A Brief Chat With Russell Brown

By Sabrina Yohannes

Russell Brown ran the anchor 1600-meter leg for the USA Red team at the Penn Relays’ USA vs. The World Distance Medley Relay Saturday, taking third place in 9:18.09 behind the Moroccan team anchored by Amine Laalou (9:17:48) and the Australian team anchored by Jeff Riseley (9:17.56). Laalou's 1600 time was 3:53.08, Riseley did a 3:56.66, and Brown ran 3:57.36. On April 15, Brown won the 1500 at the Mt. SAC Relays in a personal best 3:35.70 On February 5, he won the mile at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston in 3:54.81. A week later, he paced Bernard Lagat for the first mile and a quarter of Lagat's American indoor record 8:10.07 two-mile at the Armory in New York City. In 2010, Brown was sixth in the 1500 at the outdoors USATF Championships. In 2008, he was second in the USA Indoor 1500. Brown was a 2007 Pac-10 champion for Stanford in the 1500 and was third at that year's NCAA Championships. Back in 2003, he was third at the USA Junior Championships in the 800 (he ran 1:50.16 for that distance in high school).  Brown spoke after the Penn Relays DMR, first at a joint press conference with lead-off 1200m leg runner Bernard Lagat, and then in a one-on-one interview.

You ran the anchor leg. Tell us what that was like and how your experience was today.
Russell Brown: I got the baton in the lead, thanks to Lagat’s leg, but also Michael Tinsley and Duane Solomon. They both did a good job and kept our lead, but one of the nasty secrets about the DMR is that sometimes being in the lead is not the place where you want to be. I talked about this scenario going into it with my coach and I knew it’s a possibility that given my team, I might get the baton in the lead and there’s two options you have when you’re in that position. You can push the pace or you can stay calm and keep feeling good and make sure you’re ready to go at the end. I chose the latter, just given who I was racing against and given what I felt confident in. I had been kicking well in my races so I thought that would give me a good opportunity to win, but it didn’t quite work out.