This transcript was exported on Jul 20, 2021 - view latest version here. John Boccacino: Hello and welcome back to the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast. My name is John Boccacino, the Communications Specialist in Syracuse University's Office of Alumni Engagement. Justyn Knight: I'm more excited to represent Team Canada in Syracuse and my family than I am to represent myself as Justyn. My time at Syracuse has been phenomenal. I really, really enjoy my time at Syracuse and the whole community, the athletic department, the academic department treated me nothing less than family over there. To me, just being able to go out and compete at the Olympics on this stage, I feel like my way of saying thank you for all you've done for me is to represent them in the best light possible. John Boccacino: Fans of Syracuse University's cross country and track and field teams know how fast Justyn Knight is. But later this month, the 2018 graduate from Syracuse's Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics hopes to show the world that he's got world-class speed on the grandest of stages, the summer Olympics in Tokyo. It's been a long, sometimes trying process for Knight, who we wrote the cross country and track and field record books during his time at Syracuse University. With his sights set on a gold medal in the 5,000 meters for Team Canada, Knight takes the time to join us here on the podcast. Justyn, how are you holding up these days? Justyn Knight: Hey, thank you guys for having me. I'm doing great. We're getting some good training in. The summers in Virginia are very hot, so I can't complain about that, but I'm just hanging out. John Boccacino: Take us inside your mindset. How have you been preparing and training for these games? And of course, as we all know, COVID delayed them one year. I'm sure that might've been a little bit of a difficult process having to wait for the year delayed to get on the stage here. Justyn Knight: Yeah. My mindset, honestly, I wouldn't say completely changed, but it went back to what it used to be where now all I do is focus on winning and just being the best athlete that I can be. That being said, in track and field, you can't win every single event. I know that heading in, but when I'm working hard, training at practice, and when I go into the race, I have that mentality of we're going to try to win this race. Yeah, when COVID happened, that was very tough. That was difficult. I'm very thankful that they decided to postpone the games rather than cancel it entirely. I think I did a lot of growing during COVID and it actually benefited me to be a better athlete today. John Boccacino: How did you use that shutdown to better yourself, to work on your mental and your physical abilities? Justyn Knight: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it definitely tested me mentally and physically. From March all the way to October, I actually decided that I was only going to train by myself, even though I have teammates here in Virginia. That was a decision that Justyn Knight podcast (Completed 07/20/21) Page 1 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jul 20, 2021 - view latest version here. was made solely on my behalf. Based with the information that was known to the public at the time in March, I knew that COVID would affect your lungs and your heart. It wasn't entirely sure how it was being spread around. I felt like some of my teammates, not to say that they weren't taking it seriously, but I felt like they weren't using the same precautions that I was using. In order to make sure that I was safe and the people in my building were safe, I decided that I train by myself because only I can be responsible for me. With that actually, when I trained at Syracuse, when I trained like my early years as a pro, having your teammates around, it always is a huge benefit. It gives you a huge boost. I think just being able to run by myself, it taught me how to hold myself accountable for the paces and how to mentally become stronger even though it's not easy at all. Through those months of training, it was very tough but I grew a lot from it. Luckily, you can see in the races mentally and physically, I'm a lot stronger than I was before. John Boccacino: Yeah. It's a great point you bring up, you don't have that... I mean, you probably often were the pacesetter, but you don't have that pacesetter example when you're running by yourself. How did you replicate that? How would you manage to find a way to elevate your game while you were still running by yourself? Did you have benchmarks you wanted to hit for each split or each part of the run? Justyn Knight: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it depends what we were doing. When we were on solo runs, I love running with my headphones in. If I'm not running with my teammates, I'll listen to music that would get my heart pumping and stuff like that and kind of hype me up. But when I was in the workouts, we always know that the pace that we're supposed to hit, I would have to play mind games with myself. Sometimes my shadow would be slightly in front of me and I would have to pretend that that shadow was a person and I was chasing it. It sounds really weird, but when you're desperate, you're desperate. I had to come up with all these little ideas just to give myself some extra motivation. A lot of my friends actually on the global stage were competing very well. They had a lot of great times that they achieved, whether it was like my race or other races that I don't necessarily compete in. I use that as motivation too just because when you see your friends doing great, obviously you're happy for them, but you want to be a part of the crew too. Lots of motivation on that front. John Boccacino: You set personal bests and Olympic qualifying times in both the 1,500 and the 5,000, clearly impressive results. How did you see that training pay off in those results at the big races? Justyn Knight: Actually, during the COVID year, which felt like three years, during that training cycle, I've actually never had a summer to build a base. In track and field and running, building a base means like working on your strength so you'll run a lot more mileage than you would regularly run during the year because you're not necessarily competing. The reason why I never really built a base was because when my teammates at Syracuse were done running after NCAAs, they just Justyn Knight podcast (Completed 07/20/21) Page 2 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jul 20, 2021 - view latest version here. went home and they were able to take their break and build their base. But I just kept competing throughout the summer, like for Canada and stuff. I would get a break, but by the time my break was over, it was time to go back to Syracuse. Then I'd slowly get into things. But this year with the pandemic, it's like there was no competitions going on and I was able to get a lot stronger. I was running more mileage. What that did for me was I did get a lot stronger. When you stall me in these races, even though I ran 1,500, I was strong enough to hold a faster pace for a longer period of time. That was the big difference I think that was made during the COVID segment of the year. Well, that's still going on, but that definitely helped me out a lot. John Boccacino: It's interesting you bring up staying stronger and seeing yourself making the strides you were going for. Not being able to race, I mean, COVID affected our whole society. There are no races for more than a year. What was that aha moment? Was there a race when you took to the track and everything clicked and it really showed you that man, I'm making some good strides here. Justyn Knight: Yeah. I think my first race back or official race back, because we had a time trial in the summer in the mile but it was nobody but our teammates. It might as well have been practiced. My first race back after the COVID season was the New Balance Grand Prix Indoors. Fun fact, at that meet back in, I think I ran it in 2019, but that's where my worst race was run. I got dead last at 4.03. That was a huge turning point in my career as well. When I went back for that race to start my season, I was very nervous just because I had my worst race ever there. Turns out I ran a pretty simple like 8.13 in the two mile and I was milliseconds off the Canadian record.