Craig Rice of the Portland Track Festival was kind enough to take some questions during a busy week leading up to the Friday-Saturday Portland Track Festival at Lewis & Clark College.

Can you give a short history of the Portland Track Festival and include a few of the recent highlights?

Craig Rice:  The meet began in 2008 as an abbreviated, mixed age-group meet of featured events.  The planning committee identified a few events we wanted to highlight and invited some area running groups to sponsor prize money and help us recruit athletes.  I have to give credit to the athletes that attended that first year for setting the tone for what this event has become.  There were top youth milers from as far away as Arizona and Indiana and top regional distance runners in the men’s and women’s 5K.  Their participation in 2008 made it possible to attract additional athletes the following years.

In 2009, we improved all of our events including national class 5K races and the addition of the high school boy’s sub-4 attempt.  Portland had two nationally-ranked high school milers last year, in Nathan Mathabane and Elijah Greer, and that presented a great opportunity to bring in a few more top athletes to take a shot at a fast mile.  They came up just short but the effort was spectacular.

And the competition for top athletes has gotten tough.  We started off building the 2010 field with a lot of success before the a high school mile race was announced as part of  NYC Grand Prix meet scheduled for the same day.  That stopped, and in some cases, reversed progress while athletes considered the prospect of attending that Diamond League event.

Craig Rice: I hate that I’m going to miss NCAAs myself.  We recognized the conflict early and have embraced the benefits of having such a big meet nearby.  Several athletes are racing in Portland because they had reason to be in Oregon for NCAAs.

The meet has found it’s place on the track calendar as a last stop leading to the USATF Outdoor Championships as well as the high school national championship.  I think we’ll spend the next couple of years refining the event to best serve those athletes.  If there i’s an event I’d like to add it would be a marquee sprint event.  Give me a call, Usain.

We have three sub-13 minute 5,000 runners living in Portland as of last week to go along with all of the other great athletes, events and resources that are unique to Portland and Oregon. There are great opportunities to see track and field each weekend and I hope all of this recent momentum is creating a new generation of track fans.  I know the current running community, myself included, is really enjoying everything that is going on locally.