olafpod

Olaf Dietz, a senior at Berkeley High School, discusses his recent track and field season. After being injured the previous season, this was his first full track season. He had great results, setting a school record in the 3200 and 1600 meter events. Competing at high-level invitationals and state meets felt different from regular meets due to the increased competition and energy. Olaf talks about his injury, an overuse hamstring tendinosis, which took several months to heal. He believes taking full-time off would have been a better decision. Despite the injury, he stayed motivated by running once a week and doing PT exercises. Once fully recovered, he slowly built up his training volume. Olaf aims to compete in the state meet for cross-country in his senior year. He emphasizes the importance of consistency, stretching, and rolling to prevent future injuries. Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of The Prime Runner. I'm your host, Hany Hayate, and today I have a wonderful guest, Olaf Dietz. Would you like to introduce yourself for us, please? Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be on today. My name is Olaf Dietz. I'm a senior at Berkeley High School, graduating the class of 2024, and I run distance track and cross country. Very exciting. Would you like to tell us about this most recent track and field season for you? Sure. This most recent track season has been very exciting for me. It's my second track season, and we'll probably talk about this more later, but last season I was out with some injuries, so this has felt like my first full track season, and it went really well. I think I got a lot of benefits from more training consistency and being able to stack training once in a row with no limiting how to cut back at any point. I don't know. Should we go into the results of the season? Yeah, sure. How did it feel for you? The season, it felt really good to be able to train with the team for the full season, and towards the end of the season, I got some very exciting results that I'm proud of with setting a school record in the 3200 and the 1600 meter. Beautiful. We know that you got to compete at a very high level in some invitationals and also at state. Does that feel any different from the usual black meets? It definitely does. Beginning of the season, I think the lowest place I was in a race was second for the first couple months, and then to step up from there to the state meet where you're with a pack the whole time and having to deal with runners on both sides of you, front and back, that was super exciting. Same with Arcadia Invitational in LA. That was a very competitive heat. I ended up third, but through the first mile, I was third to last. Having to deal with moving up and not only just the racing conditions, but the crowd and the energy at those meets is super exciting. Both people coming up, my family watching, and then the people watching the live stream as well. It's super exciting to be at those races, and I feel very supported by all the people who helped get me there as well. It was very exciting to follow you throughout those meets and to watch you. It was very fun. You said last season you got injured. Do you want to tell us a bit about how that happened? Yeah, sure. Junior year was my first year running. I bought my first pair of running shoes the summer before junior year after being on the mountain biking team for two years and feeling like I wanted to try something new on the off season, which is during cross country. I was running cross country. That was a very exciting first season. It went well enough that I thought I could maybe do both, join the mountain biking team in the second semester and then join the track team as well, which I wasn't originally planning on. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, which in hindsight was a little bit over-ambitious. Once the biking season started up in January, we started early season workouts with the running team for our first meets starting in February and first bike races also in February. Double workouts sometimes doubled. I would bike in the morning and run in the afternoon. Double workout days were not a sustainable training plan. It was not thought out by a single coach. It was multiple coaches working on that and me just being ambitious and excited to be out with my friends and training. I ended up getting an overuse injury in my hamstring. It was a high hamstring tendinosis, which is the fibers of the tendon degrade. That was a very long-term injury. It was from February of that year to around July. It was very limiting of what I could do. It happened while biking. It was a very sudden onset. One day, I was doing a hill repeat on this hill. I felt something weird in my hamstring. I was like, I'll just keep going. I got home. The next morning, I woke up and I was limping around at school. The next day, I had to sit sideways to not sit on that side of the thigh. We're attached to the pelvic bone. I've never had an injury that serious at that level before and getting MRIs and talking to multiple doctors and second opinions and discussing maybe not surgical but procedures to help the healing process with various injections or to encourage more blood flow to the area. I remember you ran NCS that year? Towards the end of the season, so that was in May, I was able to start training a little bit again. As far as February to April, I would try to start getting back to it under the guidance of my doctors but then it would flare up again and I would have to cut back. Interestingly enough, I think I ended up, because I never went full to zero training, on recent MRIs, it showed scar tissue in that area and it still gets flared up due to the scar tissue if I try to bike consistently. I've not gone back to mountain biking, unfortunately, but running for whatever reason is not as harmful to it. Do you think you should have taken full-time off and just let it recover on its own rather than try to push it? Yeah, I think so. I think if I was looking with a more long-term perspective, that would have been a better idea. In the moment, it's really hard to make that choice. Wow, I'm going to put these shoes not just by the door but in the closet and take the tires. We have this ongoing maintenance of bikes and replacing sealant in the tires. I'm going to take the tires off my bike and so there's no maintenance, none of that. I'm just going to let it fit. I didn't have the foresight to make that decision. To some extent, being able to still run once a week or I don't know how much volume you did, that helped you stay motivated to keep going? Yeah, definitely. I was running once a week. I was going to practice more often than that. I was probably at practice twice a week, maybe three times a week to say hi to the coaches and say hi to everybody and just remembering what I like about the sport, which is being able to see my friends and all that. That helped me stay in good spirits and high hopes about my recovery as well as the PT exercises. It's definitely different than cardio as far as the benefits to my sleep and mental state and stuff. Definitely, I could think that PT was another way I could channel my motivation into other forms that would get me back to running. I understand. Once you felt like you were fully recovered, then you just built back up slowly. How did that look for you? Yeah, it was a slow build up through May to July. Towards the end of the season at NCS, I did not run a PR from February for around when I got injured. I wasn't going full into workouts to try to get back up to my full fitness. It was really focused on volume and running over summer up to 40 miles a week was my big goal. I was able to do that the summer before senior year. It was definitely a slow build. With taking not full time off, but even just partial time off, as I was coming back, I was having foot pain, knee pain, shin splints, another round of shin splints just from my body not being used to the volume again. It's definitely important to take it slow for me. You also had that motivation and the idea that you would be back in the fall or even the spring next year. Definitely. Once I saw that it was improving, that was really encouraging and motivated me to stay consistent with the build up and not rush it and really keep my eyes on the big goal, which would be competing. I wasn't totally sure if I would be at the start of the cross-country season senior year in the fall, but my eyes are very much set on state meet of cross-country for senior year. Not to rush the timeline too much. Do you have any fun memories from that race? The state meet? That is just so amazing to have that level of competition in cross-country. If you just look on paper, maybe I'm better at track than cross-country, but I love cross-country so much. It reminds me of the mountain biking races that I can't do anymore. Being out there in the nature and the grass and the gravel. It's a lot of fun for me. We don't go to cross-country invitationals with the size of the Berkeley High team, so to have competition and be running with people, finding people I know to follow, that was such a fun meet. Actually, my favorite memory from that meet is after the boys race, which I individually qualified for. Actually, the entire girls team qualified out of the seven. I went out and I got to watch my sister run. There's this video where I'm just cheering in the background and I'm on the far end of the course where there's no other spectators. I'm watching my sister and I was just so happy. I was like, wow, I've came so far since I was at that in 2023. Since the start of 2023 is my injury to now be out here with my sister and her first cross-country season at the state meet. It was super great. I was sitting there reminiscing about all that and then I realized that I was missing the finish. Then I jumped under the tape. All the girls had passed at that point and the sweep, the person who bikes at the sweep. I jumped under the tape and ran the rest of the course to get to the finish in the fastest way possible, the fastest route. I got to watch her finish as well. That was super exciting. It was a family moment. That was very fun. You talked about the consistency you had with your PT exercises that got you back to running. What general recovery do you do on your routine basis? When I was injured? No, not just now. You're still focusing on not getting injured again, I assume. Definitely. I only run five days a week. There's two full off days mixed in there. That's one thing. Even on the off days, I have daily stretching and rolling. That's definitely a big part of keeping me from feeling tight, which I can tell affects my form when I'm coming back. If I take a full off day and don't stretch. Then I'm trying to stay with a loose form and not stressing any specific muscles too much. That's one thing. Another thing is I've really been focused on my shoe choice and finding shoes that help reduce the impact for my joints. As I was talking about, I was having knee issues and hips. I think from the impact compared to cycling. I've found that Nike Alpha Fly 2s. Does it make a big difference for you? It makes a big difference for me. I run in those on the track in all my track races as well. In a lot of those races, I'm the only person wearing shoes, not spikes. I've found that that just keeps my whole running system feeling healthy and not too impacted. Do you stretch during your off days? Your two off days a week? Every day. Every day? Yeah. There's off days only from running. Do you do any other cross training or you can't bike still? I'm not biking. It's important for me to be fully off to let my muscles recover. When I got injured, I was doing eight or nine activities a week. There would be double days. Then every day for maybe it was a two month streak going and leading up to the injury. I'm not trying to get back quite to that level of volume. I think that's something that maybe I'll look at next year with a lot more attention to the coaching at the college level. I've been very cautious. I see. You don't want that to happen again, of course. Definitely not. What role do you like the sleep have in your training? Do you value it a lot? Sleep is definitely very important for me. I go for eight hours every day. I don't have zero periods. For me, that's around if I get in bed at 11.10 and I'm asleep at 11.30 and I wake up at around 7.40, 7.45. I'll actually be asleep for eight hours. I feel like if I'm getting behind on sleep because of school, then I have to also cut back on the training to match that and less volume. Possibly finish with the amount of repeats in a workout just to make sure I'm not overextending myself and getting into recovery debt. That's how I think of it. The season's long and it's hard to come back from that. It doesn't feel great to be, of course, when races are coming up and you're like, wow, that week really left me feeling horrible. It's better to do too little than too much. Yeah, I think so. How do you keep your training efficient? I know a lot of people see you not super often at practice where you know you're putting a lot of work in. How do you manage a busy academic schedule and also training at a high level? I run definitely lower volume than a lot of people on the team, which is why I end up not at practice because the run length is so much shorter. I would be alone at practice, so I was like, okay, I might as well run alone at home. I think the average of this track season has been probably 35 miles and then the past two months have been more like 25. For championship season, both with Arcadia in April and then State in May. I try to keep the volume low but then be very intentional with what I'm doing every day. I think that's something that Coach Anna, as we've transitioned to a new distance coaching, is really big on. What's your easy day? What's your long run day? Then the workouts being very specific and not just running just to run during the season. I like to do that over summer, but during the season I try to keep it balanced. I always say that my three big things are running, physics, and math. It's hard to get all three. It's like that triangle. How big can you stretch the triangle? Easy days I take very easy. It'll be a nine-minute pace up in the hills. That's another thing I find that's difficult to do at practice. A lot of people get in a group and they speed up in the competition. That's part of being intentional about what I'm doing on an easy day. A workout day, all my workouts are all-out workouts and then I'll usually take a day off fully off after. Do you plan your training in advance a lot or do you just go week to week, day to day? I would say that it's about every week. I'll look like, okay, what's the race schedule? I go for three hard days a week, which is one more than Coach Anna generally has the team doing. The way I have to plan that third one around to make sure I'm fresh for the workouts with the team and then for our races. That third day is usually, or not usually, it's always, it's never on the track. It's hill repeats on Marin. For people in the Bay Area are familiar with, Marin goes straight up the hill. That's usually two repeats of three minutes long up the hill or three by three minutes. I have to speedily scoot back down the hill to make sure I don't run out of space at the top for that. That's a way that I can get a third workout in, which I feel is beneficial to as far as getting my heart rate up in the cardio without putting a bunch of impact on my legs. If max effort, the pace is eight minute pace still because it basically feels like you're walking up the hill. I assume you don't go down Marin. No, I snake around. On Saturday, I tried to get the KOM up Marin. What is KOM? It's the on Strava Days, you can make a segment where the GPS tracks everybody's run and you can set it like this is the start of Marin, this is the top, and then it'll get everybody's time. Like a record or something? I tried to go up it, I missed it by four seconds. It's a fast guy, but it's 5.58 from the circle to Grizzly Peak. That's my home hill. I was just talking about that with my brother, so I was very excited to know that there's an answer on the PR. It's about a mile? Oh, I think the pace was barely seven or eight pace, so I think it's three quarters of a mile. I think it's 665 feet vertical, so more than 100 feet per minute, which is a lot. Yeah, that was what I considered my last race of the season. It's one week after state and I stayed on my focus on my training. I was like, okay, I want to try for the Marin and now I'm done. Is one of your hard days also like a long run or something? Like that? I count the three as the three, like VO2 max type workouts, time speed, and long runs. It depends on where I'm at with the season, how much of a long run I actually have. I think in February, I was more around 45 miles and that's how I got to the average of 35 because I would have been at 25. So when I was doing 45 miles, I did have room in my miles to run for nine or 10 on a Sunday, but these days it's the longest run of the week. It's like six or seven or otherwise I end up with not enough miles left in my, if I'm targeting 25, if I need to spread it out to be able to run the workouts and not end up higher than that because I'm really focused on keeping the volume low. You're like taking the rest days right after the hard workouts, that's what you said? Yeah, that's, well, I guess if it's, yeah, there's three. The schedule varies so much because of races, but as far as what day it falls on, but yeah, after two of the two of the workouts will be a full off day and then the third workout, since I don't want to take a third off day, it'll be as easy. None. What are your plans for like next year? Cause I know you're going to race in a college level. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I'm very excited to be running at Johns Hopkins, the B3, the track and cross country team. And that was a, that was a, you know, the whole recruiting process this year has been very exciting. I got to visit a lot of schools and like stay overnight with the, with the team in the dorms, go to practice, go to class and really like imagine myself at all these different places. Um, let's say I went on visits like that at Harvey Mudd, uh, MIT, Wash U and Johns Hopkins and a couple more and more just like showing up throughout the day to go on tours. And you know, that was, I think I'm, I'm very happy with that choice despite, you know, I think a lot of people are, I've heard people be surprised that I'm deciding to compete at the B3 level, not the B1 level. And that's a very intentional choice for me just as far as like how I want to balance running and academic life. And also where I kind of see running in my future as a lifetime sport, not like a, oh, I want a lifetime sport as on top of the rest of my life, not like becoming a, you know, semi-professional runner or, you know, only wanting to run in college and then be super burnt out and like, oh, I never want to run again after four years of B1 insanity, five years really with a red shirt freshman. Um, yeah, yeah. Keeping the, yeah, the balance like you, like you just mentioned is I think that just the, where, yeah, where I want to keep the, the serious, serious this level. I'll kind of joke that I'm retiring after this year from trying to be like state champion. I'm going to like cut back a little bit and be a freshman again. And on the, you know, on the team, the freshmen is kind of the freshmen build up to the harder workouts and the higher miles. So I'm where I thought the B1 level, I'd feel like I'm stepping, it would be, I'd step up again from this year, senior year to be running, you know, a lot more. And, you know, when I was speaking to coaches and athletes on those teams, it's a lot of, well, I did, I did not meet a lot of mechanical engineering majors on the D1 teams like Cal and, uh, Cal Poly were two that I was looking at for BU as well. And so I'm mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins and that definitely scheduling that around labs to be at, you know, practice at the D1 level twice a day is, it was too much. Yeah. I understand. Is there any, uh, like, what do you really enjoy about running so much that made you, uh, choose to do it instead of mountain biking? Although I understand you have like a injury limitation also. Yeah. I think what I love about running is how peaceful it is to be, you know, I run in Tilden a lot and, you know, even when there's people running with me, it's just like, you don't have to pay attention to anything. It's just the, you know, running and your mind is free to wander and, you know, have great conversations, you know, with Mason and Oliver on the team, super memorable conversations with those two guys. And that's always a ton of fun for me compared to biking, uh, feels a little bit more like driving. You have to be very attentive to where you're, uh, especially if you're on the road, which is a big part of, um, you know, getting to trails, you know, yeah. And so I really enjoy, enjoy that, that part of, you know, spend a lot of time on the trails and not, you know, I'm not be calling out to people like behind you, like on your left. Um, so there's one thing I think with the racing side of it, I was always, I was, so the mountain biking races we do, uh, it's a loop and you, you do laps for maybe two to two and a half hours. And while I really liked being out in nature and the super pretty locations, part of that is racing the downhill and, you know, going 25 miles an hour, four feet behind somebody trying to get the draft on a downhill. And there's very harrowing moments like I've nearly, um, maybe actually fully like rolled, you know, cause you follow closer than you have space to break because people try to draft and get the aerodynamic benefit. So I, I, I, I, I'm always very timid on the downhill. I'm not, not big on like, you know, my risk appetite for winning the race is low. So for the running races, not having to deal with, you know, taking risks and feeling like that's part of the sport is how, you know, are you willing to take that turn at 25 miles an hour when you're already seeing cross-eyed, like, you know, really tired. So that's, I've enjoyed the racing format a lot more as far as that goes. You talked about like the physical toll of trying to balance like low sleep because you have a lot of work and then trying to, so you have to cut down your volume to make sure you could actually recover. Is there ever like a mental toll that you feel like you need to maybe do a little bit less of running or something else to keep that balance going so you don't burn out? It's for me, the, the, the mental toll now with the three full seasons is unfortunately always by the end of the season, it feels like my body's kind of like tapped out and my mind's kind of trying to signal to me like, this is, you've been at this fitness level for too long and training at this level now for, you know, five months straight. And so if that came on in the middle of the season, I think I would be a little bit more strategic and be like, okay, maybe I'll, you know, tell Brad, like, oh, I can't go to this race. But I was really feeling that around NCS and state this year, but I would just have to, you know, the finals as well at the very end of the year push. And when that shows up at the end of the year, I feel like I just kind of have to push through and like, kind of not ignore what my body's saying, but like, I know that I can make it one more week if I just like stay focused on my goals and know that I do need to cut back after that and, and rest. So it definitely was, it was hard to get through that last week of training before state. And there was, it was like two weeks in a row when I was just not, never feeling like fresh and fast as I would be with the same training three months ago, even though I was at a higher fitness level, it was just like cumulative fatigue maybe. Yeah. And so, yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely a mental side of it. I think part of that is also like I, for the the very end of the season, I, I trained at a slightly higher weight that then I would rate that at championship season. So there's definitely a mental toll of being more on the lean side. So I'm looking forward to being in my, my training weight, you know, it's all healthy weights, but just as far as like a little strategy for the end of the season. And so that definitely also takes an added, an added, maybe not stress on my body, but added change at the end of the season, it just makes it a little bit harder to get through the, at the very end. You mentioned like your determination to reach your goals. How exactly did like goal setting work for you? What do you set for yourself? I think it's, yeah, I always set my goal, like a little bit beyond where I, where I am. So at the start of this track season, you know, my, my, my event is a 3200. I was hoping to break 920 last year. I was at like 923, I think. And I did that in the first race and I ran 917, I believe. And then I was, the next goal was 910 and I broke that and then at 904 and then it was sub nine and then I broke that. And so it's, it's just always kind of progressing and, you know, knowing that I can keep improving at kind of a consistent rate. And I mean, this season has completely blown my expectations out of the water. I was not. You just do like incremental increases each time? Yeah. Just, and then especially to keep that in mind for like training paces, like what pace are we training at? Like, do you have to make sure that I'm not overreaching with any of my training to just have a small, consistent improvement goal? So do you have your like, your time-based goals rather than like, or do you also do training-based goals for yourself? I think it's, it's, it's mostly been, I think when I was just starting, I guess like distance athletics, which I would say both biking and running are kind of in the same category. Like freshman year was for me a lot more training goals. Like, can I get up to, you know, training for more than four days a week? And that was like a huge goal for me. And then being able to like ride, go biking, you know, be able to ride across, go to Mount Tam and back, like maybe training-focused goals. But I think as I've, you know, now senior year, I think I would, you know, I was more, more focused on the results because I felt like I was... So you have the fitness now, you can... Yeah. Interesting. Did you have any final wisdom before we close out this episode? For me, I think my, my big takeaway from, from getting a lot faster this year than I was, you know, about 30 seconds faster in the 3200 is that, that reaching that goal and getting there, it feels so exciting and huge with it to actually get there. I'm still the same, same person and, you know, having the same self-improvement goals as I did before. And it's like, it does not, I think that's helped me keep it in perspective. Like it doesn't change your life to get faster. It's not, it's the same sport, you know, you go run the same places with the same people. So what that reminds me is to really stay focused on, on, I think going forward to be honestly less focused on the results and more focused on enjoying the process and the more like life goals and how running fits into that versus just running goals. I think it's an important thing that I've learned this season. Very nice. Thank you very much Olaf for being with us on this episode. And thank you so much for having me. Thanks very much for listening. Again, I'm your host Henny Hayate and that was Olaf Deetz. I'll see you next week.