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Monday, April 29, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The news Rob Reeder gave his parents one day during his freshman year of high school, while not a complete shock, was certainly a big surprise.

	Rob Reeder Ran in Pittsburgh in 2000 (Photo courtesy of Jeff Johnson)

Reeder was a studious kid, the kind of student who stayed up until midnight completing his homework. And all of the sudden, he comes home with something his parents never expected to see -- a varsity letter.

"I was always a nerd growing up," Reeder said. "My parents had written me off as someone who was never going to do anything physical. Then in high school, I showed them."

He did, however, earn the letter for ... bowling.

Reeder joked that he lettered simply because there were so few people on the team, but he enjoyed being an athlete enough that the next year, when the bowling team was dropped for lack of funds, he looked for another sport.

When he ran the mile in 6 minutes, 40 seconds during the President's Physical Fitness Tests, the second-best time in his class, he found a home. The cross country coach invited him to join the team, and by his senior year he had dropped his mile time to 4:17.

"I love that story," said Reeder's father, Don. "It just suits his personality."

Twelve years later, Reeder's personality is just as multifaceted -- and just as disciplined.

He speaks Chinese. He plays the piano. He began working toward a doctorate in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in August.

Despite his challenging academic program he has continued to run, and he will compete Sunday in the UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon.

"You can't do mathematical derivations all day and not get outside and do something," said Reeder, 27, who lives in Greenfield.

Reeder is the latest in a string of national-class runners who have come to Pittsburgh to study science, math or medicine. He doesn't see any contradiction in the pursuits.

"They both play to people who are naturally introverted and able to spend long hours by themselves," he said. "If you're going to run for two hours, you'd better be able to entertain yourself with your thoughts."

Reeder previously ran the Pittsburgh Marathon in 2000, when the race served as the U.S. Olympic trials. He qualified for the race by winning the Las Vegas Marathon in 2:17:15 -- still his personal best -- and then, like most runners on that hot, humid, day, struggled through the trials. He finished 72nd in 2:46:03.

He has juggled a rigorous academic life with a demanding training schedule for more than a decade, something his father appreciates but can't quite understand.

"Rob has an extraordinary sense of self-discipline," Don Reeder said. "He always had that -- he developed it really early, before he started running. And especially with running, to really do it well you need to do it and do it and do it. He's done it."

Reeder even accidentally found the perfect place to hone both sides of his personality. When it came time to apply to college, he considered several Ivy League schools and Stanford. In the end, he had to decide between Dartmouth and Stanford.

He liked Dartmouth's charismatic, energetic track coach and its impressive academic tradition. He liked Stanford's even more impressive academic programs, particularly in computer science, and its solid track team. He picked Stanford.

And then the summer before Reeder's freshman year, Dartmouth's track coach, Vin Lanana, was hired at Stanford.

"So I had my cake and ate it too," Reeder said.

Lanana turned Stanford into a track powerhouse, and Reeder steadily improved.

He was captain of the 1996 NCAA champion cross country team, and during his senior year, he was the 1997 Pacific-10 Conference 10,000-meter champion and a two-time All-American.

And he studied so much that he hardly slept. "Vin got frustrated with me because he would be giving this big motivational talk and I'd fall asleep," he said. "He'd have to yell, 'Reeder, wake up!' "

Reeder believed he was peaking as a runner when his college eligibility ended, so he enrolled in a master's program at Stanford and trained with the Nike Farm Team, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

"It didn't surprise me," Don Reeder said. "I thought it would be about two or three years of that, and it's been about that. He's had good success -- he got into marathoning, and he's done OK.

"There's a point where you grow up and decide what you're going to do when you grow up, and I think that's what he's doing now."

Reeder puts it this way: that the time has come for him to begin to "do something that makes a meaningful contribution to society." So once he was accepted to Carnegie Mellon, he rearranged his priorities. Now academics are ahead of athletics.

"But I need to run," he said. "I need it to keep me sane. It's my security blanket."