Won outright at the Cadillac
10K (32:00), the Kensington Metropark Challenge 5K (15:37) and
the Capital City River Run 10-miler in Lansing (54:04) in
September.
In the early 1980s, Scannell
was an unlikely letterman at Arizona State. He ran only
outdoor track his senior season in high school in Tempe, Ariz.
He went out with a friend to
tryouts after enrolling at ASU and says the coach told him
after a mediocre workout, "You'd be better served by putting
your efforts into your schooling."
Said Scannell: "He angered me
enough to make me train. If I'd have been any smarter, I would
have quit."
Scannell developed into a
solid competitor by his junior year, ran in the U.S. Olympic
Marathon trials in 1988 and 1992, had a marathon personal
record of 2:16 and spent several years working part time and
traveling the pro running circuit. After dropping out of the
1992 trials, he decided it was time to go to work and put his
MBA to use.
He cut his running back to 4
easy miles a day and would race once a year to see if he could
still run five-minute miles.
Three years ago, Scannell
moved to Grand Blanc to accept a job as operations manager at
Flint's Engineered Products Co., a manufacturer and
distributor of cabinet components.
In 2001, he ran one of his
infrequent races and says that shortly afterward, he got a
call from Fred Vanhala, who organizes the Front Line Racing
Team of southeastern Michigan.
"I'd raced someplace and Fred
saw my time and called me out of the blue," Scannell said. "He
said, 'You're fairly fast for an old guy.' "
Vanhala invited Scannell to
run a 5-mile segment for that fall's Detroit Marathon relay.
But a few days before the race, Vanhala called and said there
was a problem and asked if he could possibly switch to the
two-man Front Line team.
Scannell agreed reluctantly
-- 13.1 miles of hard running were more than his training
called for -- but he did 5:30 miles, had a lot of fun, hit it
off with the other Front Liners and found his career
rejuvenated.
He ran about 10 races in
2002, a season curtailed when he got hit by a boat while jet
skiing.
"I walked away from it with
just some broken ribs," he said.
Scannell has a workload that
can hit 60 hours a week and family commitments -- he has a
wife and two children, 6 and 8. He runs 40 miles a week much
of the year, well below the level of most elite runners.
"I would love to run twice a
day and run 100 miles a week and do harder workouts," he said.
"But I just don't have the time."
