Interview with Sarah Schwald
by Scott Douglas

(Photo: Victor Sailer/New York Road Runners)

Sarah Schwald will run her first cross country race in years at the USA Cross Country Championships, to be held February 18 and 19 at Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx. Schwald, who was on the U.S. team for the World Cross Country Championships in 2001, will contest the 4K at this month’s meet.

Known primarily as a miler, Schwald’s bests include 4:04.33 for 1500 meters, 4:34.02 for the mile and 8:51.68 for 3,000 meters. In 2001, she represented the U.S. at the World Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Last year, she was ranked third in the country at 1500 meters.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Arkansas, where she was an indoor 3,000-meter champion, Schwald moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 2000 to train under Peter Tegen. This past November, she relocated to Boulder, Colorado to be coached by Brad Hudson, whose athletes also include leading men’s cross country contenders Dathan Ritzenhein and Jorge Torres.

Fast-Women: After several years in Wisconsin, why did you move to Boulder last fall?
Sarah Schwald: My old coach [Peter Tegen] took the Stanford job, so that presented a pretty big change. I wasn’t immediately thinking about moving, but I wasn’t exactly sure how his new job would affect me out there. I knew that he would have a big responsibility there, coaching both the men and women. The sheer number of people he would be coaching made it prohibitive that he could give post-collegiate runners the attention he had given us before, so I started researching my options.

FW: So how did you end up with Brad Hudson?
SS: Brad called me. Once I knew Peter was going to Stanford, I decided I wasn’t going to make any decisions until the end of my season. My last race was at the end of September. The timing was uncanny—I flew back from my last race, and Brad called me. He wasn’t even on my radar. I knew that he had worked with Shayne [Culpepper]. I thought she was the only woman he was coaching, and I didn’t think she would want him coaching one of her competitors. But then I learned they had parted ways, and that he wanted to coach one woman. We had a lot of talks and e-mail. I wanted to be sure we were on the same page—I had vivid ideas about the type of work I needed.

FW: Such as?
SS: I wanted to do more volume and more aerobic work. I had done a lot of track work specific to running the 1500. I wanted to explore doing more threshold work and moving to the 5,000.

FW: How have you adjusted to being at altitude? Like, how do you track your progress, because not only are your workout times going to be slower than in Wisconsin, but any time you move to a new place, you don’t have your old loops to check times on.
SS: It’s not been too bad. I lived at altitude all of junior high and part of high school. More foreign to me so far is the training, doing different things. But I sort of changed everything at once—different training, different altitude, different coach—so I’m not sure I can point to one variable and separate that out.

FW:So how do you know what to make of your times? How do you know if you’ve had a good track workout, for example? ?
SS: I still struggle with that a lot—you can’t take workouts from sea level and translate them to up here. I’ll often do something and can’t believe how slow it is. You have to throw all those comparisons out the window. Brad knows what the times up here mean, so I have to trust him that I’m running the right pace. Also, I’m now doing workouts I’ve never done before, like tempo runs and 1,000s, so at least with those there’s no comparison to what I used to run for them.

FW: How often do you run with others??
SS: I do the majority of runs by myself. I maybe run with the guys in the group one or two times a week. For hard workouts, there’s a guy that we have in town, Carl Kinney, who runs with me. He’s about a 14:20 5K guy, so that’s a big help. It’s a big difference, having someone there who’s a lot better than you. He’s there specifically for my workout, so my main focus is on running the workout consistently.

That’s part of what’s great about being part of the group here—I get help with everything, all the little things that make a difference. As soon as I moved here, I had training partners, I knew where to run, I had my own little support network set up. Right away they found me a massage therapist and a doctor.

FW: How much more volume are you doing? What would be your biggest week in Wisconsin, compared to your biggest week since moving to Boulder? ?
SS: Probably a 70-mile week would have been my biggest week before. Now I’m in the 80s, and consistently. But it’s not like every week is the same—some are higher, some are lower. Brad makes me a schedule for the week, but it’s not written in stone. A lot depends on how the day before, or two days before went, and how I’m responding to that.

FW: You’re doing cross country nationals. When was your last cross country race?
SS: In 2001 in Belgium [at the world championships]. That was actually the only time I tried out for the world cross team and made it. Everyone said that was the worst year ever—worst conditions, worst course, worst weather. It was windy, cold, muddy, and I’m not much of a mudder.

FW: Have you done training specifically for cross country?
SS: In terms of workouts on grass, no. But I’ve been doing more mileage, longer intervals. I’m definitely a lot stronger. As far as racing, it’s going to be interesting. Because of the training I’ve been doing, I feel like a different athlete, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen. My first few races this year will be big indicators if we’re on the right track.

FW: If you make the team, will you run worlds?
SS: Definitely. Not running worlds if you have the opportunity is something I don’t really understand—it doesn’t interfere with the rest of your year, and it’s a great experience. If we were to send our best people every year, we would have a chance of medaling. And I think any time you have a chance to represent your country, that’s good. If I’m in shape to run well at nationals, then I definitely want to see how I do at that next level of competition.

FW: When you talk about moving up to the 5K, do you mean still concentrating on the 1500 with some 5K dabbling, or vice versa? ?
SS: I’d say more exploring the 5,000 for now, not concentrating on it. I want to take the time for Brad to learn about me as an athlete, and for me to see how the training goes. So still primarily the 1500. But to run a better 1500, I think I need to be able to run a really good 5,000. A lot of the women I run against in the 1500 can run under 15:00 for 5,000, and that’s not their primary event.

FW: Will you run a lot of early outdoor meets to see how the training is going?
SS: No. I’ll run a few as tests, but I’ll probably keep a schedule similar to what I’ve done before—a couple before outdoor nationals, and then the bulk of my racing in Europe over the summer. You can’t really stay race sharp from May through early September.

FW: You’re now 33, which is by no means ancient, but still, you’re running against women in the mile in their early 20s. What’s different compared to ten years ago?
SS: The only difference is that now I have more experience, more knowledge, which is invaluable. I certainly wish I knew then some of what I know now.

FW:Such as?
SS: A lot of it is now having more confidence in what I’m doing. Americans tend to have the mentality that working harder is always the key to success—we like to think that the person who works the hardest wins. But what matters is not always working harder, but smarter. A lot of Americans don’t recover properly. Now I know that there’s a value to all components of your training, and that all the little things are just as important as working hard. But we’re brought up with this philosophy that as long as you work harder than your competitors, you’ll be better than them. That’s not an attitude that keeps you healthy.

For example, here, a lot of guys have the mentality that they won’t run with women. They think it’s not worth their time, that they’re not working hard enough, even if it’s running with Paula Radcliffe. In Europe, the top men don’t have that mentality. There, I’ll be heading out to run and guys will say, “Can I tag along?” Their ego just doesn’t come into play. They know that every mile has a specific purpose and that all have equal weight. It’s a big reason why they’re able to stay healthy and have continuity. I’ll be running with 13:00 5,000-meter runners, and it will seem like I’m the one pushing the pace. They’re just jogging along. But then you see them doing incredible things on the track.

Editor's Note: Sarah Schwald placed 5th in the 4K at the 2006 USA XC Championships, with a time of 12:49.

(Interview conducted February 3, 2006 and posted February 8, 2006.)