Interview with Jordan Fife (July 19, 2008)
Sub-4:00 Miler & 2008 Olympic Trialist 3000m Steeplechase, Indiana native

Six years ago, Jordan Fife graduated from Seymour High School, where he earned All-State honors in cross country his senior year. He went on to Indiana State to become a two-time D-1 All-American and now is running professionally for Team Indiana Team. He just competed in the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon earlier this month.

The Jordan Fife File Seymour High School, 2002 Indiana State University, 2006 Current PRs: 800 - 1:54.40 1500 - 3:44.06 Mile - 3:59.75 3000 - 8:06.47 3000 SC - 8:36.69 5000 - 13:48.99 Race Videos: * 4:00.13 mile at IU * 3:59.75 mile at ND

Derek Leininger, IndianaRunner.com
Jordan, you had a good career at Seymour High School. Talk a little about your roots: how did you get in to running way back in the day? What was your high school running experience like? What was your mind set and training approach to running back at Seymour?

Jordan Fife, 2008 Olympic Trialist
I first got introduced to running when we would visit my grandparents in the summer. We always seemed to be in town on the weekend of the Hog Jog in Flora, Indiana. They have a 10K and a 3K road race. I always ran the 3K race when I was younger, and I really enjoyed it. Of course, I never trained for it, I simply showed up on race day and tried to compete. I tried to play football in 5th grade, but I was way too small. I was so small that I had to have a different helmet than everyone else because the helmet I was originally assigned was way too big for my head. We had a field day at the end of my 5th grade year, and it involved all of the elementary schools in town. I won the 800 in 2:43. In 6th grade, when I had the opportunity to run cross country instead of playing football, I went for it. I have run cross country and track ever since then. I experimented with the hurdles, high jump, and the long jump in middle school and with the pole vault for one year in high school.

My high school experience was probably very different than most. I didn’t know much about the sport in terms of training methods, so I did everything that my coach told us to do without question. I ran no more than 20 miles per week throughout the whole cross country season; freshman year through my senior year. I ran 5-6 days per week depending on whether or not we had a meet on Saturday. Any day that we weren’t racing, we were running a workout. We never had recovery days or long runs. The workouts weren’t that difficult though, but they were always some sort of an interval workout such as 800’s, Miles, K’s, or 600’s, or some combination of the different distances. As a freshman, I was anywhere between our #2 man and our #7 man and my PR for the season was 17:59. As a sophomore, I established myself as the #2 man for a majority of the season and ended the year with a PR of 17:17 at the Bedford Regional. I had a breakthrough season as Junior, running as the #1 man for the whole year. I ran a PR of 16:34 at the Terre Haute Semi-State and finished 94th in the State meet at IU. My senior year was very similar to my junior year until I got to the State meet. I hadn’t run faster than my junior year until the State meet, where I ran 16:15 at IU and finished 25th, capturing the final All-State spot.

In track, the training was more of the same. I probably only averaged 15-20 miles per week throughout my whole career, and the workouts were all interval-based with no long runs and no real recovery days. We ran ladders and 400’s all of the time. I played basketball in the winter all through high school so I didn’t do any running at all in the winter. I often found myself racing in to shape as the season progressed, getting beat by a lot of runners early in the season, and then passing them later on in the year. As a freshman, I ran 5:01 for the 1600m and 10:41 for the 3200m. My sophomore year PR’s were 4:50 and 10:19. As a junior, I ran 4:36, and then qualified for the State meet in the 3200m with a season best time of 9:47 at the Bedford regional. My first state track race was perhaps the most exciting race of all time, as it was the 3200m race when Robert Smitson out leaned Charlie Koeppen by .01 to grab the State title. Showing a complete lack of experience, I led the first two laps of that race, setting the pace, only to fall back to a 25th place finish, 50 seconds behind the winner. As a senior, I lowered my PR’s to 4:30 and 9:45, again qualifying for the State meet in the 3200m. There, I finished 16th, ending my high school career.


Leininger: You decided to go to Indiana State as a walk-on. What made you choose you become a Sycamore? And at that point, did you imagine the steeplechase was in your future? Did you have any hurdling background prior to college?

Fife: I had the college search down to four places; Indiana State, Southern Indiana, Butler, and Ball State. With the rumors of Ball-State possibly cutting its program, I decided not to go there. My visits to each place went well and I rather enjoyed all of the campuses, coaches, and programs. In the end, I’m not really sure what the deciding factor was, but Indiana State was the last place I visited, and it was the most fresh in my head when I finally made the decision. Each school that I visited, and each coach that I talked to mentioned the possibilities of running the steeplechase in college because they were all aware of the fact that I played basketball in high school and had the athleticism that it took to jump the barriers. I did some hurdling in middle school, so I understood the mechanics of it and the basic movements. At Indiana State, there wasn’t much depth in the steeplechase when I arrived, so I jumped at the chance to be one of the top runners in that event as a freshman.


Leininger: At Indiana State, you developed from a high school All-State runner to an NCAA two-time All-American. In just a couple of years time, you made a HUGE jump in the running world. To what factors do you attribute that improvement?

Fife: The biggest factor that I can attribute my huge breakthrough in the running world to is consistency. I tell so many people that the most important thing to be a competitive runner is consistency. There is no substitute for weeks and weeks of uninterrupted training. It is almost a certainty that people are going to face injuries over the course of their career, some more than others, but the longer you can go between injuries with solid training, the more improvement you will see. Almost every year since high school I have increased my average weekly mileage, as well as the intensity of workouts. I matured a great deal physically during my first two years of college, and I feel like I’ve been getting stronger every season since. Getting in to routines and believing in myself are two other very important factors to my improvement along the way.


Leininger: After graduating college, a lot of All-Americans like you are faced with a decision. Do I put some more years in to this running thing, get a sponsor and really see what I can do? … or do I do what other 22-year-old college graduates do (go out and get a “real job”)? What made you choose to continue to pursue running? Did you already have a post-collegiate training group and sponsorship set up at the time of graduation?

Fife: I was 100% sure on wanting to continue my running career after I graduated from Indiana State University. However, I wasn’t sure for the majority of my senior year, how that was going to work. I didn’t know if I would have to do it as a high school teacher and coach, or if there were possibilities to join a group somewhere across the country. I knew that I was nowhere close to reaching my potential as a runner, so the choice to continue my running career was an easy one. During the second semester of my senior year, I was contacted by Coach Chapman, formerly the coach at IU, about a post-collegiate group that was starting up in Bloomington. Not only would I not have to start my teaching career right away, so that I could focus entirely on running, but I would be moving even closer to home, rather than finding a group based out west somewhere. It didn’t take long for me to decide to move to Bloomington and begin training with Team Indiana Elite at the completion of graduation. With housing provided by the university, and a travel budget and equipment deal through Brooks, I don’t think I could have found a better set up no matter how hard I would have looked.


Leininger: It was a pretty big deal this winter when you were going after the sub-4:00 mile. Most people know that on February 9th at Notre Dame you ran 3:59.75 for a full mile. What does it mean to you to be a sub-4:00 miler? Was that a big goal of yours for the 2008 season?

Fife: Running Sub 4:00 has to be the highlight of my running career. Going in to the indoor season, it was not even a goal of mine to break 4:00. I wanted to run PR’s for the Mile and 3,000m, and take a shot at qualifying for the USA Indoor Championships in one or both of those events. In my first race of the season, I ran 4:02, which was 4 seconds better than my PR in college, and about 5 seconds faster than I was prepared to run at that time. In an instant, my goals for the season had changed. A week later, with pacing from my teammate, and in one of the loudest and most energized crowds I’ve ever ran in front of, I ran 4:00.13. The race was bittersweet, as I had missed breaking 4:00 by so little, and I had felt like I let the crowd down in so many ways. However, it was evident to me even more than the week before that I was going to break 4:00 at some point. The following week, at Notre Dame, I was able to dip under 4:00 in front of my family, my girlfriend, and several current and former teammates, and it was one of the best feelings in the world. Being only the 4th person from the state of Indiana to run under 4:00 definitely makes me feel like my running career will be legitimized.


Leininger: You just finished competing in the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon last week. Describe that whole experience. What was the atmosphere like in Hayward Field? What did you learn from your first Trials? And what are your long-term goals? (I’m sure you are aware that the Trials return to Eugene again in 2012).

Fife: For all but about a couple of hours out of my entire 10 day stay in Eugene, the experience was second to none. To any runner, on any level, the sights and sounds, and the overall atmosphere in Eugene is something that just has to be experienced at some point. Words and pictures don’t do the experience justice. Everyone around you eats, sleeps, and breathes track and field. It was simply amazing to watch all of the races, and even more to experience one first hand in front of 21,000 cheering fans. Failing to make the finals was very tough on me, and then to watch the finals from the stands, was even tougher. As it turned out, I had beaten the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place guys all head to head in races earlier in the season. Just sitting there knowing that it could have been me out there, is the greatest motivating factor for the years to come. I learned that it’s all about timing and who’s hot when it counts.

As far as long term goals, I would like to continue running PR’s each season. That has been one of the things that I have focused on each season. As long as I’m healthy, I set the goal of running a PR in each event that I compete for that year. I would like to continue qualifying for USA Indoor and Outdoor Championships, and to improve my places at each in the years to come. The biggest goal of all for my running career is to have the best race of my life in the finals of the 2012 Olympic Trials. If the best I can do is 10th, then so be it. I don’t want to say “what if” after that race. I truly believe that with the continued support of everyone around me, and with a growing and growing confidence, I can run a race in the 2012 Trials that will land me a spot on the Olympic Team.


Leininger: Finally, how excited are you about the return of IndianaRunner.com?

Fife: The return of IndianaRunner is way past due! I was a big fan back in high school, and I am looking forward to accessing it on a daily basis once again. I am still very interested in running at the high school level as my brother is going to be a junior this season at Seymour. I try to stay up with all of the news and results as best I can, and IndianaRunner will make that a lot easier on me.