Cabada aims high after strong marathon debut

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Fernando Cabada sees himself on the medal stand one day at the Olympics.

Call it brash, even arrogant, but consider that a week ago the rising distance star pulled off a stunning marathon debut in Fukuoka, Japan. His ninth-place time of 2:12:27 was the seventh-fastest debut in U.S. history.

"I thought 'Wow, I'm leaving my mark,' " Cabada said last week, back home in Bristol, Va.

Still, Cabada is aiming higher. He plans to run 2:11 or better in his next marathon and says times of 2:07 or 2:08 will become common.

"When I finished, I felt more relief than happy," he said. "You know us runners, when you get to a certain point and you want to get faster and faster. I am more happy because I know that the training I am doing is what I need to be doing. If I had gone 2:15, that would have been OK but I would wonder what I'd need to be doing. Running 2:12, I know I don't have to change my training.

"People run a lot of years to get to 2:12, and I haven't even reached my potential in training and racing," said the 24-year-old Cabada, who ranks sixth among American marathoners this year. "There is so much room for improvement, from A to Z. I got away with such minimal training to run this marathon."

Cabada was amazed he handled the marathon distance with relative ease, even holding back more than he thought he should have.

"At 10K to go, I was so ready for whatever was going to come to me," he said. "I was waiting for the pain and it never came."

Little has come easy for Cabada. He grew up on welfare in a rough neighborhood in Fresno, Calif., with a father who was in and out of prison and a mother he calls his best friend and hero doing all she could to hold her family together. That upbringing helped Cabada developed a sense of survival that he has injected into his running career.

A talented high school runner, he made it to the big time with a scholarship to Arkansas, one of the best track schools in the nation in 2000. Two years later, he was gone. Too much intensity, too much pressure. He went back home and tried Fresno State in 2002 but that school cut its cross country and indoor track programs. Cabada gave Arkansas another shot, sans scholarship, but that didn't last long.