Men's Track & Field: Running into record-breaking form

Circling the steep banks of the New York Armory’s track well into the evening of Jan. 28, senior distance runner Joe Stilin had come a long way. Driving lap after lap at the front of the 3k with teammate Donn Cabral, he clicked off 32-second 200-meter splits, one after the other. Accelerating past the mile, Stilin slowly put the hammer down, pulling away from the field and his previous personal best time. Burning the last lap in 30 seconds flat, Stilin stopped the clock in 7 minutes, 56.28 seconds — a new Princeton record.

“You always set goals at the beginning of every season — where you want to be in terms of places and times and everything,” Stilin said. “One of my dream goals was breaking eight minutes in the 3k.”

Stilin’s 7:56 run was a personal best of nearly unimaginable proportions. In a single race, the senior cut nearly 30 seconds from his previous career record of 8:26.22.

“I was pretty shocked that it actually happened,” he said. “I knew I was in shape, I knew I was capable of such a performance, but to have that sort of a dream goal actually come to fruition was just amazing.”

The roots of Stilin’s success were planted well before the indoor season even began. Coming into the new school year, the men’s cross country team decided to spend the summer training at altitude in Park City, Utah. Traversing the endless trails of the mountainous ski town, the Tigers built a strong aerobic foundation for the hard year to come.

“It was great training, I think our team benefited from it a lot,” Stilin said. “But what really happened up there is that we looked at each other over the dinner table, while we were running or when we were out having fun, and forged the idea that we seniors were going to lead this team and have the best year possible.”

Still, it was a long and hard time before Stilin’s dreams finally started to take shape. Struggling in races during the cross country season, his performances began to inexplicably slip to the point where he no longer made the team’s top seven.

“I was putting in the training, putting in the miles, but the results just weren’t happening,” Stilin said. “Week after week, I was having okay workouts, but then the races would just be awful. It just wasn’t me out there.”

It was not until the end of the season that Stilin found out that the source of his problems was iron-deficiency anemia. After only a few weeks of iron supplementation, his fitness finally started to turn around.

“It was almost like a miracle cure when I started taking the iron,” Stilin said. “A few weeks later, when I ran a really fast 5k inter-squad time trial, I knew something was happening positively. Then I went to IC4A and led the team and won the race.”

Ever since that momentous IC4A cross country race, Stilin has never looked back. Charging into the new year, he has been working out harder than ever, which has shown in his recent races. Starting with his indoor mile season debut on Jan. 7, Stilin has broken his personal best every time he has raced. After experiencing the bitter pain of under-performing in the fall, Stilin does not take his recent success for granted.

“I’ve experienced frustration with my running this year already,” Stilin said. “Running is not always running PR’s everyday, but when it does go well, it’s made all the much sweeter by the tough times.”

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Nevertheless, getting so close to his dream goals so early in the season has forced Stilin to start thinking about reevaluating his situation.

“My goals change a little bit,” Stilin said. “In that 3k, I really realized that I moved to a new level, that I do have a chance to become an All-America outdoors or break four [minutes] in the mile.”

With one sub-four miler already on campus in junior Peter Callahan, and several other teammates close behind, Stilin has all the training partners he needs to keep propelling his fitness forward. Strengthened by the bonds they formed during their summer in Utah, Stilin said he and his teammates are more motivated than ever before to work together to bring their racing to a whole new level.

“Even an individual sport like track, if you trust the people you’re working with, and you trust the people you are running with in a race, that’s going to push you all the harder,” Stilin said.

For the Tigers, everything is focused toward maintaining dominion over the Ivy League and producing as many national All-America performances as possible.

Already a senior, Stilin is just beginning to reach his potential. Looking forward, the mechanical engineering major does not want his competitive running career to end with graduation. With one season of indoor eligibility remaining after this year, Stilin hopes to continue racing after leaving Princeton.

“I’ve applied to grad school,” Stilin said. “I’ve applied to Stanford and Wisconsin. I’m just waiting to hear back from them, but if I get in, I will definitely welcome the indoor season.”

While some collegiate runners run for the fame, scholarship money or simply out of habit, Stilin says he does it for his love of the sport.

“Some people finish their undergraduate years of track and say, ‘Okay I’ve been running since I was a freshman in high school and I’m done with it, I’m sick of it,’ ” he said. “I’m going to keep doing it, keep on competing, because I love it a lot.”