Interview: Eric Giddings

by Scott Douglas

Eric Giddings is the 2005 New England Interscholastic Outdoor Track & Field champion at 3,200m. His winning time of 9:00.70 broke a 26-year-old meet record and made him the fastest Maine high schooler in history. It also earned him his first significant victory of the spring over freshman sensation Sintayehu Taye, who, with his older brother, Ayalew, had defeated Giddings at Maine's regional and state meets. The three's battles this spring — especially the state 1,600m final, in which all broke 4:11 — drew national attention. Six days after winning New Englands, Giddings placed eighth in the two-mile at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in 9:02.72.

Giddings first gained notice when, a month before starting his junior year, he was the first Maine finisher at the Beach to Beacon 10K in 31:17. As Giddings notes below, his accomplishment got even more press because he was initially overlooked, and the title of first Mainer was first awarded to a well-known local nearly twice his age.

A lifelong resident of South Portland, Maine, Giddings will attend Stanford University in the fall. Stanford's coach, Andrew Gerard, is also a Maine native.

MensRacing.com: Let's start with you winning New Englands. Why do you think you were able to do there what you tried to do all spring but before then couldn't?
Eric Giddings: Probably because only one of the Taye brothers [Sintayehu] was in the race, and it's a lot harder to do it against two people instead of one person, because they start working with you, well, working against you as a team. I was trying to do it all through the mile at the state meet, but one would get in front of me and then slow it down on the turn, so I'd have to go wide on the turn to get around him if I wanted to push the pace. So I'd push the pace, and then the other one would come up and get in front of me and slow it down a little. And so they kept on doing that. You could even hear them...on occasion one of them would forget to go up, and he'd yell back to the other one. Like on the third lap coming off the last turn, Ayalew, the older one, forgot to take his turn at the lead, so the younger one yelled his name, and a second later I see the older one come up front and get in front of me. So I think it was the difficulty with the team tactics.

MR: Did you know going into New Englands it was just going to be one of them?
EG: Yeah. I don't think [Ayalew has] ever run a two-mile race competitively. You know by the beginning or middle of the week who's going to be in what race, because you have to declare what race you're going to run after the state meet.

MR: Earlier in the season, you were losing to them but running good times. Which would you rather have happen? I mean, obviously winning in a good time is the best, but would you have rather been third in 4:10 or first in 4:15?
EG: Definitely third in 4:10. Partially because I can win races other times, but if I get the chance to run fast, I want to run fast, it doesn't matter what place. But also if they run faster than a 4:10, they deserve to be ahead of me. It's a good accomplishment for everybody, no matter what place you are, if you're running that fast. Like if Alan Webb ran a 3:50 but was beaten by a few Kenyans, I think he'd rather get the 3:50 than win the meet with a 4:00.

MR: So then how do you feel about your race at nationals?
EG: It was decent. The time wasn't as good as I wanted to be. It was an 8:59 3,200, which I think [makes me] the first ever Maine [high schooler] under 9:00. But I would have liked to place better than eighth, like at least sixth. I feel like I could have if I was more prepared for it. We were planning on stopping after New Englands, but the night of New Englands I was like, 'Whatever, I'll run it.' So I could have done better if I had prepared for it. I mean, I'm happy with it. I beat the people who I really wanted to beat — the two Tayes, one on Friday and one on Saturday, and John McGuire from Colorado, who's also going to Stanford.

MR: How would you have prepared differently?
EG: The few weeks leading up to it... For regionals, I was running maybe half an hour, 45 minutes a day. And then for states, it was like half an hour, for New Englands, it was like 20 minutes a day. So by the time nationals came around, I was starting to get out of shape. In those few weeks, we would only run like five days a week. We usually take the day off before the race, or maybe two days before, just because my coach likes doing that, because he does it with his horses. Yeah, he races horses at Scarborough Downs, and he likes doing that with his horses. So we were taking maybe two days off a week, and a few weeks of that and running half an hour or less, I don't think it was the optimal thing for extending my season another week. Definitely it was good up to New Englands, like what we thought would be the end, I felt really good that day. But then just trying to get it going another week like that was just a little too much.

MR: Nationals was the first time since you got really good that you've been in that sort of field, right?
EG: Yeah. It was a good experience. I definitely haven't been in a race that fast where there are like 10 kids within, like, from me to you. [Note: Douglas and Giddings are neighbors, so this interview was conducted in person.] It was a really good experience.

MR: Did you take the early lead?
EG: Yeah, because nobody else was. If I didn't go out, it was probably going to go out in like 70, and I didn't want that at all. It was just for a few laps, and then it took off from there.

MR: And when did you lose contact?
EG: I'd say two, three laps left. And then they just threw down some fast times in the last 800, the last 400.

MR: Yeah, I saw the video of the finish.
EG: Yeah, it was amazing. I was actually kind of watching it in my race. I mean, I wasn't like full-on watching it, but I was coming off the turn and I just see [winner Mark Matusak] flying and thought, 'Wow, he is going so fast.'

MR: In high school metric terms, your PRs are 4:10 and 8:59. If we had talked at this time last year, is that about where you think you would be?
EG: Last year, after the injuries, I was hoping for a better season. I wanted to prove myself even more. But after cross country, with the injury there, after that, I was thinking, 'You know, I'd be happy with a 4:10.' Last year, it was just one season of injuries, outdoor, and then I got in really good shape in cross country and got really optimistic, but then when I got injured [in the fall], I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to have to build up during the worst part of the winter.' And then, even in the spring, it was awful weather, so it was hard to get my feet back on the ground after a stress fracture in late fall, so I'm definitely happy with 4:10 and 8:59.

MR: You've trained separately from the rest of the [South Portland High School] team since when?
EG: Sophomore year. I trained with the team my freshman year. We had a 50-second 400-meter runner and like a 4:40 or so miler, and I was at like 4:24 my freshman year, so I could run workouts with them, because I didn't really know what to do in practice. Because in middle school, our longest run was three miles, so everything was new to me, and I would train with them, even though I could have done stuff on my own, most likely. So my sophomore year, my coach, Mr. Brogan, started separating my workouts. I would do a few of them with people, like 200-meter workouts, but sophomore year is when it really started being my workouts and their workouts.

MR: Other than racing horses, how did your coach know what to do with someone as good as you?
EG: Back in the 70s, the South Portland team was amazing. I think we had another, like, 4:12 miler, a 1:55 half miler, and a bunch of pretty fast runners. So he knew how to train fast people. We just hadn't had somebody of that caliber for a long time. He's been coaching for 35 years, so he's had pretty much the full range of runners.

MR: What else from racing horses did he apply to your training?
EG: There's a Gatorade powder up there [points to kitchen]. Every time he'd give it to me, he'd say he feeds this to his horses because they like the powder and the sugar. And just like if I'm feeling tired, he'll equate it to if his horses are feeling tired after a race. He'll say, 'Yeah, my horses sometimes feel it like three days after a hard race,' if I'm feeling it three days after a race. It's just a whole bunch of random stuff. I mean, it's not exactly parallel, he's not racing his horses and thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to have Eric do that.' It's more just noticing parallels.

MR: My understanding of what you did is that it was very much strength-based. Not just lots of mileage, but you didn't do a lot of typical high school stuff, like 10 times a quarter every week.
EG: Yeah, not at all.

MR: What was the thought behind that?
EG: I'm not really sure. I mean, he knows, I just never really cared to ask him. I think it just worked. My sophomore year, we were doing that sort of stuff — I think we got up to like 14 quarters. But then he read a lot of Jack Daniels, and he based a lot of my workouts off of that. We just started doing more 1,200s, mile repeats, tempo runs, and it started to work really well. I was in amazing shape in cross country. And even this outdoor season, I didn't do a workout below 1,200s. I didn't do any quarters, any 200s, any strides or things like that. It was all 1,200s and above.

MR: You ran some short races, right?
EG: Yeah, once in a while I'd run an 800.

MR: In terms of your mileage, is that coming from him, or coming from you?
EG: Kind of both. We were already at pretty high mileage...

MR: By when?
EG: Well, sophomore year going into junior year, it was about 85, 90 [miles per week]. And then junior year going into senior year, it bumped up somewhere over 100, but we worked up to it over the year. Junior year going into senior year, we were talking, and he said, 'It's probably going to get up to 100, a little more, and it's kind of weird to say that, but I think that's where it's going to be.' But I think it was kind of half him, half me adding on, like doubles here and there. If I'm bored, I'll just go out and run, so it would add up here and there.

MR: You've heard from people that you shouldn't be running that much in high school.
EG: Yeah, it was pretty controversial when people first heard I was doing that much mileage, but since I've continued to improve...I mean, I've gotten injured a few times, but that was in no part my coach's fault. That was entirely my stupidity, just doing it totally wrong. There was definitely some backlash when people heard I was doing that much mileage, but I think people are starting to realize I can handle it, and I know how to do it now. Like junior year, right before I got Achilles tendonitis, I bumped it up to high 90s and I bumped it way too fast and I ran it way too fast, and I learned from that experience. And over [last] summer, I was taking my easy runs slower and I took the time to build it up.

My injury in the fall, I really believe it was my trip to Disney, in which I was running 100-some miles a week, all on concrete. When I came back, I remember the exact moment when it started to hurt, when I got my stress fracture. It wasn't the high mileage here that got me injured, but the time at Disney. Now I think I can handle it. I'm learning how to do it, how to be smart about it.

MR: So what's the highest you've been since coming back from the stress fracture in the fall?
EG: I think it was an hour and 45 minutes a day, so maybe 105? I always do 7:00 miles when I'm doing the math.

MR: Even though you don't run that slow.
EG: Yeah, that's conservative, so that I know that that's at least how far I'm going.

MR: When people first started saying, 'Gee, you shouldn't be running that much in high school,' how did you respond? Not necessarily to their face, but what did you think?
EG: I just kept doing it. My sister, I always talk to her about things. Not because she knows a lot about running, because she doesn't really know that much, but she understands why I do things, because she knows who I am. And she kind of put it in perspective, that it doesn't really matter what they think. And other people have done high mileage and obviously gone on to do great things. So I just felt like I just needed to do my own thing and not pay attention to people who don't believe in high mileage.

MR: Did you start running in part because your sister did?
EG: Yeah. My brother and my sister ran. Okay, here's the story of how I got into running. In second grade, we were watching one of the Olympics, so when was that?

MR: '92? Barcelona?
EG: Yeah, Barcelona. I told my mom, 'I'm going to run a mile every day until I get to the Olympics.' And we marked out a mile. And then she started asking me if I wanted to do those Hershey track meets, and I said yeah, and I liked it a lot. And then there were fun runs around the area, I'd ask her if I could do them and she'd let me do them, because they were only like a mile. And then there were cross country and track meets in Windham in elementary school every Wednesday, and we went occasionally because I had fun with it. Once I got into middle school, I was going to play football for South Portland High School, because they were so good, and I was going to be the star running back. But then the cross country coach got me out for cross country, and that's where it took off, I guess.

MR: So when did you start saying, 'I'm a runner' and pretty much start running every day?
EG: Seventh grade. Sixth grade, it started, but there wasn't that much of it. Seventh grade, I started running more, and seventh grade going into eighth grade was when I first started running pretty much every day over the summer.

MR: By the time you started high school, what were your PRs?
EG: 4:43 for the mile. 2:06 in the 800. 57.2 [for 400 meters] from seventh grade, I'm still proud of that one. And I think 9:30 for 3,000, which is like 10:09, 10:08.

MR: I know from running with you and talking with you that you just love to run. When did you realize that, kind of independent of competing, that you just love going off into the woods for an hour?
EG: I think it was as early as eighth grade. Like I said, in middle school, the most we would run would be three miles, but over the weekends I started doing like six miles, which was huge. And people would say, 'Why are you doing that much? That's too much.' But I didn't care, because I liked it so much. I think that's when I really started to enjoy just going out and running.

MR: Do you know why?
EG: No idea. I think it just kind of happened.

MR: I mean, do you know why you enjoy it so much?
EG: That's a hard question. Not at all. I think it's just one of those things. Maybe I'll think of it by the end of the interview.

MR: Good luck. I've been thinking about it for 26 years. Why are you going to Stanford, as opposed to lots of other places I assume would be happy to have you?
EG: Partly because they were one of the only places that recruited me. I had contacted Colorado, because I thought I might want to go there. Two schools contacted me — Stanford and Quinnipiac.

MR: Who?
EG: Quinnipiac. It's in Connecticut, maybe? It's kind of funny that Stanford was the only [other] one that contacted me. Well, Dartmouth called, but I wasn't going to go train in Hanover [New Hampshire] in the winter. I'm sick of winters. So that's one of the reasons, too — the weather, location. That's a big factor. I can't stand long, heavy winters any more. Obviously, education and opportunity. Experience, going far away from home. I've lived in Maine my whole life, so going to California is going to be a new experience. Obviously, California's not a bad place to be.

MR: Last summer you did go check out Colorado.
EG: Yeah. I went on a trip with my friend Tim Cahill. We went two weeks. One week, we went to Colorado, Boulder, and just traveled around that area, and then we visited the school. And then we went to his sister's apartment in San Francisco, and hung around there and visited Palo Alto, Stanford. Colorado didn't really seem interested in me enough that I'd feel welcome there if I did go there. They were pretty much saying, 'Yeah, you could walk on here, but we're not really going to bother with you.' So it seemed like I wouldn't feel comfortable there.

MR: Have you talked with Matt Lane and Louie Luchini about going from Maine to Palo Alto?
EG: No, I don't think I've ever talked to Matt Lane. I talked to Louie Luchini while I was out there. Not about that type of stuff, but it seemed like he didn't have a very difficult time getting adjusted out there. He seemed really comfortable out there and he seemed like he wasn't homesick at all. And he's from northern Maine, so it's probably more drastic for him.

MR: You've trained on your own since sophomore year, and now you're going to be with however many other people.
EG: It's definitely going to be different. I think it was Matt Lane who said how easy it is to overdo it out there, because of all the good runners. I am going to have to watch out for that, like not pushing the pace every single day just because some other kid might be. I need to be careful about that, especially if I'm going to be doing high mileage. I'm not sure what mileage [coach Gerard] will have me at next year.

MR: Yeah, what would you do if he said, 'You're not going to do more than 70 miles a week this year'?
EG: I'd probably listen to him. I mean, I'd try to convince him to let me do more, but if he truly felt that I shouldn't be doing more than that — because he knows how much mileage I run — he knows more than I do. I'd definitely do it, but I'd try to convince him to let me do more.

MR: Have you heard yet what your summer training will be like?
EG: He hasn't gotten to me yet. He was waiting until everything was over so that I wouldn't be distracted by a new training program coming in. I should be hearing any day now.

MR: You're not running right now?
EG: No. I mean, I'm jogging with my brother, like 8:00 miles, and with my sister, but I'm not really running.

MR: Have you talked with him at all about what your best events might be?
EG: No. I think it will come more once we start getting into the track season. He told me what the plan will be for cross country, which will be, obviously, train over the summer and then there's a race in, I think, Golden Gate Park, and I think you can run one race before you redshirt, or maybe I'll run unattached there. I think he makes the decision of who's going to be on the team, who's going to redshirt off of one of those races, and most likely I'll redshirt cross country. I think he wants me to do junior national cross country. If I redshirt, I think that will be the plan — race a few races unattached, and then do junior nationals. But I could be totally wrong.

MR: If you had to sort of declare a major going in, what would it be?
EG: I have no idea. It's jumped around from everything from learning more about music, producing music — not making music myself, but becoming a music producer or something like that — to medical school. But I don't know if I can stand doing calculus and physics classes any more. I think I realized that this year in AP calculus and AP physics — I just don't want to do that, crunch numbers all day. I'd like to be a lot more creative. I learned that through AP art this year — it's so much easier for me to do that, that creative stuff, than find out how fast the ball is going to drop from a 100-foot building.

MR: One of the first times that people heard of you was when you were the first Mainer at Beach to Beacon in 2003, and then last year, you didn't do it. Why not?
EG: I think because we were planning to go pretty far into the cross country season — we were planning on making it to Foot Locker [nationals], so it would be kind of starting the season way too early if I was going to be running hard there. And also, just the publicity. The year before, it blew up, and I didn't want to deal with that again. It was nice for like the first few weeks, but then the story got old for me, and I didn't want the story to repeat. The whole story about them not knowing me, I kind of felt bad for those other people, because they were made to seem like...I don't know what word to use, not 'idiots,' but I felt like it was making them a sideshow in the story.

MR: You mean the guy who they thought was the first Mainer? Andy Spaulding?
EG: Yeah, it kind of made me feel like he was a sideshow in the whole story, and it made me feel bad for them.

MR: But you're doing it this year?
EG: I'll do it this year, most likely as a tempo run, because I'm working for Beal's Ice Cream, and we're going to do the corporate challenge and try to win that, because we have a bunch of college kids who work there who can run decent times.

MR: But if you ran a tempo run, you'd probably still be the first Mainer.
EG: Probably. We'll see. That's up to Coach Gerard. Hopefully I'll do it. I think this time it won't be as big, just because people know me now.

(Interview conducted June 24, 2005, and posted June 30, 2005)