From leaving the track and cross country behind to embark on a marathon career, to switching allegiance from Great Britain to the USA, the 24-year-old talks about some big, and very personal, decisions.
It has been a time of change for Charles Hicks. It’s just 12 months ago that he was making the final preparations to compete in his first ever road race – a significant departure for an athlete steeped in cross country competition and tussles on the track.
But this was no sudden dive into the deep end. The idea of becoming a marathon runner had already been taking shape in his own mind so, when his coach Jerry Schumacher raised that same notion, the decision to hit the road was made and months of preparation began.
In that first venture on to the asphalt, Hicks impressed at the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler in Washington D.C. – an event that doubles as the US Championships for the distance. His victory brought a national title, but his dual citizenship with Great Britain meant that his time of 45:14 would not stand as a US record. That honour went to second-placed Alex Maier, whose 45:15 just edged inside Conner Mantz’s previous mark of 45:16.
But there’s more change in the air. Come mid-July, Hicks will become eligible to compete for the USA. The 24-year-old was born in London and lived in Fulham for the first 12 years of his life before moving Stateside with his family.
His international career thus far has played out in a British vest, with two European U23 cross country titles and a 5000m gold at the 2023 European U23 Championships to his name. But, with having lived the second half of his life in the US and with his country of residence looking unlikely to change any time soon, he admits: “I was feeling increasingly fraudulent the more time I spent outside of the UK.” It has felt like the right call to make and, should he realise his Olympic dream by competing at the LA Games in 2028, he will do so as a member of the home team.
He will certainly have plenty of support coming his way later this month when he takes part in the Boston Marathon for the first time, his second outing over 26.2 miles after finishing seventh in New York last November with 2:09:59. It goes against conventional wisdom for one so young to be committing themselves to the distance but, then, the marathon rulebook is becoming increasingly rewritten with every passing year.
“People, especially out of the US and the NCAA system, don’t typically try to do marathons as aggressively as we have,” says the Stanford University graduate as he speaks to AW via video call from his Oregon base, sat at a workspace encased by an altitude generator tent “that is usually set between 10,000 and 12,000 feet”.
“But the beautiful thing is you’re seeing a lot of guys are trying to make this switch earlier than people previously did and that can lead to really exciting performances as people figure out [that the marathon] isn’t something that just physically obliterates you.”
Hicks could perhaps have added the words “any longer” to the end of that sentence. Having had a glimpse into the
past and seen the tools once used in the marathon trade, it’s the rapid advancement of technology that he sees as playing a major role in the event attracting a more youthful competitive audience.
“My personal conspiracy theory, and I don’t know if this is controversial or not, but I think it has a big deal to do with the shoes,” he adds. “One thing I have seen by being at the Nike archives is that the shoes people used to run marathons in are horrifying.
“It felt like I was in a medieval torture museum looking at implements of terror and destruction. I get why you wouldn’t put a 23, 24-year-old in them and get them to run 26 miles because I don’t think that that developing body would do well.
“But now we have so much insulation from the impact forces of the marathon. I can still barely walk after mine but you’re getting a lot of energy return from these shoes and I think it’s less of a destructive force than it used to be. That’s allowing people to take more risks, maybe train a little bit harder and race a little bit more aggressively without having so
much destruction.”
That doesn’t mean Hicks will be approaching this next marathon assignment by throwing caution completely to the wind. He is maintaining a healthy respect for the distance and that debut in New York proved to be an exercise in self restraint.
“There was a big move at halfway and, looking back, I’m not sure whether or not going with it could have placed me a couple of spots higher or 50 spots worse!” he says. “I determined in that moment: ‘I’m running really well. I’m feeling really strong. There’s still 13 miles left, and I think there’s so much unknown so why don’t we just play it safe, run with the second chase pack, and still give yourself a shot at a top 10 finish?’ Running conservatively and having it work out really well does excite me for the opportunities.”
The plan, with every passing attempt, will be to loosen that leash slightly.
“What I really do want to do with each progressive marathon is take that as the foundation and then throw it out the
window a little bit, then just be a little more aggressive each time,” adds Hicks. “I want to take a balance of that very risk averse way that I raced in New York, to inject a little risk tolerance into the model, and start to find out where my ceiling is.”
Hicks is clearly an athlete who thinks deeply about his sport and it’s the idea of literally going on a journey, rather than lapping a track or a cross country course, that appeals most to him about the new stage of his career. He sees this chapter, though, as an extension of what he first learned – and came to enjoy most – during his off-road adventures.
“What I loved about cross country was only more available on the roads,” he says. “The things that I really loved were competing and having competitive placement be the ultimate priority at every race. I found that to be extremely true on the roads. Times are obviously important – there are races where you chase records – but, with every road race I’ve been in, placement has been the ultimate priority and that felt very cross countryesque.
“And then the other is doing reconnaissance, having all these new locations, finding the hill elevations, figuring out ‘because X,Y,Z, then should I do this’. That’s still on the track too, because there are tactics, but I felt like [on the roads] the course itself is almost like a character in each of these races. There’s a lot more thought that’s worth putting into these races beforehand that I just really, really enjoy.”
All of the above is part of Hicks’ identity, something that was at the core of that very personal decision to switch national allegiance. Much like the move to road racing, it wasn’t taken on a whim and the reaction, he’s pleased to report, has been a positive one.
“I’m sure there are some British fans who are less excited about it but because the decision was so personal, I feel much more comfortable [and still would] even if the reactions had been overwhelmingly negative,” he says. “I made a decision that was true to who I was and who I wanted to be.
“I was 24 when I made the decision and the reason I started thinking about it was that I moved from the UK to the US and I turned 12 right after. I had had 50 per cent of my life in the UK, and then 50 per cent of my life in the US. And I was like: ‘If I’m ever going to make a decision, this is a very real inflection point for me and what’s the rest of my life going to look like?’.
“Maybe in college or before that, I thought there was a chance I could move back [to the UK], re-establish roots and whatnot, but I think just the reality of my life having taken shape now and being able to see it so clearly just makes me realise that that number is just going to keep getting more US-centric.
“I think that lends more credence to some of those perspectives that maybe were more negatively skewed about whether or not I truly embodied what it meant to be a Brit. But I think, when I made the decision [to compete for Britain] when I was 18, I felt much more British than I did American at the time. I think it also might have been just reactionary from the move [to the US] and wanting to retain a sense of stability at a young age.
“In some ways, I think the truth of life is that you can never make decisions that make everyone happy, so you might as well make the ones that you think are right.”
And so to Boston, that beast of a course and a marathon challenge unlike any other. What lessons learned from New York does Hicks think he will take with him on this next venture to the east coast?
“The main thing I learned is that you need to have a sort of lower sense of urgency when you’re racing [the marathon],” he says. “When people make moves, you can think things through carefully before you respond, whereas in a 5000m or 10,000m, you’re operating on milliseconds and you have to take a lot more risks. I think what really benefits me is an analytical approach, trying to make sure that, when I react to things, there’s a justification behind it.
“Being an experienced cross country runner set me up well for marathon progression. I think it’s very easy to say: ‘I want to run faster, I want to place higher every single race’ but the field is going to be totally different, the style of marathon is going to be totally different.
“This is my opportunity to go out there, get as many experiences as possible, race as hard as is humanly possible, maybe be a little bit more aggressive than New York, start pushing those limits and see where they’re at.”