Unsung pro runner leads the modest life

Matt Gabrielson has been a professional athlete for seven years.

Yet he has signed fewer than 10 autographs and is rarely recognized in public.

He is sponsored by Reebok, receiving a travel budget, clothes and physical therapy.

Yet his contract would make most big-league professional athletes chuckle.

Gabrielson is one of the 10 best distance runners in the country, having finished eighth in the 5,000-meter run at the U.S. Olympic trials in June.

Yet, he works part-time selling shoes at TC Running Company in Eden Prairie. He's an assistant cross-country coach at Edina High School. He announces track meets in the spring.

"You just don't know that people like me exist, really, until you go to a road race and see 40,000 people running it," Gabrielson said. "The elites are running out in front. But it's like they're hiding in the walls the other 364 days a year."

Gabrielson, 30, will compete in the Twin Cities Marathon on Sunday. He is a professional runner, a professional athlete, despite living an nonglamorous, anonymous life on almost laughable paychecks.

"I have a bed. I don't have cable. We just got Internet, actually," Gabrielson said. "[Someone like Randy Moss] probably has like a shelf in his room with stuff on the shelf that probably totals way more than everything I own together."

Gabrielson is a charter member of Team USA Minnesota, which formed in 2001. Through the organization, Gabrielson receives coaching, health club memberships and a yearly stipend (not salary) of about $500 a month, among other amenities.

Gabrielson lived with his younger brother, Mitch, several years ago.

"He'll wake up in the morning, go running 15 to 20 miles, then he'll come home and make like some kind of whole wheat Belgian waffles or oatmeal or something like that, things to build the carbs back up," Mitch said. "He'll get on running blogs and see how some of his competitors and teammates are doing or feeling, or if they competed.

"After that, he'll go work out at Lifetime Fitness for probably like two or three hours to do strength training, then he'll come back and get a little free time to do whatever. Then back to 15 to 20 miles at night. And it's every day. If we were to come and visit parents for the weekend, it didn't stop."

Gabrielson admitted to being choosy about friendships, forming them mostly with other marathon or distance runners, people who understand he can't be out partying until 3 a.m. He needs at least seven or eight hours of sleep a night to put in the 12 to 30 miles a day.

But why don't more people understand the sport, follow the sport, watch the sport? He can only guess.

"Maybe it's because people in charge of the sport at the highest level, if it's national governing body, maybe they don't do a good enough job promoting things," Gabrielson said. "At a lot of races, the faster runners are known as 'elite athletes.' But they were commenting how they should be known as 'professional runners.' It just legitimizes things more. Saying 'elite' doesn't really mean anything."

Under the radar

Outdoor track is the third-most-popular high school sport, with 996,341 participants nationwide, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations' 2007-08 survey.

According to the USA Track & Field website, 19 track or distance-running events other than the Olympics have been televised so far in 2008. During the fall, at least that many football games are televised on basic cable during a single week.

With a lack of media coverage and no stadium to which season tickets can be sold, professional running can only succeed in small doses. The athletes -- well, most of them -- are happy to live normal, nameless lives.

Gabrielson is closer to the end of his career than the beginning, though he hopes to compete for a 2012 Olympic slot in the 10,000 meters. He puts the onus on the rising generation of runners to put a new face to the sport.

"There are so many good young runners coming out of high school and into college," Gabrielson said. "They have to create rivalries. These younger runners have to be very vocal and say what they're going to do, put it on the line."

Until that aura exists around running, Gabrielson will continue going to bars or coffee shops looking like an average Joe and being treated like one, as well.

"If I was Joe Mauer, I can't imagine it," Gabrielson said. "He probably can't go out anywhere without being hounded, hounded, hounded. I wouldn't want that at all. But it'd be cool to be able to be recognized at different places that you go."