WHITEWATER, Wis. — One athlete at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is having a record-breaking year.
Christian Patzka is an All-American cross-country runner. He recently broke the UW-Whitewater 8,000-meter run record, which was a record held by Tom Hoffman since 1968.
Patzka would go on to break his own record again just weeks later at the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Championship meet.
He said he hopes to continue to grow at every competition.
“Starting out as a freshman, I would just look up at the record board and just think, I want to run a time like that,” said Patzka. “That’d be amazing if I could do that. And then now to see my name up on the board, go to the conference, meet and break my record again… It just felt easy to do it. It was just a great feeling and knowing that my ceiling is a lot higher than I think it is.”
He said his strength is his closing speed at the end of races. Patzka said he feels he is the best in the nation.
“I really like the grit of it, just knowing like, how much more am I going to try to go out there and push you and also push myself and hurt you and also hurt myself in the process,” said Patzka. “I’d really like to know who’s tougher than the others is really my mentality with it. I’m just here to prove that. I just want to be tougher than you and faster than you.”
Jeff Miller has coached the Warhawks cross-country team for 43 years. This is the 10th time the men’s team has qualified for nationals.
Miller said it’s great that Patzka broke the record, but he tries to keep him focused on the ultimate goal of winning a national title.
“Our motto is: ‘You’re never as good as you think you are. You never as bad as you think you are,’” said Miller. “You need to stay in the middle, try to keep steady. That performance you just had, it’s over. You need to move on to the next. We talk about that a lot.”
Throughout Patzka’s success, he has never brought home a national title as an individual.
Patzka said he wants to be the first UW-Whitewater cross-country runner to make that happen.
“Now my goals were going from, I want to qualify to nationals, now I want to start winning more national titles and hopefully break more national records,” said Patzka. “And just trying to get better and better each year is really my goal.”