Meb Keflezighi approached the finish line of the Boston Marathon, holding off Wilson Chebet, who had whittled Keflezighi's lead from 81 seconds at the 30K mark to 6 seconds in the final mile. The crowds along Boylston Street screamed for him, chanting "USA." Yordanos Asgedom, Keflezighi's wife, stood beyond the finish line, murmuring prayers. Journalists in the press center openly rooted for him. Bernard Lagat, 39, Keflezighi's friend and collegiate rival decades ago, paced around his home in Tucson, Arizona, tweeting his anxiety--and then elation--as Keflezighi broke the tape.

And his coach of 20 years? Bob Larsen was checking out Keflezighi's feet. "His ground contact time [was] pretty good, which is what we want," Larsen says. "He never got sloppy, never lost his form."

Spoken like a true tactician. For all the emotion around Keflezighi's victory--the first by an American man since 1983, coming one year after the bombing at the finish line--his win was proof of training ideas that stand the test of time. Keflezighi has been atop the podium since college and at some of the biggest events in the world, earning Olympic silver in the 2004 marathon in Athens and finishing fourth at the London Games in 2012. He won the New York City Marathon in 2009. Now Boston, where his time of 2:08:37 was a new PR, set two weeks shy of his 39th birthday. How has he been winning for 20 years? The answers range from the mundane to the mystical.

Keep Your Own Counsel

The worst injury in Keflezighi's career was a stress fracture in his hip, which he suffered in 2007 at the Olympic marathon trials. The pain was so intense, he had to crawl around his house. At 32 years old, with an Olympic silver medal to his name, he could have called it quits.



Although skeptics said he was washed up, he made the call to keep going, demonstrating a self-belief that all elite athletes have, including Lagat. "We believe we can still run hard," Lagat says. "And we believe that it is actually up to [us] to decide what [we] want to do. We know deep inside."



Keflezighi is his own best judge of his gifts, his wife says, and had he listened to outsiders, his New York City and Boston victories would never have happened. His internal voice is now telling him to try for the 2016 Games in Rio. "I'm running as fast as ever," Keflezighi says. "I believe as long as I stay healthy, I'm not going to disappear from the scene. I'm the most consistent marathoner in the world. I'm 39. So what?"

Go With the Tried-and-True . . .

Larsen has coached Keflezighi since he was a freshman running cross country at UCLA in 1994. They've hit on a formula that works. "Continuity counts for something," Larsen says. "We're not always trying something new. We do the things we have confidence in."

But Tinker as Necessary

Keflezighi points out the ways his training has evolved over the years. He eliminated his midweek long run, which used to be 16-21 miles. After his crippling stress fracture, he saw Dan Pfaff, a renowned coach of form and technique, and started incorporating drills, which he now does five to six days per week. Before Athens, he sought out the biggest hills he could find. Preparing for Boston a decade later, he kept to flat terrain as much as possible, even if it meant doing a long run on a 1-mile loop. For whatever races still lie ahead of him, he wants to get there healthy.

Form Matters

Those drills might have made the difference in the race. "Chebet was losing a little bit of his mechanics toward the end," Larsen says. "Meb was really disciplined in that regard. He wasn't losing form at all."



Focusing on his technique gave Keflezighi something to think about as Chebet narrowed the gap. "I was panicking, but at the same time, I was saying, 'Collect yourself.' If it wasn't for form, I don't think I would have won," he says. "I think about my feet, where they're going to land. My hips, knees, legs, arms, neck. Where my head should be positioned. Where my chin should be going uphill, downhill."



Lagat, in front of his TV, could see his friend's form was holding up. "He's still lifting," Lagat says. "It's amazing. He ran under 4:40 for a mile at some point there." You can't run well with bad mechanics, a point Lagat's own longtime coach, James Li, has preached for decades. "He tells me, 'I don't care how fast you run workouts as long as you give me good form,' " Lagat says.

The Little Things Mean a Lot

Keflezighi's mileage is lower than that of many world-class marathoners, but his total training time, including all the extras, eats up at least eight hours each day. "He's meticulous," Asgedom says.



"His cool-down, warm-up, stretches, core exercises. I'm like, 'Good Lord, take a break, dude.' " Asgedom unwinds at 8 p.m., exhausted after a day with the couple's three daughters. That's when Keflezighi uses the NormaTec recovery system.

Cross-Training Works

Keflizighi replaces a second run with an ElliptiGO ride if he's feeling beat. At points when he's been hurt during his career, he's hit the pool for hours of deep-water running. "Meb is very, very good at cross-training when he gets injured," Larsen says. "I've never seen anybody as dedicated. You've got to go hard, and it's really boring." When Keflezighi runs again, he's not starting at square one and not desperate to catch up.

Use Your Head

If Keflezighi's sore from a workout, he doesn't need Larsen's blessing to adjust his program. He decides if he needs an extra easy day.



The same holds true out on the course. At Boston, when Chebet appeared in his rearview mirror, Keflezighi started playing through different scenarios. "Should I slow down and try to outkick him? But once I slow down, he's going to have the edge," Keflezighi says. "Do I conserve energy, save a little bit? Or forget saving, keep pushing the lead, thinking he must have worked hard to get close to me. Now it will discourage him not to catch up. These mind games? I have to play them." He did so perfectly, finishing with a 12-second margin of victory.

You Can't Eat Everything

Keflezighi, 5-foot-5, watches his diet carefully to get to his ideal racing weight of 125 pounds, and he travels with his scale. His metabolism, he says, has slowed, one of aging's cruelest consequences. "I have to monitor my diet, which is hard for me," he says. In the 10 days after Boston, he says he put on 8 pounds. His wife jokes, "Once running stops, you're not going to recognize Meb."

Be a Mensch

People gravitate toward Keflezighi. During the three days before Boston, he hustled to different events, giving speeches, signing autographs, meeting with bombing victims and their families. His wife says he's always the last to leave. "Meb is a better person than he is a runner," Asgedom says. "His greatest gift is his ability to touch people."



Does his personality make him faster? Consensus is that it can't hurt. Who knows if the crowds would have cheered as enthusiastically for a different man?

Run for a Higher Purpose

Running can be a selfish endeavor, an hours-per-week commitment to trimming seconds off a race time. Keflezighi runs best when he's representing his family, his country, a city that's healing or, grieving families. At 4:30 on Boston race morning, he and Asgedom Googled the names of the bombing victims to write on the corners of his bib. He wanted to be sure they were spelled correctly.

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