Track star Lane likes the roads, particularly in Louisville

(NOTE: This is the second in a series of stories about the Papa John's 10 Miler/USA Men's 10 Mile Championship, which will be run in Louisville on Saturday.)

When Matt Lane tries to play the piano from time to time and quits in frustration, he’s reminded of running.

“You keep working at it and don’t get any better,” he said.

That thought offers a little perspective on Lane’s decisions after the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, when he just wanted to get off the track after a torturously disappointing run in the 5,000 meters. He finished fourth, just as he had done four years earlier, and failed to qualify for the Olympics again.

“I needed a break from running around in circles - no pun intended,” Lane said during an interview with Beyond the Derby’s Nathan Chambers. “Well, maybe the pun is intended.”

Either way, his career intentions were clear. The track star hit the roads.

He had never run a road race longer than seven miles and wasted no time changing that in 2005; he entered the USA Men’s Half Marathon Championship in Houston on Jan. 16 and placed fifth.

That began an adventurous year in which he was third at the USA Men’s 15 Kilometer Championship in Jacksonville, Fla., on March 12; fourth at the USA Men’s 10 Mile Championship in Louisville on April 9; and 14th (second among Americans) at the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 9.

“I hadn’t done any of these,” said Lane, who still runs on the track and plans to compete in the 10,000 meters at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Indianapolis in June. “It was fun to get out there and just do one.”

But the marathon’s 26.2 miles were a real stretch for Lane, whose longest previous race was half that distance earlier in the year.

“I used to never want to run a marathon,” he said. “It didn’t make any sense to me. But it became, like, ‘If you’re a distance runner, it’s something you have to do.’ And I wanted that experience. It was something else I hadn’t done before.”

He also welcomed the more relaxed atmosphere of the road races, which, he noted, offer much better prize money than track events. (The USA Men’s 10 Mile Championship, for instance, awards $10,000 to the winner and more than $26,000 total.)

“Most of us are not highly paid anyway, so that’s a nice bonus,” said Lane, who runs for Nike.

Of course, he also did well in those races last year. So, after a particularly impressive run in the Chicago Marathon, he targeted the more prestigious Boston Marathon, which will be held on Monday. He tried to let his body recover with some time off before training for Boston, but a nagging foot problem eventually caused so much pain in January that it curtailed his workouts.

“So it wasn’t time to run another marathon,” he said. “I wanted to be at the same fitness level for Boston as I was for Chicago. It became clear to me that I couldn’t do that.”

Instead, Lane will return to Louisville for the USA Men’s 10 Mile Championship, which will be held on Saturday in conjunction with the Papa John’s 10 Miler for the fourth year in a row. He is one of the runners to watch in a race that also includes defending champion and record holder Abdi Abdirahman and 2004 champion Dan Browne.

“The Papa John’s fit in well with my schedule; my fitness is coming along,” Lane said. “And it’s just a fun one to do.”

He could have more fun this time around with a little less on his mind. A year ago he was thinking about wedding plans; he and his fiancee, former Stanford University All-American Erin Sullivan, were getting married exactly two weeks after the race.

“It was stressful,” he said. “We did a good job planning for the wedding so I wasn’t that overwhelmed. But my training just wasn’t going as well as I’d want it to.”

Matt and Erin currently live in Menlo Park, Calif., and she is enrolled in a teacher certification program at San Jose State University. They plan to move to Maine, his home state, this summer, and, with an interest in politics, he will begin law school at the University of Maine.

He actually volunteered at the Santa Clara County Democratic Party office in 2004 and did campaign work for U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, California Assemblyman Ira Ruskin and the Kerry-Edwards ticket. He wants to get more involved in 2008.

With such interests and his running career, Lane has little time for the piano anymore. But that already had become clear to him at the College of William & Mary (2001 graduate), where he was an All-American, majored in finance and music, and developed a friendship with pop pianist Bruce Hornsby.

“When I went to his house for the first time, I talked to him about what he did to get where he is, the work that went into making him as good as he is,” Lane said. “That made me realize I had to focus on what I really wanted to do, and that was running.”