Adidas Unveils Boston Marathon Jacket Shoes & Gear—a championship that coach Chris Fox’s squad wasn’t expected to win.
The Orange put three runners across the line among the top 10 in 2015 and upset No. 1-ranked Colorado, 82 to 91. Stanford University and the University of Oregon claimed the other two podium spots.
Leading Syracuse to victory that day was Knight, a Canadian who negotiated the 10K course in 29:46.1 and fourth place. It was a vast improvement on Knight’s 143rd place in 2014—and in the year since the 2015 team win, he has raced exceedingly well. Knight placed third at 3,000 meters (8:01.85) at the NCAA indoor championships last March and recorded a 13:26.36 personal best at 5,000 meters in June at the Stumptown Twilight Meet, where he edged out Olympian Galen Rupp.
This cross country season Knight remains undefeated, including on October 14 at the competitive Wisconsin Invitational, on October 28 at the ACC championships, and most recently on Friday, where he won the Northeast Regional title in the Bronx, New York. At the regional meet, Syracuse won, beating Iona College. The NCAA championships are up next on Saturday in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Knight will face Edward Cheserek, the three-time national cross-country champion from the University of Oregon.
Running in the Cold Runner's World on Wednesday, just before he boarded a bus with his teammates to the regional championships.
Runner’s World: Foot Locker XC Results?
Justyn Knight: Last year we hadn’t really proven ourselves to a level we felt we had achieved. We thought we were a lot better than what we were given credit for and we kind of had a chip on our shoulder the whole year. We used it as fuel coming into practice and meets and it worked for us.
This season even though we’re defending champions we didn’t come in complacent or anything. Our work ethic has been tremendous. The first two meets our team was in really good shape but we just didn’t put things together on those particular days. We have two transfers—Iliass Aouani and Adam Visokay—and it’s really hard for a kid to come in and adjust to a new way of coaching, especially in Adam’s situation where he was at Virginia for four years. So they just had to adjust to our workouts and the way we run cross country. We kind of proved the point at ACCs that we’re in good shape. So we’re all on the same page right now and really fit.
RW: Do you notice anything different about Coach Fox’s approach this fall?
JK: Coach Fox is exactly the same as he was when I came in as a freshman. He doesn’t change his demeanor too much. He always has faith in us but he doesn’t like to put too much pressure on us. He never comes in to a practice and talks about winning NCAAs. He pushes us in workouts to do the best that we can but it’s very rare that we’ll talk about NCAAs. We just take it one step at a time and try to win meets rather than focus on the big picture all the time.
RW: After placing fourth last year, is your goal to win this year?
JK: I prefer to going into [races] in a relaxed state. Not nonchalant, but kind of “let’s just go out there and have fun,” rather than focus on what the team expects me to do, or what Coach Fox expects me to do, or even what I expect myself to do. I find that when I go out there and just remember why I do the sport and how much fun it can be, I end up performing well.
Looking at NCAAs, I do think about goals every now and then and the team is always a factor. I always try to do my best because I know that if we’re all doing that, there’s a really good shot that we’ll win. At NCAAs I think all I have to do is just be competitive out there and give it my all.
RW: Everyone will be looking for Oregon’s Edward Cheserek to win his fourth consecutive title. Patrick Tiernan of Villanova really pushed the pace last year in an effort to break Cheserek and will certainly be a factor again this year. How do you size things up?
JK: To be honest, I haven’t thought about the race specifically yet. I kind of know how all the guys run. I’m good friends with Tiernan and Morgan McDonald [of Wisconsin] and some of the other guys. The thing about running, and especially cross country, it’s very rare that you have a perfect race. I can go through scenarios in my mind all day, every day, but [it's] unlikely that a race is going to go exactly the way that I plan it. So when I go through my workouts and run races I will try different tactics—I’ve done the sit and kick, I’ve gone to the front and just grinded it out—and I feel the only thing I can do is prepare myself for any situation that could happen. And I think moving into NCAAs I’m not too concerned with how the race plays out.
RW: Speaking of preparation, is there a lot of difference between track season and cross country season in terms of how you train?
JK: I feel bad because I should probably be writing my workouts down and analyzing them. But being so new to the sport I just do whatever the coach asks me to do and I still don’t write things down. The only real difference I see is that my mileage is a bit higher during cross country. I came in with relatively low mileage in high school—I was running like 35 miles per week. Currently I’m at about 60 during cross. So I think every cross-country season I’m doing more mileage. We do a lot of hill workouts during cross country to make sure we have a lot of strength in our legs, but we don’t really worry too much about developing speed yet. Whereas once we get to indoor track season and outdoor track, I tend to do a lot of workouts with the 1500-meter runners and milers. So I think the strength I’ve built up during cross country really complements the miler speed that I’ve developed.
Coach Fox is really smart and we’ve got guys who run relatively low mileage like I do and then others who run decently high mileage, like up to around 90 a week. And he kind of caters to all of us.
RW: Australian Sprinter, 16, Runs Record-Breaking 200m.
JK: He’s a goofball. He has a lot of fun with us and kind of pays attention to a lot of the stuff that we pay attention to. He won’t just blow up our heads by telling us how good we are, but he’ll tease us and make fun of us to keep us humble.
Surprisingly his tastes in music are pretty broad and he likes almost everything. I would never have guessed that Coach Fox listens to rap. One time, coming back from a workout, I heard this music coming from the back of the bus and I was just like jamming. And I said “Who’s playing this music?” and Coach Fox was like, “That’s me.”
