For this week's Friday Focus we caught up with Lamar's Sam Stabler after he won the Stanford 5K against a loaded field. We asked him questions about his training after indoors, the experience of racing in the states and expectations for his future.

After missing the mark for indoors by an extremely small margin, you came back to beat a loaded field at Stanford. What has been going on in your head and in your training between seasons?

I was gutted. To miss out by such a small margin the second year in a row felt, basically, shit. Last year I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it and wasn’t too disappointed because I had a sneaky flat track conversion to help me on my way. This year, however, to move from 12th to 20th on the last day of the season was heart breaking especially when I knew I had improved so much since my 7:53 at the end of January. I’d ran a conservative race, 64s until the last 600 where I closed with a 1:29, and had hit a modest 33, 25, 52, 42 mpw the four weeks before. The disappointment of indoors pushed me on to run my biggest ever three week track training block of 72, 83 and 89 but the increase in training took its toll the fourth week when I struggled to break 3 minute kms off 2 minutes recovery and only managed to put 33 miles down. The next week, the week before Stanford, I had better luck and had two decent workouts and hit 63 miles albeit mostly at 7:30pace. The turmoil had given me motivation and I had the intention of proving a point!

Take us through the Stanford Invite 5K race.

Rabbit: “I am going 64s for 2km to 3km” Me: Straight to the back it is then. 

The gun went off and I rolled off the line with the intention of going to the back and sitting half a meter or so off for the first 3km. Darren Gauson, the distance coach at Lamar, shouted out my splits every lap and the first was 68.8. The pace did pick up but not to 64s and I ran around in last clipping 65 points with the odd 66 feeling great and holding myself back from making a silly early move, something I’ve done at Stanford previously, twice. I went through 2km in 5:31, after a 2:47 first km, so we were back on pace. At this point ‘Mr Muscle’ finished his pace making duties so the pace settled before being picked up again to go through 3km in 8:15. I had rounded someone who had fallen off the train, and was no longer last, yay, but still kept at the back of the group of now 18 runners still feeling great but waiting for the pain to come. The next lap picked up considerably, which I didn’t realise until I had been dropped off the back, about 5-10m, with two other runners. I caught them back up cautiously over the next two laps, not wanting to go into the red zone too soon, so that with 1,200 to go I was back at the back of the front group. I felt great but I was expecting the next lap to bite hard so I held back. The bite never came and going into the home straight before two laps to go I just thought ‘screw it’ and went straight into the lead. Right then I was thinking ‘shiiiiit, how long is this going to last?’ I’d been known at home by my club mates to kick early ‘Stabs sit and kicks with 1,500 to go in a 1,500’. At this point Darren had stopped shouting splits and started shouting a blur of incomprehensible Scottish noises. It started hurting with 200m to go but I knew I’d made the field hurt with the 59 but I still expected a rush of people to come by, fortunately they didn’t. That last 30m sucked big time, I nearly fell over, I’d been hit by a few lactic snipers and I could see some chunder bears in the distance…

What is your average daily routine? 

Today is a Tuesday, so let’s do Tuesday. 6:30 wake up followed a 10 minute cycle to campus listening to Alex Dunbar complaining about me having a morning class. Sorry Alex, but some of us don’t sit on our arses all day and 6:30 isn’t really that early. The session usually involves 4-6 miles of reps off a nice amount of recovery. Jeff, our athletic trainer, provides us with high quality H2O and ice towels except for Winter; January and February. After the workout I head back to my apartment for breakfast and a shower before I head to my 9:30am class. Every previous semester it has been at 8 am with workouts at 545am so I’ve enjoyed the ‘lie in’. At this point my Irish roommate is starting his arduous 1 hour process of waking up and getting to class. When the semester gets going, around April time, he will join us for workouts. Class lasts from 9:30 to 12:30 and is horrible engineering stuff so I won’t bore you with that. Lunch is all you can eat in the dining hall with the team. Then it’s back to class at 2:20 to 3:40 for some computer simulating aka facebook and twitter. I then have a 1 hr 50mins break; when I cycle back home, do my second run, have dinner, and then head back up to campus for 5:30 pm class. Fortunately this class is quite enjoyable and the time flies by, I also have my laptop and internet access. I am starting to become quite the ‘bloons monkey tower defence’ pro. Evenings are usually spent either playing fifa or watching some film or tv series.

What is your cross-training regimen? 

Rule number 1: Don’t cross train. 

When im injured I need to rest and don’t want to aggravate my injury. When I’m injury free I’d rather make the most of my runs than go into runs with fatigued muscles and risk getting re-injured. 

When and what do you normally eat while in training?

I start the day off with oatmeal and rice milk. I heard that Team Sky use rice milk and they have been cycling well so I thought it was a good idea. After breakfast, however, the diet changes completely. Lunch is normally 1 or 2 plates of whatever the dining hall has to offer; pasta, pizza, burger, chicken, Texican, Asian etc followed by cookies, chocolate pudding or, if there has been a catered meal the night before, cheesecake or crème brulee. Lunch normally fills me up until dinner when I have either chicken spaghetti or bolognaise spaghetti – my culinary skills are limited. I do go through ice cream cycles and have been known to have a pint of ice cream in the evenings each night for a week or two but these only usually happen during cross.

What is it like balancing life, training and racing?

I get by, I did a lot of 18 credit hour semesters my first few semesters when I was injured so I’m benefiting this last year from some lower workloads. I always find time for fun at Lamar.

What is your most bizarre pet peeve?

I hate the sound of loud eating or loud breathing especially when someone is just sitting still. I don’t know why, I just do.

What is it like training and racing in the states compared to England?

A complete contrast. At home I train in the evenings, in the cold whereas out here it’s early morning practice and heat with humidity! Racing out here is incredible. The amount of depth is brutal. At home if you are off by 10 to 15 seconds over an 8km cross country race it will cost you 3 or 4 places out here it’s more like 30-40! There are so many more people watching the races out here even during cross. Cross country at home looks something like this:


Courtesy: xxxlmatt

15 mm spikes are nearly always required at home!

Running and racing in America is an experience I will never forget!

Describe your childhood dream.

I really, really wanted to go to Disney World and you know what, I did.

Describe your fondest race memory.

Stanford was pretty fun!

Describe your worst habit.

Im pretty bad when it comes to winding people up and sometimes I take jokes a little bit too far, apparently.

Describe the kind of kid you were in high school.

I spent most of my lunches either failing miserable in my attempt to be a soccer star or brushing up on my Latin in the library – I was a bit of a nerd.

If you had a day off from your everyday responsibilities, describe how you would spend it.

Having been so used to having responsibilities and carrying them out in the upmost care I would realise that I had been institutionalized and so, unable to handle the freedom, I would go the way of Brooks Hatlen and that’s all I have to say about that.

Describe your most embarrassing moment as an athlete.

Probably trying to run away from the field at NCAA cross and then dying a little, ok a lot. Yeah I was that idiot who was 30m off the front at 4km and yeah it was a little bit windy. Whoops.

Tell us about your favorite memory with one of your current or past training partners.

It was crisp September morning and we had just finished a hard tempo around Claibourne. I’d recently had a cold and, out of respect to my fellow teammates, decided to bring a tissue as opposed to firing dangerous snot rockets. However, one of the bullets eluded my tissue’s grasp and, like a heat seeking missile, shot 10m through the air onto the chest of Joe Wade and landed on his ‘I’m coming down fast but im still miles above you’ tattoo. He was not amused and quickly closed the 10m gap before, just as quickly, calming down and ended it with a ‘Euughhhh, Bloody hell Stabs’.

Describe the perfect post-race meal in detail.

Milkshakes; Strawberry-banana, large and white chocolate, medium. Pizza: BBQ Hawaiian.

Describe your guilty pleasure.

Chocolate, sugar, deserts, and Ice cream. I was known as LFB at home – Little Fat Boy

If you could give one piece of advice to any runner, what would it be and why?

Relax, this track seasons training has been the worse out of my last three years here yet of improved massively. Sometimes the consistency is more important so just get plenty of rest and keep at it!

In the immortal words of Jimmy McElroy ‘If you can dream it, you can do it’.

Describe your favorite place to run or train.

At home it has to be Bradgate Park, it's the 'Mags' of Leicestershire, there isn’t a better place to do a Sunday long run and then finish at a café for a hot chocolate and flapjack.

At Lamar it has to be Claibourne park. It’s a 2 mile grass loop near some woods and tempos just seem to fly by!

Dinner with three (living or dead) who and why?

Boris Johnson – hilarity ensues.

George Bush (the oil one) – great orator, I would really like to listen to anything he has to say.

John Oliver – To add a serious, inquisitive side to the conversation.

Describe your pre-race ritual.

Warm up jog of about 10 minutes, bathroom trip, watch a few races, bathroom trip, do high knees and bum flicks followed by a bathroom trip then I will just walk around a little and pretend to look like I know what I’m doing. Usually I do a stride then one last bathroom trip before the race. I probably over hydrate a little.

What is your main goal for this outdoor season? 

All my goals have gone out the window now! Racing in Eugene would be amazing but it’s a tough task to get through the West region but making nationals and running a PR there has to be my goal. 

What does racing and training look like for you in the next six months?

Nationals and then after that I will head home and try to do the British champs before I mess around with some speed work and run some 800s in late July, my 159 800m pr needs revising!