This week’s guest is Woody Kincaid of Bowerman Track Club, a Colorado native and University of Portland grad who recently qualified for his first Olympic Games in the 5K and 10K. Longtime listeners will remember that we first had Woody on the podcast in 2018 when he was coming off a string of injuries that derailed his early pro career. It was a great full-circle moment to have him come on again at the top of his game and to reflect on how far he’s come

Woody is a great friend of host David Melly and we got right into it, so get ready for an all-timer episode. We covered a wide range of subjects from “self-inflicted wounds,” to his relationship with his coaches, to why he threw up before the 10k at Trials and everything in between.

Enjoy the episode and don’t forget to catch Woody representing Team USA in Tokyo in a few weeks. Don’t forget to subscribe, like, follow, review, and everything else!

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Photo by Justin Britton

NOTABLE QUOTES

On believing he can make the Olympics through setbacks:

“I do have this weird confidence in my own abilities. I have a pretty pessimistic outlook toward other things in the world, but I have a very strong self-belief. I’m not one of those guys that’s like, ‘anything is possible,’ but I know that if I focus I can do pretty much anything I set my mind to. I’ve had moments where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work out,’ but those are, for me, generally pretty passing.”

On his relationship with University of Portland coach Rob Conner:

“RC was always a very hands-off coach. His philosophy was, ‘you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’ and he was always taking me to water and I just… would not drink. But I think he’s very proud now and he’s happy to see the potential that he’d always seen on the big stage.”

On his relationship with Bowerman Track Club coach Jerry Schumacher:

“Jerry and I are the same person with two very different philosophies of life. Personality-wise, we’re very similar, stubborn kind of people, but we disagree on a lot. We always fight, but we understand each other.”

On participating in track and field media:

“I’ll go on podcasts because I have a respect for recording at the moment, but it’s not wise… it’s not smart. If I were smart, I wouldn’t have a Twitter as a professional athlete, because it doesn’t do me good. [….] At the same time, everybody has a [platform] now, and one of the good things about that is that people are more sympathetic to people just being themselves. I’m not worried about what people are going to think at this point – I’ve been out there for a while.”

On dealing with speculation and criticism:

“I’m most defensive when people discredit everything I do. I’ve always been that way. It can be anything… doping allegations or anything else. When I ran 12:58, it was like, ‘Well, it’s just the shoes, it’s the environment.’ And Centro made a good point – he said: That just means you made it. And I really took that to heart. When people are so mad at me, it just kinda means that now I’m on the radar.”