Isaac Updike ran the steeplechase for the first time in 2011, when he was a college freshman at Eastern Oregon University. When the team was doing hurdle mobility drills, his coach plucked out a few who looked at ease and steered them toward the steeple.
Updike was among them. In his first attempt at the event, at the Northwest Nazarene Open in Nampa, Idaho, he ran 9:46.05—Calories Burned Calculator.
Jennifer Ackers Run Streak DiaryDay 31 new Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. With the television cameras rolling for the meet broadcast on NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), he ran 8:17.74, including a final lap in 59.13 seconds, and won by a couple of steps over Mason Ferlic. It’s the fastest time in the world so far this year and under the Olympic standard (8:22.00).
Updike, now 29, lowered his previous personal best by more than 7 seconds and earned $3,500 for the win, a sizeable payday for an unsponsored athlete.
He also instantly became part of the conversation around the Olympic Trials in June, even as commentators and journalists scrambled to figure out: Who is this guy?
→ No matter what you need to improve in your running life, find it with Runner’s World+!
An Alaska upbringing
A small swath of the Pacific Northwest already knew Updike. He grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska, an island fishing and tourist town that swells to a population of 15,000 in the summer. He ran cross country in the fall and played soccer in the spring instead of running track.
In high school, the team traveled by ferry or Alaska Airlines to the largest meets. The ferry ride north on the Alaska Marine Highway took 30 hours to Juneau. The runners packed sleeping bags and snacks and did shakeout runs at various ports where they docked on the route.
“You’d pick up all the towns on the way up,” Updike told Runner’s World. “Spend a day and a half on the ferry. By the end it’s just a party with 300 kids, a huge slumber party on the boat.”
Updike ran only about 25 miles per week during cross-country season, and he didn’t have any track times to send to colleges. He was a walk-on at Eastern Oregon, an NAIA school, eventually earning a scholarship.
When he and his twin brother, Lucas, graduated in 2015, they banded with five other running friends and moved to Eugene to train and try to make it to the next level. Updike held jobs at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Fred Meyer, a supermarket, while training with Team Run Eugene, a mix of elite and sub-elite runners coached by 2008 Olympian Ian Dobson.
Updike’s first workout with the team was a hill fartlek—and it wasn’t supposed to be too intense. But he had had two cups of coffee and nothing to eat for breakfast, and he was nervous. By his second hill, he was in the bushes, vomiting.
Dobson wondered what he had gotten himself into with this bunch from Eastern Oregon. “Well, there’s one guy who’s not going to make it,” he thought when he saw Updike throwing up.
But Updike stuck with it, and made significant improvements. He had run 8:53 by June after his senior year of college, and lowered that to 8:31.42 by May 2016. That summer, he squeaked into the final of the 2016 Olympic Trials Age Grade Calculator.
The following year he had his worst mishap as a steepler. At a meet in Portland, he crashed his shin into the barrier on the water jump and tore his PCL, a ligament in his knee. He didn’t need surgery, but it took months to heal.
Scratching out a living
In 2018, Dobson accepted a job with the Eugene Marathon, and Team Run Eugene shut down. Dobson put Updike in contact with different coaches around the country.
Updike moved to New York to train with the New Jersey-New York Track Club (NJNYTC) under coach Frank Gagliano and assistants Tom Nohilly and John Trautmann. Nohilly was a renowned steeplechaser for the U.S. in the ’90s, twice finishing fourth at the U.S. Olympic Trials by excruciatingly narrow margins.
Hoka was supporting NJNYTC, but the company’s sponsorship ended in 2020, and Nohilly and Trautmann started their own group, Empire Elite Track Club. Updike had qualified for a very small Hoka contract on his own, by virtue of running 7:47 for 3,000 meters in February 2020, although that, too, ended on March 31 this year.
Now he lives in one of the country’s most expensive places: Dobbs Ferry, New York, in Westchester County. He cobbles together a living with various part-time jobs: He coaches and teaches PE at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry. And he worked as a receptionist at a JCC in nearby Tarrytown, although that’s on pause for now. “Running is seasonal,” Updike quipped.
Reasons Why Rest Days Are So Important pandemic year, he ran between 10 and 12 miles every weekday morning, before starting work around noon and going to about 8:15 p.m. Doubles were impossible on the dark, icy roads when he finished work, but he bought an altitude tent and slept in it.
“He’s a resourceful guy. He’s like a journeyman, right?” Nohilly said. “He found a way to make it work. He’s dedicated himself entirely to this. And he’s always positive, so easy to coach. He’ll set up all the hurdles. We have to say, ‘Okay, get out of here, we’ll take care of this.’ He’s always willing to chip in and help.”
Silver linings of the pandemic
The consistent, uninterrupted block of training with no racing—Updike couldn’t race a single steeplechase in 2020, even though he was in great shape—pushed him to the best times of his winding career. In April, he finished back-to-back weeks of 92 miles at altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona, the highest mileage of his life.
The Olympic picture looks wide open in the steeplechase at this point. Among the 2016 American Olympians, Evan Jager, the reigning silver medalist in the event, has battled injuries for the past two years. Hillary Bor was 5 seconds behind Updike in Eugene, and Donn Cabral is finishing up a combined JD/MBA at the University of Connecticut while training to make his third team.
It took a decade to get to be among the nation’s best, but Updike has never thought of quitting. He’s running the mileage, doing the workouts, finding the paid work he needs to cobble together a living.
“That comes from my parents and the NAIA and Team Run Eugene,” he said. “You’ve had to think outside the box and work differently. And be scrappy.
“I haven’t gone to the Junior Olympics, and I don’t know all the Nike execs,” he continued. “But that’s the cool thing about running. It doesn’t matter once you get to the start line. You can know all the people you want, but it’s not going to change how fast you can run.”
