After Years Of Waiting, Casey Clinger Gets A Chance To Race In His First 5,000 Meters On A Track

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

It's been four full years since Casey Clinger won the second of his back-to-back Nike Cross Nationals titles and he has not yet run a 5,000-meter race on a track. 

That is about to change. Clinger, a standout at BYU returned from a two-year mission to Japan nearly a year ago. He will run his first 5,000 on Friday at the Sound Running Track Meet in California. He is entered in the second-fastest section, the "13:30" group.

"Mostly I just feel excited," Clinger said. "I've never done 5K on the track. I didn't do track my freshman season (at BYU) and then with COVID I never got the (2020) season."

Clinger might, in fact, be one of the brightest young 5,000-meter prospects in the U.S., which makes the fact that he has never done one hard to believe. 

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He figures to make a strong first impression. Clinger got back into a shape with a couple of cross country appearances for BYU this fall and then ran a 4:04 mile time trial in the thin air of Provo, Utah. 

The unsual 2020 calendar may have worked out just fine for Clinger. He returned home from Japan in late December of 2019 and then quickly got back into the habit of running. 

"I got back home just in the nick of time," Clinger said. "Things started closing down in February and March, so I made it back before it got crazy. In the long term it gave me more time to train, but I've missed racing."

Clinger returned to school in January and went into a base training mode for a month and a half to regain his fitness. 

"I actually got into shape quicker than I expected," he said. "I redshirted the indoor season and was considering coming back for outdoor."

In October, Clinger finished third at the Oklahoma State Inviational in his first college competition since 2017 and ran within eight seconds of winner Luis Grijalva of Northern Arizona and second-place finisher Conner Mantz of BYU. On Nov. 6, he won an 8-kilometer race at the Weber State Invitational.

Rather than shut things down, Clinger jumped into runs with former BYU stars Clayton Young and Connor McMillan, who were training for the Sound Running Track Meet 10,000 meters, which is Saturday night.

"I decided to carry out the training and get into that 5K," Clinger said. 

He is approaching his first track 5,000 with a sense of adventure and a curiosity for how it might go. 

"There is something fun about doing something for the first time," Clinger said. "There is not a ton of pressure. It will be really fun to go out there and see what I can do. I really just want to compete. I'm hungry for that race feeling."

A personal best is probably coming. His fastest "5,000" came on a cross country course his junior year at American Fork High in 2015, when he won the NXR Southwest title in Arizona in 14:42. 

A new chapter starts Friday.