5 Questions with Danny Mackey

Published by Daily Relay on November 5, 2013

1. Daily Relay: You have amassed quite a talented group of runners up in Seattle. When did you get the idea to form this group and what’s your background as a runner and coach?

Danny Mackey: Thanks, yeah, they are a super talented group of runners, as well as great people.  I am very thankful to have the opportunity to work with them on a daily basis as they try to hit their goals.  The idea came from Jesse Williams (Head of Sports Marketing at Brooks Sports) years ago before my time.  He’s actually showed me a few emails from 6 years ago talking about the team.  Jesse wanted to parallel the Beasts with the Hansons-Brooks group, since they are successful and the pioneers of bringing the team training model back to the United States. The difference is this group has a track focus and are based out of Seattle, where the Brooks world headquarters is located.

My background as runner started at Andrew High School in Illinois.  I had a hall of fame coach in Joe Mortimer, who was as smart as much as he cared about us.  That set the tone, which is why great high school coaches grow the sport.  Out of the entire top 7 from my senior year, all of us are still involved with the sport to some capacity.  We trained hard (for us that was 40-50 miles per week), but everything was focused & intentional…and we had fun.  Time wise, I ran 14:46 for XC (3 miles) and 1:58 for the 800.  Then I went to Eastern Illinois University.  I had another set of great coaches in John McInerney and Tom Akers.  Though, as an athlete I really struggled in college. If you think of an injury or illness I had it.  From nearly killing myself on mountain bike to passing out in the middle of a country road from having the worst case of mono you’ve ever seen. But, I learned a lot about striving for goals and dealing with the frustration of failing OR not even having the chance to try to get those goals.  I also met some of the best teammates and friends I could have imagined.

After EIU, I went to grad school at Colorado State and I was fortunate to live with a few track studs and I started to coach myself.  Even though I was literally working 80 hours a week between school, research, teaching and coaching, I was able to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the marathon.  So that set me off to the Hansons, but I probably had the shortest contract ever there!  I need to ask Kevin and Keith what they thought of me, but to be honest, up until this year I actually regretted that decision.  I was so focused on work (I got a teaching job at Parkland College, teaching anatomy and kinesiology which was why I left) that I missed the small window of time to really train and see what I could do.  But if it wasn’t for work experience, I may not have landed this professional coaching job, so who knows.

Coaching wise, I have always wanted to coach.  Which made it frustrating for all my coaches.  I was very close with my coaches, but I was definitely a pain in the butt because I could not shut off asking why we did everything we did or coming up with other ideas or suggestions (most which were admit-tingly dumb).  But I listened to them 100% and would run myself into the grave if they wanted me to, so I was not the worst athlete to have!  I went to grad school to study Exercise Physiology and Biomechanics with the sole goal of teaching and coaching at the university or professional level.  But, I did not know how political that world was at the age of 22 (I still do not understand how political track and field is and hope I never do, but that’s for another discussion).  If I told you how many NCAA jobs I applied for and didn’t get an interview at (217 jobs) you would laugh. BUT I was fortunate to land a great job working at NIKE in their Sports Research and Innovation lab.  Here, I got to work with the smartest performance scientists and best athletes in the world on a daily basis.  I stayed at NIKE for a while, then moved over to ADIDAS to work exclusively with their elite professional athletes on training and product innovations.  Then I went to PUMA and was a global product line manager for their performance running line.  All the while though I was coaching track athletes on top of working at these companies. It was where my heart and passion was focused.