AYUMI NAKANISHI/ANAKANISHI@STARBULLETIN.COM Hawaii Pacific's Christian Madsen has won 11 races since transferring to the school last year.

Alone at the Top

Christian Madsen is looking
for someone to challenge him

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By Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.com

Christian Madsen runs alone.

It's not that he wants to necessarily; it's because he has to due to some internal need and because so few athletes in Hawaii can push him.

Add in the frequency of the Hawaii Pacific senior's workouts -- usually twice a day -- and he is left alone to go only as fast as he can push himself.

"Just one day without running feels real, real weird," Madsen said. "Your body is so used to putting that stress that it just asks for more."

For all of his problems finding a partner on a boring Wednesday night, Madsen is most alone when he slips on his HPU uniform. When he takes off from the starting line at any of Hawaii's NCAA Division II meets, it rarely takes long for his competition to fall back. Every week, they concede the race to the man who has won 11 times in a year and a half and has not lost since finishing 31st in last year's Division II championships.

So after the first few kilometers, Madsen is alone with his thoughts, needing just to stay upright and keep one foot in front of the other to claim another title. He could cruise to the finish, but when everyone else feels their body slow under the strain of matching Madsen's pace, the senior from Denmark picks it up a notch.

AYUMI NAKANISHI/ANAKANISHI@STARBULLETIN.COM Christian Madsen, left, took fellow All-American Christian Friis' spot at the top of the lineup of coach Vien Schwinn, right, last year.

"If I was satisfied, there would be no more reason to run," Madsen said. "I always think I can run faster."

So Madsen speeds along, hoping to go faster than he has ever gone before, faster even than the speed of the Internet.

With Hawaii all but conquered, Madsen spends his time checking up on the rest of the country, seeing how his times compare to those of the best runners out there.

Madsen knows there will always be someone out there faster than him, and he wants to be ready when they meet.

Because that is when the running will really start.

Madsen is looking past his collegiate career, figuring that regional and national championships will come as a result of training for his own personal Super Bowl. Madsen, who has given his college eligibility to a pair of NCAA Division II schools -- he transferred to HPU from national cross country power Western State -- is trying to get into next year's Stanford Invitational as a last hurrah.

Despite being on a college student's meager budget, he is trying to save up enough money to pay his own way, figuring that whatever it costs, it will be a bargain.

"If I didn't do it, I would be angry with myself," Madsen said. "It's only money, this is so much more important."

That the 25-year-old has to look across an ocean to find a challenge is no great surprise. There are people in Hawaii who can give him a race; there are just none in any of the state's small colleges. He knows of the Jonathan Lyaus and Bob Dickies of the world and hopes to test himself against them in next year's Great Aloha Run, a race he missed last year because of a sprained ankle.

Until then, he will have to keep chasing their forms in his imagination on Saturday mornings, adding to his seeming invincibility. But he came to Hawaii knowing that his greatest competition would have to come from within.

"I kind of knew there was not much competition here," Madsen said. "I knew what I was getting into. I was spoiled before with the faster guys to train with in Colorado."

MADSEN GOT a pleasant surprise last week at the Hawaii Pacific Invitational when a runner actually brought the fight to him.

Madsen and teammate Abdeslam Naji, who is the closest to Madsen in training, were running along, dominating the 10K meet four kilometers into it, when Irvine Valley College's Shane Dougherty did the unthinkable. Dougherty passed Madsen on his home course, adding to the insult by doing it to Hawaii's best as if he were standing still.

"I was scared I was going to lose," Madsen said. "But I caught up to him and heard his high breathing and I knew I had him."

Although Madsen says he was running his fastest at the time and had never seen anyone run down a hill so quickly, the prospect of losing frightened the man who has forgotten what it's like not to finish first. Madsen had "trained through" the meet, not expecting a challenge, and because of it had to call on something that has nothing to do with training -- intimidation.

Madsen had pushed himself through meets to build up the aura of invincibility that he treasures, and bullied the stranger into making a mistake. Although he was tired and beginning to doubt if he could hold on, Madsen believes he won because he gave the appearance that it was just another Saturday run for him. When Dougherty slumped his shoulders just a little bit, Madsen ignored the pain and ran that much more upright. Madsen believes that is why he turned a potential challenge into another win by more than a minute.

"I try to look strong to seem intimidating," Madsen said. "I think in the sprints, I win a lot more because of my experience. I'm not really fast in the sprint, but I play a mental game and look for any sign of weakness. I was just hanging on, but I picked up the pace just a little tiny bit to make him think I have a lot left."

Although his senior season is winding down, Madsen believes he still has far to go. After the Great Aloha Run and Stanford Invitational, Madsen will return to Denmark. Although people around him use such words as world championship or Olympics, Madsen says that he takes his running career one step at a time. He says becoming an Olympian is not impossible, just so far into the future that it is not worth considering.

Before he even thinks about such lofty heights, he wants to reclaim his place near the top of the region where it all started as a boy trying to keep up with his father.

"I'll have to go home and show the Danish elite that I haven't been on vacation over here," Madsen said. "After that, who knows?"