Hamer Excited About Second Chance He Did Not Expect
Grad student back at NCAA Indoor Championships
Mike Brohard
Eric Hamer ran. That’s what he does.
Where it was going to lead him, he didn’t know. He didn’t need to, either. He just needed to be ready for that next race. And he needed to vent.
He had finally qualified for the NCAA Indoor National Championships, and the day he finished his final training in Albuquerque, N.M., the whole event was canceled. Not long after, the outdoor season was erased from the schedule for everybody.
It was supposed to be his senior year. His final chapter.
So he ran. For what wasn’t important at the time.
“I remember taking a day or two off. There was no plan, there was no vision, but I knew I could just run, and it was a great way to process grief,” Hamer said. “It goes back to you can control what you can control. At the time, next March was a very long time away, and I could get overwhelmed – we all could get overwhelmed with just how much had to happen in that time.
“My dad was really good. He wasn’t putting the pressure on me that I had to run like a maniac, but he basically said a lot of people are going to take time off and they’re not going to be ready. When you get that hypothetical phone call, you need to be ready to answer it. You might not know when the next race is, but you need to be ready.”
A year later, Hamer is back at the NCAA Indoor National Meet, qualifying for the 5,000 meters, which he will run Friday in Fayetteville, Ark.; the starter’s gun is set to go off at 2:05 p.m. MT. Again, he returns as the Colorado State record holder in the event, but now it is a much quicker 13:37.73.
This was not where he expected his landing point to be, by the way. At the time the pandemic hit, he was looking at starting the next chapter of his life. He wasn’t really intrigued about coming back to CSU to just run an outdoor season, and as for continuing school, there wasn’t anything which intrigued him.
Then somebody remembered he had taken a redshirt year during an indoor campaign earlier in his career. He could have that season back, too. And he found a Master’s program which piqued his interest.
So here he is.
Again.
I know if I do my best, my best will be reflected as a really good performance.Eric Hamer
“He was not thinking he was going to come back. He was going to go on and get a job,” CSU distance coach Art Siemers said. “He wanted a job in Fort Collins to train with coach Andrew Epperson and coach Grant Fischer, who was coming off the Olympic Marathon Trials. Once he started to think about those missed opportunities, it was too much not to come back and show that he had gotten to the next level and not gotten a chance to show it.”
Hamer maxed out all of those months of training. Siemers figured as much, but seeing was really believing. Hamer was training with some members of the Rams’ cross country team, but he was wearing them out, literally. When the season finally came around, Siemers needed a new plan, for Hamer and the team.
So he gave his top guys a head start. And he made Hamer play catch up. Which he did.
At Colorado State’s first cross country meet of the year in Laramie, Hamer ran unattached. And he ran away from the field. And he almost caught the pace bike. That was the real race that day.
“Cross country times don’t really matter, but we knew the course was accurate, because we helped set it up. A 6K is not a distance the men run very often, and there were snow flurries, it was chilly and he went out in the 5K in 14:40 on this way to 6K,” Siemers said. “That’s really fast at that altitude. Our jaws dropped. Especially because we were like Eric, you’re doing this as rust buster, so why don’t you do this slower so you don’t pull the guys out too fast. He hadn’t raced in so long, he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t hold back.
“Nick Costello (the Wyoming assistant coach) is an alumni or ours, and he’s on the lead bike, and I was teasing him he couldn’t ride his bike as fast as Eric could run at that point. It almost came true. He was all white coming by us the last lap, and he’s a pretty good athlete himself. That was just hilarious.”
His workouts during the summer were maniacal, especially once he found a purpose again. And he’s never relented, even up to the final day before he started to taper for the national meet.
He was working out with Dawson LaRance, a transfer who came from Minnesota after placing second in the Big 10 in the 800 meters. They are very different runners, but a training session allowed them to meet in the middle – a set of 12 400s.
“He just has the best work ethic and he’s tough as nails. I feel like the best way to describe him is just a grinder,” LaRance said. “He grinds day in and day out. When we did the 12 400s, it’s a workout that kind of feels like it takes forever with the amount of 400s you’re doing, but it was great, because he can push me on a distance aspect. We started to pick up the pace, not necessarily challenge him, but I know I have great 800 speed. We picked it up and he was holding it. For a 5K guy, he has the wheels to do really well in the championship race.
“I had teammates at Minnesota who were equally as dedicated, but I’ve never been around the type of athlete like Eric, especially a 5K-10K guy. Most the guys I train with are 800 guys or milers. Because that aspect of it is really new to me, it’s more impressive to see the kind of work he’s putting in.”
LaRance was also at the meet in Albuquerque, to run a leg on Minnesota’s distance medley relay. He understands exactly the disappointment Hamer felt at the time, when the chatter started to happen at the hotel where most of the teams were staying.
The next day, they were all at the airport, ready to head back to school.
Even to this day, nobody puts plans in stone. Things happen, but Hamer won’t let his mind go there. He’s build up a wall, as he figures most people have at this point of the pandemic.
“I feel like there’s a feeling of nothing can hurt us anymore. I think the mindset for the last year, and I’d say every athlete who is going to be in this race, they all have the mindset of from last March, I’m going to train for this race whether it happens or not,” Hamer said. “I clearly can’t control anything that happens in this world, so I’m not going to try to. I’m only going to try to control what I can control.”
Which was his training. And Siemers will tell you Hamer is in the best shape of his life. He’s also mentally tougher and more mature. All of that combined bodes well for Hamer in the field.
He enters with the fourth-best time in the nation this season, but a national championship race can play out many different ways. You could have the same field of 16 run the race three times, and each one is likely to be different.
Last year, Hamer’s confidence was at a high point. And the race was on a track he was very familiar with, with the Mountain West Championships held there. It was at a bit of altitude, where last year's Mountain West Male Indoor Track Athlete of the Year thrives.
Now, the race is at sea level, at a banked track renowned for producing amazing races, and his training has him more confident in his abilities than ever before. What that means will play out on Friday.
He knows his strength is in the middle of the race. He implicitly trusts Siemers to watch how the event is unfolding and to alert him to adjustments needed.
“I mean, everybody thinks they can win. So can I,” he said. “When you think about winning, it’s very easy to create this image in your mind of you’re storming down the homestretch, there’s no one in sight of you, you get to throw your arms in the air. That’s what you want to do. I have to divorce myself from that thought. If I’m in it with 200 to go, and I can throw myself at the line with everything I’ve got, I hope to come away being happy with that, and that could be a lot of places.
“It is competitive. It’s always competitive. Sometimes the harder races are the ones where you know you’ll be out front by yourself.”
Back when seasons were abandoned for health precautions, at least the roads were open and Hamer could run. To where, he had no idea. Not that it really mattered. He had his roads, and they helped him come to grips with all kinds of thoughts.
A vision is necessary. Even a purpose. They don't always have to be clear. Or even have a definitive target attached.
“I think it’s just all hindsight, and in this case, hindsight works out,” he said. “Really recognizing it for the bigger plan that it was and it’s this idea of there are so many things that happen for us in life that I wouldn’t have definitely chosen this to be my trajectory when I set out in 2015 to do this thing at CSU, but there are some things that could have been done better. In the long run, I’m glad it went this way. I’m glad I had that extra year. I feel like the big thing I take away is this time last year I felt the pressure of it being my last year and of having to make it count and be perfect, and I was really scared of the prospect of it not being perfect.
“This year it is my last year, and I feel so much better about it. I still don’t know how I’m going to race all the time and I don’t know what next month looks like and I don’t 100 percent know what after college looks like, but I’m not scared of those things anymore, and I don’t feel nervous to make it perfect. I know if I do my best, my best will be reflected as a really good performance.”
In all of those training runs, Hamer knew, eventually, a race would be held. He would be entered. And he would most definitely be ready.
At the time, he never expected it would be a second crack at the NCAA Indoor National Championships.
But, here he is.
Again.