Allan Appel Photo
The champ with his phone and running app.
Never mind that two-time WBC Light Heavyweight Champ Chad Dawson has never even run a competitive 20K in his life.
The next competition he’s training for is a road race, not a boxing match. Specifically, Monday’s annual Faxon Law New Haven Road Race.
“I’m competitive,” he declared in a pre-race interview. I’m gonna try to keep up with those guys [the Olympians and elite runners]. If I see someone in front of me, I’m catching them. I’m gonna try. Don’t be shocked if I win the whole thing!”
Dolan and Dawson.
Dawson offered that prophecy — with only a hint of irony — during a visit with Michael Dolan, a longtime race board member and Dawson’s training partner for Labor Day Monday’s annual event.
Click here and here for stories of previous Labor Day races. And click here for a story about a memorable 2012 bout for Dawson, who as an 11-year-old boxing phenom began his career at Ring One boxing gym on Congress Avenue in the Hill. Since then he has developed cadres of admiring fans beginning in the West Rock neighborhood, where he grew up, who follow, with pride, his exploits.
Dawson, the boxer runner, is now giving them something else to root for.
Dawson, who attended Hillhouse and Hyde High schools before turning professional at age 18, said he injured his left shoulder in the ring about a year ago. He had surgery and has just finished rehab and is beginning training for what he hopes will be his next fight some time in December, although it is not yet scheduled.
That’s where running comes in. Attorney Dolan first met Dawson at Ring One because Dolan is himself a boxer, having picked up the sport when he was a cadet at West Point. They have been in low-key, friendly, and yet serious training for the road race the past ten weeks. They’ve been meeting two or three times each week in addition to running on their own. Dolan, a long-time distance runner as well as a boxer, said of Dawson and his running, “He’s whooping me again.”
The “again” refers to Dolan’s recollections of sparring with Dawson when the boxer was a teenager and looking for likely victims, er, sparring partners, at Ring One.
Even as a teenager, Dawson took it easy on him with the gloves, Dolan recalled.
Dawson, who played basketball at Hillhouse High School while developing his boxing skills at Ring One, admitted that in high school “I hated running. I hated getting tired and being out of breath.”
As his boxing career zoomed, that attitude changed. “I got used to it [running] and I learned the importance of road work,” he said.
While running is critical to a boxer’s training, Dawson said the usual boxer’s run is three to four miles, not the 12.4 miles (20K) that he’ll be attempting on Monday. Or even the five-to-seven mile runs that he has been on with Dolan in the training run-up.
“I’ve run 12 miles,” he said, citing his longest run to date, “and ten miles two weeks ago.”
He said it all felt good and he’s keeping track of his progress via the Runkeeper app on his Samsung galaxy phone (pictured).
While “roadwork is everything” to a fighter’s training, Dawson said, it’s a different kind of running and a different kind of training if a night in the ring is in the offing, instead of a 20K through the cheering morning streets of New Haven.
“The most I’ll do [training for a fight] would be three to five, maybe six miles,” Dawson explained. “You run too much and you burn muscle, and that’s a big mistake. Once you burn all the fat, you do muscles.”
“I’m trying to keep up with him. And in his mind he’s trying to keep up with me,” Dawson said of DOlan..
“Boxers are three minutes on, one off,” Dolan added.
“It’s all about recuperation. If I can recuperate faster than my opponent [in the ring], then I win. If you’re in the ring and can’t control your breathing, it’s going to be a long night,” Dawson added.
Which is why “I’m running as a boxer,” he said, with his plan being to sprint, overtaking somebody, and then to drop down to run at a more relaxed pace.
Race coordinator John Bysiewicz reported that for this, the 38th running of the Labor Day road race, more than 4,000 people had already registered by day’s end Tuesday, with the expectation of over 6,000 participants in total for both the 20K and 5K and the little kids’ race.
That won’t make this the largest race yet; 7,000 entered in 2013. Several former race winners and Olympians in the elite field are competing for the laurels and the $46,850 prize purses to be awarded to the top 20K finishers.
Dawson hopes to be among them.
“I’ll try to rein him in,” said Dolan. “We’ll try to pass people later in the race, not in the beginning.”
Awesome Game On!
Go for it Chad...we'll be cheering for you at the finish!