Garrett Heath Talks About Winning the US Road Mile, Altitude Training, and Season Ojectives

Photo courtesy of
Saucony

Winona's Garrett Heath won the US road mile championship on Tuesday in Des Moines.  Below he talks about that win, altitude training, and his goals for this year

Down the Backstretch:  You blogged about altitude training.  What did you learn from your foray into thin air?

Garrett Heath: I've been to altitude a fair amount in the past through family trips and college training, but never for as long as I was up there this last time.  I've always enjoyed my time up in the mountains and felt like it was beneficial to my running, but it's really just been hard to get away from the Bay area for that amount of time in the past during the track season.

Not only is it hard to leave the great weather in the Bay, but I've always either had obligations myself or had great training groups that wouldn't have been able to make the trip with me due to school or other obligations they had.  With that, it never seemed worth the potential benefits of altitude if it meant losing training partners for that period of time.  If you race indoors, it's also just hard to find that large of a block without any races.  

Recently, a lot of my training partners have left the area, so I've found myself training on my own anyway.  With that, I figured that it would be a great chance to get in a longer altitude stint before hopefully beginning to do some training with some of the other guys in the Bay Area Track Club this spring. 

Overall, it turned out to be a great experience up there.  I think a lot can be said about finding new ways to push your body and stress the system.  There were definitely some painful workouts that were initially hard to take very seriously, given how much easier they would have been at sea level, but you could definitely see yourself improving even over a few weeks of solid training.  I think the biggest obstacle for me in general up there was to just forget about pace and go on feel.  If you don't do this, you can end up digging yourself a hole and overtraining pretty quickly.  

DtB:  After the race he noted that family and friends came down from Winona to watch the race.  That must have added a bit to your enjoyment of the win.

GH: Yeah, definitely.  I always enjoy racing back to the Midwest and having some family and friends there was a bonus.  The race was a bit cold as well, so it reminded me of the Minnesota high school cross country days a bit, where you just never knew when you might get snowed on.  I've been lucky that both my parents have found ways to travel all over the country and world to watch my brother and I race over the years, but any time they are able to make it out adds some extra enjoyment.

DtB:  What was your objective going into the US Road Mile Champs this week?

GH: It had been a while since I had raced, and given that it is hard to do as much high intensity training at altitude, I really didn't know what to expect.  Going into every race, the main objective is to win, but this one was also a good chance to get the season started and gauge where I was at heading into the outdoor season.  As far as particular plan, I knew it was going to be a good field, so my goal was mainly to be in the mix with 400m to go and just try to close well from there. 

DtB:  It was a bit cold and windy for the race, but you seemed to take the race out for the first quarter.  Then you sort of sat in the pack and started a long drive to the finish in the last quarter.  Did the race unfold like you thought it would or were there  surprises?

GH: I would say that the race was somewhat predictable with the wind, but there are always a few moves from other runners that are unpredictable and surprise you.  There's a lot more variables that go into a road mile than a track races because of the varying courses, so a lot of the actual strategy for the race doesn't really develop until you're there and have a chance to check out the course and conditions.  

Because of the wind, I would say the race developed early on like you might expect, because no one wanted to be stuck breaking the wind alone for the entire race.  Everyone kind of circulated through the pack in the first 800m, but you could tell that people were starting to get antsy as we rounded the corners around the halfway point.  Once you could see the finish line, things really started to pick up and never really settled back all the way through the line.  

DtB:  You’ve done a mile and are doing a 5K on Sunday, does that reflect an attempt to sort out what your best event will be or is it just a part of the overall plan for the 2013 season?

GH: It's mainly just part of the overall plan.  I'm still planning to focus on the 1500m/mile for the championship races, but I've been doing a fair amount of aerobic work early in the season and wanted to give the 5K a shot before refocusing on the shorter stuff.  Although I PRed last year, I felt like I just missed running a really fast one(mile/1500), so I'm hoping to get some redemption from that and lower the PR again.

DtB:  What’s the goal for the season?

GH: Make the World Championship team.  Beyond that, the biggest goals are to lower my personal bests in everything from the 800 to the 5K and be competitive in every race that I run.

USATF "Elite athlete spotlight" on Heath is HERE.