University of Minnesota Athletics
Hassan Mead Preps for World Championships
8/17/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
University of Minnesota alum and Gophers great Hassan Mead will make his international debut this Saturday when he runs in the men's 10,000 meters at the IIAF World Championships in Beijing, China.
Competing with USA Track & Field, the eight-time All-American and nine-time Big Ten champion qualified for the race with a third-place finish at the 2015 USATF Outdoor Championships last June. Mead, who currently competes with Nike's Oregon Track Club Elite program, still holds Minnesota school records for the 8,000 meters, the outdoor 10,000 meters and the indoor & outdoor 5,000 meters.
GopherSports.com caught up with Mead while he continues to train for the World Championships in China…
You're over in China right now, training for the World Championships. How was your trip?
I left (last) Monday and got into China on Tuesday. It wasn't too bad of a flight…a little over 10 hours. I left out of Portland, Ore., so it was a pretty direct shot to Tokyo. Not too bad of a trip, pretty smooth.
Are you training the whole time or do you get to do any sightseeing?
I probably won't do much of the sightseeing before the race. I'm here at the training venue until the 19th, and then it's about a four-hour flight to Beijing. I get in three days before the race. I won't do too much then other than chilling, get comfortable and wait for the race. I might do a little bit of sightseeing after the race but not before.
This will be the first time in your career that you've competed on the international level. How do you feel heading into the World Championships?
Very excited. Definitely very excited. I put in all the work now, I can't get too overwhelmed. I just have to come out here and compete. I've done quite a bit of world-class competitions, so I have an idea of what to expect in terms of how deep the field is. We have a great plan for the race, and we just have to stick to it.
You've come so close to representing the U.S. in the past. Now that you've made the USATF roster, are you excited to hit the track?
Absolutely, absolutely. For anybody who is competing in track and field, this is the grand finale. To have made this World Championship roster, one of the toughest teams to make it on, I'm absolutely excited. I put a lot of work in to get to this point, and I'm looking forward to racing.
You moved from the 5,000 meters to the 10,000 meters this year, a distance you hadn't officially ran since college. What pushed you to make the change?
That's just the way it works as you're becoming a professional runner. You have to be a strong 5,000 runner first in order to run a 10,000. Most of the time, the race comes down to the last 5,000 meters or 3,000 meters, so you have to have the speed of a 5,000 to run a 10,000. We figured we had to get the 5,000 settled in, spend the first two years learning how to run a 5,000 and be strong, and then after that, we'll take a shot at the 10,000 for the 2015 World Championships. That's what coach said to me from day one and it worked.
Looking back at your time at the University of Minnesota, you had so much success, but also a lot of tragedy with an Achilles injury followed by a collapsed lung. All-in-all you missed over a year of competition. Is all of this somehow more enjoyable or more appreciated based off of what you had to do to get here?
I think so…especially when you look back and things could have gone the other way. With the Achilles and the lung injury and taking a lot of time off…sometimes people don't come back from that. I think as a team, we were a great group, and they were probably the biggest reason for me to keep on driving when I was injured. And we had a great group of support staff and coaches to go with it. But all of the work, the rehabs, and all of that…I would not be where I am today if I didn't have to go through all of that.
You get to compete with some former Gopher teammates (Ben Blankenship and Harun Abda) at OTC Elite. Is there a little Gopher camaraderie on your pro team?
It's definitely nice to have people you knew in college as teammates. Moving up to the 10,000 kind of separates us a bit, so I don't get to train with them as much as I would have liked anymore. Ben and I go back to our high school days and even early Minnesota days. It's awesome having him on our team. He's been having an outstanding season, and he came as close as possible to making the World Championships team. It would have been even sweeter to see him come out here with me. But it's awesome having Gopher teammates beyond college. That's a rare thing to see at the professional level, so it's pretty special for all of us.
The three of you were at the U.S. Outdoor Championships, and you also had Goaner Deng come out there for the 800 meters. Was that a cool experience, considering that's where you punched your ticket to Beijing?
It was nice to have former teammates and former coaching staff out there for support. They came in on one of the first nights and I ran early for that meet, so I had to focus on my race coming up and get my ticket to Beijing. But I knew they were there supporting me, and I knew I had plenty time to see them because they'd be around for a while. I took care of business, and then I got to hang out with them, and support those guys, so it was pretty good.
You closed out last season with a personal record in the 5,000, you hit a personal record in the 10,000 earlier this year and you just ran a 3:59.89 at the 2015 FloTrack Throwdown. Are you running your best right now?
I'm actually not running my best right now. I think that's still ahead of me because I'm still a rookie for the 10,000 meters right now. I'm trying to put a lot of things together. The more you race, the more you get to know the race, so I'm still exploring and improving. I think it'll come together soon.
One more for you before we let you go. I know that Roy Griak had a very special place in your heart. Can you share what he meant to you?
Roy was a great friend. He was there when I came for my visit to Minnesota. When I came in for my first visit, he was sitting in that office and from that day on, we became good friends. He was a great mentor. He was always giving great advice…what hard-working people needed to do in this environment to have success. He was just a great person overall, and I think any person that he talked to or had a relationship with would say the same thing.
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