Matt McClintock shattered his personal best and clipped the ZAP 10,000m record last Friday night at The Track Meet in Irvine, CA. Coming off a disappointing 14:06 5,000m race at the Drake Relays 2 weeks prior McClintock was just focused on competing rather than time. “I was surprised when we can through 5k in 14:10, I hadn’t been looking at the clock at all and I was feeling so good I thought for sure we were going to be 14:25.”
McClintock tucked himself into the lead pack from the early stages of the race, intent on covering any gaps. Never more than a couple of seconds from the front of the race he stayed patient until about 2k remaining. The pace began to lag and McClintock went to the front thinking, “I was feeling good and figured I’d take a turn at the front to keep the pace moving a bit and just found myself pulling away from the field.”
With 4 laps to go McClintock had opened up a 3 second lead that continued to grow as he ratcheted down the pace each lap. He covered his final mile in 4:21 capped by a 61 second final circuit to run 28:13.6 and take the win. His time was just under a second faster than the previous club record held by David Jankowski, and 14 seconds faster than his previous personal best of 28:27.
McClintock’s next race is on May 28th at the Portland Track Festival 10,000m where he and On ZAP Endurance teammate Joe Stilin will take aim at the automatic Olympic Trials qualifying standard of 28:00.
Full Results for The Track Meet can be found here.