Joe Vigil, a coach, scientist, and innovator who played a key role in raising the prospects of U.S. distance running over the past half century, died on July 19 at age 95. Adams State University, where he led 19 teams to national titles, CA Notice at Collection.
During a career that spanned more than six decades, Vigil coached several thousand high school and collegiate athletes and also worked directly with dozens of elite American distance runners, including U.S. Olympians Deena Kastor, Meb Keflezighi, Brenda Martinez, and Pat Porter. Vigil’s book Master Negative Splits, considered by many to be an essential training volume, offers insights into the training methodology and some of the science behind it—that brought his runners so much success. One of the sport’s top clinicians, Vigil spoke in more than two dozen countries on six continents during his lengthy career. He always embraced his work with unwavering enthusiasm, rising well before dawn each morning so as to pack as much learning and coaching into every day.
Born in Antonio, Colorado, near the New Mexico border on November 25, 1929, Joe Vigil was only three months old when his father died. The child was subsequently raised by his mother in the poor, Hispanic south side of Alamosa, a town of 8,800 residents situated at an elevation of 7,544 feet along the Rio Grande in south central Colorado. After graduating from Alamosa High School, Vigil served for two years in the U.S. Navy, and then enrolled in the hometown college, Adams State (now University), where he was a standout on the Indians’ football team. He ran track but without distinction. “I participated very minimally in track,” he remarked in a 2015 Running Times interview, “but I developed an affection for it.”
In the fall of 1954, Vigil returned to Alamosa High to teach biology and serve as an assistant football coach. The following spring, when only three prospects showed up for the first outdoor track practice, the head coach canceled the season. “These were young men who didn’t play football,” Vigil told Running Times in 2015, “and they had waited all year for track. I saw tears coming down from their eyes and down their cheeks, and I went home and told my wife I wanted to do something to help those kids out.” The sentiment marked the beginning of Vigil’s track and cross-country coaching career. He stepped in to coach the three-member team on his own, with no budget for travel or anything else. “As it turned out,” Vigil said, “all three of them placed in the district meet, and I raised $155 for the trip to the state meet in Boulder. We stayed in one motel room and fixed sandwiches, and lo and behold, they all placed in the state meet.”
Vigil eventually became recognized as one of the top high school coaches in Colorado. In 1965, he was hired by Adams State to coach cross-country and track. The timing could not have been better, for in that year came the announcement that in 1968 Mexico City would host the first high-altitude Olympic Games. Recognizing that Alamosa and Mexico City stand at almost identical elevations, Vigil and reigning U.S. marathon record-holder Buddy Edelen immediately began working together to bring the first U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon to Alamosa and recruit top American runners to train in the the Colorado high desert town.
“Buddy Edelen and I worked together those three years,” Vigil said of the period from 1965 to 1968. “And the best middle-distance and distance runners in the country came to Alamosa to train in the summertime: Jim Ryun, Conrad Nightingale, Johnny Mason, Tom Von Ruden, Bob Price. And other great athletes from around the world came, like Ron Clarke from Australia.”
Involvement with the 1968 Olympic Trials put Alamosa and Adams State on the map of U.S. distance running, but it was the successful program Vigil built at the then-NAIA school that created a lasting legacy. Over the course of 28 years coaching at Adams State, Vigil’s men’s cross-country teams won 14 national titles, 12 in NAIA and 2 in NCAA Division II. The highlight came in 1992, when the Adams State men won the DII national championship with a perfect 15-point score, accomplished by sweeping the first five places. It remains the only perfect score in NCAA cross-country history.
Convinced from an early age that education is key to many aspects of success, Vigil was a lifelong learner. His formal education included a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of New Mexico as well as post-graduate work at LSU and Toledo University. Vigil was a full-time professor at Adams State, teaching courses in anatomy, cardio therapy, kinesiology, and physiology. His coaching success at the school and unmatched knowledge of the sport and human physiology brought Vigil opportunities to coach on the NCAA Division I level, but he always declined. “Why go someplace else when you think you are in Utopia?” he said in a 1989 Master Negative Splits article.
After retiring from Adams State in 1993, Vigil remained in Alamosa and continued coaching elite athletes on an individual basis. In 1999, he began conversing with veteran West Coast coach Bob Larsen about establishing a developmental distance training program at Mammoth Lakes, California. Two years later, in March 2001, Team Running USA was initiated with Vigil and Larsen heading up the coaching staff. Success came quite quickly for the program: At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Deena Kastor (bronze) and Meb Keflezighi (silver) won marathon medals.
For several more years Vigil continued coaching with Team Running USA (now reorganized as Mammoth Track Club), and after stepping down as a coach he served on the program’s board of directors. Vigil returned to coaching elite individuals such as Brenda Martinez, the 2013 World Championships 800-meter bronze medalist and 2016 Olympian at 1500 meters.
In 2015, Vigil was honored as the second-ever recipient of the USA Track & Field’s Legend Coach Award, recognizing the astonishing breadth of his involvement in the sport. Earlier he was honored with inclusion in nearly a dozen halls of fame.
Although Vigil was a team coach during most of his career, it was the one-on-one interaction with athletes that most resonated with him. His approach, based on mutual trust, yielded consistently outstanding results. “I try to get into their mind and into their heart and find out what they’re made of,” Vigil told Running Times. “And then I try to develop a team between us, the coach and the athlete. There’s a great amount of trust that goes into that. If they trust me and I trust them, we work well together.
“I’ve taken a scientific approach to all my coaching,” Vigil concluded. “But every kid is different, and you’ve got to treat each one as an individual.”
