And to think Kyle Baker nearly retired last spring at age 26. Yes, the same Kyle Baker who was profiled in a recent issue of Running Times magazine, who is Michigan Runner's 2002 Male Runner of the Year, a guy who dared to run with the Kenyans at Crim and passed two of them in the homestretch, who popped a 2:14:13 marathon debut at Chicago, who raced here, there and seemingly everywhere and pulled in prize money from one end of the country to another. "I had a bad spring. I was racing terrible. I was so frustrated with my performances I was close to retirement," said Baker after being told he was MR's Male Runner of the Year for the second-straight year. "It probably wouldn't have lasted long, but I was ready to quit." That was the beginning of April, after a bang-your-shoes-against-the-wall month of March. Instead of packing it in, Baker, an assistant track and cross-country coach of both men and women at his alma mater, Michigan State University, decided, "to do tougher workouts, to make myself really suffer as much as I could." Tough track workouts as in: 20 repeats of 400 meters with a 200 recovery jog, most in 64 seconds and each fifth one in 60 seconds; or, four by one mile with 400 recoveries at 10K race pace; or, 10 by 500 at 13:25 5K pace with 100-meter recoveries. "I was just gonna turn this into a physical thing, work as hard as I could," said Baker. "It had been a mental thing and I wanted to make it physical." By the end of April, his season, and frame of mind, turned around. He PR'd on the track at 10,000 meters, running 28:34 at a meet in Hillsdale, and was on his way. By the time his long and rewarding season of racing was over, he'd PR'd at the New Haven 20K, where his 59:21 was sixth best ever by an American and just a second back of winner Dan Browne; he'd hung tough with the Kenyans at Crim; and he'd had his breakout marathon in Chicago. Baker raced a lot on the national circuit, but that didn't preclude him from running enough at home to win the MR series. He tallied points in every MR series race he ran, winning the Spectrum Health Irish Jig 5K in March in 14:56; finishing 10th overall and first from Michigan at the Fifth Third River Bank Run 25K in May, in 1:17:56; winning the Dexter-Ann Arbor half-marathon in late May in 1:09:22; winning the Volkslaufe 20K July 4 in 1:07:59; finishing seventh overall and first from Michigan at the Crim 10-miler in August in 47:55. Baker raced well and often, at one point doing 15 races in 13 weeks. "I know that sounds like a lot, and is, but I was pretty smart about it," he says. He ran some races as hard workouts, figuring if he was going to run hard, it might as well be with other people and the support of water stations along the way. "It's easier for me to get in a race and run hard than it is to go out by myself and do a tough workout," said Baker. "And if you can make a couple of bucks out of it, rock on." He won Frankenmuth doing it as fartlek workout, for example. And he did the same at the Standard Federal 10K in Kalamazoo, going out hard the first mile, then doing a minute all-out, relaxing a minute, then doing another minute full-speed until he hit the tape, a winner. Crim was particularly special for Baker. He had finished as the top state runner there the year before, content to let the Kenyans rule at the front. But when he finished the race, he was disappointed to know he had something left in the tank. "This year, I thought I'd go out with those guys and see what would happen," Baker said. What happened is he hung with them for four miles, got dropped a bit but kept the leaders in sight, and even passed two Kenyans in the late going. Baker was part of the first recruiting class for the Team Hansons crew put together by Kevin and Keith Hanson, which has done so well it was profiled recently in Runner's World magazine. "It was a great opportunity for me to keep running after college," remembered Baker. "It allowed me to make that transition. If it hadn't been for the Hansons, I don't know if I'd still be in the sport." Yet the Hansons are the first to admit they are hands-on, with disciplined workouts and a strong say-so in what everyone is doing on a particular day, and Baker wanted to run more free-form. Their parting was amicable. "What they are doing is great, awesome," said Baker. "But it didn't work for me." Early in 2000, MSU head coach Jim Stintzi, a six-time all-American at Wisconsin, offered Baker the assistant's job at State, where he'd been a four-time Big Ten champ and four-time all-American from 1996-99. Baker is self-coached, but gets input and advice from Stintzi. "I like competing against the Hansons guys," says Baker. "When they show up, you know you're in for a good race. Clint (Verran, a Hansons member) and I are still pretty close." Emotionally and physically. Baker and Verran decided to run Chicago together and finished as third and fourth Americans, respectively, four seconds apart. If Baker hits his goals for 2003, he'll three-peat as MR's Runner of the Year. He wants to finish in the top four at Crim, make the U.S. marathon team for the track and field world championships in Paris next summer, lower his 10,000-meter track PR to near 28-flat and his 5,000-meter PR to 13:30 from 13:51. And, not incidentally, rock on and rake in the dough from the U.S. road-racing circuit. MR