Carter Cutting proving why he is BYU's all-time record holder in the mile

After breaking all-time school track records in back-to-back meets, qualifying for indoor nationals and now just focused on competing, Carter Cutting is now entering his favorite part of the season.

Cutting, a junior at BYU, first ran in the John Thomas Terrier Classic held Jan. 31 in Boston. Up until this point, Cutting sat at No. 3 All-Time in the mile at BYU, with a time of 3:56.79.

The week before this meet Cutting got sick and felt it affecting in his workouts. Before the race, while wondering how his fitness was leading into the race, one of the coaches told him not to worry about times but just try to win. Although a good time would help him qualify for nationals, Carter had flipped a switch in his head for this particular race.

“That was kind of my mindset, I’m just gonna go out there and compete with the guys racing,” Cutting said, “so you know, I just went in there with kind of like a dog mentality, of just, im just gonna stick my nose in it and fight as hard as I can.”

That race went well for Cutting, breaking the all-time school mile record with a time of 3:53.38, which was held by a previous multi-national champ Miles Batty from 2012, whose record used to be the national collegiate record.

Even though he ran a personal best and school record, Cutting didn’t even know he broke the record until a few minutes after the race when one of the coaches informed him.

“My confidence from running that time has gone up, skyrocketed, and so now I just feel like I can keep up with anyone in the country and run with anyone,” Cutting said.

Breaking an all-time school record doesn’t happen all the time. It comes from extreme disciple and dedication to one’s sport but can also be aided with the help of coaching.

The director of the track & field team, Ed Eyestone, and assistant coach Ryan Waite work together to figure out how to train Cutting the best way possible.

“Carter is a super multi-faceted, a very hybrid type athlete who can handle longer workouts, higher volume stuff, but then he’s also got pretty amazing speed,” Waite said.

Eyestone and Waite meet each week to figure out what the 5k and 10k guys are doing for training and see how that fits in what they might want Cutting to do.

“Carter is kind of a bridge between our middle and long distance group. He brings things from both sides to the other group,” Waite said.

Middle distance runners are considered the 800m and 1mile, anything more than that is considered long distance.

Waite supervises the middle-distance runners, so when it comes to Cutting running with them he sees that “he really helps them with all of their strength and their longer distance stuff, their higher volume stuff, but he hangs right with them in the speed stuff and he pushes them. He’s helping everybody.”

In this training style, whenever Cutting runs with the longer distance runners, they know he will be leading the group because he will be the fastest guy.

Eyestone explained that “anytime he comes in, they are better. And anytime he comes to our endurance workouts, he becomes better because he’s pushed a little bit more.”

A week after breaking the all-time record, Cutting knew that record wasn’t going to last long. After two weeks of resting and prepping, BYU headed to Boston again for the David Hemery Valentine Invitational on Feb 13.

Going into this meet Cutting was stoked and his coaches knew he had more in the tank from the previous meet. The pace for the race was set at 3:50 and there were some professional runners in his heat, so Cutting knew the competition was going to be good.

The preparation, the plan and the persistence resulted in Cutting besting his own school record. He finished with a time of 3:52.84, which would automatically qualify him for the NCAA Indoor National Championship.

In this race against high caliber runners and wanting to compete with them, “I just hopped on the train and kind of rode the momentum for almost the entire race, and then kind of made a couple moves towards the end, but yeah just felt great," Cutting said.

In back-to-back meets breaking his own all-time record, qualifying for nationals, and with championship season rolling around, this is Cutting's favorite part of the season.

“I think I’m best at championship racing,” Cutting said. “Now all I get to focus on is going out and competing. And my strong suit is just head-to-head competition. I love tactical racing against guys.

“Now times don’t really matter, it’s just racing for titles and racing for championship titles," he added.

Carter will be helping the men’s distance medley relay team qualify for nationals this weekend at the Colorado Last Chance Indoor Invitational.

Upcoming for Cutting and the Cougars is the Big 12 Indoor Championship Feb. 27 then NCAA Indoor National Championship Mar. 12-13.