Boston College Athletics
Fitzgerald, Burdon Delivering Track’s Message One Mile at a Time
August 15, 2017 | Men's Track & Field, #ForBoston Files
Former track athletes' company has been a success just down the road from The Heights
On the track, runners are taught to balance and embrace the competition between the team and the individual. They strive for individual performance within a larger community built on team support. It's best illustrated along the streets of Boston as people wind their way from the Charles River through the outer reaches of their city and region. Its ultimate highlight is the Boston Marathon, widely recognized as a 26.2-mile block party celebrating the city's entire spirit.
Dan Fitzgerald and Justin Burdon know that community very well. As members of the Boston College track team, they spent hours training along the same hills run on Patriots' Day. Following graduation, they very much remain a part of that as the founders of the Heartbreak Hill Running Company.
Though the duo both started as runners for the Eagles, they took two very different paths to the present day.
"I was a Carroll School of Management guy," Burdon said. "After I graduated, I started working at Ernst and Young as a CPA for quite some time. But I always had this desire to kind of do my own thing. Dan and I had been talking and the time was right, so I just jumped into it with him."
"I worked as a running coach right out of college," Fitzgerald said. "At the same time, I was a volunteer assistant coach for BC. After a year of doing that, I had a job in the surfing industry and worked there for seven years. There was a hole in the running market and I wanted to offer something that was new and different in terms of brand and programming. So we opened South End Athletic Company to focus on speed and getting runners faster. It became the Heartbreak Hill Running Company, which was really aimed at getting running better in the heart of its business."
When Heartbreak Hill started, it sought to offer programs building directly off their experiences as Boston College student-athletes. It looked towards the team atmosphere built through high school and college to create opportunity to enhance individualized training.
"When I ran track at BC, I ran the 800 meters," Fitzgerald said. "Whenever I talked to people in the running stores, whether it was the first one that I worked in or the one that I opened, I was shocked at how many people didn't do any speed work. They identified as runners and were passionate about running but never actually did a track workout. As a track athlete, that was tough to see that runners would try to get faster but not have the tools. So the goal was to apply what I learned at a higher level of competition and make it something that could be digestible at any speed. When we opened the business, all that was really offered were four- to six-mile jogs."
"Our experience at BC and as Division I athletes really informed what we've done with the running club," Burdon said. "Not everyone is fortunate enough to run with a team and run with a D1 program. So we wanted to take our experience and give it to the masses. We wanted people to experience what it was like to be part of a team, where they could support each other. At the end of the day, you make a lot of your best friends as part of a team."
Heartbreak Hill fosters that attitude through comprehensive programs geared at both team and individual atmospheres. Remembering their schedule from their college days, Fitzgerald and Burdon created a program mirroring what they did at Boston College.
"The workouts started as a basic introduction to the potential we can unlock in speed training, whether we're running on hills, doing track drills and all of those kind of things. We started with one night per week on Thursdays with a Saturday long run. As a track athlete, though, I did two to three workouts per week, so we expanded our programming to include speed training with our Heartbreaker practice, which is a private speed session. The Thursday session is still public and kind of a feeder or introduction."
The Heartbreakers, as they're known, are the members of Heartbreak Hill's private running club. Fitzgerald serves as the "chief Heartbreaker" and creator of all programming, earning a "Best of Boston" award in 2016 as the Best Running Coach in Boston Magazine. Within the club, there are different programs geared at helping runners of all levels compete on marathon, half-marathon, 10K and 5K plans.
"It's turned into what I learned and loved as a team member at Boston College," Fitzgerald said. "We created that for people who had that experience and had since graduated or for people who never had that experience and wanted to be part of a team. They get to be pushed by a team and have those fundamentals from being cached at running."
"Running is one of those sports where it's a combination," Burdon said. "You're always competitive with yourself and the people you're running against, but you also support each other. It's something I've really noticed, and it's been really fun for me to see both our team and within the broader community."
In Boston, the team element taps into what makes the city a true "running city." Fitzgerald described the running community as vibrant within the region. Having grown up in Tewksbury and attending school in Chestnut Hill, he identified with the year-round runners on the Charles River and being able to run the Boston Marathon's hills, including Heartbreak Hill, as part of his training.
"I meet people from other parts of the country, and they all comment on how many people are running (in Boston)," he said. "You realize how running has a deep ecosystem of clubs and it combines people who have been doing it for a long time with a new running movement of people who are more introductory. All of that combines with the unifying spirit of the Boston Marathon and how it unifies the city as one of the world's pinnacle races. It's awesome to be a part of that."
"I've never been to a place in the world where you see so many runners like Boston," Burdon said. "Boston College, Heartbreak Hill and the Boston Maraton are all steeped in a great history of enthusiasm and participation. You don't get to be a great runner overnight, and it takes years and years of working hard to get to an elite level. From a business perspective, we started our company almost eight years ago, and we still love what we do. We're still working really hard, and it's really just grinding away, every day, to hopefully make our runners successful."
For both Burdon and Fitzgerald, their days of officially running are behind them. Though Fitzgerald still races a couple of times per year - for "street cred," as he joked - they're now focused entirely on delivering the message acquired at BC to their runners.
"When I finished at BC, I retired as a competitive runner," Burdon said. "I really love to see people picking up running now, and it's a great thing to watch. I feel like I've been there and done it (in racing), so now I really enjoy watching that out of our runners. It makes Heartbreak exciting."
"As an athlete myself, I really liked Boston College," Fitzgerald said. "The BC track team was full of dynamic individuals and runners, which I gravitated towards. The team was really close and I had a great experience to there. It's a great place to be a runner. The [Reservoir] is a great place to run and Heartbreak Hill is right there. We ran through Newton and Brookline and all of those places are a great place to step into the community in Boston.
"I'm of the mindset now that I loved career and my time as a college athlete," he continued. "That was my chance and I feel strongly that a coach coaches. Athletes need to maximize themselves and have that tunnel vision and I came up in running being competitive and trying to win as my ultimate goal. I've learned that I really enjoy the community aspect and I want to maximize what my runners can do. It's much more for me to help my runners realize their potential than my personal running now."
The entire mission encompasses what makes Boston's running culture, highlighted by the Boston Marathon, successful. Fitzgerald ran the Marathon in 2014 and knows what it takes to complete the grueling course.
"The hills themselves aren't crushing on their own," he said. "People will come in from out of town, look at the route and Heartbreak Hill and ask if that's it. It doesn't look that bad at first look. But the start of the course is downhill, which can bang up the quads. Heartbreak is the either the third of three or fourth of four hills in Newton. It's the third of three hills on Comm Ave. It's the make-or-break point of the Marathon and that's why we're named after it with that great heritage and challenge.
"But one thing makes Boston so special," he finished. "I talked to Galen Rupp, who was second place in this year's Boston Marathon and medaled in the Olympics. He's arguably one of America's best distance runners and he was excited and touched by the Boston Marathon. It's our local road race and he was so excited about Boston. In Boston, you can high five the fans and they're screaming your name. There's that energy."
Dan Fitzgerald and Justin Burdon know that community very well. As members of the Boston College track team, they spent hours training along the same hills run on Patriots' Day. Following graduation, they very much remain a part of that as the founders of the Heartbreak Hill Running Company.
Though the duo both started as runners for the Eagles, they took two very different paths to the present day.
"I was a Carroll School of Management guy," Burdon said. "After I graduated, I started working at Ernst and Young as a CPA for quite some time. But I always had this desire to kind of do my own thing. Dan and I had been talking and the time was right, so I just jumped into it with him."
"I worked as a running coach right out of college," Fitzgerald said. "At the same time, I was a volunteer assistant coach for BC. After a year of doing that, I had a job in the surfing industry and worked there for seven years. There was a hole in the running market and I wanted to offer something that was new and different in terms of brand and programming. So we opened South End Athletic Company to focus on speed and getting runners faster. It became the Heartbreak Hill Running Company, which was really aimed at getting running better in the heart of its business."
When Heartbreak Hill started, it sought to offer programs building directly off their experiences as Boston College student-athletes. It looked towards the team atmosphere built through high school and college to create opportunity to enhance individualized training.
"When I ran track at BC, I ran the 800 meters," Fitzgerald said. "Whenever I talked to people in the running stores, whether it was the first one that I worked in or the one that I opened, I was shocked at how many people didn't do any speed work. They identified as runners and were passionate about running but never actually did a track workout. As a track athlete, that was tough to see that runners would try to get faster but not have the tools. So the goal was to apply what I learned at a higher level of competition and make it something that could be digestible at any speed. When we opened the business, all that was really offered were four- to six-mile jogs."
"Our experience at BC and as Division I athletes really informed what we've done with the running club," Burdon said. "Not everyone is fortunate enough to run with a team and run with a D1 program. So we wanted to take our experience and give it to the masses. We wanted people to experience what it was like to be part of a team, where they could support each other. At the end of the day, you make a lot of your best friends as part of a team."
Heartbreak Hill fosters that attitude through comprehensive programs geared at both team and individual atmospheres. Remembering their schedule from their college days, Fitzgerald and Burdon created a program mirroring what they did at Boston College.
"The workouts started as a basic introduction to the potential we can unlock in speed training, whether we're running on hills, doing track drills and all of those kind of things. We started with one night per week on Thursdays with a Saturday long run. As a track athlete, though, I did two to three workouts per week, so we expanded our programming to include speed training with our Heartbreaker practice, which is a private speed session. The Thursday session is still public and kind of a feeder or introduction."
The Heartbreakers, as they're known, are the members of Heartbreak Hill's private running club. Fitzgerald serves as the "chief Heartbreaker" and creator of all programming, earning a "Best of Boston" award in 2016 as the Best Running Coach in Boston Magazine. Within the club, there are different programs geared at helping runners of all levels compete on marathon, half-marathon, 10K and 5K plans.
"It's turned into what I learned and loved as a team member at Boston College," Fitzgerald said. "We created that for people who had that experience and had since graduated or for people who never had that experience and wanted to be part of a team. They get to be pushed by a team and have those fundamentals from being cached at running."
"Running is one of those sports where it's a combination," Burdon said. "You're always competitive with yourself and the people you're running against, but you also support each other. It's something I've really noticed, and it's been really fun for me to see both our team and within the broader community."
In Boston, the team element taps into what makes the city a true "running city." Fitzgerald described the running community as vibrant within the region. Having grown up in Tewksbury and attending school in Chestnut Hill, he identified with the year-round runners on the Charles River and being able to run the Boston Marathon's hills, including Heartbreak Hill, as part of his training.
"I meet people from other parts of the country, and they all comment on how many people are running (in Boston)," he said. "You realize how running has a deep ecosystem of clubs and it combines people who have been doing it for a long time with a new running movement of people who are more introductory. All of that combines with the unifying spirit of the Boston Marathon and how it unifies the city as one of the world's pinnacle races. It's awesome to be a part of that."
"I've never been to a place in the world where you see so many runners like Boston," Burdon said. "Boston College, Heartbreak Hill and the Boston Maraton are all steeped in a great history of enthusiasm and participation. You don't get to be a great runner overnight, and it takes years and years of working hard to get to an elite level. From a business perspective, we started our company almost eight years ago, and we still love what we do. We're still working really hard, and it's really just grinding away, every day, to hopefully make our runners successful."
For both Burdon and Fitzgerald, their days of officially running are behind them. Though Fitzgerald still races a couple of times per year - for "street cred," as he joked - they're now focused entirely on delivering the message acquired at BC to their runners.
"When I finished at BC, I retired as a competitive runner," Burdon said. "I really love to see people picking up running now, and it's a great thing to watch. I feel like I've been there and done it (in racing), so now I really enjoy watching that out of our runners. It makes Heartbreak exciting."
"As an athlete myself, I really liked Boston College," Fitzgerald said. "The BC track team was full of dynamic individuals and runners, which I gravitated towards. The team was really close and I had a great experience to there. It's a great place to be a runner. The [Reservoir] is a great place to run and Heartbreak Hill is right there. We ran through Newton and Brookline and all of those places are a great place to step into the community in Boston.
"I'm of the mindset now that I loved career and my time as a college athlete," he continued. "That was my chance and I feel strongly that a coach coaches. Athletes need to maximize themselves and have that tunnel vision and I came up in running being competitive and trying to win as my ultimate goal. I've learned that I really enjoy the community aspect and I want to maximize what my runners can do. It's much more for me to help my runners realize their potential than my personal running now."
The entire mission encompasses what makes Boston's running culture, highlighted by the Boston Marathon, successful. Fitzgerald ran the Marathon in 2014 and knows what it takes to complete the grueling course.
"The hills themselves aren't crushing on their own," he said. "People will come in from out of town, look at the route and Heartbreak Hill and ask if that's it. It doesn't look that bad at first look. But the start of the course is downhill, which can bang up the quads. Heartbreak is the either the third of three or fourth of four hills in Newton. It's the third of three hills on Comm Ave. It's the make-or-break point of the Marathon and that's why we're named after it with that great heritage and challenge.
"But one thing makes Boston so special," he finished. "I talked to Galen Rupp, who was second place in this year's Boston Marathon and medaled in the Olympics. He's arguably one of America's best distance runners and he was excited and touched by the Boston Marathon. It's our local road race and he was so excited about Boston. In Boston, you can high five the fans and they're screaming your name. There's that energy."
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