On Saturday night, Ian LaMere will run the 10,000 meters at the Portland Track Festival. A junior at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, LaMere will face nearly 40 other entrants, most of them professionals. LaMere is the top seed, based on the 28:38.63 he ran on April 1 at the Stanford Invitational. The time is an NCAA Division III record.

But LaMere, 22, wants to go faster. The automatic Olympic Trials qualifying standard is 28:15, probably a bit out of reach. The closer LaMere comes to that mark, however, the better his chances of getting into the Trials early next month. That’s his goal for now, and it’s one he never thought about until two months ago.

Last fall LaMere won his final three cross-country races by an average of 36 seconds. He capped the season with a dominating 39.6-second victory at Division III nationals at UW-Oshkosh, where he broke from the field after 1K, hit 5K in 14:35 with his closest competitors 40 seconds back, and completed the 8K course in a meet record 23:35.4.

LaMere’s coach at Plateville is Tom Antczak, a three-time U.S. Olympic Trials marathon qualifier. Jumping into the lead and running full bore as long as possible was never his approach when he was a competitive runner. But Antczak has been in the sport for half a century, long enough to know one size does not fit all. His top runner is woefully short on speed but can push hard for a long time. So that’s what he does. And he does it well.

The win at Oshkosh prompted a lot of message board banter about how good LaMere truly is, and how he would fare against Division I competition. Most of the comments were not charitable. “Ian’s a pretty modest, down to earth guy,” Antczak said. “But he’s got a chunk of pride, and he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder after that. He wanted to prove something. And I felt after the great cross-country season, he deserved to dip his toe in the big-time waters.”

That’s how Antczak and LaMere decided to go to Palo Alto, California, for the Stanford Invitational. LaMere was in section two of the 10,000 meters with hopes of a sub-29:00. A rabbit led through 5K in 14:33, and then the pace quickened a bit. At 6K, it was all LaMere. 

“After [the pacemaker] stepped aside, Ian ran the next quarter in 65,” Antczak said, “and I thought, ‘Oh geez, what the heck is he doing?’ But then he went 66, 67, and another 67, and he just kept going.” LaMere covered the second 5,000 meters in 14:05 to take a 17-second victory. 

“Some say DI is a lot harder than DIII, and maybe it is,” LaMere said. “But the nice thing about the sport is that it’s very democratic, and I was let into the Stanford meet because of my times. And I ran well out there.”

LaMere graduated from Southwest High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2012 after a solid—but not spectacular—prep career. “He came here for the engineering program,” Antczak said.  

But even though LaMere lacked a high profile prep pedigree, in his first collegiate competition, a small cross-country invitational at UW-Whitewater, he went right to the front and led for about three miles, Antczak recalled. “There were a couple All-Americans in the field, so I was a little surprised he was that bold,” he said. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, this guy’s willing to really go for it.’ He hung in there and I think got third or fourth that day.”

A stress fracture after his first indoor track season kept LaMere on the sidelines almost an entire year. The down time convinced him to moderate his training—his coach says he hasn’t been higher than 90 miles per week this season—and he has been a fixture at every DIII national championship since returning to action the winter of 2014. In May he captured the 5K/10K double at DIII nationals. 

In Portland, LaMere looks to run steady and within himself, and he isn’t concerned with place.

“The way he ran at Stanford, you’ve got to believe the guy’s got more in him,” Antczak said. “We’re thinking he can run low 28:20s or possibly under 28:20, which is less than a second a lap faster. A lot of things will have to come together, but the race is obviously set up to be fast as a final chance for a half dozen or more guys to get into the Trials.”