The Under Armour athlete puts an eventful indoor season behind him as he shifts his focus to the World Cross while keeping the Olympics in his sights
Falling within the first 50m of his first race on the global stage was not what Adam Fogg had anticipated at the World Indoor Championships.
Since joining the Under Armour Mission Run Baltimore Distance team, the British athlete has seen great success as he ran a 3:49.52 mile at the Millrose Games in February.
However, Fogg has since had an eventful few races at both the UK Indoors in Birmingham and World Indoors in Glasgow, which he described as “slightly disappointing”.
The 25-year-old was a firm favourite alongside Callum Elson to take the UK indoor 1500m title but it came down to a kick in the final 100m which saw the fast-finishing Piers Copeland clinch the crown, with Fogg third.
A few weeks later, Fogg found himself face down on the track in the first heat of the 1500m at the World Indoors, although he was allowed to advance to the final, where he finished 14th.
The middle-distance runner remains optimistic as he gets back on his feet at the World Cross Country Championships in Belgrade next Saturday (March 30), competing in the senior mixed relay.
Thomas Keen, Alex Millard and Bethan Morley will make up the team as they try to win Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s first mixed relay medal at a World Cross.
Fogg believes finishing a close third as a team in the Euro Cross Country Championships last year has helped him get a good taste of being right up there.
AW chats exclusively to Fogg below:
Adam Fogg and Khai Mhlanga (Getty)
What do you make of stepping away from the indoor season and competing at World Cross?
I think racing at Euro Cross in December gave me a great taste for racing in a cross country environment at a pretty high level, so racing in Belgrade will be another good opportunity to represent GB and hopefully, we can be right up there challenging for a medal.
I think being in the mixed relay is a really good way of bridging the gap from the indoor racing into the outdoor season because I will be mainly focusing on the 1500m outdoor.
It’s going to be a good test to see where I’m at and a great test against the best cross country teams in the world. If we do everything in our power to make sure we are all running as well as we can then I think it’s definitely possible to get a medal and it would mean a lot be a part of the first GB team to get a medal in the mixed relay.
How do you reflect on your 2024 season so far?
Looking back at the World Indoors and the UK Indoors, slightly disappointing. I think three months ago if I knew I was going to be a World Indoor finalist I would have taken that every day of the week and I would have probably said it’s been a great 2024.
As soon as I qualified for Millrose Games my expectations of myself were immediately increased and by the time UK Indoors came around I wanted to win that. I had a little bit of a target on my back having run fast the week before, I didn’t win but it was a good experience and it did enough to get selected for World Indoors.
Piers Copeland beats Callum Elson and Adam Fogg (Getty)
I really wanted to make the most of that opportunity [World Indoors] and I definitely thought I was capable of making the final. The way it worked out, I wanted to get through without falling over and I worked very hard to catch back up. The final was very disappointing, I don’t walk away from it thinking it was a lesson learnt or a good experience, it was rough.
My indoor season finished pretty disappointingly but I think how it started opened my eyes to what’s possible for the summer.
What does a normal training week look like for you?
When we can – and this changes with races – we are on a nine-day cycle with day three, six and nine being a workout day with day nine being a long run. We do our long runs relatively aggressively, at a pretty strong pace.
Day one and two is easy running, plus a bit of gym and speed development on one of those days. Day three is either a hill session or a faster track session. Day four is an easy long run and day five is an easy double, plus speed development. Day six is double threshold with day seven and eight being easy, with day eight being an optional day off.
The nine-day cycle is something that is a bit different, it allows you to get more of a recovery in between sessions.
Adam Fogg (John Nepolitan)
Why did you decide to start documenting your journey through your own Youtube channel, ‘The FOGDOG Exclusive’?
I never planned on getting into it until I was running with one of my friends when I was back home in Australia and he told me I’ve got to start a Youtube channel. Initially I thought no, I’m not becoming a Youtuber and then within a day or two I bought a camera and started filming.
It is crazy, I will be at meets and there’s people coming up to me talking about the channel whether they are an older fan or a young kid getting into the sport.
You see a number of views on a screen and you forget what it means. But having a few thousand people watching, they do end up getting invested in your journey.
What do you make of rivalries in the sport, such as Kerr v Ingebrigtsen?
It brings the sport more eyes I think. There’s other sports, like boxing, where there are individual rivalries so it won’t hurt the sport. I don’t have particularly strong opinions on it and I’m not in the position to be calling shots and saying I could beat either of them with a blindfold on but I do think it’s quite entertaining and I think it gives the fans someone to be a fan of.
At those big meets it will definitely have a lot more people watching because of the way they’ve talked. I think the Olympic final this year will have a lot riding on it with both of them having very high expectations of themselves.
How has the signing with Under Armour helped you so far?
Being able to run full time is something that not many people get the opportunity to ever do so I am definitely grateful to have that opportunity and to be able to focus full time on running and be as good as I can be.
When I signed with Under Armour I was a 3:56 miler and 3:38 1500m. I’ve since bombed that 1500m outdoors down to 3:35 and 3:49 in the mile.
Having joined Under Armour and having Cory [Leslie] as my coach and having so many like minded professional guys on the team is great to be surrounded by them every day. We all have similar goals, we are all trying to make national teams, we all want to be in Paris, we want to be running as fast as we can and we want to be putting our brand on the board as a new team.
When I first joined, the team itself was very new, Under Armour as a brand was massive but it was growing in the running world. Over the last couple of years it has come a very long way and it’s pretty exciting to be a part of a brand that is growing.
Under Armour Headquarters is in Baltimore so we can have the full setup with everything we need, whether it’s gym, a massage or the track.
Adam Fogg (John Nepolitan)
What are your aims for the year ahead?
Running the 3:49 mile opened my eyes to hopefully how fast I can go during the outdoor season of the 1500m.
It’s a massive year and with the 1500m being my focus still, there’s the European Outdoor Championships in Rome which are very much on the radar for me. I think with it being an Olympic year, maybe some of those top guys won’t opt to run the 1500m at the Euros so hopefully the door is a little bit open for making that team. I need to have a good couple of months but hopefully that is a possibility.
READ MORE: World Cross 2024 news
The goal is to make the Olympic team at trials [UK Indoors]. The third sport on the team is discretionary so I think I would have to be in the top two, because I’m unlikely to get that discretionary spot but I will absolutely be doing my best to make that happen.
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