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Brigham Young Cougar Cecily Lemmon-Lew took 10^th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute last fall and is a former runner-up in the 10,000-meter run. With another full year of competition left for the California native, Lemmon-Lew has been battling back from injuries with a slew of cross training. The only running she's doing right now consists of 20 miles a week on the Alter-G treadmill, combined with an aqua jogging and elliptical/bike regiment. Lemmon-Lew's main goal this fall is to contribute to her team the best she can.

What do you have left for NCAA eligibility?

Actually I've got everything left. I'm going to be able to do cross, indoor and outdoor. It's kind of exciting.

Going into this cross country season, what's a goal for you?

Well, I wish I could say I'm better prepared for this season, but I'm not. As you might have noticed I wasn't around last track season. It wasn't by choice. I've been dealing with quite a few injuries in a row. I thought I was free and clear and training well this summer...and I just hit another one about a month ago. You know what? My biggest goal right now is to get back in time for cross country season. I want to be back to help the team in the last few races. I've already kind of decided that it might not be the season that I want it to be, but I'm going to do everything I can to make the best of it.

Let's say you were at 100% last year, where are you right now?

Oh, gosh...10%. I haven't even been running. I've been cross training for three or four weeks.

Is it old nagging stuff or did something new come along?

It's been all new. It started in December, when I was getting ready for indoor and everything was going great coming off of that great cross season. It was really bad and I never experienced it before. I battled with that all winter and was able to break the tendonitis and be able to come back without relapsing—which was nice. That was going really well. I've had achilles problems and I've never had shin splints. I assume that I just came back too quickly in anticipation for the outdoor season. I'd pretty much missed it by then, so I don't know what I was doing. I had a left shin splint problem and then I trained for about two months and moved away from that and it moved to the right. They're small things, but they're just really nagging and they make it really hard, where I couldn't even walk with this most recent one on my right side.

What's your cross training consist of?

It's a little bit of everything. I get pretty bored cross training, so I have to do a little bit of everything. I do a lot with the elliptical and also of aqua jogging. I switch off with those two and when I can't take either of those anymore, I'll hop on a bike. That's what I'm doing right now. Also, BYU has an Alter-G, so I am running on that a little bit—about 20 miles. That's good.

That's your only running? 20 miles a week?

That's it! The rest is cross training.

When are you expecting to be out on a trail or on the road?

I think I can be back on the road in the next two weeks. I'm doing a lot better. I'm in California and just got here for a week. I'll be away from the Alter-G and I was thinking I might venture and try a bit of road running this week, but not much. Maybe two miles every other day, just to test it out. We went to the beach and I was running all over the beach. I think that's a good sign. We'll see.

Is it ultimately your decision or are you on the phone with your coach getting permission?

Yes, I'm definitely keeping the communication open with coach. His thing is no pain for 10 days before you start any outside running. I think I'm there, but I also know that with shin splints, they come back if you do too much too fast. Obviously I've had to learn that lesson the hard way and I don't want to do it again. It's a little depressing talking about it. I'm not giving up. I will make an appearance this season. I'm going to do everything I can to get back on the trails and do what I need to do.

I don't want to depress you! What have you been doing this summer for non-running activities?

It's been a fun summer. I've been to a few places and I've been working too. I did get to go to Hawaii with my family for a week. That was really fun and we were on Kauai, which was beautiful. I really enjoyed that. Also, one of friends who's on the team with me, Stacy Slight, she just got back from serving a year and a half mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She's like one of my best friends. We came on the team at the same time. I drove out the Wyoming to visit her when she got back. We had a lot of fun. I'd never been to her house and she lives on a little ranch. I got the full Wyoming experience. She took us to a rodeo and we helped her with some farm chores like shearing sheep and went four-wheeling. I was still running at that point, so we got to run on some really beautiful trails. It was great.

Did you come across any wildlife?

We did. An entire large pack of antelope went tearing across the path in front of us. It was amazing. They're really fast. Her dogs, of course, went chasing after them—which they didn't stand a chance on catching them. It was awesome and really beautiful.

When do you go back and join your team? Any preseason camps or anything?

We have our camp next week in Park City just before our semester starts up. I don't know if you've been to Park City in the winter, but that's when most people are there for the skiing and snowboarding. It's equally as gorgeous in the summer—really green and really beautiful. We stay in large cabins. They're cabins, I guess, but they're more like mansions. It's really fun. We make our own meals and we run together and do a mountain run, we do a team threshold run together. Then Coach can get an idea of where we're at individually. Besides that, it's really chill. We do team bonding and play games and watch movies, go on hikes and bike rides and, of course, lots of running.

What's it like to be married and be a top NCAA athlete?

It's wonderful. Two years ago I was in a very similar position as I am right now. I spent the whole summer injured with a stress fracture in my foot. I tried to run the whole track season on it and it was kind of disastrous. I made region, but it was terrible. I didn't run well at all. Then all summer I cross trained. I already knew my husband Matt from a year before and we were really good friends. When I came back to school and we started dating, I felt like—and this may have nothing to do with it—my running started to improve. It probably was going to improve anyway, but I like making the correlation that the time I started hanging out with Matt, was when my running became better and better and it only got better after we got married. That's when I had that awesome cross country season. When we were engaged was when I took second at nationals in the 10,000. He's such a wonderful support to me. He loves coming to my races and cheering for me. When we first started dating, he knew nothing about running, or track, or anything. He's a basketball boy and he likes baseball and football and golf and tennis and everything except running. He's a good sport. At first, I would drag him around to meets and say, “oh, I want to go watch this” or, “I want to go cheer for these girls” as I was still injured at that point. Then as I started to come back he'd actually come to watch me. I couldn't ask for a better fan and husband.

Is he coming around where you've got him into racing?

Last summer before we were married, I bought him a good pair of shoes. If he ever ran with me, he'd do it in his heavy basketball shoes. I said, “you can't run in these anymore. You're going to get hurt.” I got him some shoes as a present. We weren't together as we were engaged. He was working and I was home, still at school competing. I went home to my own house to finish up some wedding preparations. So, we weren't together until the actual wedding. I know he was here, training on his own in those shoes. I put in 60 miles the week of our honeymoon. He would wake up with me and he could go about three or four. He'd start with me and then I'd have to finish up on my own. It was a lot of fun. The best thing he said to me on our honeymoon, while we were eating ice cream one day, was, “wow, it's a good thing we're runners.” That was my favorite that he said he was a runner.

Which shoes did you get your husband?

I got him the Mizuno Wave Riders. A nice basic neutral because he doesn't pronate much. He really likes them a lot. Of course I can't run in those, but they work for him. They're light and a huge difference for him from his basketball shoes. He put them on and felt like he was flying.

You have three NCAA seasons left, do you know what comes after those are done?

I really don't know. I'm really excited about that because obviously I really love running a lot. If that opportunity presented itself to continue to train or compete, then I think it would be something I'd be interested in. I've always loved running. I've already exceeded my expectations for myself. But, you know what? It's such a great sport because I'm never satisfied and hungry to do more. I think that's where a lot of my drive comes from. I'm really excited for this year and to see how things play out. I think that will be a lot of what I base my decision on, if I will continue to run or not...at least in that sense. I'm always going to be that old lady, running around.

You're studying print journalism?

I'm looking for an internship right now. That's pretty much all I have left before I graduate. That's kind of exciting. If there was a way to incorporate my running into journalism, that would be something that I'd be interested in. Also, Matt's working on his med school applications right now, so it's going to be a fun road for us after college. We're both going to be graduating. So, it's exciting.

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

Any meal? This is silly, but my mom's mashed potatoes and gravy. It's always been my favorite and she always makes them from scratch. They're amazingly creamy and so good. Sooo good!

Can you give me a crazy running-related story?

The summer before my senior year of high school, and every year, I would go to BYU summer cross country camp, because I'd always wanted to run for BYU and I wanted to run and show Coach Shane who I was. I wasn't much back then, but I must have been enough because he put me on the team. Anyway, every year we do a run up in Utah and it's beautiful. On beautiful trails up in the mountains and we do a mountain run. I was there with a friend and she twisted her ankle. I decided to stop with her and kind of help her. We got left by our group and the kept going. I waited until the next group caught up to her, it was a walking group. She was able to go with this group and a counselor. I—in my stupid idea—wanted to finish the run. I took off by myself, running alone on the mountain, no one with me and I don't know where I am. It was a really stupid idea and I had absolutely no idea where I was. Suddenly crashing through the underbrush on another path I couldn't see came Josh Rohatinsky, Kassi Anderson and Josh's little brother Jared—who is my age. The come crashing out of a pass on the right. I thought, “awesome, people. I need to stay with them or else I'm going to be stranded here on the this mountain by myself.” I start following them thinking that Josh and Kassie must know where they're going. They didn't. They're totally lost. We end up running however many extra miles. It probably turned into a 14-mile day. Here I am, I'm about to be a senior in high school and I'd never done anything like that ever. A lot of it was downhill. I'm pounding my legs running downhill for forever. We make it to a ranger station somewhere in the mountains of Utah. It was pretty much closed, but someone who was there was actually a newscaster. He was there looking to do a story about the ranger station. We're able to finagle him to giving us a ride to the lake we were supposed to be at—which we were very far away from. I have no idea how we got so far off the path. Here we are driving in the big news van with Josh and Jared and Kassi and we show up to the lake where everyone had apparently NOT gotten lost. That was pretty fun. You should also note that I did not stay with Josh or Kassi at all. They were little tiny dots ahead of me on the path. It took everything I had to keep them in view.

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