In this MileSplit interview, Jeff talks with Tori Gaitan, the anchor for Great Oak’s 4x800 and 4x1600 relay teams, about their dominant performances at the Arcadia meet. Tori explains how each teammate set personal records in the 800, leading to a national‑leader time, and describes the challenges of running solo anchor legs, including pacing, mental strategy, and reliance on coach cues. She reflects on recent competitions at Stanford and Azusa, noting travel fatigue and confidence gains from a strong 16‑minute 4x1600 and 32‑minute 4x3200 at Azusa. Tori emphasizes how those prior successes boosted her confidence for today’s anchor duties. The conversation ends with a brief look ahead to the upcoming DAMR meet.
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All right, this is Jeff with MileSplit. I'm here with Tori Gaitan, the anchor for the Great Oak 4x800 team that crushed it earlier today and the 4x1600 team that just crushed it now. Tori, take us through your day.
Um, you know, starting with the 4x800, we wanted to definitely— we know we had a challenge coming with the girls who came in second. They're definitely big competition, so we kind of just went out there not knowing really what was gonna happen, but know that we just wanted to put our best foot out there. Each and every single one of our girls PR'd in the 800, which was amazing. Yeah, so So that was a good way to get it, and we came out with a national leader time, so that's pretty good. We were a little tired coming into the 4x16, but we definitely had our expectations high still. We still wanted to attempt that national record. Definitely didn't get too close as we wanted to, but I think we were just tired. Our legs were tired from the 4x8, and it's definitely hard running alone. I think we have to train more. Not necessarily— we know we can run the times to do it, but it's doing it alone that's the challenge, so we're kind of just getting through that.
Yeah, and you were running alone twice today, right? Basically, yeah. Yeah, so what goes through your mind? I mean, how do you keep your pacing? How do you keep pushing when you're just you?
Um, you know, I kind of just use the girls who are ahead of me because, you know, there's always girls that are in the lower positions, but, you know, you kind of— they do help a lot, kind of just like trying to admit as if they're in first place. So kind of just going off of them. It's definitely hard. It's not an easy thing to do. It's just kind of mind games, kind of just staying in it. There's nobody to pull you or kind of get you through the race. It's like you're doing doing all the strategy, you do the pushes. It's not like you just get to turn off your brain, so it's hard. But I mean, we're learning.
Yeah, yeah, it would be easy running alone to turn off your brain, right? And, and that's the worst thing to do.
Yeah, you know, you kind of running alone, it's a lot of strategy because there's nobody in the race. You like, there's no girls around you like, oh, they run these times, so I'm gonna stick her the whole time, turn off my brain, just let her do the work. There's none of that. So it's kind of like you need to know if you went to Sully first off, you're the one who pushes it, it's not another person. So it's kind of like you have to come up with all the strategy.
It's kind of a Are you aware of when they're calling out the splits? Do you have coaches yelling at you at a certain point?
Yeah, definitely you hear all your coaches yelling at you. Definitely I hear them during the races and I know when I'm going too slow. It's just a matter of having to speed up is kind of the hard part because you have nobody doing it for you. So it's kind of just like, it's definitely hard mentally. I know we physically are able to do it, just kind of hard to do it mentally.
Yeah, yeah. And then when you finish and And how does that change the mentality?
You know, going around the last lap and knowing that you're gonna finish, the last lap's probably one of the easiest ones, 'cause you know you just give it your all. So I think, and then finishing, having your teammates around you, just like comforting you whether you had a good or bad race, you know, it's always nice to be able to finish.
And yeah. How was it for you last week at Stanford, right? This is the third, at least the third weekend in a row where you guys have run some serious competition.
Yeah, Stanford definitely had loaded field. We didn't necessarily go the way that we planned, but we did have a long travel day, you know, driving up there with a lot of traffic. Took about like 11 hours in the car. Yeah, so definitely didn't go to plan, but I think it's just kind of a learning experience right now this early in the season. We're kind of getting to the middle of the season, but you know, it really counts at the end of the season. So I think when we get there, that's when it's really gonna matter. Right now it's just learning everything.
Take us, take us back 2 weeks at Azusa, right? So is that 3 weeks? 2 weeks? No, it's 2 weeks. Yeah, you had a day. Oh my goodness, you just crushed— you crushed— was the 16 and the 32. Take us through that day, your thoughts at the end of it, now looking back 2 weeks later.
Um, I think it definitely, uh, going into that day, I didn't expect myself to kind of perform the way that I did. It was a great way to, uh, boost my confidence for the season. Um, it was a really good race, and I think that it just proves to me, like, my potential for the race pretty much. It just proves that I can do what I want to do, and that That wasn't even the tip-top of our training yet. We were just getting to speed. So I think like by the time I get to the end of the season, that's where I'm really going to shine and show my true potential.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about the confidence boost of that day. And are we seeing the byproduct of that? Did we see the byproduct of that today in your anchor legs?
I think definitely, yeah. I think it's just the confidence has really gone up and it's like better to run. Like, you know, anchor legs were mostly running alone. So knowing that I have run those times and knowing that I'm capable of those times, definitely gives me that boost of confidence that I need to get through the race. So I think it does help a lot.
Yeah, and then so DAMR tomorrow night?
Yes.
Awesome. All right, that's Tori Gaitan at Arcadia who crushed it today for Grado.
