than they ever had before. The 2004 Olympics was, for the first time, a concrete goal. And Gruber, for the first time in a long time, bought into it.
“Once he and I started setting goals for him, he started believing,” Clark said.
The next step was training like a world-class runner.
Gruber needed to step up his intensity, meaning more two-a-day workouts, increased mileage and added weightlifting.
“I basically said, ‘I’m either going to do it all the way or not at all,'” Gruber recalled. “No half-assing it.”
He also signed on as a volunteer assistant coach for the Kansas cross country team and ran with the team during workouts. And he’d get in an eight-mile rub with Clark once or twice each week to discuss his progress and make plans. That tradition continues today.
“It’s a good opportunity for us to chat and make sure we’re taking care of business,” Clark said. “Although usually by the end I’m not doing much talking because I’m breathing pretty hard.”
Gruber also enrolled in graduate business school at Kansas, mostly to fill the time when he wasn’t running. And he got back with Deutsch.
“I got a better balance in life,” Gruber said, “Which enabled me to become a better person as well as a better runner.”
When he stepped back onto the track in the spring of 2003, Gruber knew he needed to improve. Although he had come close to breaking 3:40 in the 1,500 meters — just a little over 100 meters short of a mile — on many occasions since he ran 3:41.2 in 2000, he had always fallen short. He hoped that by the USA Outdoor Championships in June, he would finally do it.
In the first few months, Gruber didn’t break 3:40. Frustration was settling in.
Then at the Oregon Track Classic in May, against stiff competition, he felt it. Figures ran through his head as he neared the finish: 3:37, 3:38. His time had to be down there somewhere.
Gruber crossed the line and looked up at the posted results: 3:39.7. Not what he expected, but those three-tenths of a second made all the difference. The 10-ton weight of 3:40 melted off his back like an ice cube in the rain.
At the USA Championships, after 10 months of hard work, Gruber figured he was ready to place in the top three. He ran 3:45.3 and crossed the line in fifth.
“I was disappointed,” he said. “But to go from almost quitting to fifth in the country in 10 months, that’s not too bad.”
But he wasn’t producing Olympic stuff, either. Not yet.
On a cold, snowy February afternoon in Indianapolis, out of nowhere, Gruber won the four-kilometer race at the USA Cross Country Championships to start the 2004 season.
He’d go on to knock two seconds off his 1,500-meter time when he ran a 3:37.2 in June at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore.
Then came the Olympic Trials 1,500 meter final in Sacramento on July 18. Gruber needed to place in the top three to make the Olympic team: He finished second.
But he wasn’t able to celebrate. He still had to meet the international qualifying mark, the Olympic A standard, of 3:36.2. He had to do it by the Aug. 9 deadline.
Gruber said he wasn’t worried. “I truly believed I could do it,” he said.
Clark believed, too. He bought a plane ticket to Athens the day after Gruber’s race at the Trials.
Within days, Gruber boarded a plane for Europe to race against some of the world’s best. Two days after arriving, he ran 3:38.0 in Stockholm, Sweden. Four days later, he clocked a blazing 3:34.7 in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium.
He called Deutsch in Lawrence to tell her the news: He’d made the Olympics.
The Gruber contingent in Athens consisted of Clark and a number of close friends and family who had stuck with him through thick and thin: Gruber’s parents, uncle, brother, three friends and Deutsch.
They watched from the stands as Gruber stepped to the line in lane two against 13 competitors in the third and final heat of the 1,500 meter preliminaries on Aug. 20.
The top five runners from each heat and the next nine fastest from any heat would qualify for the semifinals. The times from first two heats had been slow, so Gruber figured that he had a good shot at advancing with a quick time if he didn’t place in the top five.
Gruber and Clark had formulated a plan beforehand, as they always did. Gruber was to hang near the middle of the pack for about half the race, then make his move.
But he had to be prepared for anything. Something strange happens to runners under the glare of a million flashbulbs. They shove, trip and trash talk. Sometimes everybody charges to the lead, other times nobody will take it.
The starter fired the gun, and the race got off to a sluggish start. Nobody wanted to push the pace. Gruber couldn’t afford to get caught against the rail in a slow race.
He boldly sprinted past everyone and took the lead in the first lap. Sometimes you have to stick your neck out for that brass ring.
Gruber maintained his lead as the pack salivated off his shoulder. Clark checked his watch after the second lap: 2:00.3. Gruber was on a 3:45 pace.
Railbirds say that underdogs who take the lead early rarely win the race. But if he could just push the tempo, he’d have a shot.
A group of runners passed Gruber in the third lap. Michael East of Great Britain took the lead and drove the race into a fury. Gruber fought to keep up. With 300 meters left, Clark checked his watch again: He was still on pace to advance.
Gruber headed into the final turn. Somebody clipped his heel from behind. He stumbled. By the time he regained balance and got back to speed, his race was over.
Gruber finished in ninth. His time: 3:41.7. The semifinal qualifiers were posted. The slowest qualifying time was 3:41.1.
Two months later, Gruber doesn’t know who tripped him up. He doesn’t care. He’s got other things to worry about.
After getting back from Athens, he and Deutsch bought a house in Lawrence, using the money from his Nike sponsorship and her job as logistics manager at the local Target. One day Gruber brought her to the new house and asked her to marry him.
“It’s a busy time for us,” Deutsch said.
Since earning his master’s degree last spring, Gruber still volunteers with the cross country team, helping out however he can.
He took three weeks off after the Olympics and is now building his mileage up from 50 miles a week to his normal volume in the 70s.
He has a title to defend at the USA Cross Country Championships in Vancouver, Wash., in February. And he hopes to reach the finals in his first track and field World Championships next summer in Helsinki, Finland.
“You have to believe in your ability to do things you haven’t done before,” Gruber said. “You can’t limit yourself.”
