Spiker Had the Times of His Life

Many elite distance runners say that winning races takes precedent over running fast times.

Not Josh Spiker of Ventura High.

Spiker, a junior, said earlier this season that he’d rather run 8:55 in the 3,200 meters and get third in the state track championships next June than run 9:10 and win.

His attitude toward cross-country is the same.

Spiker, The Times’ Valley-Ventura County boys’ runner of the year, said that winning the Southern Section Division I title at Mt. San Antonio College on Nov. 21 was a breakthrough race for him.

Not because he became Ventura’s first individual section champion or because he handed senior Alfonso Leon of Santa Ana his first loss of the season. But because he ran 15:01 over the 2.95-mile course that was previously called three miles in distance.

“If I had won, but run 15:15, it really wouldn’t have done much for me,” Spiker said. “But to run 15:01 over that course made me think that I really had a chance at qualifying for [the national championships]. It made me think that I could [finish among the top eight in the West regional and] make it to nationals.”

Spiker’s confidence took a hit when he finished fourth in the state Division I final at Woodward Park in Fresno on Nov. 28, but he came back to place third in the West regional at Mt. SAC on Dec. 5 and become Ventura’s first national qualifier.

“I was a little concerned after the state meet,” Spiker said. ‘I remember asking [Coach Bill Tokar], ‘Do you think I peaked too soon?’ He said, ‘No, you’ll be fine.’ ”

Tokar was right. Spiker followed his third-place finish in the West regional with a 14th-place effort in the 33-runner field in the national championships at the Oak Trail Course at Shades of Green in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., to earn third-team All-American honors.

Spiker was in “ninth or 10th place” with a quarter-mile left in the 5,000-meter race, but several runners passed him in the homestretch.

“I tried to pick it up and go with 300 [meters] to go but I couldn’t,” Spiker said. “I was just right on the edge of collapsing at the end. I was just dead on my feet.”

The national championships capped a 14-race season for Spiker in which he posted eight firsts, two seconds, a third, a fourth, a fifth and the 14th in the national final.

It also turned his attention to the upcoming track season in which he hopes to break nine minutes in the 3,200.

“That’s still my goal,” he said. “Sometimes it’s 8:55 and sometimes it’s 8:57, but I definitely want to break nine. I think that’s very possible considering my cross-country season.”