Isaac Updike
After two bouts of COVID wrecked his 2022 track season and caused him to miss the most important race of his campaign, Ketchikan’s Isaac Updike is making up for lost time.
Winter is usually a season of base-building training for the steeplechase specialist, and while Updike is no doubt putting in the miles, he has spent the last two months supplementing that work by racing relatively frequently on surfaces other than the track.
The 30-year-old, Nike-sponsored athlete on Thursday checked off his fourth race in the last two months with Thursday’s performance at the FitnessBank Cross Championships in Austin, Texas.
Racing in a strong field of Olympians and NCAA champions, Updike led his Empire Elite Track Club by finishing 16th in a cross-country race of eight kilometers (just shy of five miles).
Updike clocked 24 minutes, 8.60 seconds and finished strong – his time of 5:15.3 in the last mile or so was the 11th-fastest closing work in the field of 69 finishers. He passed three runners in that final stretch.
Kenyan Edwin Kurgat of the American Distance Project – he was the 2019 NCAA cross-country champion – won in 23:27.50. He was followed by four runners from On Athletics Club: runner-up American Yared Nguse (23:30.60), who qualified for the 2020 Olympics in the 1,500 meters; Australian Olympic and Commonwealth Games 1,500 champ Ollie Hoare of Australia (23:32.70); former NCAA cross-country champion and Olympian Morgan McDonald of Australia (23:42.10); and Olympian George Beamish of New Zealand (23:42.60).
On Athletics won the team competition with 14 points – each team’s top four runners scored – and Updike’s Empire Elite finished seventh of 10 teams with 99 points.
Thursday’s race was the only U.S. stop of the World Athletics Cross Country Tour.
Updike, who finished fifth in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials, was focused on that event in the 2022 USA Track and Field Championships last June, but he scratched at the last minute because of lingering effects of COVID suffered in late May. A second bout in July prompted him to shut down his track season.
Come fall, though, Updike set off on the roads by racing distances much longer than his usual fare.
He finished 29th at the USA 10-Mile Road Racing Championship in Minneapolis on Oct. 2. A month later, he took 14th at the USATF 5-K Road Racing Championship in New York City. And just two weeks after that, he seized third place at another road race, making the podium at the Sugar Run 5-K in Germantown, Tenn.
Updike in 2023 will set his sights on the steeplechase at the national outdoor championships. The top three finishers will qualify for the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, provided they have also met the qualifying standard for worlds.