Interview with Nick Symmonds

By Duncan Larkin

Nick Symmonds, 24, has been dreaming about the Olympics for 10 years. He’s worked extremely hard to realize his goal of competing for the United States, and his shot to make the team is coming up this week. The odds are on his side. With the scratching of top seed Alan Webb,Symmonds now owns the second-fastest 800-meter qualifying time: a blazing 1:44.54 that he ran at the 2007 Prefontaine Classic in front of a hometown crowd.

Symmonds discovered running at Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, ID, opting to migrate from soccer to the track. There, he captured the Idaho state titles his junior and senior years in the 800-, 1600-, and 3200-meter events and was on the state championship 4x400-meter team. He attended college at Willamette University in Salem, OR, where he was a seven-time NCAA Division III outdoor track champion and won every championship race in which he competed. Upon graduation in 2006, Symmonds turned pro and now is sponsored by Nike. He won the 2007 national indoor title in the 800 meters and was the 800-meter runner-up in the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in 2006 and 2007.

This year has been an impressive one so far for Symmonds in his 800-meter races. He finished sixth in the IAAF World Indoor Championships, and this month he ran a 1:45.01 at the Prefontaine Classic, which was good for fourth place.

Symmonds currently trains with the Oregon Track Club under Coach Frank Gagliano. He lives in Springfield, OR. New York Road Runners caught up with him as he was tapering before the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field that begin on June 27.

New York Road Runners: You ran a solid 1:45 800-meter race at the Prefontaine Classic a few weeks ago. How are you feeling?

Nick Symmonds: I’m feeling really good. Pre was great for me. It didn’t end quite the way I wanted it to end, but I know that I’m on track with where I want to be for the Trials. I have been doing a lot more speed. I did 600s the other day head to head with one of my buddies. I raced it in 1:14, which was a good effort for me. I’m sure that my speed will be right where it needs to be come the Trials. I’m just trying to rest up and get my legs back under me.

NYRR: Because you’ve been resting them, are your legs feeling jumpy?

NS: Yeah. I hadn’t taken a day off for a month until about two days ago. Already I feel like I’m getting my legs back. I did some 200s today and just killed them. I’m getting a little bit antsy, but I’m trying to have patience and remind myself that I’ve got three races to run in a week [the 800-meter preliminaries and the final at the Trials]. There are plenty of opportunities to get going.

NYRR: At the Adidas Classic last month you suffered a painful knee injury from someone’s spikes. You had to get 10 stitches. How’s your knee now?

NS: It’s 100 percent better; I got a really nice scar to prove it, but it’s all healed up. It didn’t get too infected. I’ve been taking an oral and topical antibiotic. I was just really lucky that it didn’t hit anything serious like my patellar tendon or anything. It’s pretty much superficial just running across my patella. It forced me to take three of four days off, which was a really frustrating time for me.

NYRR: What have been doing specifically for your workouts?

NS: I’ve been training for the past 10 years with this specific race in mind. The base is there. I did a lot of tempo runs. I was doing 70 miles a week all winter and spring. Now we are just sharpening up. We’ve been doing 8 x 200 in 25 [seconds]. We’ve been doing 600-meter repeats. We’ve been doing 3 by 400 meters in 50 seconds with four minutes rest in between each interval. It’s really race-specific stuff to teach the legs to feel good when you are running that kind of speed. I’ve done two races now. My season opener was a 1:46.01, which was the fastest that I’ve ever opened a season, and then my second race was the second-fastest time that I’ve ever run. I feel like I’m right on pace to run 1:44 at the Trials—maybe 1:43, we’ll see.

NYRR: You talked about your 70-mile base. How did you achieve that?

NS: I run nine times a week. There will be one day where I’ll run six [miles] in the morning and four at night and then I have a day where I run a 14-mile long run and a day where I have a six-mile easy run. I also swim twice a week, so I’m getting 70 miles running, plus two swims, plus two weight-lifting sessions. At this point, I feel like I got it structured where I know how far I can take it without injuring myself.

NYRR: Much has been made about your rivalry with Khadevis Robinson. In the lead-up to the Trials, he’s hinted that he’s the underdog and that you are the favorite. Do you agree with his assessment?

NS: I don’t see how I could be the favorite, given that he has a better PR than I do and that he’s beaten me in the last two outdoor meets. But I think in the sense that I’m the crowd favorite—obviously. I totally agree with that. For the thousands of people coming out to see this race, I would think that the majority want to see me win because I’m the hometown kid, and that provides a huge advantage to me. I just need to learn how to use that advantage. I kind of got caught up with it at Pre [this year]. When the crowd started going crazy, I let it get away from me and I wasn’t able to finish that and bottle it up to use more wisely. I think the rivalry between K.D. and myself is a great one, because we are so evenly matched and we run so differently. It’s going to be a coin flip as to who is going to win this one. I like my chances given that I’m the hometown kid.

NYRR: You are five feet, 10 inches and 165 pounds. K.D. is six feet and 160 pounds. Have you ever thought that these slight differences in your height/weight have ever been a factor?

NS: No. I’ve never thought about that at all for a second. I train like a miler and this is how my body is. I’m just a bigger-build distance runner.. I eat healthy and train hard.

NYRR: What kind of weight training are you doing? Are you lifting free weights?

NS: I do a lot of core stuff. I have a weight trainer here, Jimmy Radcliffe, who works for the University of Oregon. He’s had me doing mostly core stuff and strides—nothing like heavy lifting. I never lifted in college. I’ve always just had this build.

NYRR: What’s it like running on the Oregon Track Club?

NS: It’s great. I loved being part of a team in high school and college. I didn’t want to be out training by myself. It’s really mentally and physically taxing. To have 20 guys that I can train with any day of the week is amazing. Not only that, but off the track we help each other out. We are always having barbecues and we all go out together and watch out for each other.

NYRR: Have you been visualizing running in Beijing at all?

NS: Yeah. The frustrating part about how the U.S. conducts the team selections is that you have to get through this step first—you have to go through the Trials. I’m not overlooking this important part of the process, but I belong in Beijing. I feel like I’ve been in the top two in the last championships; I’ve made a World Finals in the Indoors. The guys that I’m looking forward to racing are the guys out in Beijing. I truly see myself in the finals in Beijing, but I have to put that on the back burner and take care of the Trials first.

NYRR: I hear that Coach Gags [Gagliano] has put a moratorium on you riding your 1983 Honda motorcycle. Do you have gas in the tank—is it ready to go assuming you make the team?

NS: [Laughing] Coach Gags was stressing out about it. So I brought it over to his house and put it in his garage. After I handed him the keys and rolled the bike into the garage, he said I could ride it after I got back from the Games. Apparently I don’t get it until September. Gags is such a great guy. If it helps him sleep better knowing that my bike is in the garage, then so be it.

Interview conducted June 20, 2008, and posted on June 25, 2008.