Pat Tiernan – From Toowoomba to Tokyo
Article by Tait Hearps
After a recent PB of 60:55 at Houston Half Marathon, as well as an exciting move to Puma’s new elite team, Australian Olympian Pat Tiernan sat down with us to discuss his journey in athletics over the past two decades. Pat – who is the Australian record holder for the 10,000m (27:22) – hails from Toowoomba, Queensland, however, he has now been based in the US for the best part of a decade. He initially moved to run for Villanova through college, before transitioning to Oregon Track Club Elite, and now to run for Puma under Alistair and Amy Cragg with their new squad based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Pat’s entry to the sport came in early primary school after his math teacher invited him for a morning run in the lead up to school cross country. This progressed to training with a local Toowoomba club, however running was only one of several sports Pat played through school – others included cricket, soccer, hockey and basketball. One aspect of athletics that appealed to Pat as a junior was the opportunity to push himself and see where his limits were, something that is a bit less of a feature in many other sports.
Gradual progression in athletics throughout school eventually saw Pat (after “butchering” a year of Exercise Science at UQ in Brisbane) granted a full scholarship to run for Villanova. Here he joined his Australian compatriots Jordy Williamsz and Sam McEntee. Pat flourished as an athlete at Villanova, and he eventually won the 2016 NCAA cross country in his senior year, as well as making his first Olympic team for the 5,000m in Rio.
After this stellar year Pat went pro and signed with Nike out of college. However, given the great progress he had made under Marcus O’Sullivan at Villanova, as well as the holistic approach he emphasised for all his athletes, he stayed on in Philadelphia. During this time with Marcus, Pat completed a Masters in Analytics. He says that he has always been a big stat guy, and that Marcus’ approach taught him a lot about analysis of metrics such as lactate levels and heart rate, which were regularly incorporated into training sessions.
A few more years passed with Pat doing a lot of solo work and seeing consistent progression, however it reached a point when both Pat and Marcus agreed that, in order to take the next step, it would be important for Pat to train with a group of athletes already at that next level. This culminated in his move to Eugene to train with OTC.
OTC had athletes ranging from Nijel Amos (one of the fastest 800m athletes of all time) to Hassan Mead and Pat running the 10,000. However, Pat says that one great thing about training with the group was Mark’s ability to structure things so that athletes could run together within sessions targeting completely different components of each athlete’s running. An example here is Pat and Nijel running 400s together within their own separate sessions. The reps were at around 63-64s – Nijel was building aerobic strength and Pat was incorporating speed work into a longer session totalling around 15km. Another great aspect of this group was the lack of ego and the fact that most of the time the athletes weren’t competing for the same spots on teams, so they were all happy to see each other doing well.
When asked which lessons Pat had learnt at OTC that he aimed to apply moving forward, Pat said there are so many it would be difficult to summarise. One major lesson that came to mind was the importance of focussing on the primary sessions as a priority, and structuring the rest of the week around being able to hit them as well as possible. That may mean that an easy day between sessions is at 8:00 minute mile pace or even slower, but the pace of these is immaterial – the priority has to be recovery so as to be firing on all cylinders for the upcoming session of focus.
Another takeaway was the importance of strength work, and how strength and high mileage are highly compatible if done in the right way. Pat says it’s important to focus on good technique rather than extremely heavy lifting, or completely avoiding gym work. Moving over to Puma a lot of the strength work will be under Amy Cragg, which appeals to Pat as she has the experience of successfully navigating the balancing act of high mileage and strength work. The opportunity to learn from new coaches and a new group is exciting for Pat, who emphasises the importance of remaining a student of the sport in order to attain sustained progression.
Wondering what Pat’s priorities are in the gym? In the past is has been focussing on postural work, something that he says he has come a long way with and can now appreciate when reviewing footage of recent races such as Houston. Other focus points have been his calf/Achilles strength (after having struggled with a few issues there), as well as strengthening and learning how to more effectively activate larger muscles in the glute and hamstring compartments in order to increase efficiency.
Pat’s recent performance was his second run of the half in Houston, after racing it in 2019. The first half of the run was at around 61:30 pace before winding things up for the run home. Having this race on the calendar was good motivation for Pat during his base training with OTC through the end of fall and moving into winter in Eugene. This result is promising for Pat moving into the track season, especially given the lack of speed work building to the race.
The move to Puma came off the back of not renewing a contract with Nike, therefore precluding Pat from training at OTC under Mark Rowland. After making significant progress over the past few years in Eugene, Pat says he was nervous about finding a group that would match up. However, the relationship is off to a good start with Alastair and Amy who are allowing massive flexibility during the transition period. The group have been training at altitude in Colorado Springs over the past few weeks.
The athletes with Puma are younger than a lot of the athletes at OTC, Pat (27) will be one of the most senior members. There is a lot of talent in the group including Fiona O’Keeffe, who ran a superb debut half in Houston (1:07:42 – the fastest ever debut by and American female), and John Dressel (who ran 62:23 in Houston), among others. The group is more oriented towards long distance than OTC, which is appropriate given where Tiernan sees his running progressing – the marathon at Paris 2024 is a major long-term goal.
Pat shared a lot of wisdom with us throughout this conversation as well as some insight into his experience in Tokyo, which came to a disappointing end. This year will see the 10,000m at World Champs in Eugene as a major focus, before potentially moving onto a marathon in the fall. We are looking forward to following along and seeing how things progress for Pat and are grateful for him giving us so much of his time! The full conversation is available here (Spotify) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
