Air Force Academy Falcon Sean Houseworth took 15^th place at the NCAA Championships in the 10,000-meter run before competing in the longest track event at the USA Championships. Houseworth recently graduated and is toying with the idea of moving up to the half-marathon/marathon distances before making a run at the 2012 Olympic Trials.

Since the USA Championships, what have you been doing? Any running?

I'm taking some time off. I'm back home where I grew up in Illinois. I'm just back home, hanging out with the family and golfing a lot.

You pretty good?

Decent. I play quite a bit during the summers. I like to try it. I've never established an official handicap or anything, but I usually shoot around 75-85. Somewhere around there.

Any tournaments or just out with your buddies?

Just out with my buddies. My grandparents got me started when I was really young. I was like 10 and they got me started. But, I don't do any tournaments or anything.

What's your strength? Long game or short game?

It used to be my long game. I'm not hitting it very long anymore. Once you move back to those tees, it makes it a lot harder. I'd say my shorter game. I've been putting pretty well...especially this summer.

Are you going to be getting back into running soon?

I'll be back into running in about a week or so. I just wanted to take a couple of weeks off after USAs to get my legs back under me and everything. I'll be running pretty soon and will probably do a half marathon in the fall. I'm trying to figure out if we're going to be moving up to the roads or staying on the track. I'll do a couple of half marathons and see what's up.

Can you explain what happened to you at USAs?

Abdi (Abdirahman) was throwing a lot of surges in there. Our plan was to be pretty aggressive and stay with the group as long as it wasn't going to dip under 14 minutes for the 5k. I was going to stay up there and make sure that there were no gaps getting away from me. I tried to stay in there and on one of the moves he made, I responded to it pretty quickly. I've had a hamstring issue this year. It's kind of off and on and it came back to bite me a little bit. It tightened up on me when I responded to one of those moves. It wasn't like a pull, but it kept me from running as fast as I needed to. Right at 5k, when Ritz (Dathan Ritzenhein) took over and they started running consistently quick, I just couldn't go with it. I couldn't run any faster than 68-69. I was going backward and I decided to drop out. Coach Juli (Henner) told me to not make it any worse once I started dropping back. I just stepped off.

You could have handled two 14-minute 5ks, back-to-back?

That's what we were going for. We wanted to be aggressive. It had been a long season. The 28:33 that I ran at Stanford had been my first on the track that I'd really gone after. We were cautious there and wanted to make sure that that went well. After that, we knew that USAs would be the next one to go after. We wanted to be aggressive then and things just didn't turn out. I felt like I had another good effort in me. Another PR—at least we were hoping for that. Sometimes things don't work out like that. In the next couple of years I'll have a good shot to get under that 28-minute barrier, I'm sure.

What's the immediate plan after you just graduated?

The Air Force has a neat program called, “The World Class Athlete Program”. What it is, is it's a program that lets you train for the two years before an Olympic Trials. As long as you hit certain times, you can train for the Olympic Trials. I hit the time for the 10k, but since we're three years out from the next Trials, we're trying to get a one-year extension. We don't know if that's going to happen yet or not. I studied environmental engineering in the academy and that's my job for the Air Force. My first assignment in California. I'll probably be out there a year before I'm put on the World Class Athlete Program and am allowed to train full time. I'll be running for this next year, hopefully getting in a couple of good races and staying sharp for when the next few years roll around.

So, you're currently doing “Plan B”, hoping that “Plan A” comes around?

Exactly. Running is definitely going to happen. It's just a matter of whether I'll have a job to do as well. I don't know whether or not I'll be deployable this next year or not. We'll have to find that out as well. Right now, it looks like I'll be in California for a year, doing engineering and I'll be able to run the two years leading up to the Trials. That will be really nice. I know I have two years, it's just if I get that third year or not. I'm looking forward to being able to train full time from at least 2010 to 2012.

What specifically does being in that program get you? A stipend? All the training facilities and athletic trainers? That sort of thing?

Yeah. It allows me to train where ever I want to and choose a coach that I want. Basically, they want any athlete in the program to feel comfortable where they're at to get ready the best they can. What I would probably do is go back to Colorado Springs and train under Coach Juli at the academy and use all the facilities there. We have have great stuff there as far as trainers, training staff and all that good stuff. I definitely look forward to being back out there, running and training. Colorado Springs is a great place to train with the trails, especially on the academy grounds there's a lot of great places to run.

Do you know anyone else who's tried to get a year extension? Do you know what your chances are that you'll get it?

I don't know too many people who have had that. I know we had a javelin thrower, Dana Pound, she was on the program for three years I'm pretty sure. Might have been two years. We had a pole vaulter, Paul Gensic, who was on it for three years. They're trying to get back on the program right now as well. I don't know if that happened yet. They were both at USAs as well. Even with your job in the Air Force, it's not perfect, but you can still train for your sport. It's a pretty big deal either way. As far as a stipend, you get your normal officer's pay and I think there's an additional stipend for equipment and travel. I don't know how much, but that's how it works. It's nice, it's like your full-time job to train and get ready for the Trials.

What are the chances that you move up to the roads?

We really don't know yet. The main motivation behind doing a couple of half marathons this year is to see what my best chances are. When we do and have a shot at being at the Trials, in whatever event, hopefully we can be as competitive as possible. We want to see if that's the marathon or staying on the track for the 10,000. Coach Juli is convinced that I have more foot speed than I think. Hopefully she's right. I think if the half marathons go well this year...maybe she'll let me try to full marathon—I don't know. That might change the training a little bit. We just want to see how my body responds to a little bit different training, more oriented to the marathon. Then we'll see what I can be the most competitive at. Either way, the half is an experiment. Nothing is set in stone, no matter what we do this year. We're still going to have to sit down and talk things through, see what we want to pursue, especially with how different the marathon and the 10,000 are.

I have this idea that military food is not all that good, so your answer to my next question might be interesting: if you could have one meal prepared, by anyone, what would it be and who would make it?

The food at Air Force is definitely different. I grew up in a really small town in Illinois. We did a lot of home cooking. That was kind of a culture shock at the academy. It takes some getting used to. The only real outlets you have from the mess hall are restaurants in town. It's different. Once I got used to it, it was fine. There were some meals that I didn't like, but it wasn't terrible. As far as one meal that I would have, it would be my mother's meatloaf. That was the best thing growing up. We'd have meatloaf and mashed potatoes and corn. We grow a lot of things here in our place in Illinois as far as fruits and vegetables and stuff. The one vegetable that's so good, when you cut it and put the grill or steam it and put it on the plate is asparagus. Fresh asparagus from the garden is just amazing. That's the number one meal that comes to mind. Asparagus and meatloaf from mom. That's always good!

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

One that sticks out in my mind is when I first started at the academy. The academy is a little different. The summer going into your freshman year, you're in basic training for six weeks. You go through boot camp and don't get to run for those six weeks. We had a break in our training. When you start XC, you start from scratch, you've had a lot of time off. You're pretty tired from basic and you've got to get back into things. The first few weeks on the team are a little rough, with altitude, where I've been never been before. My first run my freshman year, we started on a huge hill and it's kind of like halfway up a mountain. The first half of your runs there are always down hill. You realize when you're on the way back up that you're at 7,000 feet. It's not a fun place to run. That first practice, we only ran like five miles, but it felt like a lot longer. Coming back up, these afternoon storms roll in and we got hailed on big time. It was big hail! I've never seen hail like that before. It was hitting us hard and we were only like a mile out from our indoor track. We just high tailed it back, we didn't duck under any trees or anything. It was the worst thing imaginable because you're trying to run hard back uphill at altitude. We were all just freshman running there and we got back and were like, “man, this place sucks!” It was crazy because we never saw hail like that again in our four years there. It was the worst weather conditions we had to run in...and that was on our first day!