Mike Scannell, Michigan Runner of the Year, says if it wasn't for the friendly running community of his new state, he'd still be in semi-retirement as a runner.

Scannell -- a 41-year-old who tore up state roads in 2003 -- raced once a year and jogged an easy four miles a day during most of the '90s, having turned his back on the road-race, running-bum circuit after the 1992 U.S. marathon trials, where he was a DNF.

It was time, then, to get a real job and put his background -- computer science and an MBA from Arizona State University, where he ran collegiately -- to the forefront.

(He was an unlikely letterman at ASU. He only ran outdoor track his senior season at McClintock High School in Tempe, and had a two-mile best of 10:22, hardly eye-catching. He went with a friend to the ASU tryouts, where the coach advised him to stick with schooling. "He angered me enough to make me train," Scannell says. "If I'd have been smarter, I would have quit." He developed into solid competitor by his junior year, ran in the Marathon trials in 1988 and '92, had a marathon PR of 2:16 and spent several years working part-time and traveling the pro-running circuit.)

Three years ago, Scannell moved to Grand Blanc to work as operations manager at Flint's Engineered Products Co., a manufacturer and distributor of cabinet components.

In 2001, he ran one of his infrequent races -- though he'd only race once a season or so, he'd still try to hit five-minute-a-mile pace -- and says that afterwards, he got a call from Front Line Racing Team organizer Fred Vanhala.

"Fred saw my time, called me out of the blue and said, 'You're fairly fast for an old guy,'" Scannell remembers.

He accepted Vanhala's invitation to run for Front Line's five-man Detroit Free Press Marathon relay team. A few days before the race, Vanhala called, said there'd been a problem and asked if Scannell could run for the two-man team instead.

Scannell reluctantly agreed -- 13.1 miles of racing was more than his training called for -- but he was able to bang out 5:30 miles, had fun, hit it off with the other Front Liners, and found his running rejuvenated.

"The racing community here is very well-established and inviting," he says. "It's much different than Arizona's.

"I give Fred all the credit for dragging me back into running," Scannell declares.

He ran about 10 races in 2002, a season curtailed when he got hit by a boat while jet skiing. "For a boat wreck, it was great," Scannell says. "I walked away with just a few broken ribs."

He boosted that to about 20 races in 2003, and credits Michigan Runner magazine for the increase. He wasn't aware of the road-race circuit MR uses to select Runners of the Year, but had coincidentally run in several of those events early on, doing very well.

When someone told Scannell he was doing well in the series, he had no idea what they were talking about and contacted Jennie McCafferty of MR to get the lowdown.

She explained the series to him and furnished a list of coming races. "The series forced me to travel around the state, which was wonderful," Scannell says. "I never would have gone to the Allen Park 8K otherwise, and that turned out to be a great race. I would never have gone to Cadillac, and it was beautiful up there.

"Arizona doesn't have many small towns. That's one nice thing about Michigan - all the small towns and places to run."

Scannell had a poor outing by his standards, but was first state master at the Fifth Third River Bank 25K in Grand Rapids May 10, finishing in 1:26:10. He was second overall and first master at the Rose Run 10K, in 32:19; he was first master at Allen Park, in 25:21; he was 42nd overall and first state master at Crim, in 54:03; and he won outright at the Cadillac 10K (32:00), the Kensington Challenge 5K (15:37), and the Capital City River Run 10-miler (54:04).

Other sterling performances in non-series events included a pair of 31:21s at Standard Federal 10Ks in Lansing and Grand Rapids, and a 14:52 5K in a track meet at Eastern Michigan University last spring.

Scannell manages those times despite a workload that can hit 60 hours a week, and family commitments -- he has a wife and two children, ages 6 and 8, that tie up most of his evenings.

Scannell runs 40 miles a week for most of the year, boosting that to 50 in the spring. He jogs up to a mile in the morning with his dog, and gets in 25 to 40 minutes on his lunch hour. He runs for about an hour on Saturdays, and on Sundays might get up to 75 minutes.

Speed work is nearly always done on a treadmill at a gym near work on his lunch hour, where he'll warm up for 10 minutes, do three miles at five-minute pace, then cool down for five minutes.

"The treadmill only goes up to 12 mph, so that's the fastest I run," Scannell says. "I do that Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

"On Saturday, I do strides before I do steady work. Sunday, I run an hour or so," he says.

"That's what I run between January and May. Once the college kids come back to town in June, I generally run the same schedule but I might do a workout outside once per week.

"I have a pretty-large group run that runs long from my house each Sunday. We go about 15 miles. The group is made up of college kids that competed for nearby high schools (such as Flint Powers, Grand Blanc and Fenton). The summer group lasts until September, when the young guys go back to school."

"I would love to run twice a day, 100 miles a week and fit in harder workouts," he says. "But I just don't have the time."

Scannell's relatively-low mileage did affect him in his longer runs. He "hit the wall" at the River Bank Run and Twin Cities Marathon. "When I do poorly, the wheels come off. I mean, OFF," he says.

Wheels or no, Scannell finished Twin Cities in 2:37. Like Vanhala says: pretty fast for an old guy. For a young guy, too. MR