Spiker’s Times Worth the Effort

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

--Steve Prefontaine

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Steve Prefontaine was killed in a one-car automobile accident in 1975, but his legacy lives on in the minds of young distance runners such as junior Josh Spiker of Ventura High.

Spiker has seen both recently made movies about Prefontaine--the charismatic distance runner who held every U.S. record from 2,000 to 10,000 meters when he died at 24--and he often draws inspiration from them when he runs.

“When I saw those movies, there were some shots of his face where you could see how focused his eyes were,” Spiker said. “That’s helped me when I’m running, because I’ll think about the times he ran and about how hard he probably trained to get those times and it’ll make me want to push myself.”

Look for the 5-foot-7 1/2, 130-pound Spiker to be at the front of the pack in the boys’ race of the Ventura County cross-country championships today at Lake Casitas in Ojai.

No Ventura runner has won the boys’ title since the county meet began in 1976, but Spiker is favored after winning four of seven races this season, finishing second twice and placing fifth in the individual sweepstakes race of the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational on Saturday.

“It looks like it’s going to be between Josh and Seth Neumuller [of Thousand Oaks],” Coach Bill Tokar of Ventura said. “There seems to be a gap to the rest of the pack after that, based on the way things have gone this season.”

Spiker surprised some with a fifth-place finish in the county championships last year, but he expected big things this season after setting a school record of 9:18.23 in the 3,200 meters to finish eighth in the Southern Section Masters Meet in May.

“The 9:18 gave me a lot of confidence for cross-country,” Spiker said. “I realized that if I could run 9:18, I could probably run 15:15 or so at Mt. SAC by the time of the [Southern Section] championships.

“I also knew that a lot of the guys that beat me were seniors, so I figured I could run with the top guys this year. That made me want to train harder this season.”

Spiker has never lacked the desire to push himself.

The problem was getting his body to withstand the rigors of running.

Spiker ran only one cross-country race as a freshman because of tendinitis in his upper right shin, and he missed the entire track season because of a stress fracture below his right knee.

Those injuries were the result of too many 5K and 10K road races when Spiker was in seventh and eighth grade.

Spiker clocked a superb 34:21 in a 10K when he was 13, but his legs took a beating because the races were run on cement or asphalt surfaces.

Following the stress fracture, Spiker was brought along slowly by Tokar last season.

Spiker was limited to one hard and one easy running workout the week of a meet, but he was able to improve his cardiovascular fitness by working out in a pool for one hour, three or four times a week. He wore a flotation device that allowed him to simulate the running motion.

“It wasn’t easy because it’s really hard to concentrate in the pool,” Spiker said. “I mean, you can go hard for a minute, but when you start to go hard for five minutes, it gets real difficult because you’re basically staying in the same spot and your mind starts to wander. When you’re running, the scenery is constantly changing, so it’s easier to stay focused.”

Despite his limited training last season--he never ran more than 22 miles a week--Spiker was Ventura’s top runner in the county cross-country championships and he was the Cougars’ No. 2 runner behind Matt Swaney in the Southern Section Division II final with a 13th-place effort.

“I didn’t think I could go that fast,” said Spiker, who is running about 35 miles a week this season. “I thought I’d do a lot worse than I did. But once the gun goes off, a lot of things go off in your head and you just kind of go naturally.”

For Spiker, that means pushing his body to a level of exhaustion that most runners fail to reach.

“His mental toughness is one of his biggest strengths,” Tokar said. “He’s not afraid to take chances in races. A lot of guys start backing off when they get to a certain level of pain, but not Josh. I think he’s the kind of kid that if you put him on a treadmill and told him to run until he couldn’t run any longer, he’d run until he dropped. He’s just got that kind of toughness.”

A laid-back and humble personality mask his competitive nature.

A straight-A student, Spiker says he does “OK” in the classroom and worries his grades won’t be good enough to help him get an athletic scholarship to a major university.

“He’s always downplaying how smart he is,” teammate Chris Figureida said. “He’s very intelligent.”

But Spiker isn’t shy about his goals.

He wants to run under 15:10 on Mt. SAC’s vaunted three-mile course when the Southern Section championships are held there Nov. 21, and he wants to finish among the top three in the state Division I final at Woodward Park in Fresno the following week.

He wants to finish among the top eight in the West region championships at Mt. SAC on Dec. 5 so he can compete in the national finals in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., the following week.

In track, he wants to break nine minutes in the 3,200 and win the state title.

He adds, however, that a fast nonwinning performance in the state championships would mean more to him than winning a state title in a slow time.

“If I break nine [minutes] and don’t win state, that’ll be fine,” he said. “If I get a really good time, for me that’s better than a win. I’d rather run 8:55 and get third than 9:10 and get first.”

Spoken like a true Prefontaine disciple.