Interview with Adrian Blincoe

by Duncan Larkin

My interview with New Zealand middle-distance runner and former Villanova standout Adrian Blincoe was arranged during a chance encounter with him at Valley Forge Park last week. Blincoe happened to have been running in front of me and I happened to have caught up to him. (He was running an easy day, thankfully, otherwise that wouldn’t have been possible and this interview wouldn’t have occurred). I asked if I could join him; I didn’t recognize him. When we started throwing out race times and PRs, making that typical, running stranger small talk, my heart nearly went through my mouth.

“You ran what time for the 5000 meters?”

“13:27, last week,” he said humbly.

“You roomed with whom?”

“Craig Mottram”

“Who are you?”

“Adrian Blincoe.”

“Do you mind if I interview you for mensracing.com?”

Blincoe agreed.

We met a week later in a noisy Caribbean-themed restaurant and put back one Red Stripe piece.

Adrian Blincoe, 28, is currently the assistant track and field coach at Villanova University where he graduated in 2005--a seven time All-American. While running in his first year there, he anchored the DMR at the Penn Relays, leading his team to victory. He was also a member of the winning DMR team at the 2002 and 2003 NCAA Championships. As a professional runner, Blincoe has turned heads. He is competitive at the world level and holds PRs of 13:21.73 for 5000-meters and 3:35.50 for 1500 meters. He currently makes his home outside Philadelphia, but spends a lot of time abroad racing on the European circuit and visiting his family in Auckland, New Zealand.

MensRacing.com: You recently paced two of your Villanova athletes, Bobby Curtis and Michael Kerrigan to sub four-minute miles. What was that experience like?
Adrian Blincoe: I always like to help out the young guys. It’s a good thing about the sport—helping out people who are younger than you [are]. I mean I always had senior athletes help me when I was growing up in New Zealand. I like to give back to those kind of guys. To see both of them [Curtis and Kerrigan] run sub four-minute miles is really, really exciting.

MR: Are you going to be doing more of this type of pacing for your athletes?
AB: No. Marcus [O’Sullivan] my coach, likes to have me do a couple of early season pacing or low-key races to kind of see where I’m at and get a good workout from it as well. That’s probably the last time. I did pace out at [the] Mount SAC [Relays] for Anthony Famiglietti and he ran a 13:11 in the 5K. That was good for me because I was racing a 5K two weeks later. I was also taking Bobby Curtis out there as well to Mount SAC and I thought since I’m out there, I might as well jump in for a little bit. Monday night’s pacing was solely to get those guys [Curtis and Kerrigan] under [a] four-minute mile. It paid off.

MR: You paced them through three laps, could you have gone another lap?
AB: Yeah. I could have. It’s always harder pacing, because you are always worried about hitting the right splits—not going too slow or too fast. You never feel as good as you do when you are racing. I am pretty confident that I could have finished up the last lap all right.

MR: The Reebok Grand Prix is in a few weeks (June 2). You are going for the Olympic ‘A’ Standard there in the 5000 meters (13:21.5). You ran a 13:27 at the Peyton Jordan Cardinal Invite a few weeks ago. How are you going to find those six seconds at Reebok?
AB: First, at Stanford, there was no pacemaker. I paced out at Mount SAC and then I was hoping someone was going to help me out at Stanford. So the first two laps were quite slow there. By the first kilometer, I was already off six seconds from the ‘A’ standard and I finished five kilometers with six seconds still off the ‘A’ standard, so the damage was really done after the first two and half laps of the race. After the first two laps, two of the guys started exchanging leads and I was comfortable sitting in fourth the whole way. And I knew probably with a mile to go that I wasn’t really hurting and I was confident that I had a bit of a kick from the guys. I knew the guys in front of me; they are friends of mine and I was pretty confident that I could out kick them in the last lap. So once the ‘A’ standard wasn’t a possibility after the first couple of laps, my next goal was to win the race, which I did.

MR: I think I read that it was a tight pack until the last lap.
AB: Yeah, I think I ran 57 seconds for my last lap. I felt comfortable. I actually felt that some of the workouts that I ran prior to the race actually hurt more than the race itself. That was a good sign that there was more there. Last year, I ran 13:21 in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, in July. Since then I’ve had an uninterrupted build up. Usually I’d have small injuries that would put me in the pool for a week or so at a time. But I’ve had none of that. I’ve gone 30 weeks since I started running back in the fall with only maybe four days off—nothing major. So I’m really excited.

MR: So can you correlate the period of running injury free that you just described to anything different you’ve done in training?
AB: I think I’ve just gotten stronger. I’ve gotten used to the mileage. I’m still not a high-mileage guy. Even for a miler, I’m not a high-mileage guy; 70-80 miles a week is all I can handle. But one of the things that’s different now is that in college, I used to push every run—every run. I would try to run around 6:00 pace and consequently, I would suffer a lot of small injuries. Now I don’t feel the need to push every run. If I’m feeling good, I’ll run fast like yesterday’s long run was a two-hour run. Some days I’m happy to run 7:00 pace if I need to, but I probably average 6:15 to 6:10 per mile which is still a good pace. Previously, I would get injured when I was tired. Now I just get tired and don’t feel good and that’s a telltale sign for me to back off a little bit.

MR: I had read in some of your previous interviews dating back a couple years that Marcus O’Sullivan is a big proponent of heart- rate-monitor training. I also read that you are a fan of Jack Daniels’s approach to training which favors lower mileage and that you were running that lower mileage accordingly. But you are from New Zealand so I would expect that you’d be a follower of [Arthur] Lydiard-based training. I was surprised to hear today that you are now running 70-80 miles a week. Where do you fit now? Have you changed your training philosophy?
AB: I’m doing more miles, but all the workouts are based on heart rate. When I was in New Zealand, I was never a big Lydiard guy. My dad was my coach and he was very protective of the volume in my training so in high school I was running five days a week. I was running maybe 30 miles a week, tops. I got very good results out of that. He was never a big Lydiard guy and didn’t want me running that kind of mileage. He’d rather see me doing what I am now which is around 80 miles a week and not burned out mentally or physically. Regarding the Jack Daniels stuff, yeah, Marcus really uses the heart rate-based training. I really think it is the key to improving. I look at the guys coming through our program at Villanova—guys like Bobby Curtis and Mike Kerrigan and myself—you see that progression in the year, you get faster and stronger and that correlates to improvements in your times as well. When I’m in Europe with guys like [Craig] Mottram, I see them using heart rate monitors in their training as well. Nic Bideau, my agent and Mottram’s coach, is very similar in the way that he trains Mottram as Marcus does me. Craig can handle a lot more mileage than I can and he has great natural speed. He’s a talented runner. I’m doing lower volume but similar training.

MR: Let’s talk about your coaching. I don’t think there are that many collegiate coaches who are out there pacing their athletes to sub four-minute miles. Your coaching seems to entail leading by example. Tell us about this unique coaching experience.
AB: I started in the fall for the first time as an official coach. I think it’s a little bit different. There are a few guys around—guys like Nate Brannen who’s helping out in Michigan. He’s in the European circuit a lot. We used to race against each other in college. But there are only a few. A lot of the top American guys have the sole focus to just run fast. I mean that’s my sole focus as well, but I need something to fill my days in the two to three hours between training sessions, otherwise I’ll get stale and bored. The Villanova job is great, because it gets me out of the house for a couple of hours a day that isn’t detrimental to my running. As far as the pacing, I train with the guys occasionally. I do most of my runs on my own before I go to work or after when I come home. I train with Bobby Curtis, but for the most part I’m on my own. As far as pacing and encouraging of the guys, that’s just my nature, I guess. When I was in New Zealand, I was lucky enough to have a lot of senior athletes that looked after me in the same way. I could always go on a training run with them and ask them questions. When I really needed to qualify for something like World Juniors, I had them there to pace me. I feel that it’s only natural for me to do the same for the young guys.

MR: Tell me about your 13:21.7 5000-meter race last year in Belgium. It appears that you missed the standard by fractions of a second. (The ‘A’ standard is 13:21.5.) Along those lines, I think you missed making the Olympic ‘A’ standard for the 1500 to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games also by fractions of a second. What does this experience of missing these standards by such small increments of time teach you? Does it bother you?
AB: I ran a 13:21.7 there [in Belgium]. This was the second 5K that I had ever run as a senior athlete. I was encouraged by that. Plus it was a hot day—over 90 degrees. It gave me confidence, because last year was just a trial year for the 5K to see if I could pull it off and the 13:21 gave me confidence.

But I’ve learned my lesson.

The only standard that I was disappointed about missing was the Olympic 1500-meter standard. The Olympics were a problem because I went to Europe with the sole goal of hitting the [qualifying] time which isn’t the best way of approaching a European season. You want to go over there and finish as high as you can, and by that way, the times will come. So I learned that by missing the Olympics by .3 of a second. The following year, I went over and in my first 1500-meter attempt I missed the standard by .13 of a second but my goal that season was to do the exact opposite of what I did the year before and not watch the clock, trying to hit times and finish instead high in races. I was happy with that race because I finished second and it was a Grand Prix with I beat a lot of really good guys. Two days later I hopped on a plane and ran a 3:35 and got the time—again just trying to beat guys. And last year, with the 5K again I just raced it. I finished third in the race with a 13:21, against two really good Kenyans. And I beat a lot of good guys in that one as well. In fact, Ryan Hall and Abdi Abdirahman were in that race—that gave me confidence. The time was secondary to the fact that it was a really good race that night.

MR: You’ve talked before about the state of running in New Zealand. You have said that if you want to succeed as a Rugby player over there, you are all set. But if you want to become a runner, you are pretty much ignored. I was surprised when I read that, because I’ve always considered New Zealand--the home of Lydiard and [Peter] Snell--to be very supportive of running. I laughed at the irony of the quote too, because it reminded me of what some Americans say about running over here, substituting the favoritism of rugby with the favoritism of American football. Do still feel that way about running in New Zealand?
AB: Regarding that quote of mine, I feel as strong as I did if not more so with that statement now. As I said before in this interview, I was lucky to have these older guys who helped me in my races. There was a track circuit down there where there were three or four international-class races. The guys don’t have that anymore. You have some real educated coaches down there, whether they are Lydiard-based or Jack Daniels-based or Peter Coe-based guys—very educated coaches and great places to train with great clubs. There is a good foundation there, but there just aren’t the races. You get to a certain point where you have to find the races that are going to bring you to the next level. These young guys down there now are seeing that they can only get so far. If they want to go farther, they have to move. We are lucky; we are bringing two New Zealand guys to Villanova next year. They are really, really talented guys; we expect big things from them: Tom MacKenzie and Hugo Beamish. And I think you’ll see them flourish in this system because they’ve got very sound principles and they’ve run some fast times there. Once they get into a race, they will run really fast.

MR: Let’s talk about your near-term and long-term goals. Let’s assume you make it into the Olympics with a 13:21.5. To be competitive in the Olympics you got to run under 13 minutes. What are you going to do to take another 21 seconds off your time to even be competitive in Beijing?
AB: I’m really interested to see how this year goes This is the first time I’ve ever strung an entire build-up with no injuries so how can that translate to running faster than 13:21? I still see myself as a 1500-meter runner. My goal leading up to the Reebok race is the 5K. My training has been focused on that distance. Once I get that standard out of the way and get a good run in, my training will transition to 1500-meter running. I spend the rest of the European circuit finding a couple of 1500-meter races and maybe some 800-meter races and some 3Ks with the sole goal of getting the ‘A’ standard for the 1500-meter which is 3:36.6. I’ve run that five or six times now. I know I can run that. I know I can run faster than that. I’ve just got to see how fast I can go in the 1500 and if that translates into giving me a better chance than the 5K. I’m not ruling the 5K for Beijing, but the 1500 seems to be my event for at least the next two years and then after that, move up to the 5K. I need to see what results come out this season and then I can make a decision.

MR: Regarding your long-term goals, do you have any thoughts of ever getting into 10Ks, half-marathons, or marathons?
AB: Definitely not half-marathons and marathons. Maybe I’ll do a 10K in the very far future. I think 5K is the longest distance that I can be extremely competitive on the world stage. In the NCAAs, I was never really competitive in cross country. I finished ninth once. I don’t have the mileage base behind me to be able compete with the guys who run 120 miles a week and have been doing so for the last five years. I think the 1500 and the 5K are my limit.

Interview conducted May 15, 2007, and posted May 24, 2007.