Photo from Cheryl Treworgy

Duke Blue Devil Bo Waggoner is flying this fall. The senior from Ohio and his team most recently took fifth at the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships at Boston College. Neither Waggoner, nor his team, were happy with their result and will look to work on their pack racing mentality and improve before the NCAA Southeast Regional Meet.

How's the body feeling after ACCs?

Pretty good, actually. I think the course has a lot fewer hills than we're used to. We're not really feeling as beat up as we are after most of our races. I think most of us can use a rest and recovery day anyway. We're just doing easy on our own runs.

Overall, what are your thoughts on how the meet went?

It's still early afterwards and we're still adjusting, but it definitely did not go well. We came in wanting to win the meet and we got fifth. Any way you try to slice that is a bad day. Individually, our goal for me was to get third. I'm pretty happy with fifth. Certainly that wasn't the biggest of our concerns, I guess. In general, we came out of it feeling pretty disappointed, but, at the same time, we feel like we're capable of running a lot better. It's not that we're not fit or in bad shape, it's that we had a bad day. We feel disappointed about it, but we're going to figure out how to come back for regionals and nationals.

How do you shake it off and move on?

First thing, three teams that were in front of us were all within something like 12 points in front of us. They're all in our region. That's an easy goal to come back and set, that those three teams that beat us yesterday...we want to go out and beat at regionals. If we do that, we'll get one of those spots. There's also William and Mary and Louisville, both good teams as well. It hurts to lose to those three teams, NC State, UNC and Virginia, but we also have to realize that if we put it together and have a good race, we're capable of beating them in Louisville. As long we do our job there and make it to nationals, that's where we really need to focus on running well. It's not like we need to have a huge readjustment. We just need to believe we can do it and we'll be OK.

That being said, if it goes perfectly, where do you see yourself finishing this season individually?

I haven't really thought too much about regionals yet. I guess whatever it takes for us to qualify. Last year I was 13th in the region and the year before, 11th. So, definitely something around there. As far as nationals goes, for us to be where we're ranked—around 10th to 15th recently. We're going to need guys threatening for All-American spots. I could have the race of my life and get 25th or 30th or something. If we don't back it up with guys running in the 60s and 70s, it's not going to mean much. Individually, we don't need to have any individual All Americans to run pretty well as a team. We just have to get the whole pack together and rolling. I think that's going to be the focus for the next couple of weeks, just getting that pack to work together a little better. Individually, if I'm out front of our pack, it's more of a bonus, not something we need to have happen.

How has your mileage and training changed as you've moved to the championship portion of your season?

We held our base from July or August, or whenever we built up to maximum, through last week...the week before ACCs. We drop it a little bit for the races, maybe five or 10 miles the day before the race when we fly out and run the course. Now, we're definitely going to drop it more. For me, that means, well I've pretty much been in the 90s since July or so. This last week, and I haven't added it up, it was probably high 70s or so. I don't need to go out and hit 95-100 miles anymore. At the same time, we still want to get good 10-mile runs in, good long runs in. The mileage will probably stay somewhat close, but the focus is more on the workouts.

Where does that bring you into your last indoor and outdoor track seasons? Have you thought about that yet?

I really haven't really thought much past November 22nd, it terms of pretty much anything. We've got a pretty good balance right now. We've got a couple of guys who are pretty good in the 1,500. The next group in the 5K. We've got a steepler and a couple guys who can run the 10K. There's no feeling like we need someone to step into the 10K or we need someone to step up in the 5K. We need to get better everywhere, but I'll probably be in the 5K/10K.

What times would you see as “fast” for yourself?

I only ran 14:13 last year, but in cross country, I can run with 13:50 to 14-flat guys. I feel like there's no reason I can't break 14 when I start in the 5K. We definitely have two or three other guys who feel the same way. That's the start. We can look at that indoors. In the 10K, I feel like the 10K is such a long, hard race that I don't want to run it unless I feel like I can accomplish something. If I can make a time that will make regionals, which is pretty much anything under 30 flat and also contending to go to nationals outdoors, which might take 29-low conditioning. As far as we can tell, some of it is being in good shape and some of it is handling the heat in late May and June. If I feel I can run 29:20-29-flat, I have a chance to go to nationals, maybe I'll take a look at the 10K. As for right now, it's all up in the air.

Where did the name “Bo” come from?

It's short for Benjamin. I'm the sixth Benjamin in my family, so I guess they were looking for new “Benjamin” nicknames.

Do you go by any other funny nicknames? Any Bo Jackson references? “Bo knows running”?

Not too much. Around my freshman year I went by “Bovice”, but that's fallen out of popularity. I don't want to have to explain the reference.

What are you studying and do you know what comes next after college?

I'm majoring in math and computer science. Right now, I'd like to go to graduate school in computer science. Although, I haven't really done much for applying and looking at places yet. That's going to be a bit of a post-cross country season crunch. I can't really see myself not running. I think I'll continue running, but I don't think I'm going to be focusing on it as much as I am now...but, who knows? That's months and months away. We'll see how this November goes and how this track season goes.

What would the non-running dream job be?

I would like to be a professor. That sounds fun. Or possibly a job that could be really interesting would be a job in computer science, working for companies like Google or IBM. Those sound fun, but I also think I might like to teach, so I don't know. It's something I've thought about but haven't come to any conclusions about.

Do you dabble with programming right now?

Yeah. Computer science is half programming and half theoretical background or maybe hardware stuff. I find it all pretty interesting. I do programming with Josh Lund—my roommate who's in computer science—and we do problems together and homework and such. I don't know where that's going to take me or if it's going to take me anywhere.

Do you have a crazy busy senior year or have you given yourself an easier last few semesters?

I've been backing down on the schoolwork my senior year. Or trying to at least. Coming into the season, I realized that as much as I like learning and I like school, if I'm going to put this many years of hard work in, I'm going to make sure that running is coming first. I'm still taking a normal load of classes, but I've tried to chose them a little easier and maybe put less emphasis on them, whereas in past years running had to take a back seat to homework and stuff. Right now I'm trying to put running first.

What's Coach Norm Oglivie like?

I like Norm a lot. I'd say, in general, he's very laid back. He's definitely not a micro manager or anything. The bad side of that is for guys who aren't as self-motivated or don't take care of themselves. He's not going to be on them 24/7 about those decisions. The good side of that is that he trusts us and it's been working really well. We can make those decisions for ourselves. It's been working really great for us now that we've had him and his training.

Why did you choose Duke in the first place?

I wasn't good enough to be recruited by the top running schools. At the time, Duke wasn't as good as we are now. I think right now...Norm wouldn't recruit me if I was a high school junior coming into his senior year. I was looking for somewhere I could run and somewhere that was a top academic school. After looking at a couple and taking a couple visits, I loved the atmosphere at Duke. I loved the academic feel of the school and the guys on the team. It felt like it would be home and I was good to go.

Are you a big basketball fan?

You can't help but be a big basketball fan here. I came in not knowing the names of any of the guys on the basketball team and now I do know all their names. It's not the subject of conversation every day, but everyone knows how the basketball team is doing, what recruits they're getting and what's going on with that. It's a fun, big-time sports atmosphere for a school that's otherwise small and pretty academically focused.

What was it like in March after they won the national championship?

It was pretty crazy. All of our juniors and sophomores, the guys my age and a year younger, were living in dorms on the main quad. A bunch of us went down the Cameron Stadium and were watching the game on their huge jumbotron. There were like a couple thousand students there watching. After we won, people were storming the courts and everyone came back to this one quad to have this huge bonfire. We have a tradition where we burn the benches. We have big benches in front of every dorm. That was crazy! There were tons of people on the quads. We were up in our rooms, watching this crazy celebration...then after about a half-hour of that, I had to go back to my room, put ear plugs in and try to sleep for my morning run the next morning at 8 a.m.

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

Easy answer, actually. I would have salmon and some sort of special side dish, prepared by James Kostelnik, who is a junior on the team and a culinary expert. He'd probably serve it with maybe ugali, sweet potatoes or something like that. I don't know what he does, but it works.

Ugali? You're the only non-Kenyan who's ever given me that answer. Where did that come from?

Well, we know it works for them and James tries to make it. It tasted all right and we added a little honey, so whynot?

Can you share a crazy running-related story?

The craziest story on our team was from last winter. I, unfortunately, missed it with half of us going to a meet. The guys were out in the Duke Forest, which is just off campus. They were doing a long run tempo. In the middle of the tempo, they turn and look back and there's a gigantic emu chasing them down the trail, in the middle of the forest. We still do not know how it got there, there's an emu farm near by or something, but it gave them a pretty good scare. Apparently they're pretty frightening from up close.

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