For Heather Kampf, who two weeks ago won her fourth U.S. one-mile road title in dominant fashion, the appeal of the race derives from its simplicity.
“It brings it down to the base level of when you’re a little kid and you’re like, ‘I can run from here to there,’” she says of her specialty. “It’s really instinctual. You throw the pace out the window and you just race.”
That don’t-overthink-it mentality has garnered Kampf, 29, a series of impressive wins:
• U.S. road mile titles, each worth $5,000, in 2012 and 2014–16
• three consecutive Grand Blue Mile titles from 2014–16 (in 2014, the Des Moines, Iowa, race doubled as the U.S. championships)
• a personal best of 4:21, a time she notched twice in 2014.
Kampf said her road miling success is partially a result of her confidence and partially a product of an event that’s more forgiving of tactical errors than one taking place on a 200- or 400-meter oval.
“I don’t want to say I’m a dumb racer, because that’s not very kind to myself, but the strategy of road miles is really different than anything on the track,” she said. “In road miles, even if you make a mistake and don’t quite cover a move, you still have so much room to go around people on a wide street.”
Dennis Barker, who has coached Kampf since she graduated from the University of Minnesota in December 2009, said she began to excel on the roads once she learned to judge her pace without the benefit of splits every lap.
“There’s speeding up and slowing down in a track race, and sometimes you don’t have control over that,” Barker said. “She has a little more control over it in a road mile, and I think she feels a little freer to just run how she feels.”
Kampf, who lives in South Minneapolis, has suffered no major injuries in her six-year professional career with Team USA Minnesota, of which Barker is the coach. She said that her durability is a factor in her success. “I’m a little bit of a bigger, stronger athlete compared to some milers out there,” she said. (She’s 5-foot-9 and 132 pounds.) “I think the roads are a little tougher on your body, and I’m just made to hold up to that.”
The resilient Kampf last year ran nearly 30 races. Nine of those were road miles—five of which she won. But while she enjoys her unofficial status as “Queen of the Road Mile,” in 2016 she is chasing a new title: Olympian.
“It’s definitely easier to make a living on the roads than on the track, but I don’t think I’d be doing this if I didn’t have my eye on the trials right now,” she said. “I dropped a lot of time last year in the 1500 and really put myself as a true contender on the track, and that’s my primary focus.”
Last June Kampf lowered her 1500-meter PR by more than a second and a half, running 4:04.50 at the IAAF Diamond League meet in Rome. But she knows the U.S. is deep in 1500-meter talent and path to qualifying for the Rio Olympics won’t be smooth.
“There’s definitely no easy way out when you’re running a middle distance race in the U.S. right now,” she said.
Kampf brings an emphasis on strength and endurance to the track this summer.
Her recent workouts—including five times a 1-kilometer hilly road loop, starting at 3:12 and going down to 3:05, with two minutes of rest between intervals—are as strong as those done by Team USA Minnesota’s top 5,000-meter runners and indicate continued improvement in the 1500.
“She’s doing a lot of those kinds of workouts that she’s never been able to be able to do before, as far as volumes and times, and I feel like that’s already starting to show up,” Barker said, noting that Kampf set an indoor mile PR of 4:27.26 at this year’s Millrose Games. “And she seems like she has an easier time with the road miles this year, and recovers faster, so I think that’s a good thing too, especially in an Olympic Trials where you have rounds.”
Limited by bronchitis, Kampf finished fourth in the 1500 at this year’s indoor nationals, failing to make her second world indoor team. (She was a 1500-meter finalist at the 2014 indoor worlds.) But she has enjoyed a promising start to her outdoor season, placing third behind Jenny Simpson and Kate Grace at Drake Relays, where she ran 4:07.26.
Next up for Kampf is the Prefontaine Classic on Friday night, where she has been tasked with pacing the 5,000-meter runners through one mile in 4:32. She then plans to stay in the U.S., racing an 800 and at least one 1500 on the track, in the lead-up to July’s track trials in Eugene, Oregon.
What happens there, Barker said, may depend on Kampf’s confidence in her ability to perform well no matter what race scenario unfolds.
“Sometimes when it’s a big race, everybody wants to execute their own strategy, so you can have all these competing strategies at work,” he said. “So it’s being able to think on the fly and be resilient in those kinds of situations.”
Kampf has a history of that, as she showed with her astounding victory after a late-race fall in the 600-meter final at the 2008 Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships. The video, below, went viral, and it might be Kampf’s (known then as Dorniden) enduring claim to fame.
To prepare for what she hopes is the meet of her life, Kampf has opted to take a season off from coaching a local high school girls’ track team in order to focus solely on her training. She is also foregoing any further attempts at her signature event, the road mile, until she’s made her bid for berth on the Olympic track team.
“The roads are a great opportunity for me to pad the income a little bit and have a little fun and build my confidence,” she said. “But it’s always been about Rio.”
