Cal-Berkeley Golden Bear sophomore Deborah Maier has big goals for this cross country season. She wants to lead her Golden Bear harrier squad to the NCAA Division I Championships in Terra Haute, Indiana. She recently placed 13^th overall in the White Race at the Pre-National Meet, running 21 minutes, 0.3 seconds over the 6,000-meter cross country course.

Can you give me your team goals this season?

I think more than anything we just want to qualify for Nationals. We haven't a team qualify in, I think it's been, close to 20 years on the women's side. The men's team has qualified the last few years. We're just looking to make it to that level this year and hopefully do well there. As of right now, I think we're ranked 34^th on the Kolas Calculator and obviously 32 teams get to make it to Nationals. We really want to focus on Regionals and beating some teams there and hopefully qualify.

How does your team stack up against other Cal teams in the past as far as you know?

I know last year at Regionals, we were seventh and the year before eighth. It's really just been an upward trend. From what I know, the women had a solid team in the late 80s and early 90s, then there was this decline. Now it's steadily been building back up. Hopefully this year we'll be at the level where we can qualify for Nationals.

And you've got a few more years of cross country and can be part of that upward trend.

Yeah! That was one of the reasons that I came to Cal. A lot of times, at the other programs I was looking at, you can just become another face on the team. But at Cal, I felt like I was coming here to actually take part in that movement and bring the program up. I know last year was a really good year for the women on the recruiting side. We had quite a few women, new freshman girls, that have been on the team. This year our top seven are all sophomores and freshman with one senior. We're a pretty young team.

So you went there knowing you'd be a leader more than just one of the girls in the top seven?

I don't know if I so much came knowing I would be a leader, but I knew that I'd make an impact on the team right away, whereas in a lot of programs, freshman don't make the top seven and work their way up. I came in expecting to make an impact, but not necessarily being the number one or number two runner.

Speaking about your personal impact, what are your individual goals this season?

I didn't run at NCAAs last year because we obviously didn't qualify. I think individually I would love to finish in the top 40 and be an All-American.

The answer to this question might be very obvious, but I'd like to hear your take on this: why does it seem that California natives—more than other states—seem to stay in-state to go to college?

Because California is the best! (Laughs) I looked at schools out of state, on the East Coast and weather became more of a factor than I anticipated. I went to New York on a trip in the middle of the winter and it was snowy and freezing and I could barely stand being outside walking around, so I had no idea how I was going to be able to train in that kind of weather. Berkeley is pretty nice and temparate and a pretty nice environment to train in all year round. It never really gets too hot and it never drops very far below 50.

Which school in New York were you looking at?

It was Iona. The trip I was talking about.

How does that translate in your running? How do you handle running in colder conditions?

Last year the only races we ran where it was cold was at Pre Nationals and it happened to be a really nice day there. So, that didn't really change much. This year at Pre Nats, it wasn't too bad. It was chilly, but it wasn't snowing or anything. It helps when it's hotter outside. At the Stanford Invite, for instance, I was pretty ready for that. I live in The Valley in the summer. That's where I'm from. I'm used to running 100-degree weather.

Can you explain your training and your mileage?

Yeah, sure. I've actually been injured with a stress fracture from the end of track season until the end of summer and only started running again in August. My mileage is lower this season than it was last year. I'm hitting around no higher than 60 miles a week. We normally have two hard workouts a week. One on Tuesday and that's normally more of threshold intervals. And we try to do those on grass to simulate what it's going to be like in a race. Then on Friday, we also have a hard workout. And that's more like race pace or race simulation...normally faster. Then, other than that, it's normal runs and on Saturday we do our long run.

What do you put in for a long run?

My longest has been an hour and 40 minutes, but it's usually between 90 minutes and an hour and 40.

What are you studying?

I'm an intended political science major, with an emphasis on international studies.

What about that interests you?

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do, but I'm interested in working with international aides in developing countries. I'd love to one day take a trip to some of the countries in Africa and study. Obviously I can't study abroad right now with running and stuff, but after I graduate...maybe I'll take some trips and do some traveling.

How would describe your team chemistry? Do you do a lot of activities together?

We have really good team chemistry. It doesn't even matter what we're doing. If we're hanging out together, we're having fun. We do all kinds of stuff. We do the standard hanging out at people's houses and team dinners. We get into a little bit of mischief from time to time (laughs). But nothing too bad.

Can you go into that mischief at all? Or as much as your comfortable with?

Oh, there's just all sorts of stuff! There are certain members of the men's team that have tendencies of coming to the women's dinners and finding out where they are and throwing water balloons. There hasn't been too much of that this year though.

Do you have anything planned for Halloween this year?

I haven't put too much thought into what's going on, but I'm sure there will be some sort of shenanigans going on.

Any costume ideas?

I haven't put much thought into my costume, but I do know that some of the girls on my team, three of them, are going to be the Powederpuff Girls. Another one is going to be a toy troll. I do know that Eric Lee—from our guy's team—the guy from our Track Shacks on Flotrack will be breaking out the light suit. I'm quite sure of it! That's a pretty sweet light suit. How can you not have fun when there's a guy walking around in a light suit?

If you could have one meal, prepared by anyone, what would you have and who would make it?

We have some really good cooks on our women's team. I'm going to say a pre-race team dinner where everyone makes something. One of the highlights is that one of the girls on our team makes the most delicious corn bread from scratch. I could seriously just eat that for dinner, I don't even need anything else.

What about butter?

Oh, yeah! That's the thing, she makes home-made butter with it too!

She sounds like she deserves a shout out.

Her name is Rowena Tam and one day she's going to open some sort of bakery and she's going to be successful.

And you'll be there eating three square meals a day?

Exactly! The cornbread is awesome!

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

Well, I do have a tendency to getting hit by cars. But none of the stories are all that exciting because I just get hit and roll off the top and continue my run.

...Yeah, that's not exciting at all! (Laughs)

It's really not!

I guess one of the funny things that happened earlier this season is we had a race in San Francisco. It was a pre-meet race and only some of the people on the team raced. The rest of us decided that we were going to do our long run around Golden State Park in San Francisco and then cheer the rest of our team on later. We're like half way through our long run and this bum slows us down and stops us and was like, “do any of you ladies have a cigarette?” What!? We thought this was crazy ironic because out of all these people that were walking around, why would runners have cigarettes? I don't know a whole lot of runners that smoke in the first place and not to mention that it was 90 degrees and we were wearing sports bras and spandex. Did he expect to pull cigarettes from our sports bras? Or were we going to take a break halfway through our long run and light up and have a smoke? Most teams take bathroom breaks, but we take smoke breaks! It was kind of a bizarre story!