Runners can get themselves into really interesting situations and Seattle Pacific’s Jane Larson is no different. “Crazy things always seem to happen to me when I run, [but] maybe I put myself in these situations” she exclaims.  According to Larson, “I happen to injure myself a lot on runs. In high school I crawled across the finish line at the end of the 3200 at state. I got hit with a soccer ball in the stomach while finishing an XC race. In college I ran into a yucca plant in CA and got a hole in my leg. [And once], I slid down an icy hill while running in the winter and broke my wrist, requiring surgery and a cast.”

Perhaps Larson’s oddest running experience came when she was traveling abroad.  “Night runs with headlamps are always fun,” she says, but she did notice that “people thought I was crazy when I went on runs in Africa this past summer.” Last summer, Larson traveled to Africa, where she led a group of six students doing missionary work through Seattle Pacific Reachout International. This team worked with a grassroots organization called BERUDEP (Belo Rural Development), which is run by about ten Cameroonians who want to reach out to help the needs of their own community. Larson explains, “I worked on an environmental project dealing with plastic waste/usage education. It was an incredible experience and I learned a lot about God, other people and myself. It was nice to be there long enough to actually get to know people, but it was not too long so [that] I still was able to train when I got home. I also got to go on some gorgeous runs on the red clay/dirt roads over there, and got a lot of people laughing at me as they don't often see white girls, much less one running and covered in mud.”

Jane began running in eighth grade and she won numerous state titles for Cedar Park Christian High school, a small 1A private school in Bothell, Washington. Her senior year in high school, she won four state titles in track and field (3200, mile, 800 and 4x400m). “We did not have an XC team until my friend and I started it my sophomore year with five other girls. We had to figure out our workouts on our own a lot and I learned a lot about running and training and taking ownership of my running and learning to love it too” she recalls.

This desire to cultivate her love of running brought Jane to Seattle Pacific, though it took her some time to come around to the idea. “At first I did not want to go to SPU, as both of my parents and many relatives have gone here and I wanted to break the mold and go somewhere across the country. However, with running in the picture, as I looked at other programs at other often bigger schools, I was constantly drawn back to the small-team/ individual training and focus of the Seattle Pacific team. I loved the tradition of excellence that SPU has even though it is a smaller school and all of the experience that our head coach at the time, Doris Heritage, had under her belt,” she states. “Most of all, I loved the heart of the SPU team there was a fun loving spirit but also a hard-working attitude that is a part of this team that I have experienced consistently in my 3 years here” she ends.

This fun-loving spirit and hard-working attitude has led to success for Larson, who is an All-American in cross country and track and field, and was the runner-up in the 3000 meters at last year’s Outdoor National Championships. With this success in mind, she has set her goals for this indoor season. “My indoor goals for this year are to be in the top three in both the mile and 5k at Nationals and do all that I can to help my team win conference and place high at Nationals. I also want to keep cutting my mile time down and especially my 5k as I have only run it once this season and think I have lots of room to grow on the more distance end of things,” Larson states. 

Larson will be putting much hard work into hit these goals. Explaining the team’s focus on individualization, based on each athlete’s event, Larson states, “Our training is unique in that as far as mileage goes, we stay relatively low, although each person is unique.” During “both XC [and] in track,” she continues, the team focuses “more on quality and intensity rather than junk miles when we don't always need them.”   Larson describes a trademark "tough" workout, as “1000 meter repeats on a hilly, but beautiful, trail in a park near our school.” She concludes, “Our new head coach Erika Daligcon is also really doing a great job of keeping the great things that Doris  [the former coach] had us doing while implementing some new weight work/other training, etc.” 

It is not all work. Larson describes the team dynamics  and their non-athletic bond, explaining “We have lots of fun. We work really hard and we really try [to] support each other. Our women's team meets in a cadre ‘small group’ one day of the week outside of practice, where we pray and have a devotional time. I really appreciate the Christ-centered spiritual aspect of our team. We run every race for God's glory and often we dedicate races, XC especially, to those we are inspired by or want to encourage. We are pretty goofy and like to do have random movie parties, dinners, scavenger hunts, ‘egg-nog miles,’ game nights and pranking between the guys and girls teams (the girls always win too).”

Larson is ready for Nationals, and has had plenty of experience this season against top-notch competition. At the University of Washington Indoor Preview, she raced against Olympian Kara Goucher and Sara Vaughn. “It was so much fun! I felt very blessed to be in the race and to compete against the best. I just thought ‘I'm going to try to hold onto the pack and compete in this race because I belong here too!’ I also knew what pace they would be running and wanted to use them, but [to] run smart, [staying] within the time range[and] my fitness level,” she explains.

Larson has not thought too much about what she will do once she graduates. She is only a junior after all, but it is likely that she will put herself into interesting situations once again. She concludes, “I'm not sure yet. I've thought about teaching English, and possibly coaching in another country for a while, continuing on this journey of my own running career (professionally) if it that is an option for me when I graduate, [or] going to grad school among other things. We will see” she concludes.