Bishop Guertin's Matt Giardina turns the corner on his last lap of his state record run to victory in the 3200 at the Division I Championships Saturday at Portsmouth High School. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – It was just this past late October, and Bishop Guertin’s top cross country/track distance runner Matt Giardina had mixed emotions.

He helped lead his Cardinals to the Division I championship, but he lost out to Keene’s Sullivan Sturtz for the top overall finish in the race, coming in second.

Second is not in Matt Giardina’s vocabulary.

“Yeah, I wasn’t happy losing in D 1’s,” Giardina, who hails from Tynsborough, Mass., said. “That was my first race back, I had had a little hip injury. My first race back, it was tough, and it beat me up for a couple of days losing it. I wasn’t happy.”

In fact, his coach, BG mentor Tom Cassetty, all but guaranteed that Giardina would win the Meet of Champions the next week. And he did just that.

“He’s a phenomenal runner,” BG cross country coach Tom Cassetty said that day. “And I wouldn’t count him out for next week. He’s not the kind of kid that loses twice in a row. … There’s nobody in the state that can run on the level those two (Sturtz and Giardina) can.”

“Closer toward the Meet of Champions I was feeling ready and I just went for it,” he said.

And he got it, setting a course record at the Alvirne race course. “He was,” Cassetty said, “a man on a mission.”

He did have a tough New Englands race, saying that big races three weeks in a row “got to me.” But again he more than made up for it in the Nationals Foot Locker Race in San Diego, finishing seventh overall. It capped off a tremendous fall in which he also committed to the University of New Mexico to run distance in all three seasons. And to cement his spot as the state’s premier high school distance runner, he won both the 1500 and 3000 races in the recent NHIAA Indoor Championships at Plymouth State. And he’ll go into the spring season, his final in a Cardinal uniform, as the two-time defending champion in the 3200.

Right now the Foot Locker Race likely ranks as his biggest accomplishment.

“That was my first time,” he said of the Foot Locker race. “I was really happy with it. I just tried to stay with the group and conserve and push up the hills. I closed really well. I think I started out in the 20s and I kept picking guys off.”

Racing at Derryfield year after year helped, he said. “I think the courses around here prepared me for the hills. I’m not usually very strong on the hills, but I did very well on the hills that day.”

Fast forward to the indoor season when Giardina got the double win. He had to face competition from not only opposing school runners, but also his own team, especially Carson Fischer.

“I knew the 1500 was going to be tough because Carson had been looking really strong in practice and the last couple of races,” Giardina said. “I was really just going for the win in the 3K, then making sure I had enough for the 15(00) to run fast and have the wheels at the end. … There was definitely a part of it that was challenging.”

Giardina’s competitive drive is twofold – he’s going against the clock as well as the opponent. “Obviously, I want to win first off, and get the time I want,” he said. “I know there’s a bunch of races that I’ve won that I’m not happy with the time. I just have to be thankful.”

Giardina paced himself for the indoor season. He got off to a late start because of the lateness of the cross country season – the Foot Locker race was in December – and used a race in Maine to help him be ready and his time got him qualify for the NHIAA indoors. He also ran a race in Boston at the Reggie Lewis Center and another at Boston University.

“I was definitely looking for competition,” he said, also adding he wanted to race where he could wear spiked running shoes, not allowed during the UNH/Plymouth State NHIAA indoor season meets. They’re said to be lighter and grab the track better.

It’s possible Giardina won’t run in the New Englands.The New Balance 5K Nationals are five days after the New Englands. “I want to be healthy and sharp for Nationals,” he said. “Or I might just do the mile (1500), not sure yet.”

THE BEGINNINGS

What got Giardina into running as a sport? It was during his days as a middle school student at Presentation of Mary in Hudson. “That was kind of the only sport they had, it was either that or soccer,” he said of cross country. “I was always fast, so I went out for cross country. I really liked it, I got to run on the middle school team.”

But Giardina just wasn’t a runner. He wrestled, played lacrosse, etc., “but I was always serious about running.”

Of course he learned how much work it took to stay with it. “I knew it wasn’t just going to come easy,” he said. “I think especially after having bad races, I’m going to work harder so I could do better the next race. You just kind of learn from it. If you want good results, then you have to work that much harder.”

Thus when he got to Bishop Guertin as a freshman, he was ready. The Cards won the Division I title that 2021 season, and he was a key. Ironically, Giardina, who holds the cross country Meet of Champions state record, wasn’t sure he’d crack the varsity roster, “because I knew how competitive the team was. That was a really good team.”

He came into his own in his mind his sophomore year, after the five seniors in the varsity cross country lineup the year before had graduated. “I really had no choice but to take my own (initiative) and be more of a team leader.”

And that wasn’t easy. Why? Because Giardina was outdistancing his own team and often in practice had no one to run with at his pace. So he worked hard to be a team player.

And discovered that consistency is key.

“That’s the biggest thing with running,” Giardina said. “Being consistent. You can’t get faster unless you’re consistent in your training. And it’s one of those things that it doesn’t happen overnight. Over time the consistency builds up. You just explode.”

Giardina takes a logical approach to records. The wins come first. “I like winning,” he said. “If a record comes, it comes. It’s really just like how that day goes. I keep it in mind, but in the end, if it’s not my day, I’m not feeling it that day, it probably won’t happen.”

Giardina trains about 50 miles a week. Back when he was a beginner, that number was 35. “I knew I wasn’t ready for it,” he said, referring to high mileage work.

He’s had a number of coaches work with him but there’s one voice that Giardina listens to the most: Christopher Giardina.

“My Dad,” he said. “He’s just always there for me.”

Ironically, Chris Giardina was a New England champion in wrestling, but he helps his son Matt wrestle with the mental part of running/competing the most. “He’s always giving me my splits,” he said. “We’ll go back and we’ll watch races and get fired up. We have a really good bond.”

He says that he and his coaches “learn together, when it comes to the national meets and stuff. None of us knew what it’s all about.”

After the March races, the focus will be on the outdoor season. He’d like to run a sub-nine minute 3200 and get his mile time down as well. Does Giardina ever think himself as a marathoner? “Yes, I think so, probably when I get older,” he said. “I think the longer distances are better for me.”

After the spring, Giardina will then focus on life at New Mexico, where he’ll study exercise science. UNM won out over such schools like Wake Forest, UMass Lowell or Amherst. He visited New Mexico over April break last year.

“They have a great program,” Giardina said. “They reached out to me. I really felt wanted, and I think I’d be a good fit there.”

Will the different climate impact him? Not really. In fact it may make him better. “They have elevation, so it’s great for training,” he said. “It gets hot there in the summer, but heat doesn’t really bother me. I guess it’s just one of those things that it just never bothers me.”

Could Giardina have ever imagined that a sport he chose in the fourth or fifth grade take him to these new heights and be his ticket to college?

As he got a little older, yes.

“Yeah, yeah, that was a big goal of mine,” he said. “I dreamed of it, and worked hard for it.”

Go see Matt Giardina run a race, and more times than not you’ll see all that hard work pay off. If for some reason it doesn’t, you can be 100 percent sure it will the next time he steps on a track or a course.