Austin Tamagno
Austin Tamagno is the top-ranked prep heading into Nike Cross Nationals at No. 3 in the Saucony Flo50 Rankings. He is a two-time D3 California state cross country champion and has PRs of 4:06 for the Mile and 8:54 for 3200m. The Brea Olinda senior is attending the University of Oregon next year.
1. What was your hardest workout this season?
Hardest workout of the season was 8x1000 at 2:50 with 2:30 rest. Did this workout right before one of my recruiting trips so I was pretty tired after that.
2. What was your team's (or your own) biggest challenge this season?
Our team's biggest challenge just happened last week. Everyone on our varsity team except for me and our number 3 guy got very sick. We had to stay away from them the whole week. Luckily those guys stayed mentally tough and pulled out the win at state.
My biggest challenge was staying away from the media all year and focusing on my goals for the season.
3. How do you balance enjoying the nationals experience while still focusing on competing?
You always want to enjoy the national experience no matter which one you go to. I go to national meets and expect to have the best time but I also don't change how I prepare for races. I still stay hydrated and get plenty of rest. But this is a time to meet new people and make a great memory of something exciting you experienced while you were in high school.
4. How do you manage peaking for the state meet vs. peaking for regionals/nationals?
The main thing to do is to not over train early in the season and save your main training/workouts for the last 6 weeks until the state meet. Once you get close to the state meet, you taper your mileage a little bit to stay fresh for the big performance. This year I ran more mileage all the way until CIF finals (a week before state) I knew that I wouldn't get a lot of competition for most of the year so I was fortunate enough to train through races and not go into them fresh. I also had college recruiting trips and the college process I had to get done so that pushed my training further into the season. I did base training until the middle of October and then started doing workouts to get into race shape. So this year I haven't reached my peak due to lots of other activities during the xc season. Plus running by myself In every race doesn't help show where my peak fitness is knowing I can run 20+ seconds faster with competition. I'm hoping to end my season very well this next Saturday and not show my full potential until track season which matters to me a lot more than cross country.
5. If you could be a Voodoo Donut, what kind would you be and why?
(If you don't know what Voodoo Doughnuts are, check out their website here. Essentially, they are a Portland institution that creates the most outrageous, tasty, hipster donuts we've ever seen. This isn't an ad, we swear....)
Probably one with Oreos because I love Oreos.
6. Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?
Horse sized duck.