FW: How often do you get your iron levels checked?
JD: You know, not enough. I usually get tested in the fall and then sometime toward the end of indoor season or during outdoor season and usually around March my levels start to slip a bit. I had it tested at the end of the indoor season and it wasn’t great, but it was still okay. Then, I ended up getting it tested again six weeks later and it’s the lowest it has been since my freshman year of college. I don’t know exactly what was going on; maybe I wasn’t eating enough red meat. It’s hard to say. There are so many factors involved and it’s so frustrating to try to keep up on it. It’s something that you have to be really aggressive about. It’s something that all of the women in my family have struggled with, my mom and my sisters. I think part of it is just genetic. It was kind of shocking to see such a low number, especially when I felt like I was doing what I needed to do, but hopefully I am doing enough now to keep my levels up.

FW: So do you make it a point now to have more red meat in your diet?
JD: Yeah, I have been eating so much steak it’s ridiculous. I’ve been really trying to push the natural sources. I still take my supplements, but I was taking supplements when my levels were low, so my guess is that I just wasn’t getting enough of the natural iron from the red meat. My poor husband; he feels like I’m going to give him a heart attack.

FW: In your most recent journal entry, you mentioned how you decided not to compete in indoor nationals in order to have some time to regroup after some performances that weren’t up to par in January and February. Was that time off helpful for you?
JD: I think it was the best decision I could have made. It was the first time I missed an indoor or outdoor championship since 1999 [laughing], so it was almost like I didn’t realize it was an option; I was just expecting that I was always going to do all of them. Luckily Reebok didn’t have a problem with it. It just ended up being a really smart decision.

I was just in a really bad place. I tried to work out a couple of times the week before [indoor nationals] and I couldn’t even really get through the first couple of intervals. So, I took some down time and sat down with my coach and talked about goals and set the major goal of making the Olympic team; [we discussed] what we needed to do to get there in the next year. We tweaked some things with my training and backed my mileage up a little bit, and we decided to focus a lot more on the 1500. Despite the iron problem, I do feel a lot better. I feel like hopefully it will be a good season.

FW: Do your feel like your concentration on the 1500 is already helping you better prepare for competition?
JD: Yeah, I definitely do. Usually between indoor nationals and the first couple of outdoor races, I’ll maybe run some road races and do some longer things. Because I don’t have the [Olympic] A-standard, we decided we’d skip some of that stuff and start a little earlier with some of the more 1500-meter specific workouts, knowing that I needed to really be ready to race earlier this year, by the middle of May when the big meets happen. I think it’s made a difference. I feel pretty fit, and ready to race.

FW: Give me an example of a key workout or two.
JD: We’ve done more race-simulation things. I’ll do 800s or 1000s at or faster than race pace, not a lot of them, but enough to simulate the feeling of being in a race. I’ll maybe do two or three intervals like that. We’re also working on finishing hard, so we’ll do something where I have to kick the last 200 of a longer interval. The combination of getting some speed work in and some race-specific work in and taking out a little bit more of the longer runs is a great combination. I feel like I got a good base [down] in the fall; we’re still doing some of the longer stuff but just not as much.

FW: Tell me more about how you coordinate your training schedule with your work schedule as a physical therapist.
JD: I have the best ally in the scheduling department at my job. This woman named Debbie is fantastic and she works with me to fit my patients around my training schedule. The one difficult thing is that I can’t change it on a daily basis; like right now, I have patients scheduled for the next three or four weeks. I can’t change things. It’s just not fair to the patients to have to call them up and reschedule. So, we set out my schedule based on what I anticipate my training to be like from now through the summer. In the summer, I generally work out in the morning and in the winter we have to work out in the afternoon in order to get to use the indoor track, so it just flips flops depending on the time of year and I just give [Debbie] a heads up and she changes my template in the computer accordingly. That’s pretty much it.

Sometimes I can’t work out with the team. For instance, maybe they will have a hard workout Tuesday morning, but I have to work Tuesday morning, so I’ll work out on my own in the afternoon. I’ll just go to the high school track and I really don’t mind that. It doesn’t bother me; I’ve spent a lot of time training on my own. I’ve been doing this for so long, that I don’t really need anybody there. It’s nice as long as I have Dennis there for some of the key workouts.

FW: What percent of the time would you say you train on your own and what percent of the time do you train with the team?
JD: This year I have been doing almost all of my workouts on my own, but that’s not necessarily due to my work schedule. We have a couple of people coming back from injuries and the only other person who is really healthy and racing right now consistently is Katie [McGregor] and we’re now at completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of our events.

FW: Right, Katie has moved up in distance.
JD: Yup, she’s doing a lot more longer stuff. We run a lot of our easy runs together just because she’s my neighbor. She lives less than a half mile away from me, so it’s great because we get each other out the door for easy runs. I think about 90 percent of my workouts are by myself. In a normal year, it’s probably closer to 50 percent.

FW: I want to ask you about your dog Dante, who you also mentioned in your journal. You explained how he’s helping you to rest more. Is this still the case?
JD: He’s just been great all around. Having a pet is great. I’m a little bit of a high strung person and I think he has mellowed me out quite a bit. There may be dog hair all over the house, but I just have to say “Who cares!” I love going to dog parks too because it is so relaxing. My husband and I love to go and sit on a picnic table and watch Dante run around and watch all of the dogs interact. It’s just such a nice place to be outside and to relax. It’s so nice just to take him for a short walk after dinner, not walking for miles and miles on my feet, but just nice, short walks.

FW: As a physical therapist, is there any particular condition that you most enjoy treating?
JD: I like the more challenging injuries. With running injuries, it’s almost always challenging. You know, it’s never just tendonitis; there’s usually something else going on like weakness here or there or instability. I like working with the chronic, vague conditions. It’s fun to put people on the treadmill and analyze their gait and see some subtleties and pick things out that they didn’t notice, things that will make a difference for them. There are a lot of runners here; that’s all I know. There are so many runners here running on a pretty competitive level too. They are always coming in, especially around marathon time.

FW: Does your physical therapy knowledge help you to determine what’s going on with yourself when you experience pain or injuries?
JD: Yeah, definitely. It’s kind of like the medical student problem though when you study things and you feel like you have everything you are reading about. No really though, it’s helped me to catch things early and know when it’s okay to run and when it’s not okay to run through it.

It’s great being in the clinic too, like if I need to ultrasound my foot, I can take care of it right away or I can have a co-worker help me if I have a question or I want to have somebody look at something. Sometimes it’s not just me treating myself; it’s just being in that environment and having the access to brilliant therapists that can help me right there on the spot if I need it. I maybe take advantage of it too much [laughing]; they’re wonderful. They’re really amazing.

FW: Are there any measures you take in your training specifically to prevent injuries?
JD: Yeah, definitely, strengthening. I have always been more into strengthening that stretching, my whole career, not because I thought that was the right thing to do but because I didn’t really like to spend a lot of time stretching [laughing]. Now that there’s research coming out that says maybe all of the stretching that we thought was so good for us isn’t, I’m kind of happy to know that I have been doing the right thing all along. I spend a lot of time on core strength. That’s pretty much it.

FW: So, you are racing in a couple of hours. Do you have any goals for this race?
JD: To win [laughing], I guess.

[Editor’s Update: Deatherage won the Medtronic TC 1 Mile in a time of 4:52, 12 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Rebecca Tallam. This race is a slow course with three sharp turns and a long upgrade]

FW: There’s nothing quite like those one-mile road races.
JD: Yeah, this is in downtown Minneapolis. I watched it last year. It looked like fun, so I’m excited to participate this year!

Interview conducted on May 3, 2007, and posted on May 4, 2007.