As Parker McDevitt (12) finished his 24th lap in the 5,000-meter event at Nike Indoor Nationals, he knew he had to push. As he surged across the track with one lap left, his strides grew wider and stronger. The final stretch was just runners pouring everything they had left into a sprint, and as McDevitt pushed across the finish, he placed third out of 14 racers.
Nike Indoor Nationals is a sports event held at the Nike Track and Field Center in New York City. The top high schoolers from across the country qualify to compete, and McDevitt qualified by running a sub-9:30 2-mile. In McDevitt’s first race, the 5,000-meter, he said the setting felt unfamiliar. Having only previously raced outdoors, the indoor track was a new experience for him.
“For Thursday’s race, which was the 5k, one of the big things I ran into was that compared to an outdoor track, when you’re on lane two, you lose some ground,” McDevitt said. “On an indoor track it’s harder [to run] due to the bank curve. You’re running at a steeper angle. I wasn’t prepared for the 200-meter indoor track, [because] it’s a smaller track and with that curve, when you’re in lane one, and you have people all around you, so I ended up being boxed in for most of the Thursday race.”
Even though McDevitt started the race boxed in, he had set a target that he was focused on hitting.
“My goal was always just to stay as close as possible to lane one or in lane one so I didn’t have to worry about that curve and then just hang on to whoever I was with and move up when I felt people slowing down,” McDevitt said.
McDevitt began the race further back. He remained in the back until lap 14, when he began to push and lengthen his strides, eventually settling into third place going through the finish.
“I was able to just stick with the front group the whole time,” he said. “I kept moving up when I needed to, and I pushed the back, but then I ended up moving further and further front. Then, when it came down to the last two laps, I started putting pressure on the front guy, and then we all had a sprint race to the end.”
Most of McDevitt’s preparation leading up to his races focused on his mental state, and McDevitt said flying to New York gave him the opportunity to meet runners from the other side of the country.
“It was really fun because this was all the way on the East Coast so I met a lot of new people, made some friends there,” he said. “Even here, there are always cameras, so you can just find the videos on Youtube, but it was kind of cool to have a livestream. I thought it was just cool being able to be somewhere where all the other good runners, from all across the country, are at.”
McDevitt said that he will be running in college and will apply what he learned from this race to his future runs.
“Going into other races, I think if I want to hit a time specifically, I want to be able to have confidence just to immediately be towards the front pack, so I don’t have to be boxed in like I did that time,” he said. “And now with the closing speed I had during that race, that gives me a lot more confidence, I could do that during all these other races that are much shorter.”
McDevitt said this experience taught him to be more confident when racing. He noted that the beginning of the race taught him how lacking confidence was what held him back.
“This race gave me a lot more confidence that I could stick with the front pack and that maybe sometimes I am underestimating what I could actually do,” he said. “So with this race, I had my mindset for how the race was going to go, the first mile or first two miles of that 5k was going to be at a 4:50 mile pace, which was my goal. I was expecting the last mile to be like 4:40, 4:30 because I thought people were going to get close [in], but that didn’t happen.”
McDevitt said the end of the race went really well.
“That was my fastest finish ever,” he said. “I was really proud of that, and that’s where I got third.”
