Patrick Smyth: "This will be my first US X champs."

Great Interview as always by RunnersWorld

Patrick Smyth of Team USA Minnesota was third at the 2009 USA Men's 10 Mile in Minneapolis on October 4 in 47:09 and second at the Manchester Road Race (4.75 miles in 21:41) in Connecticut on Thanksgiving Day. Smyth will do the Emerald Nuts Midnight Run, a four-miler, in Central Park in New York on New Year's Eve and the USA Half Marathon Championships at the Aramco Houston Half Marathon on January 17. Smyth, who attended high school in Salt Lake City, was a seven-time cross country and track All-American at Notre Dame, winning Big East titles in the 5000 and twice in the 10,000 and placing fourth in the 2009 NCAA Championships in the 10,000. He was seventh in the 10,000 at the 2009 USATF Championships. Smyth's personal bests are 28:25.85 for 10,000 meters and 13:39.50 for 5000.

You're at altitude in Albuquerque right now. Not all the Team USA Minnesota people do that. What led you to decide you wanted to do it? Do you have a history of going to altitude?
Patrick Smyth: I definitely have a history. I have been coming to Albuquerque on my winter break; I started doing that when I was at Notre Dame as a junior. A friend of a friend had a connection out here at a bed and breakfast that houses runners for pretty reasonable rates. I would do a three-week stint here before the indoor season, to get ready for indoor and outdoor (track). I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, so I'd often get up to Park City, or when I was in high school I'd go down to a high school camp in southern Utah at about 8000 feet altitude. Even this past summer, I went to the high school camp again and stayed there for four weeks and then started my fall roadracing season. But I've always found that it's a good way to get focused on whatever the upcoming season is. I feel like I get some physiological benefits from it.

Are there people you know who are running there with you?
PS: Yeah, Luke Puskedra. I went to high school with him (Smyth was a senior when Puskedra was a freshman). He's up at (the University of) Oregon now. We've always trained together on our summer breaks and this is the first time he's been to Albuquerque. He got here about a week ago. We're not exactly on the same training plan, but we hook up for what we can.

You're scheduled for the USA Half Marathon in Houston in January. We get the impression you've been slowly working your way up in distance. You did a very good USA 10 Mile in October. Are these all new distances for you? Did you do any of these during your collegiate years at all?
PS: No, these are all new distances for me. This entire fall, pretty much, has been new distances starting with the (USA) 20K I did in New Haven in September (he placed 11th) and the ten-miler, and now this Houston Half. I've had a few races in-between, like Manchester over Thanksgiving and the Midnight Run. Those are all kind of like tune-up races. But the fall focus has definitely been looking toward Houston and toward USA Cross country (in February) and getting my mileage up and getting used to these longer roadraces.

How far have you gotten your mileage up?
PS: Last week was actually my highest week, and it was 115 miles.

You obviously had some great results in the 10,000 while at Notre Dame, but as a collegian, were you already thinking "maybe my best chances are going to be at even longer distances?"
PS: That was kind of my thought coming out of Notre Dame. My senior year was the first year I really focused on the 10k on the track. It went really well and I thought it was just the start of some success at longer distances, so that's really a direction I wanted to keep going in my postcollegiate career. And Dennis (Barker, the Team USA Minnesota coach) was really favorable to that idea. He thought this fall, by focusing on the longer distance roadraces, not only would I build a really good aerobic base for the track season this spring but I could also just improve my range across the spectrum.

Let's talk about the USA 10 Mile, where you were third in 47:09. When you started to get to the point where the races you were used to would usually wrap up and you had almost four tough miles ahead, did you feel comfortable handling that distance?
PS: I felt extremely good. Abdi (Abdirahman) and Josh Moen kind of took off at the halfway point and I was with a Team Minnesota teammate, Jason Lehmkuhle, and we worked together from five or six miles on. And I really felt it was a distance that suited me well. I felt comfortable at it. By eight miles, I pulled away from Jason a little bit. Over the last mile, I kind of cemented my third place spot.

And at Manchester, you were second. And that was quite close, right?
PS: Yes, to Haron Lagat, by just one second.

Was it that close most of the way, or was one of you closing hard on the other? How did that go?
PS: There's a real famous hill from one mile to two miles, and pretty much everybody was together at the top of the hill. At the start of the second mile, on the downhill, I took the lead and put a little bit of a gap on the field, and it flattened out again at three miles. And that's where Haron Lagat and David Jankowski from ZAP Fitness caught me and passed me. But I kept waiting in the wings a little bit to keep in contact and wait on the turn onto Main Street and the finish. And when we did that, I made a big move on a little bit of a downhill and passed those guys, and then the finish is on a slight uphill. When we hit the uphill, Haron kind of matched my move and caught back up to me, and I couldn't really respond over the last 50 meters or so.

You might be a bit used to that from some of your collegiate cross country courses, but how are you responding to road courses like the one you just described, where there are very abrupt rhythm changes? You can't get into a steady stride pattern and breathing pattern. You have to change again and again and again. Is this fairly new for you?
PS: Roadracing has definitely been a completely new experience for me. Like you said, it's a lot of different kind of courses, a lot of them with screaming fast first miles or big uphills on the first mile. They all seem to have one or two famous hills or well-known hills. But the best thing about roadracing for me has been that it's all about competing. Cross country's similar, too. Everybody's got to run on the same course and the same conditions. It really just comes down to who's there to compete the best on the day. I feel that's something that lends itself to my strength. But I like it; it's been a real positive experience so far on the roads.

Do you think the half marathon, from a point of preparation and as a race itself, is going to be appreciably different than a ten-miler?
PS: I think so, at least from my own experience running the ten-miler and the 20k. Granted, they were about a month or so about (the 20k came first) and my fitness changed a lot over that time. But running 20k, a little bit short of a half marathon, was really a completely different feeling than running a ten-miler, and it's something I've been keeping in the back of my head. With the 20k, I had my pace just all off. I think James Carney took it out in 4:30something for the first mile and I thought it would be a good idea to just go right along with it because that's how I've been racing my 10ks. But I paid for it, in the end over the last 10k (of the 20k). Whereas with the ten-miler, it was really easy to just go with the early pace. In the half marathon, I think I'm going to have to be a bit more restrained in the early going to feel myself out, to kind of go through all the checks and focus on the second half of the race.

Is this half marathon a stepping stone to a marathon fairly soon? Do you have a timetable on that?
PS: Dennis and I haven't really talked about it. We're definitely going to focus on the track for this spring. Next fall is kind of up in the air as to what I'll be doing racewise. The marathon hasn't really been mentioned. I know Dennis wants to really just keep the focus now on building a big aerobic base and having a really good track season this spring. The fall, I guess we'll talk about it when it gets a little bit closer. but as of right now, we haven't mentioned the marathon explicitly. I want to get my track PRs down a little bit and then go from there.

Under 28:00 in the 10,000 would be important to you, obviously.
PS: Definitely. That's kind of the goal on the track this spring. I think I can get in the 13:20s for the 5k and I think I can get sub-28:00 for 10k.

Will February be your first time going to USA Cross Country?
PS: Yes, this will be my first time.

And you'd go to World Cross Country if you qualified?
PS: Exactly. That the goal. Along with Houston, those are the two big races ahead of me right now, and making the World team is going to be really important.

We should talk about the Midnight Run on New Year's Eve in New York. It can be competitive. What have you heard about it and what attracted you to it?
PS: Basically, Dennis called and said "there's this race in New York on New Year's Eve and its placement is really good as a tune-up for Houston." He thought it would be a good idea, a fun time, kind of a not too serious race atmosphere but a really good chance to get the legs turning over a little bit quicker and work on a little VO2 Max stuff. So it's more that it just fits in really well with the focus on Houston.

You're from Salt Lake City but you went to Notre Dame. Are you Mormon or Catholic?
PS: I'm Catholic. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic high school in Salt Lake. I'm not from Salt Lake City originally. My parents are from the Bay Area and they made their way out to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and that's where I was born. They moved down to Salt Lake so that I could go to Catholic school.

At what point did you get started as a runner and find out that this was a good sport for you?
PS: Like a lot of other runners, I was a basketball player to begin with, all through middle school. Basketball and baseball were my two big sports. When I entered high school, the fall was a dead time for basketball players, and the cross country coach had coached my sister in track. My sister ran for Boston College. He had gotten her running well and got her into the collegiate recruiting networks. He came to me and said "why don't you do cross country just to get in shape for basketball?" It sounded like a good idea, so I actually went to the camp which was born at southern Utah at altitude. It was a seven-day camp. There's a race at the end of the camp, and I had made the varsity squad and I said to myself "hey, this is something I'm pretty good at."

I ran the entire cross country season. I think we won States that year and I ended up doing pretty well. After basketball was over, I ran track; that went pretty well. So I was pretty much hooked in my freshman year of high school, and by my junior year, since Foot Locker Cross Country was going to conflict with the early part of the basketball season, I had to make a decision whether I was going to forgo Foot Locker for basketball or go to Foot Locker and drop basketball. I decided to go to Foot Locker and I didn't do basketball that winter. Utah has an abridged indoor track season. I ran a couple of indoor track meets ad then had a pretty big track season that year. That was how I got on people's radar then. Coach (Joe) Piani came calling the fall of my senior year. We really meshed well. That's how I ended up at Notre Dame.

So you're okay right now? No wounds to deal with at this point?
PS: Yeah, I'm healthy right now. I'm grateful for that. I'm trying to keep it that way. With these big miles, I seem to handling it pretty well.