Loyola Marymount junior Tara Erdmann recently took eighth place in the 5,000-meter race at the Mt. SAC Relays, running 15 minutes, 55.64 seconds. Erdmann has improved ridiculously in the past 365 days. She's dropped her personal-best times from 16:27 to 15:55 in the five and from 34:30 to 33:22 in the 10. With improvement like that, Erdmann has grand expectations of herself and wants to see her season progress all the way through the USA Championships this summer. Let's see how she does!

You were the second collegiate to finish that stacked 5K at Mt. SAC. Can you talk about your race?

First of all, I was just really excited to be in that heat. I knew I was in pretty good shape, but didn't know what heat that would put me into. I knew it was going to be fast either way. Going into that race, it was like, “how can you not run fast in a field like that?” I think the main thing was just being smart about my pace. The goal was to hit 76s, which was 15:50 pace. I was pretty much on that. I didn't want to get too carried away. I stuck to the pace and we had a good group that was right there with us the whole time. That made it a lot easier.

And what was your previous personal-best time?

16:27. I ran that last year at Mt. SAC, actually.

That's a pretty big PR.

(Laughs) Yeah.

What were you expecting coming in?

I was expecting to run 76s. I figured I could break 16. I thought I was in that kind of shape. I wasn't sure how far under 16 I would go. I know some of the USA standards are below 16 and I was trying to get as close to that as well. I was just happy to break 16. That was the main goal. I've been trying to do that.

Have you ever raced Sally Kipyego before?

No, I don't think I have. Not in track anyway. I made it to cross country nationals and she was obviously there that year, but I didn't do as well as I wanted to.

What's it like to be on the track, trying to control your pace, when you have runners like Sally Kipyego and Molly Huddle taking the pace out faster than you'd like to go?

It's pretty hard. I guess that was the main thing: just stick to my pace. I pretty much knew, realizing as a runner, that I can't hang with Sally Kipyego and Molly Huddle. I knew going into that race that I'm not in that kind of shape. Being in race with them, though, is very exciting. The fans get so into it and you just feed off that energy as a runner. You take that into consideration and just keep moving.

What are you looking to do next? Any other big PRs on your radar?

I already had a pretty big 10K PR. I ran the 10K up at Stanford. I ran a huge PR, running 33:22.

And before that, what was your previous personal-best?

I forget where I did the 10K before nationals last year, but I ran 34:30 or 34:20. Something around there. I pretty much had PRed by something like 67 seconds, we figure it out as. (Laughs) Yeah!

Almost 70 seconds in your 10K and almost 35 seconds in your 5K?

Yeah!

How did you get that kind of improvement? Did anything change?

I didn't really change too much. I increased my mileage since last year, but not a whole lot. My freshman and sophomore year, I sort of kept getting these little injuries. Nothing really major, but we had to reevaluate my training and make sure I moved up my mileage at a considerable rate and not too high. I think it's all the little things I've been doing. I'm obviously running and doing my workouts, but I get a lot of sleep at night. I don't really do too much. My focus is on running. Nothing has really changed and I'm kind of surprised. I think I'm just getting older and getting more mature. It's starting to pay off now.

Are you technically a junior? How many running seasons do you have left?

I'm technically a junior, but I redshirted cross this past year and I ran a few races unattached. I'm going to stay for a fifth year and I'll still have two years after this year.

What are your plans for this summer?

We'll have regionals and nationals in sight. I qualified for USAs in the 10K and I'm going to go up to the Payton Jordan Meet and run the 5K to see if I can get the standard for the 5K at USAs. I'd like to have a choice of which one to do, in terms of the “a” standard. I have the “a” in the 10K, but not in the 5K. I definitely want to go to USAs. It will be a good meet to get experience with some of the really good runners.

Do you have a preference for the 5K or do you just want the options?

I just want that option. I really like the 10K. I never thought I would, but the more I run it, the more I like it. I do want to have the option between the five and the 10. With this new NCAA thing with having to run the 10K at regionals and nationals. It almost seems like with having USAs two weeks later. That's three 10Ks in six weeks? We kind of have to take that into consideration and see what I'm going to be doing. It just depends.

It seems like a lot of NCAA runners have been about “the double” lately? Does that interest you at all?

Our coach and I haven't actually talked about doubling. I don't think it's something I would want to do. I would just want to focus on one at regionals and then one at nationals and have one at USAs, but you never know. It's not a plan right now.

Can you explain a typical week of training for you with mileage?

We don't really go by mileage. We're a minutes program. I would say I'm probably somewhere with my highest being at 70. I'm typically around 60-65, depending on my week.

When you do get free time, what do you for fun?

We're really close to the beach. I go to the beach a lot. That's like my hangout spot for the weekend, if I don't really have too much homework, I like to go there.

When you mentioned what could have caused your running improvements, you mentioned sleeping. Have you had trouble in the past?

It used to be that I would go to bed when I got tired and I would only be icing sometimes. I wasn't really on top of all the little things that you should be doing as a runner to stay healthy, to be the best that you can be. I've been focusing on those things a lot more. It's easy to get the run done and to do all the big things, but it's the little stuff that I've been more on top of. And I'm someone who needs more like eight to nine hours of sleep.

What are your long-term running goals?

Well, I'd like to keep running as long as possible. I sort of thought coming into this year that I could run low 16s. That was my goal...to run around 16-flat. I thought that would be good. I'm still sort of shocked with how fast I ran. That wasn't really a goal. My coach kept pushing it, like, “you can break 16 this year. You can break it!” I was like, “yeah, I think that would be good!” And I don't know if I really believed it at first, considering I only ran 16:27 last year. Now that I've broken 16, I think it opens a couple more doors later on down the line with what I want to do.

That being said—and this could be a stupid question—did 15:55 feel easier than you thought it would or were you really laboring?

No, I really wasn't laboring too much. I think it was just that we had a really good field and a lot of use could run that pace that we were running. That probably made it a little bit easier. It felt really good. At like the 10-minute mark, I wasn't really looking at laps, I was just focusing on my splits and I'd see the clock say 10 minutes and it was getting sort of hard, but it was pretty much my training pace, roughly. So, I knew I could hang, it was just a matter of sticking it in there. I wasn't laboring too much and my splits were pretty even the whole time and I felt good at the end. That wasn't too taxing.

How are you going to approach the 5K at Payton Jordan? Will you really go for it because you've already got a 15:55 in the books?

I'm just going to go into training these next couple of weeks and see how it goes and just like I did with Mt. SAC, I'll go in with a plan of trying to run a pace and then go from there. This past weekend, we said, “76s for the first half of the race then see what you can do and pick it up after that. If I feel great, I can go for it, but if not, I'll still run sub-16.” I think we'll do that with Payton Jordan and try to push the second half more than I did. I was sort of nervous to push the second half because I knew I was already going to break 16. When you go from 16:27 to sub-16, you have to be somewhat careful of what you're going to do because you're not sure how you're going to feel. I definitely think I can run faster than 15:55. That will be the plan...and trying to get that “a” standard.

Why did you choose Loyola Marymount in the first place?

I really liked the training philosophy and the girls on the team. It's a smaller school—which was another thing—with 3,500 undergrad and it's a private Catholic school. I think the main thing was the connection that I had with the coach. I had a lot of faith with the system with what he was doing. There was a girl behind me, who had run some really fast times as well and I knew that it worked. When you go to a smaller program, I feel that you get individualized training...which I got in high school. The communication with the coach made it a lot easier. Coming into college, my high school coach and my coach talked a lot about training and what kind of mileage I could possibly handle compared to what I could possibly run and make sure everything was OK and not get hurt.

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

Let me see. I'd probably have homemade tacos by my mom. She used to make homemade tacos in high school and those were probably one of my favorite meals.

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

Coming into college, I helped out at a summer camp every year and we decided to take the eight to nine miles group. I was the only girl or there might have been one other girl with a bunch of guys. This is up in Flagstaff where we do the training camp. We had seen a map that said “ice caves” on it. We weren't quite sure where it was or how far away it was. We decided we'd try to find it with this group of high school kids. We ended up being lost and never finding these ice caves. We were gone for like probably just over two hours and came back to camp when everyone was eating breakfast and we were starving. We never found the caves that day, but I think it was the next year at camp that we ended up finding the ice caves and they were nothing spectacular. All the high school kids were dying out there. We go them back and we got them breakfast. But, there were no ice caves.

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