Navy's Marathon Team: A Force in the Making

It's Army vs. Navy writ long, if not large.

The Naval Academy has established another competitive venue for taking on the men and women in gray from West Point, and so far the midshipmen have proved more than proficient. Under the guidance of Nathan Nudelman, 30, the academy has formed a competitive club-level team of runners, 20 of whom will go head-to-head against more than 50 teams, including Army, in the Boston Marathon on April 17.

The Naval Academy Marathon Team, which was started as a loose affiliation of intramural runners by Lt. James Cathro in the fall of 2003, was granted club status, a travel budget and a paid coach in Nudelman one year ago. Today, the team has an official roster of 25 runners with up to 40 men and women participating at practice daily. Runners who qualify for Boston -- a 3-hour 10-minute marathon for men, 3:40 for women -- are awarded a varsity letter by the athletics department.

"My philosophy is 'c'mon out,' " said Nudelman, who has run 16 marathons but claims his coaching expertise derived from his background in wrestling, swimming and mountain biking. Nudelman lives in Annapolis, where he hosts weekend workouts at his home; he works in Washington as a member of the uniformed Secret Service.

Many of the team members also compete in ultramarathons; some are training for the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile trail run in California in June. Naval Academy runners have quickly established themselves as a force at the JFK 50-Mile Race in Hagerstown, winning the military team title each of the past two years and breaking the U.S. Marines' monopoly. At JFK in November, Wallace Miller, a senior, completed the 50 miles in 6:50:09 and finished 15th overall.

"It's tough to coordinate our race schedule in the fall because we've got to work around the football games, where attendance is mandatory," Nudelman said. The team received special permission to compete at JFK and miss the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia on the same day.

Miller has a personal-best marathon time of 2:39:25, which he ran at the 2004 Steamtown Marathon in Nudelman's home town of Scranton, Pa. Steamtown is scheduled to be the site of a marathon dual meet between the midshipmen and Army next fall.

"The hardest thing about coaching this group is getting them to slow down," Nudelman said. "The marathon is about patience, but they're 100 percent Type A personalities. And their average GPA is 3.8, 3.9. But who wouldn't want to work with a group like that?"

· BIG RUNS: Online registration for the 22nd Army Ten-Miler on Oct. 8 opened last week, and more than 6,300 runners already have signed up. The field will close at 24,000.

Online registration for the 31st Marine Corps Marathon on Oct. 29 will begin May 17 at noon.

· CHAT: Questions, comments? Join me online at washingtonpost.com Thursday at 2 p.m.

-- Jim Hage

hagej@washpost.com