13:43.82.
It’s one of the more heralded marks for Oregon harriers.
Breaking it means a place on Oregon’s all-time 5,000 meters top-10 list among legends such as Bill McChesney Jr., Alberto Salazar and Steve Prefontaine.
Oregon senior Eric Logsdon not only wants to add his name to that list but get it up as high as he can before the end of the year.
Even after his coach and recruiter resigned in the middle of the season.
Even after a volunteer coach jumped on board a few weeks later.
Logsdon isn’t going to let those distractions keep him from running a time of
13 minutes, 43.82 seconds.
Former head track and field coach Martin Smith wouldn’t let that happen.
But if you ask Logsdon, personal records are only a good side note to helping the team as a whole. The goal is helping the team finish as high as it can at nationals. The byproduct, he’ll tell you, is that a runner needs to run fast to
accomplish that.
Logsdon’s desire to focus on the team, rather than himself, came from the recently departed Smith.
“One of the things that was emphasized with Coach Smith was that you can never lose your focus for a second, you can never break down,” he said. “No matter what’s happened around you, whether it is on the track or just in general in your life, you can never let anything distract you from what your goals are.
“Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean that we’ve lost that lesson, and we are no longer able to do that.”
After the resignation of Smith, Logsdon and his teammates seriously contemplated quitting the team. A few days later, they came back refocused and ready for the outdoor season with former
Oregon runner Pat Tyson volunteering his services to the distance runners.
Logsdon responded by winning the 3,000 meters in the Pepsi Invitational, the Ducks’ second outdoor event of
the season.
“Honestly, he is a man about it,” Tyson said of Logsdon’s focus. “He’s not a whiner and he’s not going to let this change ruin his closing time at Oregon. We all have challenges and what I think that says about Eric and Brett (Holts) is that they’re survivors. They know what’s really important is the team and they want the team to do really well. He could have easily taken a negative stance and pouted and got moody and made it hard on me, but I think he realizes that we are going to make this thing work.”
The Canby native came to Oregon during the 2000-01 season, two years after Smith had taken over as head coach. Smith brought a desire to turn around a storied program that had fallen under the radar, something Logsdon identified with.
“I’m a native Oregonian and having grown up and done track in Oregon since I was in the sixth grade, running in Oregon was always a big draw,” Logsdon said. “When I was in the recruitment process and looking around, I knew I wanted to stay on the West Coast and probably a Pac-10 school, and I remember talking to the coaches here and they were talking about bringing Oregon back to prominence on a national and conference level, and I really bought into that.”
Under the guidance of Smith, Logsdon dropped his 5,000 time from 14:28.30 in 2001-02 to a personal record 13:49.99 during the 2005 indoor season. Logsdon’s goal is now to shave off those last six seconds, something that both Logsdon and Tyson believe will happen before the end of the season.
Logsdon has also had to deal with the addition of distance runners Galen Rupp and Scott Wall, two runners from Salazar’s Oregon Project. Logsdon admits to not working with them much, favoring instead to show them little things if need be.
“I think he has taken a quiet approach to it, and I think that is the way he should take it just like I have to take a quiet approach,” Tyson said. “I don’t think he wants to be in controversy right now, so I think he’s smart in staying back. He’s real tight with Kyle Alcorn and Brett Holts, so there is enough of the Martin people here to keep him feeling good.”
The man who likes music when he’s off the track — trying to find artists few people are listening to; Otis Redding, for example — is only one of two runners from
a talented recruiting class that
includes teammate and fellow
All-American Holts.
“I still remember the first day we came in here,” Holts said. “There were six of us freshmen and now Logs and I are the only ones left. It definitely takes a certain kind of athlete to work at a Division I level, at a level like Oregon, under Coach Smith’s program, and obviously if you are that type of runner and you stick with it, good things can happen
to you, as we have seen with
Logs definitely.”
Holts also admits there is little that can stop Logsdon from reaching his goals.
“He’s a great runner and a great athlete,” Holts said. “It would take a lot more than the diversity the year has thrown at us to stop Eric. He hasn’t put in five years of work, day in and day out, coming into practice, summers, Christmas breaks, and if anyone thought that Eric would use this as an excuse, that would be doing an injustice to Eric and everything he has worked for and an injustice to Coach Smith and the program. I don’t think Eric would have handled it any other way. I think he has handled it the way coach Smith taught us to and it says a lot about him.”
Because after all, 13:43.82 is just over the horizon.

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