Interview with Thomas Morgan

by Shannon Martin

Thomas Morgan, 25, won the Emerald Nuts Midnight Run this past New Years, just missing the course record by four seconds. He ran a strong race against extremely talented local Ethiopian runners as well as several runners from the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. Because of this achievement, the USATF named him the Athlete of the Week on January 2.

Mensracing caught up with a laid back and humorous Thomas Morgan over the phone at his ZAP Fitness home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, while he was dog sitting his brother Jack’s two dogs.

MensRacing.com: You were cruising during the Emerald Nuts Midnight Run and you almost broke the course record!
Thomas Morgan: It was funny because after the race, someone had told me that I had broken the course record because we thought it was 18:36. I found out a couple of days later that the course record was 18:28. Coming so close to the course record was just a bonus for me anyway.

MR: Well perhaps you should come back next year and aim for the record!
TM: Yeah, I’d love to! The race was great; New York Road Runners really knows how to put on events. We just had the greatest time; it was so much fun! I’d love to do that race in the future because it’s on New Years Eve in New York City and just the whole atmosphere is really fun.

MR: How did it feel to win with a strong field of talented runners, including many from the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project?
TM: That was pretty cool; in their defense though, the whole group was basically their marathoners so a 4-mile race wasn’t exactly their forte. It was still fun to hang out with them, run with them, and talk with them a little bit.

MR: Tell me how the race unfolded for you.
TM: The first half-mile, I was feeling pretty comfortable. I believe that I had the lead. [Laughing] actually, a couple of times, I was just looking at the fireworks. There were so many fireworks around and it was really cool; I didn’t want to miss it! So, I was staring off into the sky a couple of times.

Then, it really started to pick up. Some of the local Ethiopian runners that were there really pushed the second mile. So, the first mile was a little slow, but the second mile was pretty tough. Then, on the third mile, there was another runner who pushed it really hard up the hill and then the last mile was fast because it was mostly downhill.

MR: So, at that point, I’m assuming that you were no longer paying attention to the fireworks.
TM: [Laughing] exactly, but I did find out that they were still going on. They were going on the whole time! I just started focusing more on the race and kind of forgot about it.

MR: Well, congratulations on your win! I’d like to talk to with you now about ZAP Fitness. Your teammate Pezz [Stephanie Pezzullo] had a very interesting story on how she ended up with the team. How did you end up with the team?
TM: Well, I had a fifth year of eligibility at the University of Kentucky that I took. I started my Masters [also at the University of Kentucky] that year also. Then, I had another year of training on my own [in Lexington] while I was finishing up school. I was exploring my options, seeing what was open. I had a couple of friends tell me about ZAP Fitness; I heard about ZAP around circles. So, I called Pete [Rea]and we talked a lot. Once I went down there for a visit, I was pretty much sold. The training environment and the whole group [appealed to me] and another big factor too was that it is close to home. I wasn’t ready to move way off on the West coast somewhere, but ZAP is only about five and a half hours from Lexington. My family is all still there, so it’s nice to be able to stay close to home, not too close though [laughing].

MR: You’re at that comfortable distance away.
TM: [Laughing] exactly.

MR: So, what did you get your masters degree in?
TM: Business; I got an MBA.

MR: Are you using that now or is it on hold for a while?
TM: [Laughing] not really; it’s on hold for a while. I’ll break it out when I need to. I have school out of the way so now I can focus on running and eventually I’ll pull it [business] back out again.

MR:When you were running for Kentucky, did you envision yourself going pro afterwards?
TM: Not really until the end; I knew that my career at Kentucky was winding down and I wasn’t necessarily ready to be done running yet, so I kept exploring my options [for professional running]. I didn’t know how feasible it was to keep running. A lot of people in my classes were preparing for jobs with big-time companies and it was kind of a different feeling for me, not applying for all of these jobs. I was pretty sure that running was what I wanted to do though despite what a lot of society will tell you.

MR: Well, your PRs with ZAP go to show that you made a great decision.
TM: Yeah; it’s been going really well. It was a little bit of an adjustment the first few months, with the harder and more focused training and the different environment, but once I finished the first fall, I started to do really well with indoor and outdoor track.

MR: What are the major differences between training with Kentucky and training with ZAP?
TM: The most major change is trying to get more mileage. Kentucky is a pretty low mileage program and that’s one of the major reasons that I wanted to keep running because I knew that I could still run a lot more miles and achieve a bigger base. I knew that once I started doing that, I would improve. Since I moved to ZAP, I’ve been steadily trying to increase my miles and [have also been focusing] on all of the little things that you can’t necessarily take care of when you are in college, because you’re so busy with studying and friends. I think that taking care of diet and rest is important. Rest is a big one for me, you know, finding enough time to sleep [laughing].

MR: So, do you live with any of the ZAP athletes?
TM: Yeah, I live in the facility in the valley near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. So, that’s where we call home; there’s three of us who live in the facility and the three girls live across the street in another house, and then we have three more guys who live up the road.

MR: Tell me about the facility and what’s offered there for you guys.
TM: Pretty much everything is included for us; ZAP covers housing, food, and travel. Days and days will go by without me ever leaving the facility. You have everything you need here. We can train here if we need to. We try to go into town, to Moses Cone Park; it’s a really big area for running with great trails. We try to go there every day, but other than that, we’re at ZAP resting or using the full weight room. There are trails here too; it’s a great place to train and live. We just got wireless internet, so that’s taking up some time.

MR: ZAP has such an eclectic group of runners from those who focus on shorter distance like the 1500, to those who focus on marathons. Who, on the team, do you run with most of the time?
TM: It’s a really great training dynamic. It’s not too big to where people with egos can get in the way and [a run] turns into a race everyday. Everybody works together. I train with Kyle [King] and Ryan [Warrenburg] most of the time; they are the two other 5K range guys on the team. We’ll also do workouts with Brendan [O’Keefe] and Joe [Driscoll]. We really kind of mix it up a lot. Rarely will we have to do workouts by ourselves. Usually about two to three guys will do workouts together and we do most of all of our runs together too.

MR: Give me an example week of training for you.
TM: Well, we do one long run a week on Sundays. We do two workouts a week, like Tuesday and Friday or Wednesday and Saturday, and the rest are just mileage days. We go to Moses Cone Park five or six times a week; the other days, we’ll go to one of the many other great places to train around her.

MR: Come late winter, early spring, do you train on a track at all?
TM: Yeah, we do. We’ll do some strength stuff; we use Appalachian State’s track. It’s a great track. It’s a little bit of elevation; it’s at 3300 or something like that [3333 feet – the highest elevation of any university in the United States east of the Mississippi River], just enough to feel, but it’s not that significant.

MR: What’s on your racing agenda for 2007?
TM: I’m pretty excited about the season; I’m going to try to do a few solid indoor meets. I’m opening up here in Kentucky in a week; then we’ll be doing either Boston Indoor Games or the BU Invite, and then hopefully Tyson Invite, and ultimately the USATF Indoor Championships.

MR: What’s your focus going to be?
TM: It’s going to be the 3000 indoors and the 5K outdoors, but I still want to do the 1500 and the mile because I still have some goals that I’d like to accomplish in those events too.

MR: Do you have plans to compete on the European track circuit this summer, like you did last summer?
TM: Europe went great for me last summer; once I went over there, I really came into my fitness and I was sharp mentally too. I really enjoyed that trip and we’re definitely planning another Europe trip this year.

MR: Who were you out there with last summer?
TM: We stayed with the Minnesota group [Team USA Minnesota] and they were excellent; they treated us like one of their own. We met up with tons and tons of American distance runners who were staying in the same city of Leuven, Belgium. Everyone was there; there were Americans everywhere; you’d see them at dinner, or just walking around.

MR: You were taking over the city?
TM: [Laughing] yeah, we really were. It was a cute little town though. I was able to meet a lot of interesting athletes, so it was a great experience.

MR: Do you have any particular running heroes?
TM: I think that I follow the same athletes that everyone else does, like some of the impressive African athletes and I think that Craig Mottram is a pretty big inspiration for American runners too.

MR: Okay, let’s rewind to your cross country season. At the USATF Club championships, you were on Matt Downin’s heels right until the very end. You placed second and secured a team win for ZAP Fitness. Tell me more about that race.
TM: That was Matt Downin’s marathoner strength coming out; he really got up the hill quickly and was able to put some distance on me in the last kilometer. I was closing hard, but he was closing hard too, so I couldn’t fill in that gap. I think that if I would have been closer to him with 400 [meters] or a half of a mile to go, I could have got him.

I felt strong the whole race; it was a solid performance. I was being really aggressive and pushed it a lot in the middle of the race, which is where I have struggled in the past. I really just tried to establish myself as the person to beat. I think the mud took its toll on me toward the end, with all of the slopping around in it [laughing].

Our team was a little nervous at first. We thought we had [been defeated] just based on who we saw coming in near us. At first, we were a little down, but once they tallied up the scores, we were pretty excited. That was the main goal in going out there; to win the team title.

MR: Do you have that sense of team camaraderie that you had at University of Kentucky?
TM: Yeah, we definitely relished the team goal out there. We still have that now even competing individually because we spend so much time together and we live together. We’re definitely supportive of one another and it doesn’t get too competitive between any of us.

MR: Isn’t it great that there are so many opportunities these days to continue running for a team, after college?
TM: Can you believe that? Just over the past few years, there have been so many more opportunities.

MR: How do you see the sport of distance running growing in the next few years?
TM: I think the sky’s the limit and I think there are a lot of people who are willing to put in the necessary training to make it happen. I’m pretty excited to be a part of it. The next few years are going to be pretty important for me as far as my training and my racing. I think that if enough people work together, we can accomplish a lot for American distance running.

MR: Do you see yourself focusing on the 5K range of distances for quite a while, or do you see yourself transitioning into longer distances?
TM: The 5K is really my event for a while. I haven’t accomplished everything that I want to in this race; I haven’t really figured out everything with this race. I have a pretty good sense of the mile and the 3K, but the 5K is still a big challenge for me. I think that as long as I continue to run well in the mile, I’ll still continue to focus on the 5K.

I still want to do some longer races on the road though, just to get that experience. I think I’m planning on competing in the 15K road championships this year, as well as the 8K. I only like to run on the road sometimes. The track is definitely where my focus is.

MR: And where does cross country fit into the mix?
TM: Cross country [laughing], not so much.

MR: You perform very well on the trails though.
TM: Yes I do, but it’s just not my favorite.

MR: I have one final question that has absolutely nothing to do with running. Do you follow college basketball like your ZAP coach Pete [Rea] does?
TM: Oh yeah, I’m a big Kentucky fan. I grew up a Kentucky fan, and went there, so you know, Kentucky basketball is everything. Pete’s a UCONN fan; he’s good about it though.

Interview conducted January 8, 2007, and posted January 10, 2007.