TEN QUESTIONS WITH...

You’re in your ninth and final semester now. Having previously participated on the rowing team at UB during your first four years here. What made you decide to join the cross-country squad in your fifth year?

When I was a sophomore, I was at a Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) meeting and we had to introduce ourselves and some kid, I don’t know who he was, said, ‘I know you must be a runner’ and I said, ‘No, I’m a rower’. Then he said, ‘Well, you look like a runner’ and I thought maybe I should be a runner and that’s when I sort of started thinking about it and then I was thinking about staying for this last semester and I decided that I might want to try out some running, so I did.

Is the training for cross-country different compared to the training for rowing?

I think it’s not quite as time consuming because there’s only so much running you can do before your body starts to break down and with rowing there’s a lot more training that you do outside of practice whereas with running, you do your run and you can’t do too much running outside of that.

Were there any specific goals you had entering the cross-country season?

Not really. I didn’t really know anything about what the team was going to be like this year. I knew they had graduated a couple of seniors and (Coach) Vicky (Mitchell) had talked to me about maybe fulfilling a leadership role on the team but I didn’t really know how I would fit in on the team. I just really wanted to train and I didn’t think that I was going to get to race but I was surprised.

On October 28, Buffalo is hosting the MAC Championships. What is the difference between racing on the road and racing in Buffalo and how much of an advantage does racing on a familiar course provide you?

Because I’m sort of inexperienced, I’m never really quite comfortable on any of the courses. I know they’re all pretty well marked but I don’t actually know where exactly to push myself. Because we have raced on this course and we have trained on this course, I’m pretty sure where all the mile-markers are and I know what parts I want to push myself and the part where you have to go for it. Also having fans out there is great, we had our invitational meet here in September and it was great, so many people showed up. The weather was disgusting but there was just an amazing amount of people there and I think it will be even better this weekend.

Your season begins in the summer and ends at the end of fall. How hard is it adjusting to the difference in temperature as your season progresses?

We actually have been pretty lucky, this has been a mild fall and I think it’s only been the last week or so that it has gotten cold so we’re still doing workouts with short-sleeves and shorts on so, for me the biggest problem is running in the summer because I have a real issue dealing with heat.

In general, cross-country is assumed to be more of an individual sport. Considering the fact that there is both individual scoring and team scoring, is there any team strategy involved in the race?

We go out and we have our pace groups that we train with in practice and we go out and try to stay with them and push each other for the first mile of the race and a lot of it comes in the race when you see one of your teammates struggling, saying maybe, ‘Hey, come on, lets move together’ or maybe at the end when you know your teammate has something left because they’re a sprinter and they have that final kick and you don’t have that, sort of telling them ‘Let’s go now’ and that little push means maybe they finished ahead of you but you’ve pushed them a little bit ahead so the team scoring all together gets a little better.

As your season progresses towards the MAC championships, how does your training change?

At the beginning of the season we did a lot of tempo work for our workouts for the first two weeks and then we went into a really intense period of really hard interval training, which is a little faster paced. Now, we’re going into more of a mixture of tempo and interval pace and this last week we’re really tapering down and doing some light, longer tempo workouts.

Last weekend, you were one of the top-three UB women to finish at the Cornell Invite. How exciting is it to be making such an immediate impact in just your first year on the team?

I think it’s been exciting all season, that experience to be in the top-seven because I definitely didn’t expect that. I thought maybe I would get to race the home meet and maybe one or two others. It’s been really exciting for me and I think one of the things that is really beneficial for me isn’t necessarily that I’m such a good runner, I think it’s that four years of racing experience on the water has really transferred really well into the running.

What do you like to do for fun in your free time?

I play the piano a little bit. I like to read, I like to cook, and I like to sleep.

What has been your favorite moment as a UB student-athlete?

Finishing the first race we ran in this season as Akron. It was not only my first cross-country race as a college athlete, it was my first cross-country race ever and it was really only maybe the fourth 5K that I have ever done. I think I placed 16th or 19th and it wasn’t like a super-competitive meet but I think it was really exciting for me because I proved to myself that I could go out there and race and that I actually belonged on the team, which was really exciting for me.