Ready for title defence
It’s the obvious question with the not-so-obvious answer.
Patrick Tiernan came into the world championships in London with a bullet next to his name.
The Toowoomba product was Australia’s next big thing, the US-based college kid who’d had an amazing season to push himself into the higher echelon of distance runners on the planet.
And then in the 10,000m final . . . he finished last.
Four months on and the question is still the same – what happened?
“We have looked back on it and figured out a couple of things that we could have done differently,” Tiernan says. “Just little things like I think we underestimated the sort of effect the training load at the camp (in Spain), which had some sort of altitude to it, had on us in the lead-up to championships.
“Little mistakes like that are on me in the end, I wasn’t looking at those things enough and it caught up with me four or five kilometres into the race.
“The thing is I’d rather it happen at that world championships than the next one in 2019 when I’m a bit more experienced and have a better shot at a medal.
London wasn’t all a bust, though, with Tiernan pulling himself together five days after the failed 10,000m, running brilliantly in the 5000m heats to make the final.
And then in the final he courageously put himself in the medal frame with Vo Rogue-type tactics, taking the lead with five laps remaining and then keeping the likes of Olympic great Mo Farah at bay until finally succumbing with 600m remaining.
“I think I learnt more from the 5km final than I did from the 10km final because at the end of the day so much went wrong in that you can almost sort of wipe the board and start fresh,” Tiernan explains.
Tiernan, who won the prestigious NCAA cross-country title in 2016, is back in Melbourne for tonight’s Zatopek 10, the event he won for the first time last year.
With the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April, Tiernan has decided to stay here over the summer and prepare in his hometown of Toowoomba.