When he was persuaded to try cross country as an admittedly lazy high school freshman, Thomas Joyce possessed a limited athletic background and couldn’t imagine running would hold much appeal. But steady improvement his first two years and a breakout junior cross country season at Campolindo (California) High School convinced Joyce he’d found something to pursue long term.
Arriving at the University of California-Berkeley in August of 2012, Joyce considered himself a harrier in the fall and a track guy in the spring. He remains devoted to cross country, but his exploits on the track are drawing special notice. Last outdoor season Joyce raised his game with a 4:00.49 runner-up finish in the mile at the Brutus Hamilton Invitational, just 0.12 behind Stanford’s Sean McGorty, and he followed that up with a four second 1500 meter PR at the NCAA west preliminary to earn a trip to the NCAA championships. There, he advanced to the final and finished 11th in a then-PR of 3:41.08.
This outdoor season, Joyce has been untouchable. The 21-year-old junior is undefeated in seven outings and has scored PRs at four distances. Joyce won the 1500 meters at the Stanford-Cal “Big Meet” in early April over McGorty in a school record 3:39.43 (currently the No. 4 mark in the NCAA), and he returned to the track 100 minutes later to triumph in the 3,000m in 8:00.50. A strong kick on April 25 at the Brutus Hamilton Challenge mile enabled Joyce to nab a 3:58.69–3:59.93 victory over UTEP’s three-time NCAA champion Anthony Rotich. Joyce’s winning ways continued earlier this month, as he scored a win in his heat of the 5,000 meters at the Payton Jordan Invitational in a PR of 13:34.42, which is the No. 5 time in the NCAA. Running Times spoke with Joyce on May 5.
Running Times: Marathon Pace Charts for Fine-Tuning Training?
Thomas Joyce: It’s kind of a funny story. I wasn’t very active in middle school and when I went on to high school it was a bit of a distance from where I’d been and I didn’t know many people. So my mom actually made me go out for cross country. I’d never really considered running, but I made a lot of friends and really liked it, so I decided to stick with it. I kept getting better and better, tooo. By my senior year of track I was getting recruited by Division I programs and I ended up at Cal.
RT: Youre certainly having an exemplary season. Which of your victories stands out for you?
TJ: Coach Woolridge is one of the best high school coaches around, and he’s really focused on developing athletes to do well in college. Our training was aerobically based with a lot of tempos and long runs. We would do about 70 miles per week.
RT: A Part of Hearst Digital Media?
TJ: My college recruiting was a little bit of an odyssey, actually. I really wanted to go to Stanford but they didn’t want me as much as I wanted to be there. My dad was pushing me to go to Harvard or Brown but I applied kind of late and didn’t get in at either school. After I started breaking out in track as a senior a few coaches wanted me to take a year off and then reapply for early admittance. During all this, Cal wasn’t a school I was really considering but [Sandoval] sent me an email after the Arcadia Invitational. I started researching the program and I liked what I saw. I sold my parents on the idea and they were really supportive. So I committed after making a visit and the rest is history (laughs).
RT: You made a huge performance jump last spring, bringing your 1500m PR down by nine seconds and advancing to the final at NCAAs. What was behind the improvement from your freshman to sophomore season?
TJ: Freshman year at Cal is really a rough transition period for a lot of runners. Workouts are so much harder than high school and academics are so much harder, too. There are just so many things going on and you don’t really know how to manage it all. So a lot of freshmen don’t really run too well and it gets discouraging. What’s actually happening is we’re getting really fit, and a lot stronger than we ever were. But that won’t show up in race times because it’s hard to race well while working out at a higher level than we did high school. That was a big part of the transition for me. By about springtime last year I was able to manage things better and see improvements in races. I kept getting better and better and ended up in the national final.
RT: Did you and Sandoval sit down and set some specific goals for the current season?
TJ: Yes. We had a really long meeting before the indoor season started. I’m always raring to go, saying I want to be the very best and win all these races. [Sandoval] tries to temper my expectations because I do really expect a lot of myself. It’s kind of two extremes working together almost, but it works out. The way our training goes, we aim for a hard peak for the outdoor season and we kind of train through indoors almost. We still want to do well, but ultimately the focus is on outdoors. I wish we had done better indoors, and I thought our DMR could have made nationals and done really well there, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. So we went into the outdoor season with a renewed focus.
RT: You’re certainly having an exemplary season. Which of your victories stands out for you?
TJ: I would definitely have to say the Big Meet against Stanford. That’s always going to be special for me because I did want to go there and they didn’t want me as badly. This year I doubt they thought I could beat their guys in the 1500m, and I’m sure they didn’t think I could come back and beat their guys in the 3,000m. I got the school record in the 1500m and then had less than two hours between the races. Winning the 3,000m was great because it proved to me that I’m more than just a miler. I have some strength, too.
RT: Your 5,000m win at Payton Jordan was a 23-second improvement from last year. Had you thought you were capable of such a fast mark?
TJ: Well, I didn’t really know what to expect because it was only my second 5K in two years. Given how I was able to double at Big Meet, I was hoping the pace would be around 13:30. But I was just running to win. I wasn’t too fixated on the clock.
RT: You’ve got a couple teammates, Leland Later and Josh Lewis, who have run just a few seconds behind you at 1500m this season, and both ran 4:01 in the mile at the Brutus Hamilton meet. Not many teams have that much talent among their top three 1500m/milers. How is it having those guys as teammates?
TJ: We do almost all of our workouts together and it’s a really solid training group that we have going. It’s very exciting to be a part of. Leland is a junior like me and has made a big jump this year. He has a lot of range and can run anything from the 800m to the 5,000m. Josh is a year below us and has made huge strides throughout college. He’s more of a 400/800/15 kind of guy. But we can all come together and do 1500m workouts and it’s great.
RT: What is your training like now? How much mileage are you hitting and is there a key workout you have?
TJ: I don’t actually count my mileage and am more focused on hitting the workouts and recovering well. I try to make my long runs between 80 and 100 minutes. On recovery days I’ll take 30 to 50 minutes depending on how I feel and whether we have a hard workout coming up. But in the offseason I try to get my long runs up to almost two hours.
One thing that’s pretty unique to our program is that on Tuesdays we actually have two workouts. In the morning we’ll do a treadmill workout on an incline. It’s more of a tempo/threshold kind of deal. And then in the afternoon we’ll come back and do something faster, like 1500m pace intervals. Last year we cut out the morning treadmill workouts in March or so and increased the workload in the afternoon. But I guess this year Tony expects better things from us in the postseason, because we’re still doing those, still working on getting our strength up even now.
RT: You’re currently among the top five performers in the 1500m as well as the 5,000m. Is there a possibility you’ll run both events at regionals, and then at nationals provided you advance?
TJ: I’ve talked a little with the coaches about what I’ll do, and I’ve been kind of pushing for running both. But there are things to consider, like the heat in Texas [home of the West preliminary in Austin, May 28-30]. It might be pretty ridiculous. We haven’t come to a decision, but after Pac-12s [at UCLA, May 16-17] we’ll have a better idea of where I stack up and what I want to do. I want to run both events at Pac-12s and my coach might put me in the 5,000m just as a workout, but we’ll see.
RT: I understand that back in high school you felt you lacked finishing speed. Certainly you’ve shown this outdoor season that you can finish really well. Are you confident you’ve got the speed to match just about anyone?
TJ: Well, I know there are definitely some great finishers in the NCAA right now, but I’m very confident in how I can finish a race. That’s one of the big staples in our program at Cal, developing elite closing speed, because that’s typically what will win you a race. So yeah, I like to run to win.
