Oregon Daily Emerald: Has it sunk in yet, that you’re a four-minute miler?
Andrew Wheating: To be honest, no. To me it’s just another race. Everyone keeps telling me it’s incredible and I did a great job, but it just seems like another race and it hasn’t sunk in yet, no.
ODE: What did that last lap feel like?
Wheating: It was unbelievable. I could not believe it, then with 50 meters to go I looked back and there was nobody there. I thought for sure I was going to be caught and when I didn’t see anybody me eyes lit up and I was like, ‘I’m going to win this! I’m so excited, I’m going to win this!’ and then finishing crossing that line, there’s no bigger feeling. For the longest time I couldn’t wait to get into a race where the crowd would be so involved and so loud.
ODE: You beat a pretty good field. How does that feel?
Wheating: That was incredible, because when they were listing all the names off, they were like, ‘NCAA champion, runner-up champion, this guy champion’ and then ‘Andy, sophomore, Oregon’ and then Galen Rupp, there was this eruption. I was just like, ‘Well, I’m clearly an underdog here’ so when I finished in front of all those guys I was like, ‘I guess I’m probably one of those top athletes now and I’m not a little guy out of a farm town. I can actually compete out here.’
ODE: What’s your next time goal?
Wheating: I want to go 1:46 in the 800. I went 1:48.8 in the UCLA dual meet and I led wire-to-wire. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but it felt like a jog so I definitely feel like I can run a lot faster.
ODE: There are three sub-4 milers on the team (Wheating, Michael McGrath and A.J. Acosta). Does that mean anything to you guys?
Wheating: We’d have a crazy-good 4xMile team. And with Centro (freshman Matt Centrowitz) coming up, you know he’s bound to do it eventually. I think we’d love to run a 4xMile at Penn Relays or Drake Relays at some point and just break that 16-minute barrier.
ODE: How many guys on the team do you think can run a sub-4 mile?
Wheating: There are three now, and I’m sure we can knock three more guys off. I think seven, at least seven by the end of my season. If one or two more recruits come in, I’d say about seven, six or seven.
ODE: You said you were scared leading up to the race. Does that help you?
Wheating: I’ve had a good friend tell me, a long time ago that I’d always come in, my legs would feel weak, I’d feel tired, I’d be really scared and have a crappy feel, the better the race is going to be. That’s how I felt, that every time I say ‘Oh, I feel terrible, my legs hurt’ and I was totally scared, as nervous as anything, but I always keep telling myself that it probably just means something big is about to happen. When the gun went off it all went away and with 300 meters to go, it just kicked in and it was like ‘This is gonna happen,’ so that was awesome.
ODE: Coach Lananna said you’d been bugging him for a while to set you up with a fast mile race. Now that he’s done that, what’s the next thing you want him to set up for you?
Wheating: I don’t really know. It’d be kinda cool to go to Penn Relays and run an individual event there, because Scott Wall ran a 5K, ran incredibly well and won that and it was pretty big, a pretty big moment, I’m sure, for him. That’d be pretty cool to go to a big, huge relay meet like that. But I’m not gonna bug him too much, ’cause I know he wants me to run other things, so I’m happy just to run that mile.
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