 |
| Shannon Rowbury |
photo by Victah Sailer/Photo Run |
Duke University senior Shannon Rowbury, the winner of the Atlantic Coast Conference and NCAA Southeast Regional Cross Country Championships this fall, will compete in the NCAA Championships in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Monday. The Duke Blue Devils women, coached by Kevin Jermyn, were team champions at the ACCs and the Southeast Regional. Rowbury is undefeated this season, having also won the Great American Cross Country Festival in Cary, NC, and the Penn State Invitational. In 2004, she was 27th in NCAA Cross Country. Last spring, Rowbury anchored Duke to a Distance Medley Relay victory at the Penn Relays, and finished eighth in the 1500 at the NCAA Championships in outdoor track; she had placed second in the mile at the indoor NCAAs. She holds the Duke outdoor 1500-meter mark record of 4:14.81, and holds Duke indoor records in the 800, mile, and 3000. Originally from San Francisco, Rowbury was a national scholastic champion in the 800.
Runner's World Daily: Both Duke and you, as an individual, are among those being touted as possible NCAA champions on Monday. What are your thoughts on the team's prospects and your own?
Shannon Rowbury: As far as the team goes, all of us are so confident and so excited. We know there's lots of talent out there, and we know we're going to have to race well if we want to try and win. But each one of us on the team has such high energy and so much faith in Kevin and in our training. I think we're just pumped to go out there and really get some good competition and see what we can do. Each race, we've been able to keep rising up to the level of our competitors; I think we're all pretty excited to do that again. It should be a really good day for us.
And then, as far as for me, I'm just sort of focusing on the team aspect of it. Cross country, coming into college, was never a strong point for me, so to be doing so well at it is just a huge perk. I'm just kind of going with it. I'm just going to go in and do the best I can to race well to help my team and see what happens. I'm really excited about the possibilities.
RWD: You're generally known as a middle-distance runner. Do you have any explanation for this success you've had in 6k cross country races?
SR: In high school, my coach had me race everything from the 4x400 [relay] to the 3200, so I made sure to give myself a broad range. I thought of myself more as an 800-meter runner and a miler, but my coaches kept telling me "don't think of yourself as any one thing; keep training." I came into Duke and there was pretty much no question that I was doing cross country, so I just kind of did it my freshman year. It took a while for me to get used to the 6k and the higher level of competition. I've been fortunate enough to have consistent training throughout the years and gradually build up my mileage. It's kind of been a slow process. All the little things played in together to get me to here.
RWD: What was your summer like? Did you train hard over the summer? Did you stay in North Carolina or were you back in the Bay Area?
SR: Actually, I was in London for the summer, so I probably didn't have the intense summer of training that some of the other people did. I got in my long runs, but I wasn't really able to do a lot of the little extra things I would have liked to do if I was at home, like weights or any extra cross-training. I mostly just focused on building up my mileage. I really just wanted to have a fun summer and enjoy being in London for a study abroad program. I took a less intense route, but I think it was a good thing for me, because it kept me from overanalyzing things or getting too stressed out or nervous.
It was a Duke in London theatre program. I think we saw a total of 28 plays. We'd see a play a night and have two hours of class a day and the rest of the time we could do whatever we wanted in London.
RWD: How to Watch the NCAA XC Championships?
SR: Yeah, we had team camp on August 20 or so. I came back to Durham on the 14th and have been in here since.
RWD: For the NCAA women's team title, Stanford is one of the teams being talked about. What's your perception of who the toughest teams are going to be?
SR: Stanford definitely has a talented team, and Michigan and Notre Dame. Colorado always brings it together at the end. There are several teams that have a lot of potential. If we can just go out there and make sure to compete with people and not overanalyze anything and just keep doing what we've been doing, that's been great so far. We don't really want to change anything too drastically--just try and go out there and not freak out.
RWD: Health & Injuries?
SR: Yes, we kept two of our girls out; not for injuries of anything like that, but we really wanted to make sure that we have the best seven girls on the starting line at nationals and we wanted to make sure we brought an alternate who was peaking right now and at her best. So the reason we sat out two girls was to try and figure out who would be our seventh runner and who would be our alternate going to nationals. Everybody really wanted to race [at the Southeast Regional], so it was a big sacrifice for Laura [Stanley] and Whitney [Anderson], who sat out, but I think our team's going to be that much stronger because of it.
RWD: Clara Horowitz has been a close second to you this season. In fact, she was the runner-up in all four of your wins so far. How important has it been to you to have somebody that you can work with and race with who's that close to you at this point?
SR: I feel really lucky to have such talented teammates. All of those senior girls and Whitney, our freshman, are all so talented. I think that's why I've been able to improve so much this season. We have such a team focus this year that it's not "Oh my gosh, this girl is coming in right behind me or right near me in a race, I need to try to beat her in workouts so I can make sure I can beat her in races." Instead, we really just approach the workout trying to get as much as we can out of it. Having Clara in the race right near me gives me confidence, and hopefully, it goes the other way for her. We're able to kind of push each other and race better than we might if we were by ourselves.
RWD: Duke was second at NCAAs in 2004, but a fairly distant second to Colorado. A year ago, looking ahead, could you be pretty confident that your team would be even better this year?
SR: Oh yeah. Each year, we get better and better. We knew we had six seniors coming back [they're seniors now], so we were just ecstatic at the thought of what we could do this year. You have to wait and see how things turn out, because you never know what can happen. But to have our six seniors and our freshman really strong, we're just so excited.
RWD: One member of Duke's coaching staff called your Distance Medley Relay victory at Penn last spring "the biggest win in school history in track and field." But obviously, a national cross country championship would be an even more important moment.
SR: Definitely. It's always just so much more fun to win something with the team, because you can have people to celebrate with. To win this would be huge for us. It would be our first in history in cross country. It would really be a huge accomplishment.
RWD: Does the fact that you've done so well this fall running 6k races give you any idea that maybe you should be doing some 5000s now in track?
SR: Yeah, actually, I wanted to last year but it didn't really pan out because of relays, and I was focusing on the mile and trying to get some speed. Now that I've been doing better in cross country, I'm really excited to see what I can do on the track. It's fun, because I don't have a PR at all at the 5k on the track, so it'll be an exciting experience to see what I can do.
RWD: When did you start running? Were you an athlete before that?
SR: I started in my freshman year in high school. I did Irish dancing since I was six--like Riverdance. It helped develop my fast twitch muscles and strengthened my bones. It was a really good way to keep me athletic and make me tough and strong. I really enjoyed it. I also did soccer from fourth grade until high school. My best friend as a freshman was doing cross country. I ran up and down the soccer field and thought, "Running: how hard can that be?" went out and ended up having a lot of success with it and decided to stick with it.
RWD: Your eligibility is over this spring. What do you think you'll do with your running after that?
SR: As of now, I'm thinking of maybe trying to train for 2008 for the Olympics and just see how things go. In talking with Kevin, he just thinks if I can keep up at the rate of improvement that I've had, I don't need to make any huge steps, I just need to keep chipping away at my PRs. I might have a chance to make it to the Olympics, which would be so crazy and so cool. That's what I'm going to try to shoot for right now. I'd like to keep training with Kevin; I respect him so much as a coach.
RWD: And in heading to 2008, you'd mainly be thinking about running the 1500 still?
SR: As of now, yes. I don't know what will end up happening mentally. I might change what my interests are in running. Some other event might jump out as a stronger point for me; but as of right now, it would be the 1500.
RWD: With Regina Jacobs gone and Suzy Favor Hamilton's track future uncertain, opportunities for new American women to emerge in the event are certainly there.
SR: Yes. Some of my competitors from last year raced during the summer and had some really good PRs and were in really good shape. So some of the people I competed against in college are the ones I'm probably going to be competing against in the future. It's exciting that there are people who are still there to fill in that gap, because none of us are going to get better unless there are other good people out there. That would include Anne Shadle and Lindsey Gallo, and Erin Donohue ran pretty fast, and Treniere Clement has been running pretty well. There are definitely some girls who are coming into their own.
