Post-Race Quotes - Women

Reported by Parker Morse

Tara Chaplin
In 1997 when the NCAA cross-country championships were last held at Furman University, the race was supposed to be the coronation of Arizona's Amy Skieresz. Instead it was a coming-out party for Villanova's Carrie Tollefson. Tara Chaplin overlapped one year with Skieresz at Arizona, but it would be reading too much into the race to say that Chaplin was trying to make up for Skieresz' loss. Chaplin ran to win for herself, to finally make good on the potential she'd shown since high school.

Not many athletes win running from the front, and it's a very rare winner who gets caught after leading early, and then comes back to win. Chaplin usually runs away from a pack that never sees her again; this time she had to both lead and come from behind. She gives credit to the heavy load of mileage she runs all year, but her training log is barely half as impressive as the mental focus she needed to take back the lead after the chase pack caught up.

On the win: "It's great. I've been wanting to win this championship since my freshman year. I'm so happy for our team, I was so excited when I found out that we got fourth."

On her training: "We tapered last week. We did a lot of short, fast intervals, faster than race pace. We were working on turnover and leg speed. I still do over-hundred-mile weeks. I did my last one last week. My coach and I have reached a compromise: I can run all the miles I want, but I have to do every interval."

On race strategy: "We planned not to get caught in the pack. It's really hard to move from 101st to 1st. We decided to go out and run hard. I wasn't nervous at all, I like to run from the front."

On being passed: "I was trying to hang on, because I knew we had a big hill coming, and downhills are a strong part of my race. So I was really focusing on staying within sight of the leaders going down that hill.

"It's mentally really hard when you get passed and you're that tired, because you think they're stronger than you. It was hard just to stay focused and realize that I just had to go out there and run.

"I really pushed it down the hill, because I don't have the strength to run the uphills as fast as some of the other girls, but I know I can run a downhill."

On being back in the lead: "I was surprised that she came back to me. She probably got ten meters on me at the 5k mark. But I could hear my dad telling me I was catching her, and I've learned after twenty-some years that he's always right about these things."

On what was happening behind her: "I didn't know Shalane was walking, not until after the finish. The girl who finished second told me she was walking. You never look back.

On looking strong at the finish: "It didn't feel like that [strong]. That was the hardest I have ever fought at the end of a race. This was definitely my best finishing kick. My coach worries about my kick, he likes me to have a lead."

On the warm day: "The conditions were more of a factor last year [when it was extremely cold in Iowa]. This year it really just evened the playing field. This wasn't hot. High tens [over 110 F] is hot. This is beautiful weather, the best that we could hope for."

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Renee Metivier
You could be forgiven for not picking Renee Metivier for a top-three finish, given that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke optimistically of her finishing in the top thirty. Winning the South regional isn't often considered the sign of a title contender, and Georgia Tech has had just one cross-country All-American before in the women's race.

Metivier, however, arrived in the media tent as composed as if she'd been shutting down NCAA track champions her entire collegiate career. She'd laid down a race plan and stuck to it, and if the winner she chased in to the chute was Tara Chaplin and not Shalane Flanagan, she certainly wasn't going to complain - not even when other reporters started a second press conference with Chaplin on the far side of the tent.

On her finish: "I came in this season not quite expecting this, but I've been getting better every race. Last week kind of prepared me for this, and the ACC Championships with Shalane. She got me good, so I knew what was going to happen here. My coach has been preparing me for this, and giving me a lot of confidence in myself, and because I've been progressing each week, we saw that I would have a chance."

"I wanted to be top three, but I didn't know. I saw myself being top ten, and I knew it would take a lot of heart and a lot of guts to be up there, but I wanted to be up there.

On winning the South: "The South district is getting better. We're hoping we'll get some more respect. Last year we weren't considered part of the group that was supposed to be here. I think we're trying to build that up more."

On her race plans: "My goal was to stay right on Shalane's shoulder for most of the race. I was supposed to try to pick up the pace around two and a half miles."

"I didn't follow Shalane too closely, because she does a lot of surging and relaxing, and I'm more of a continuous-paced runner. I tried to not let her get too far ahead, and keyed off that pack.

On what happened when Shalane passed Chaplin: "I didn't know what was going on ahead, I just tried to key off Lauren Fleshman. I knew she was trying to get us up there. I'll admit, I was hurting, but I pushed through, because I thought, I have to stay."

On moving into second: "It really did surprise me [to see Shalane walking]. I didn't expect it because she's been running so well this season. But she did it before, in high school. I'm the same year as her. I expected her to win, that's why my goal was to stay on her shoulder. I was surprised when I saw her walking, but she toughed it out and finished, so I give her a lot of credit."

On holding up at the end: "I usually have a pretty good finish. I'm very good at toughing it out. You have to be very tough on this course, on those hills at the end. That helped me a lot. It also helped to have run Pre-Nationals, and to see the course. It gave me a lot of confidence in knowing where to go and where not to, using my strengths and weaknesses from the Pre-Nationals. I tried to use that."

On her track plans: "I did the steeple last year, it was my first year. But I think I may go to the 5k this year. I'm starting to get a lot better, and I'd like to see if I can break sixteen minutes. But I'll probably end up doing some of both, the 5k and the steeple."

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Lauren Fleshman
Lauren Fleshman, a junior from Stanford, had the best previous credentials in the top three. The defending NCAA outdoor 5000m champion, Fleshman has flourished at Stanford under pressure that frequently overwhelms the girls who beat her in high school. Beyond that, she is capable of gathering her thoughts quickly after a race and facing the media with reasoned, honest, and even interesting responses to the same old questions.

On her race: "I'm happy, I definitely ran the best I could on this day. That's what I always go out there to do. Unfortunately two people ran faster than I did. I'm happy that I did well; if I look sad, it's because I'm sad for my team. That was my number one priority out there, to share that with them.

On Stanford's team plan: "The strategy was to get out fairly hard and move up through the pack. We had our sights set on certain positions. We just considered what we could control, which was what place we got, and how we ran to get that place. I was shooting for first place, or anywhere in that range.

On how it worked out for her: "The pack was closing in on Tara past two miles, and then the gears just started to shift a little more than I could handle, and they got a bit of a gap on me. I don't think I ever caught Tara, she stayed in front of me the whole time. I might have closed on her a little, but I never caught her."

On passing Shalane: "I was trying to win up to the last step. Even after the first girl had crossed the line. It set off a light bulb, that you never know what's going to happen in this race, you've got to keep yourself moving forward as fast as you can until you cross the line. It isn't over, someone could stop right before the line. So I didn't get a good look at Shalane, I just kept going."

On her ball-point body art: "I have the names of my teammates here, we all wrote them on our left hands. We had a gut-check point at three-and-a-half K, to look down and remember who we were running for."

On the two extra safety pins on her uniform: "The pins are a tradition, they're pins from other races. Your season builds as it goes along, and I think it's really important to remember where you're coming from and where you've been, even the races where you finish really poorly. It's a way for me to remember when I put my uniform on in the morning, I can look at it and know what I am, who I am. I've run more than two races this year, I had to recycle some for my number. It's a good safety mechanism for that too."

On how individuals handle team expectations: "I think it's easier to run for a place near the top ten than it is in the middle of the pack. That's an incredible challenge, and as you see, only about twenty-five runners do well at Nationals. Every year we try to have a couple more girls do well at one time, but it's hard."

On the team results: "Arizona definitely ran well today. They were excited, you could see it on their faces from when they got on the course, that they were going to go out there and run well. I had a feeling that they would run well. So it's not disappointing to lose to anybody, it's disappointing not to run as well as you thought you could have run run, as a team. That's the only thing to really worry about, out here, just that we're Stanford, and how well can we run as Stanford. It doesn't matter which four or five teams were ahead of is - we could have run better than we finished."

On the depth of talent at Stanford: "I think a lot of people underestimate how tough it is, running at Stanford. I think that it's something you've just got to learn to deal with. It's an added challenge that some people might even see it as a negative when they're choosing a school to go to, that they might not even make the top seven. But you have the opportunity by going there to do something really incredible if you seize that opportunity. It's in your hands, it depends on the person. It's not the school that makes you - it's you that makes you. I just wanted to go to the best program, in my mind, so that I could become the best runner I could."