Pierce transferred from Mankato State, where he was already an 8:52 steeplechaser. When I ask him why he switched schools, he unhesitatingly gushes, "Oh, coach Plasencia. Oh, yeah. I knew who he was. I figured that if he could train himself, well, I figured that if he teaches me a tenth of what he knows..." The mood around the track offices on this Monday is almost uniformly this upbeat.

The exception is ten yards away, in Steve Plasencia's office. There, the two-time Olympian, who's the men's head cross country and assistant track coach at his alma mater, is on the phone. He's learning that a Finnish high schooler with a 14:09 5K PR has decided to go to Harvard, despite that school's lack of a real track program. Plasencia has worked hard to land the Finn, and is clearly devastated. "Recruiting is tougher than racing," he says after hanging up. "You're either first or last. There's no such thing as an honorable second."

In his second year of coaching at Minnesota, Plasencia is still discovering daily such ambiguities of his new life, where he has to balance pride in the present with the constant need to build for the future. And if he ever thought otherwise, he now knows that coaching at this level isn't some running bum's paradise. Plasencia spends more time filling out expense reports and making travel arrangements than he does boning up on training theory and running with the team.

Not until after 5 p.m., with full darkness just a few minutes away, do Plasencia, Joey Corr, a redshirting freshman, and I get out for a 10-miler. Already in mid-November, most of the bikepath we run along the Mississippi River is covered with wispy snow atop a bed of ruddy ice. The questionable footing is especially tricky for Plasencia, who turned an ankle on similar ground 10 miles into a 16-miler the previous day.

After the run, Plasencia rushes to a Minnesota basketball game, where he is to be interviewed at half-time on the local sports cable channel about his team's qualifying . No time for stretching, and barely time for dinner, which winds up being a bratwurst at the game. The interview lasts less than three minutes. Plasencia jokes the next day that no one saw it, because the TV fans were off rooting for another beer in the refrigerator.

This is not the life that Steve Jones, Martin Mondragon or other top masters lead. Plasencia doesn't care. Despite setting American masters marks at distances from 3K to 25K since turning 40 in October '96, his focus these days is on his team's running, not his. After nearly two decades as a perennial presence on national teams, Steve Plasencia has moved on.

The irony, of course, is that only since he turned 40 has anyone really paid attention to Plasencia. Given running's demographics, his 2:19:06 masters win at October's Twin Cities Marathon got far more press than did his fourth-place, 2:12:51 PR there, just three years before. Same thing with most of his American masters records, which include road marks of 14:25 for 5K, 45:14 for 15K, 1:05:33 for a half marathon, and 1:18:38 for 25K. You're reading this story because of those times, not his vastly superior 10,000 meter track PR of 27:45.20, which makes him the ninth-fastest American ever.

Naturally, every one loves a winner, and that's what Plasencia has been since joining the age-group game. But we're not talking John Campbell here, who was world-class in the late '70s, then conveniently disappeared until just before he turned 40. Plasencia made the Olympic 10,000 meter team in 1988 and '92, and nearly did in the marathon in '96, when he placed fourth at the Trials, eight months before his 40th birthday. The previous year, he had placed tenth in the World Championships Marathon. That was his third appearance on that team; he twice ran the 10K there, placing eighth in '87. Between 1987 and '94, he won the national 10,000 track championship once, and placed second five times.

Or consider this as a model of consistent excellence: In 1979, just out of college, Plasencia's best track times for the year were 13:46 and 28:53. In 1996, on the verge of geezerdom, he ran 13:59 and 28:48. Clearly, if you cared to look, Plasencia was there to notice.

So although he's happy to make some money from masters running, he's properly peeved that it's been the catalyst for so much ink. Staring at me as if I represent all media, he asks, "Where were you guys writing stories on me 10 years ago?" It's a fair question. "In a way, this masters stuff is a joke," he says. "Look at where I am now compared to when I was 38, 39. I'm way off." But that's more coincidence than inevitable to Plasencia. Part of his bemusement about the focus on masters running is because of its arbitrariness--thinking that everyone undergoes a physiological paradigm shift precisely at age 40 is like expecting world events to coincide with the calendar's odometer flipping to the year 2000.

For Plasencia, at least, his past-40 slowing is easily explained. "I'm not a professional runner anymore," he shrugs. Accepting the coaching position roughly coincided with becoming a master. In the summer of '96, Plasencia and his wife, Theresa, and son, Ryan, moved from their long-time home of Eugene, OR, to his childhood haunts, settling in Shoreview, MN, a suburb of St. Paul. In Eugene, Plasencia had used his master's degree in exercise science to work at an asthma clinic, but the running came first. When he took the job at Minnesota, he made a conscious decision to switch those priorities. "How can you make 20 guys secondary?" he asks rhetorically.

Despite the concession to coaching, Plasencia's running is still guided by an ethic of achievement. Sure, on his refrigerator is the requisite har-dee-har-har reference to age, an "Old Fart On Board" car sticker. But the refrigerator also holds a photo from last year's Drake Relays. In it, Plasencia leads a pack of college runners in the 5,000. By the end, only one of the tykes had passed him. His 14:02.86 took six seconds off the American masters mark he had set during the indoor season.

Plasencia's strongest memory of the race is wishing that the PA announcer would stop gee-whizzing several times a lap that the guy in front was 40 years old. He wants to be known simply as a runner, thank you, no "masters" adjective necessary. Certainly, the guys on his team, none of whom can beat him at 5K or longer, don't think of him in geriatric terms. And the names that pop up in conversation with Plasencia show not only the length of his career, but also its continuance in the present. His stories sandwich mid-'80s stars such as Steve Scott and Don Clary between '76 Olympians Gary Bjorklund and Craig Virgin on one end, and on the other, current figures such as '97 World Champs marathoner Dan Held and Libbie Hickman's coach, Damian Koch, who recently installed windows at Plasencia's house.

On the flip side, Plasencia is universally liked--and universally feared--by as wide a range of runners. Without prompting, his '88 Olympic teammates Mark Conover and Pete Pfitzinger call him a great guy. At the '95 World Championships, while previewing the Olympic Marathon Trials, Mark Coogan gave most of the top field a detailed assessment. For example, he noted that Chris Fox, of the Manute Bol physique, wouldn't hold up well on Charlotte's hilly course. But about Plasencia, Coogan simply said, "Oh, Plas'll be ready." Leave it to the master master to tie the two strands together. "Tell him I said hi," Bill Rodgers told me, "and tell him to stop breaking my records."

Plasencia stands 5'10", but looks taller. A photo in his guest bedroom from the '88 Trials exemplifies why. With his sweat-drenched uniform clinging to his frame, his legs start somewhere around mid-rib cage. His torso looks just long enough to pin a number on. Run behind him, and you'll see his arms draped low, his inside wrists metronomically slicing somewhere between his waist and hips, all of which makes him seem that much lengthier. Adding to the pick-the-elite-runner-out-of-the-crowd effect are two of the most haunted, recessed eyes to ever stare down an opponent.

Not that Plasencia is without his physical imperfections. Run behind him, and besides that textbook arm swing, you'll notice a pretty severe case of bow legs. The resemblance is nothing so much as an elongated jockey. Even though he has a 3:58 mile PR, he claims that his exceedingly flat feet make him unable to lift and sprint. During Plasencia's Eugene days, Mary Slaney suggested that he have surgery to correct his feet (which is akin to Elizabeth Taylor recommending marriage to fix a relationship). Plasencia ignored the advice, but admits a touch of bitterness about the genetic hand he's been dealt. Only with rigorous attention to stretching, yoga and other supplementary exercises during the past dozen years has he overcome an earlier tendency to injury. (It doesn't hurt that Theresa is a physical therapist.)

So if a guy with a 13:19 5,000 meter best can be bilious about his body, just think what he's capable of if you get him going on the "kids today" thread, huh? Sorry, but no. Plasencia has the serious runner's habit of an unfettered look at reality. From his immersed vantage point, the facts are clear--current young American runners have it harder than they used to. Five reasons: m-o-n-e-y.

"I was a guy who ran in the high 13:40s when I got out of college," he says. "I got picked up by Athletics West. When they started, [Nike's] Rob Strasser was given a list with 35 names on it, and was told to winnow it down to who they'd support. He said, 'We'll take them all.' I was near the bottom of that list, but I got a $500-a-month stipend, health insurance, some travel money, and they paid for me to get my master's degree. I wasn't living extravagantly, but I had some security. That allowed me to get me down to that next level, to be a 13:25 guy. That just doesn't exist now."

What also doesn't exist, or is at least increasingly rare, are the competitive venues that allowed a Steve Plasencia of 1979 to become the 13:19 runner that he was six years later. When he ran 27:45, the race was won in 27:29, and the world record was 27:08. But where now, Plasencia wonders, is someone like '96 Olympian Dan Middleman, with a 28:02 best, supposed to go to get the chance to run 27:40? The European circuit that used to be Plasencia's annual focus is now centered on world records; Middleman might as well stay home and run a time trial, given that whatever race he might be able to get in will be rabbited at 26:30 pace.

Plasencia also laments that the sport has become more top-heavy in its rewards. "All the media talks about is the Haile Gebresilasies and the Kenyans and the Bob Kennedys," he says. "What about the Joe LeMays? You need seven or 10 guys like that if you're going to keep having the Bob Kennedys. But how are those guys supposed to make it? Joe Lemay works full-time. Dan Held works full-time. The financial thing is such a bigger deal than it used to be. Now, they have to think about what they're going to do right after college. When I got out in the '70s, it was more realistic to say, 'I'm going to take off for a while, run, see what happens.'

"Our young runners are told they should live like monks," he continues. Adopting a mock know-it-all tone, he taunts, "The Kenyans sleep on boards." Returning to reality, he counters, "You can't tell an American kid to sleep on boards. We don't say that to our young hockey players. You want to walk down the street and look that guy you graduated with in the eye and say, 'Yeah, I'm still running, and it's good.' People are always saying American kids aren't tough enough. That's bull. They're tough enough, but they're also smart. You can't walk down the streets here with a quarter in your pocket; you need 30, 40 bucks. We live in this country, not Kenya."

From the administrative side, Plasencia knows of what he speaks. Cross country is the only college sport with a national championship that doesn't allow separate scholarships. That is, if a school has a track and field program, then the 12.6 scholarships that the NCAA allows for men's athletics is spread among participants in three seasons. In Minnesota's case, that doesn't leave much for developing distance runners, given that the track team includes an 18'2" pole vaulter, a 7'5" high jumper and the Norwegian national record holder in the decathlon. The upshot is that someone like Corr, a 9:07 2-miler in high school who might have been given a ride 20 years ago, isn't on full scholarship. No matter how tough he is, he'll have several thousand balance-sheet reasons not to dedicate himself to running upon graduation.

A few hours after getting the bad news from Finland, Plasencia is holding a team meeting. First order of business is reiterating congratulations for qualifying two days earlier. Then it's a look ahead to the national meet a week away. The team has succeeded because of its evenly matched depth, rather than because of stars; for example, Pierce, first finisher at regionals, ran fourth for most of the season. They're solid runners, but perhaps a bit too into the sport as fans for Plasencia's liking. (At the meeting, Pierce and Chad Johnson hand their coach the other regions' results, which they have culled from the Web.) Plasencia's aim in the talk is to remind his sometimes star-struck runners that they're going to nationals to compete, not spectate. This he summarizes by saying, "I don't want to go down there and be on the Adam Goucher watch, god damnit."

Such admonitory terseness stems from Plasencia's belief--borne out by his career--that successful distance running requires myopic attention to detail, and a certain emotional detachment. He has no part in the current American penchant for instant nostalgia, imbuing every experience with an overarching here's-what-it's-really-about lesson. Plasencia won't be submitting his "My Most Memorable Race" essay any time soon. Even about his 10,000 meter track PR, he says, "That race was just one of hundreds."

His team can do nothing but benefit from such quiet professionalism. Four hours before the regional qualifying meet, Plasencia was running the snow-covered Iowa course, first in 3/8-inch spikes, then in 5/8s. He told the team to wear the longer spikes for better traction. That's coaching that's worth thousands of screamed platitudes during the race.

More broadly, there's the benefit of Plasencia's example to a guy like Corr, who gets to spend his Monday 10-miler listening to his coach tell stories from when he ran in the Bislett Games. Faith in training underlies successful racing; who on the Minnesota team is going to doubt what Plasencia asks them to do? Are they going to presume to know better what's necessary? If it takes heading out on a day when the wind chill is -70, and splattering your front with frozen, bloody snot, as Plasencia has, well, then, that's what the coach says.

At least that was during a real run. Almost immediately after placing second in the '88 Trials, Plasencia noticed a stress fracture in his left tibia. Eventually, he had to turn to water running. "A neighbor had a pool," he says. "I didn't know him, but I went over and said, 'I'm training for the Olympics. Can I use your pool?' He looked at me like, 'Yeah, right, guy.' So I'd do these two or two-and-a-half hour sessions in his pool. I'd set up my speakers to face the pool, and program the CD player. I'd do what Mark Nenow called 'radio fartlek'--one song on, one song off. Well, one day the music got messed up, and I got out of the pool to go fix the CD player. I get over there, and there's a cop with my landlady. Turns out there had been a complaint about the noise, and here I show up, this skinny guy walking right into all this in a Speedo." If that's what it took...

No more. His team now gets the national-team tunnel vision that drove Plasencia for so many years. Plus, Theresa is due in April, and those pesky Minnesota winters sure are a lot tougher than he had remembered them 15 years ago. Whatever masters records Plasencia sets will have to fall around these freely-chosen constraints. Boston, a plum for any masters marathoner? No good, coming as it does in the heart of outdoor season. Maybe Berlin in September, because he could train during the summer, and get in a good effort before cross country season consumes him. Or maybe this winter he'll use the school's indoor facility to get in some real speedwork for the first time in years, and try to get under 4:10 in the mile. Of course, that would have to work around coaching the indoor squad, from half-milers on up.

But enough about all that. For now, Plasencia needs to talk to someone about what paperwork is needed to get a cash advance for the trip to nationals. And he needs to call the van rental company to extend the use of the team vehicle for another, unexpected week. And in a few minutes, he needs to head across campus to the football team's weekly press conference, where he might get his team a few minutes of attention. Maybe he'll get a run in before heading home.

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