Indiana's redshirt freshman, Andy Bayer, has had a stellar indoor season so far. Things are really coming together with his training and he has already logged a sub-four mile and a 7 minute, 55.25 second 3,000-meter run this season. With health issues and months of solid training behind him, he's looking to accomplish great feats in the world of track and field. Let's see how he does!

Did you get your long run in today?

I did. I went 15 this morning. I'm in a 14-16 range. I fell in the middle of it today.

Do you go out on your long runs with all the distance guys?

Yeah. We normally meet at 8:30 a.m. every Sunday for it. We kind of split up in two groups today. One group took various trails in Bloomington. The first group kind of went on the trail called “The Rail Trail”. It's kind of a flat soft surface from an old railroad. Then I went out with some other guys on a normal trail that goes around the lake and stuff in Bloomington.

How much snow do you have there?

Not too much, but it was pretty chilly this morning. It was about six or eight degrees when we started. We probably only have an inch.

Do you ever do your long run on roads or is it all trails?

If there's too much snow on the trails, we'll figure out a loop of some sort. When possible we like to get on the trails and get as much soft surface as possible.

Is that consistent with your running in general? Soft surfaces only?

I normally prefer soft surfaces. I had knee surgery last fall. Just like a little thing...but I have less cartilage in my knee. I prefer the soft surface stuff.

So, what kind of performance-enhancing drugs are you on this year?

(Laughs) None. None at all. A few vitamins...a little vitamin C. Other than that...nothing. I take a little iron.

Are you border-line anemic or anything like that?

Not anemic necessarily. I had a little drop in my iron at the end of cross season. I don't know what caused it. But my iron—which we test at the beginning of the year every season—after not performing the way I wanted to in the cross season, they tested it and my ferritin had dropped like 20 or 25 points or something. They put me on a little iron supplement. It's not too low.

If it's not Rashid Ramzi juice, what is it that's changed your running this indoor season?

Nothing has really changed it necessarily. I think it's just the program we're in. It takes a little time to get adjusted. Last year I redshirted the indoor and cross season, coming in as a freshman trying to get used to the college training system. It's kind of a program where you get on and you're getting fit all the time, the first year or year and a half. The results sometimes take time. It takes a year, year and half to start seeing the results. Around that time is when you normally start to see it. This is the first year that I got a good base in because when I first came in my freshman year...I ran September basically. I had this weird knee injury and had surgery in October. That kind of put me off most of the fall and some of the winter. I came back in the beginning of the indoor season and put in workouts. I was racing off of not a lot of base and setting PRs from high school. We just tried to run outdoors to see what I could do. I kind of had some improvements there, but then coming off of outdoors last year, I was able to take a few weeks off then put in a good summer of training and fall.

Excuse my cliché, but it sounds like it's “all coming together”?

Yeah, for sure. It's kind of like all the training is building up right now.

What kind of mileage are you typically hitting?

I'm not a super high. Like 80 to 85. I'm at kind of typical collegiate mileage. I'm in the middle of our team in terms of mileage.

What are your goals for indoor? Then what are you goals for outdoor?

These first few meets at home, we were trying to run fast times to see that we could do it at home and not have to travel to Mayo and those kinds of places to try to put down the time. I'm pretty happy with my times right now. I'm going to take the next few weeks to just train. You probably won't see any super-sick times for a while...until hopefully Big Ten's. At Big Ten's I would like to content for a title at something and a good team effort. We're coming off a kind of disappointing outdoor finish last season. We had a lot of guys redshirt. I think we have the potential to be in the top couple at Big Ten's. I would like to perform my best there and help the team. Going into Nationals, I'm not sure which event I'm going to focus on, but whatever I do, I would like to try to be an All American for the first time. We'll see. Then outdoor, I guess I want to try to get a few fast 1,500s and 5Ks. I rabbited a 5K yesterday for Andrew Poore and felt pretty good. I ran him through 4K, so maybe I'll try to go...sub-13:40 in the 5K hopefully. Then sub-3:40 in the 15. I'll try to do good stuff at Nationals and before that at Big Ten's.

Are you grabbing new confidence off of taking down a Bob Kennedy record?

I'm getting more confidence in my competing, not necessarily taking down Bob Kennedy's record. I feel like his indoor 3K record doesn't show how great of runner he is. He's really awesome. If you look at the indoor times they were running then, the indoor 5Ks and 3Ks aren't really as prestigious as his outdoor school record. His school record is like 13:22. He's pretty awesome. I was happy with the 7:55, but I don't feel like I'm at Bob Kennedy's level at all...yet. I was with happy with it and the race gave me confidence, but not where I'm with him or something.

There seems to be a good amount of trash-talking about IU coming out strong early in cross country and fizzling out when it got down to the end of the season. What do you have to say to those people?

Yeah, I know a lot of people are hating on us, saying we trained too hard, too early and stuff like that and we burn out toward the end of the season. I don't like to make excuses, because we sucked majorly this cross country season, but a lot of it was that we had a lot of weird injuries. I had the iron thing at the end—and I don't like to make that as my excuse for running bad at the end of the season—but I wasn't running to my potential at the end of the season. I don't think it's got anything to do with coaching or anything like that because Andrew Poore and Zach Mayhew running really well at the end of cross season. Poore qualified for the first time individually and Zack Mayhew was sixth at Big Ten's as a redshirt freshman. I think it's more about putting together a whole team effort. At Regionals, we had a guy fall down and pull his groin in the middle of the race. I was up there until 8K then fell off in the last 2K and ran bad, so I don't think it's got anything to do with our coaching. It's about putting it all together. We were really working hard together at the beginning of the season and were kind of the walking wounded by the end of the season. A lot of it was fluke stuff, but excuses aside, we definitely sucked at the end of the season. They can keep talking all they want until we produce something. I think, as of right now, we're definitely not peaking for these meets. I'm at the highest mileage I've been at in my life and we haven't really done any speed work or anything like that. We've been doing a lot of strength stuff...longer tempos and those Lts and longer workouts. I think we've got a long way to go and still need to prove ourselves. I guess they have the right to say that were were running bad at the end of the season. I think we can turn some heads by the end of this indoor season, going into this outdoor season. We'll see.

I know you don't get much free time being a student athlete, but what do you do when you get free time?

I live with one guy that's on the team, Zach Mayhew. Then another one of our roommates isn't on the team, but is a big supporter. We just hang out and play a lot of Mario on Wii. At the Filene House, which is like the track house around here, we have a lot of NCAA basketball tournaments on Xbox. Other than that we just hang out and chill, go to this ice cream place called Jiffy Treat a lot. It's kind of the local hot spot for the IU cross country team.

What do you order when you go there?

They have one interesting ice cream. It's called “Cookie Monster”. Which is a bright blue, crazy ice cream. The also have these cyclone things...they're kind of like a blizzard at Dairy Queen. I always get the puppy chow and Reese's combo. That's my normal order.

I read somewhere online that you used to be a wrestler. Is that the case?

That is the case. I wrestled way back in elementary school when I was six or sever until my sophomore year of high school. I was a little 103-pounder.

Were you pretty good?

I was all right. 103 is the lowest weight class in high school and I wrestled that my freshman and sophomore year. You get a lot of forfeits and stuff, so your record looks pretty good. There's a lot of guys that don't wrestle at that weight. I qualified for Regionals, but it might have been a bit of an inflated record. I was all right. Not bad. I was a “most improved player” award one year, I think. But never "most valuable player".

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

Let's see...favorite meal? When I'm at home, I'm a big fan of my mom's quiche. An egg quiche. I'd go with that.

Spinach? Or what are we talking for fillings?

She kind of has this egg with breading in it with sometimes broccoli and cheese and maybe an occasional sun-dried tomato every once and a while. It changes with what she's feeling. She makes a great, little crust.

The only reason I'm getting so nosey about your mom's quiche is because if she threw some spinach in there, she could include some much-needed iron into your diet and help eliminate your semi-anemia problem.

My mom is big health freak. When I was home over the summer, my iron was good. It was when I got back to school that it started dropping again. Obviously she knows what's up with good iron.

It sounds like if your mom is reading this, then she should send you a care package as often as possible. How far are you from home?

Only about three hours. I'm from outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

This one is way back from high school, but it's for anyone who's annoyed with people yelling at you out of a window. We were on a run one time—and I'll leave the names out of this, so people don't get arrested—and someone yelled, like, “f*g” or something like that at us. Then they got caught at a stoplight immediately afterwards. They got stopped there and we sprinted up and...one guy puts together two hands and does like a two-hand sledgehammer with his two hands and drives it into their trunk and puts a huge dent in it. Another guy runs up and opens the front door and grabs the guy by the collar and says, “who's the f*g now?!” This guy is holding onto the center console, trying not to get ripped out of the car. The light turns green and he stiff-arms him back into the car and they run away so they don't get in trouble. That was pretty ridiculous.

Which one was Andy Bayer in that story?

There was a group of running guys that I always ran with and I was not a part of this and just was an...observer...or a bystander. Also, the same summer....someone threw a fire cracker at us and that didn't end too well either.

More shenanigans?

Yeah. (Laughs)