By Brett Taylor
Throughout the Portland Track Classic, the Tracklandia podcast hosts, sitting on a couch called the “living room” on the front stretch of the Lewis and Clark track kept asking, “Engels, where are you?”
Nike Oregon Project middle distance runner Craig Engels had parked his RV just outside the track, and hosts Andrew Wheating and Jeff Merrill kept calling attention to it. “We have confirmation that he’s in his RV,” they said. They kept doing it. They got no response.
“I was hiding for most of the day,” Engels said. “People were texting me like, ‘Where you at, man?’ Like I’m not going to my RV 20 minutes before I warm up,” he added, laughing.
Engels did his regular warmup, and then he sped past Sam Parsons in the last 200 meters to win the high performance 1,500-meter race with a time of 3 minutes, 35.32 seconds, a new personal record. He finished nearly two seconds ahead of runner-up Izaic Yorks, who ran 3:37.13.
Engels said that he felt “really, really good” during the race. “I was trying to hit the Olympic standard time, but still, fun night, it’s awesome here,” he said.
He just missed the Olympic standard of 3:35.
Engels, who is ranked 38th in the world for the 1,500, in 2016 became the first-ever Ole Miss runner to win the SEC championship in the 1,500 meters with a time of 3:50.71.
But Engels hadn’t broken his personal record since a fourth-place finish in 2017 at the New York TrackTown USA Summer Series, where he ran a 3:35.95 in the 1,500.
On Sunday, Engels stayed near the top of the pack during each lap, switching between second, third and fourth place while letting runners like Parsons, a former teammate and roommate, keep the lead. As the runners began to make the turn into the final lap, Parsons began to kick things into gear, pulling ahead of the rest of the group.
But Engels stayed right on him, keeping stride-for-stride. At the 200 mark, Engels made his move, quickly pulling ahead of Parsons and everyone else, winning the race.
“Last year we went to altitude and it didn’t treat me the way I thought it it would,” Engels said. “But this year we stayed in Portland, and it’s been amazing.”
Parsons, who finished fourth in 3:37.46 after leading for most of the race, knew that he wanted to lay everything on the line while running, even if he didn’t end up winning.
“I just went for it, you know,” said Parsons, who runs for Adidas and the TinMan Elite club. “You are only in this world for a finite amount of time, and when I step out on the track I want to make the most out of every opportunity, run the ‘Tinman way,’ and I want to cross the finish line knowing that there are no regrets.”
With this victory under his belt, Engels will get ready to compete in the Harry Jerome in Canada and then the Pre Classic later this month. But before Engels leaves Portland, he was going to go celebrate.
“Go over to the RV and sign some posters of Eric Jenkins,” Engels said, laughing. “And maybe share a beer.”
