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By MICHAEL WIGMAN

News Sports Writer

Sometimes in life, when you find yourself facing adversity, you have to make an unorthodox decision to overcome it.

After running, by her standards, a subpar 2:52.17 at the Rock 'n' Roll marathon in Nashville in late April, Alpena native Michele Suszek found herself facing such a life altering moment.

"It was a shocker. It was devastating," Suszek said. "I felt the best I had ever felt going into a race It happens and everybody has a bad race and you can't beat yourself up about it, but if you think there's things that are wrong you should really look at those and try to fix them."

Sitting downtrodden on the flight from Nashville back to Denver, Suszek flipped through the May 2009 issue of Running Times and stumbled upon the life story of Lyle Knudson.

"There was this couple page article on him in there about his kind of controversial or nontraditional American distance coaching ways," Suszek said. "There's a lot of controversy with him The traditional long distance athlete usually runs over 100 miles a week he focuses more on quality miles over junk miles."

A both revered and vilified track and field coach who had risen to the highest levels of the sport, Knudson had found himself on the outside in recent years.

As the former head women's coach at the University of Florida, among other universities, director of the United States Track and Field junior elite camps from 1978-2005 and a coach on 11 different international teams, Knudson is well known in track and field circles. It's not his personality, passion for the sport or ability to better his athletes that spurred his meteoric rise - and eventual downfall - instead it's his unique training program.

He is a firm believer that athletes need to train specific to the demands of their event, and should focus on speed over the current model of long, slow distance training. Runners training under Knudson learn to run based on time not distance, and to maximize their pace throughout the event. The majority of the USA running community subscribes to the alternate training method of running high mileage at lower speeds.

"Why are we coaching these athletes to run slow? We should be coaching them to run fast, and that's exactly what he's doing," Suszek said.

The program piqued Suszek's interest, and made her decide to send the coach an e-mail shortly after arriving back in Denver.

"He basically talked me into moving up to Frisco, Colo., and training with him just based off me finding him in that magazine," Suszek said.

In that same article Knudson told the interviewer he wouldn't pursue an athlete or coaching opportunity, but he would listen if one found him. In what Suszek calls fate, she did exactly that.

Suszek should not be confused with a slouch of an athlete. The Alpena High School graduate and former UNLV track star finished 60th at the 2008 U.S. Olympic women's marathon time trials. She had reached her myriad accomplishments by coaching herself, and by following the "long, slow, distance" model of training.

"I coached myself all the way up until two months ago when I found him," Suszek said.

After the disappointing race in Nashville, she was ready for a change to push her over the hump and into the truly elite level of marathon runners. It didn't take long for Knudson to give her that push.

Last Saturday Suszek won the Seattle Rock 'n' Roll marathon in a personal best 2:38.37, after only two months of training with Knudson. She is now the 10th-ranked USA marathon runner. Making the accomplishment even more outstanding is the fact Suszek wasn't even training for marathons. Knudson has had her training for 5Ks and 10Ks in an effort to build up to the USA Marathon Championships in October.

"I am happy with her performance in Seattle. We went up there not knowing what she was capable of doing in a marathon," Knudson said. "We knew that she was training well, but we didn't know how that would translate to a marathon."

Her focus has been on increasing her turnover, which is her stride length and stride frequency. In laymen's terms it means efficiently moving her legs.

"We had some suggestions to her running technique which would allow her to improve her speed a little bit," Knudson said.

The schedule the pair had made has her competing in the Desert News 10K in late July and the Columbus, Ohio half-marathon in August, a schedule they will still stick to despite her recent success.

"We've kept the basic schedule intact, but revised the training a little bit," Knudson said.

The ultimate goal for her is to make the 2012 Olympic team that will travel to London. Knudson isn't a fan of goals, saying he'd rather work everyday to get better and allow the results to take care of themselves.

"My goal, if anything, is No. 1 to improve, and No. 2 to feel good about what you're doing in training as well as in competition," Knudson said.

From the sound of it, Suszek is extremely happy with her decision to train with Knudson and she is enjoying every moment.

"Absolutely. I think it was a definitely a blessing and I think God had his hand in it," Suszek said.