Photo courtesy of the Indiana Hoosiers

Fifth-year senior Sarah Pease, an Indiana Hoosier, is in cruise mode after her fourth-place finish at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Des Moines, IA, this past summer in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. Going into her last cross country season, the Indiana native won a relaxed “opener” meet and is setting her sights on earning NCAA All-American honors in Terre Haute.

Did you just have your opener?

It was this weekend, actually this morning.

It's fresh in your mind. How did it go?

It was good. One of my teammates, Chelsea Blanchard and I did six-minute pace through 3K, then we picked it up at the end. It felt good and the team did well, so it's going to be exciting to see what we can do this year.

So, a real comfortable, in-control style race?

Yeah, more in control and getting out there. It was good to be out there again.

What do you have coming up next?

The team is racing at Indiana Inter-Collegiates, but I'm not going to be racing. The next meet that I'll be racing is will be the Adidas Invitational at Wisconsin. That's the first weekend in October.

With you winning this opening meet, it looks like you're leading the Hoosiers this year. What's it feel like to take the role of being the team's No. 1?

I like it! It's my fifth year, so I feel like I've got a lot of experience and hopefully can help out the rest of the team and try to keep them calm in situations and let them know how things will be at meets.

Did you take a lot of time off after USAs?

Well, I did two weeks of every other day running. I just started back on regular running and have been doing 85-miles-a-week pretty consistently for the past six weeks.

Were you doing a lot of those miles with your in-state teammates?

I actually ran a lot of with some girls on the team and then of course everyone came back to campus in August. I ran with Wendi (Robinson) also, so that was nice. I pretty much had training partners all summer, so that was a really big plus. I stayed in Bloomington and it was nice.

You've seen your team race once, what are the team goals for this year?

I think we want to make it back to nationals and do well there. I'd say we'd like to be like 15-20 range at nationals. We also want to compete real well at Big Tens and regionals. I think a lot of the girls just put in a ton of work this summer. I was really proud of our team because all together we've done a good job of getting our work done and training well and making sure we came prepared and ready to go.

What about individually? With last year's finish and your USA race, where are you setting your sights?

I'd definitely like to be an All American for cross country. I haven't really went and talked to my coach yet about numbers, but I think if everything goes as planned, I'd really like to finish as high as possible. I've run at the NCAA Cross Country Meet once and it didn't go very well, so I'm looking forward to getting a chance to redeem myself and I'd like to place as high as possible at Big Tens and regionals. Obviously I'd like to win those meets. Either way I'd like to place high to help the team out. I think our team definitely has a chance to do some good things this year.

You have both indoor and outdoor eligibility left?

Yup. I have all three seasons. This my last year.

And what exactly is your steeple PR?

9:56.

Is lowering that PR this year your biggest goal or are you taking each season as it comes?

I'm going to try to take each season as it comes because I really love cross country and I enjoy competing with the cross country team. There's more team incentive, because your team moves on. People who might not make it to nationals individually can come and compete with our team. That's one of the things I love about cross country. I love outdoor track as well as indoor. I just want to do really well with those and set some new PRs and help the team out. I'm just really exciting about all three.

With your great outdoor season last year, are you going to be keying off of new people or running with new confidence?

At races like Big Tens, I probably won't go out and lead. I'll probably stay with the lead pack and then see what I can do at the end. I definitely know there's going to be a lot of good girls at the Big Ten Meet and whatnot. I know if I can keep myself in the top pack and hopefully get myself a chance to run well late, that would be really good. I guess I've always looked at competing as trying the best that I can. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I guess I take the same approach that I want to run faster and set a little bit higher goals—goals as far as where I was top-10 last year at Big Tens and, ideally this year, I'd like to win. I guess the goals are different, but they're always the same: to get the best out of my ability at the time.

What did you do for non-running summer stuff?

I went to the beach with my family, with about 20 people from my family. We go to the beach and it's one of my favorite times, the week after USAs. It was nice to get away for a little while and have a break. This is running-related, but I work a couple of running camps—that and going to the beach, those are my two favorite things. It was a great summer.

There are beaches in Indiana?

Oh, no. (Laughs) It was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! We stayed there for a week or so. It was nice to be able to relax on the beach and do a little bit of running, but not too much. I figured that if I could make it to USAs, then I could hit the beach on my off-weeks. (Laughs) It works out well.

You're from Indiana. How far is campus from your hometown?

It's about two hours and 15 minutes from home. It's not too far, but far enough.

Were you originally looking anywhere else or did you know you were a Hoosier all the way?

I visited one other school and only applied to Indiana. Indiana was really the only school I considered and wanted to go to. I had always wanted to go to Indiana even when I was a little kid. It worked out really well that I got to run here and go to school here. It was the right choice!

I've beaten this question to death with the other Indiana runners I've interviewed, but did you start out as a basketball player when you were growing up?

(Laughs) I was a basketball player all through high school! I played year-round basketball and played for my high school team for four years and just absolutely loved basketball. Coach Helmer sometimes jokes with me and says, “you just came here because you wanted season tickets!” That's not true! I do get season tickets, though, and I do love my Hoosiers. I've been a fan since I could walk. It's cool to be at a school like IU where basketball is a big deal. While I didn't play basketball in college—and I think running was the right choice—I still love it and still have fun with it.

With traveling to meets on weekends, how many games are you able to catch during basketball season?

I've actually missed very few home games. Most of the time away games fall on when we travel, so it's really nice. I think I've maybe missed less than 10 games. I've had the season tickets every year and I've got a pretty good track record.

Obviously basketball is a good selling point, but from a running perspective, how do you sell IU to running recruits?

I think the biggest thing is if you want to be good and you're serious about this and you want to see how good you can be. I like to sell our coaching staff. Coach Helmer and the rest of the coaches are so good and they know what they're doing. They have the athlete's best interest in mind. The team is just great. It's a bunch of us who love to work together and we're a bunch of motivated, excited people about running. We're all really good friends and we all have a really good time together, but when it comes down to it, we'll take care of what we need to take care of. I feel like anyone who came here and put 100% into it...they would get a lot.

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

Oh, gosh! I would have my parents make a meal together. I would have my dad grill steaks and my mom would make mashed potatoes and green beans from our garden, some corn-on-the-cob from our garden and then I would have my mom make strawberry shortcake with homemade shortcakes. Oh, and sweet tea! I can't forget that!

I thought that was more of a Southern thing. Sweet tea stretches all the way up into Indiana?

Well, I like to say that I'm from the South. Most of the people on my team make fun of me when people ask me where I'm from. They think I'm from Tennessee or Alabama because they think I have an accent. I always say that I'm from the South and they ask where in the South. And I say, “Southern Indiana, right across from Louisville, Kentucky.” People think that's really funny, but we had sweet tea for dinner like every night when I was growing up. I'm a big fan. I make it for my teammates all the time and they say it's good, so I don't know if they're just saying that to make me feel good or what.

Can you share a crazy running-related story?

I'm going to tell you about one that was at practice last week, last Monday. Four of us were going out and my teammate, Chelsea Blanchard, and I name loops after ourselves. The name of this loop was “Blanch-Death March Modified.” We have this death march and we were doing it backwards, so we let it be the “Blanch”. We took off and these other two girls had never run it before and they were going to do an out-and-back as we did the whole loop. It was supposed to be only eight miles through our cross country course. It cuts through this field area and gets to a trail. At first we go the wrong way and had to go through these tall plants or tall field grass. We finally get to the trail and the girls with us just turn around and Blanch and I just kept going. We went through all these trails and finally found our way out to the road. We kind of were like, “we don't know where we are, but we'll keep going.” Finally we get to where we know we're on the right track. We go down this gravel road that goes down to where there are these trails that we run at some times. We didn't get attacked by any animals, but all of a sudden this dog and runs at us and starts growling. I'm really scared of dogs. At first I'd pushed Blanch in front of me (laughs). She's all of like...100 pounds. I felt really bad about this afterward.

You sound like you felt really bad.

(Laughs) There was some woods, so I sprinted into the woods and up a tree. Blanch was in the road and she was just laughing at me, because I'm up in a tree at this point. The guy who owns the dog, runs out of the house and is like, “oh, guys, don't worry. He loves women!” It was really funny to me! He probably saw me up in his tree. We get out and go to the trails. We think, “oh, this is great and it's going to be about eight miles.” We take a turn and keep going and going for a while...like wondering when we're going to hit the bottom of this run. We were thinking it was getting bad and then something looked familiar and we just kept running. Finally we stopped and looked around and realized that we were going to complete opposite way and had to turn around and go the other way. We ended up running nine-and-a-half miles because we went the complete wrong direction for the longest time.

In retrospect, was climbing up in the tree an overreaction?

No, no, no. Absolutely not. I was almost bitten by a dog on a run one day, but a guy was practicing shooting his bow and arrow and he came and scared the dog away. Ever since then, I always reserve in my mind, I always try to find a tree because I'm scared to death of dogs.

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