Ben True won the individual 2005 Heptagonals Cross Country title October 28 at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and helped his Dartmouth squad win the mens team title. True also won the Murray Keating Invitational in Orono, Maine, October 1. A sophomore from North Yarmouth, Maine, True's running success came early; he finished fifth in Foot Locker Cross Country Championship as a high school senior. In winter, he competes with the nationally-ranked Dartmouth ski team. True and his teammates will compete in the NCAA Northeast Regional this Saturday at Franklin Park in Boston.

Runner's World Daily: Based on how you've done so far this year, and in particular, your Heptagonals victory, what are your prospects and Dartmouth's prospects at the NCAA Northeast Regional?
Ben True: Well, I think at Heps, the team did extraordinarily well. We had been a little worried about our fifth guy, making sure our fifth guy was close enough to the rest of the top four. But at Heps, he was right there and getting in good shape, so everything really worked out well. Taking that into account, it looks like we have a pretty good shot of getting the whole team to NCAAs [November 21], which is definitely our number one goal. The top two teams in each region are automatic, and then there are at-large points which determine which teams will be pulled in as well. If you've beaten a team that makes the NCAAs previously in the season, you get points. We think right now we've run well enough that we've accumulated a good number of at-large points. Obviously, we don't know their point value until after the Regional. Right now we're ranked first in our region, but Iona and Providence are both very strong teams and we're not counting them out by any stretch of the imagination.

RWD: How much racing have you personally done before? You didn't run the New England Championships, we noticed.
BT: Coach [Barry] Hartwick sent a lot of the JV team, not the top seven, to various races. We did Pre-Nationals in Indiana [True was 25th in the "blue" race]. We raced at the Murray Keating race in Maine. And then we did the Dartmouth Invite, as we call it, which is basically just an informal time trial at the beginning of the season [True took first].

RWD: You stated that you weren't really stressing the individual race at the Heptagonals. It was clearly a very close race; your teammate, Alec Wall, was in fourth place and only about four seconds behind you. Was the outcome pretty much in doubt most of the way?
BT: Going into the race, our plan was really just to have the team title, and to do that, we decided what we were going to do was just run our top five in the pack and really try to dictate the race and take control of it pretty early on and just see what the other teams would do. We definitely were able to do that. We put on some good surges as a team effort to try to break up the field. There was no individual plan of taking it out or anything like that.

RWD: What You Need to Know About the Sydney Marathon?
BT: Going into it, we knew if our top five had good races, our [entire] top five could be in the top 15 and our top four could definitely be in the top 10. And so going into it, I knew I had a pretty good chance of winning it if I wanted to. How it played out was it came down to a 600-meter kick, and once that happened, I was very confident that I was going to be able to do well and that Alec Ball was going to be able to hold on to his place, as well.

RWD: It sounds like you're not lacking people of similar ability level to work out with, like Alec, and that you can rely on being pushed in practice.
BT: Oh yeah. The whole top four or five together--myself, Dave Burnham, Alec Ball, and Ian Marcus--we all push each other very well during practice.

RWD: The Heps title obviously must have been one of the team's top priorities of the season.
BT: No, actually, we're really making NCAAs our top priority. This was just a good stepping stone to get there. Especially this year, when we're being nationally ranked for the first time in a while, and being ranked so high up-- we were 14th last week and then dropped back to 16th--but still, that's the highest ranking we've been in a long time. That's really where our goal is right now: to do really well at NCAAS. We just saw Heps as a nice bonus that we wanted to do well at.

RWD: You were fifth in the nation at the Foot Locker Cross Country as a senior and ninth as a junior. In an interview your junior year, you sounded like you'd already zeroed in on Dartmouth. Were there a lot of other college programs that you considered, and that considered you, and how did Dartmouth win out over them?
BT: I do Nordic skiing as well, cross country skiing, so I really wanted a program where I could do both sports at a Division I level. That ruled out, basically, the majority of schools. I did, however, become very tempted by Stanford. I was looking to them, they were looking to me. It came down between Stanford and Dartmouth. I chose to not make a decision yet and to try to see which sport I still wanted to do, so I chose Dartmouth to pursue that.

RWD: Yes, we read that your plan was to be a cross country runner in the fall and a cross country skier in winter for your first two years of college. Do you think now that after your second year, which is this year, you'll be asked to make a serious commitment to one or the other?
BT: We'll see how it goes. I know that I'm going to have to make a decision at some point. I'm not having an easy time making a decision. I'll try to go as long as I can doing both, but I know eventually I will have to make a decision to pursue one.

RWD: Oddly enough, the bulk of the training for both sports occurs at the same place, doesn't it, out on the Dartmouth golf course?
BT: Yeah. We only go interval training on the golf course. Most of our running and skiing is at Oak Hill, which is a half-mile away. That's a lot more terrain with hills. It's all trails.

RWD: What have been your best performances so far in cross-country skiing? Did you compete in state and national meets in high school? How well have you done in collegiate skiing so far?
BT: In high school, I did a few national things at the Junior Olympics. Last year, at NCAAS, I was 14th for "classic" and 19th for "skate." It's a 10k "classic" and a 20k "skate." I was 39th at the World Junior Olympics (in Finland) in an event that combined "classic" and "skate."

RWD: How well did you do in spring track as a freshman, and what distances have you emphasized?
BT: In spring track, I really only ran the 1500. I did one 800-meter race, but I basically stayed in the 1500. I was able to do 3:46 at NCAA Regionals. I got into the finals but kind of fell apart in that race.

RWD: You're often photographed with a John Deere hat on, but you don't race with it. Do you just walk around with it on?
BT: No, I don't race with it, no. I'm a fairly superstitious-type guy. It's a lucky charm, I guess.

RWD: DAA Industry Opt Out?
BT: It's a lot about that. My dad, when I was a little kid just starting to run, always told me nothing sounds like a deer, and be fluid and effortless. It kind of mixes in with that: to try and run like a deer.

RWD: The Spring Marathons of 2025?
BT: To some extent. I'm a pretty big guy. I'm 6 feet and about 165, so I'm not as fluid as some other people. But I try to be.

RWD: Being from Maine, you're not too daunted by Hanover, New Hampshire, winters at Dartmouth, are you?
BT: Oh no, not at all. Actually, I was a little disappointed with last year's winter. It was raining more than it was snowing, so we actually didn't have much snow up here. We did a lot of traveling. We went to Stowe, Vermont, a lot to ski there.

RWD: You've had excellent running results for a "real sophomore" who's never red-shirted. Are you surprised you've come this far this fast?
BT: No. I'm always the type of guy who's very competitive. So if I see anybody who's running faster, I try to improve upon my own. I'm always more disappointed with myself than surprised, because I always want to succeed and do better than I'm doing.