Imagine the exemplar of success in your community seeing you, and rather than you approaching him about his accomplishments, it happens the other way around.
That's what happened to Casey Clinger was at the BYU track a few weeks ago, right before Jared Ward made the US Olympic team in the marathon. Clinger was meeting a few former teammates--there are two American Fork track alums on the BYU men's team--to go to a basketball game, when the not-yet Olympian Ward recognized him and congratulated him on his Nike Cross Nationals win. After telling Clinger that he was proud of how he represented Utah, he shared a little insight: despite getting out of shape on his two-year Church of Latter-day Saints mission, he's glad he went. Clinger plans on going on that same mission eventually, and Ward gave him some tips on how to get back in shape when his mission ends. (Ward went to Davis, which is the nearby rival of Clinger's American Fork High School; Clinger ran against Ward's brother Josh, who graduated from Davis in 2015.)
Clinger, a junior from Utah, is having one of the best junior seasons ever. He was the first non-senior to win NXN since 2009, and depending on how you feel about altitude conversions, potentially one of the fastest high school indoor milers ever. How did someone who ran 9:50 and 4:40 as a freshman get so good so quickly?
Since winning NXN, Clinger's career continued on an upward trajectory. His first two track races in 2016 have been a pair of 4:10 1600s. Using the NCAA altitude conversion calculator (or chart for Mac users), the faster of the two translates to roughly a 4:07.5 mile. That would put him right at the cusp of the all-time top ten performers list in the indoor mile! All of the boys distance attention this winter has been laser-focused on Drew Hunter, and rightly so. When you run 3:58/7:59 in high school, you deserve every pixel of attention you get. But Clinger might be building a case as one of the best eleventh graders we've ever seen. (Here it should be noted that this past weekend, he actually lost to Davis's Logan Mackay, 4:10.40 to 4:10.60)
When pressed about what's possible for the last 15 months of high school, he says over and over again that the main goal is "just try to win races," and I believe him.
Clinger does say, though, that he wants to break as many of Ben Saarel's records as he can. First up is Saarel's 9:00.62 meet record in the 3200 at the Simplot Games, where Clinger will race this weekend. (Unusual for a high school meet, Simplot has prelims in the 3200 on Thursday night before the final on Saturday, making for a grueling weekend)
Next up would be Saarel's 4:02.72 mile and 8:45.74 3200, both Utah state records. Clinger has never raced on a track at sea level; Saarel set those marks at the low elevations of New York and southern California, respectively.
However fast Clinger runs--and he says he plans on running the big postseason meets on the coasts this year-he won't be displaying fitness honed by running on Sunday. Like a majority of Utahns, most of Clinger's teammates are also members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, or as many people know them, Mormons. So the American Fork team doesn't run on Sundays.
Under the tutelage of coach Timo Mostert, they do run quite a bit on the other six days of the week. Clinger explains that the underpinning philosophy of their training is having a big base, which is why the team runs most mornings before school and afternoons after school. The recovery run is in the morning, with a tougher run in the PM and mileage topping out at a moderate-for an elite high school program in 2016-sixty miles a week or so. Clinger's highest single week ever is 70, though any runner worth their salt knows that the highest week ever does not represent the average.
The mornings are filled with an easy thirty minutes, while the afternoon practices are either a six-to-eight mile run or a workout, with roughly one set of repeats and one threshold run a week. Clinger relishes a 3x mile workout at goal three mile race pace, and dreads a fartlek named after BYU coach Ed Eyestone where he has to go eight minutes hard, eight minutes easy, seven hard, seven easy, and on down the ladder.
So, he didn't get this fast just by wearing out-of-place looking wayfarer sunglasses at cross country meets.
Photo: Ravell Call/Deseret News
All fall, his American Fork team floundered while Clinger won races across Utah and the Southwest. Other runners in the top five were banged up and dealing with injuries, though Clinger stayed healthy, stayed winning, and stayed wearing those comically out of place sunglasses.
After finishing third at the Utah state meet and fourth at the NXN Southwest Regional, there were rumblings that American Fork wasn't deserving of the at-large bid-just one of four available in the nation-that it received. (Also, let me be clear--I was rumbling some of those rumblings.) But at Nike Cross Nationals in December, the Cavemen finally had their full top seven healthy. After taking six losses in their last three meets, American Fork was ranked 13th in the Saucony Flo50 and sixth in Bill Meylan's projections.
The Cavemen finished second in the nation. Clinger won the whole race. He didn't wear the sunglasses. (Take a look at the top of the article.)
What's the deal with the sunglasses, then? Were they a goofy teenage fashion statement? Are they permanently consigned to the car cupholder after Clinger won a national championship without them?
"Um, our team wears sunglasses because lots of times it's sunny, and [not squinting] keeps your face relaxed, your shoulders relaxed, and being relaxed as possible helps you out in a race...It's very functional. It's not about style at all. When there's sun or rain, it just keeps stuff out of your eyes, you know? It was cloudy at Nike and I didn't feel like I needed them."
That's not a bad way to see Clinger: a serious-if-laid-back guy who is much more focused on function than fashion.
Here's a thing about men's distance running: it's a realm mostly populated by flighty, neurotic headcases but ruled with an iron fist by flinty, certain true believers. When asked what makes him a special athlete, his coach Timo Mostert said that beyond his strong work ethic and ample natural talent, Clinger "has the ability to suppress that internal voice that says 'slow down, this hurts.'" Even if you subscribe to a theory that Mormons make disproportionately excellent male distance runners because they aren't racked by the doubts that are the norm for so many, Clinger is exceptional. He might not see it that way, though: "We're all hard workers. We definitely have a healthy lifestyle--but so do most runners."
