By SCOTT CACCIOLA

Olympian Abdi Abdirahman arrived in New York ahead of a race last week with every intention of going for a 50-minute training run. Then his plans changed.

"I just wanted to eat, lie in bed and watch basketball," said Abdirahman, an American long-distance runner. "So that's what I did."

Distance runners tend to be Type A personalities. They weigh their food, chart their mileage and obsess over everything from sleep to stretching. Then there is easygoing Abdirahman, a Somali native who moved to the U.S. as a child. He eats what he wants, likes to party and runs fewer training miles than other marathoners, occasionally skipping workouts altogether.