FARMVILLE, Va. - Longwood University junior women’s cross country team member Brittany Foote/Goshen, New York is this week’s Longwood Female Athlete of the Week. She ran a new collegiate-best 6K time of 23:24 to finish 76th among 365 runners at the Paul Short Invitational on October 5, leading the Lancers to a 44th-place finish in the Brown race at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Foote’s time for the distance is the fifth-fastest all-time for the program in its 13-year history. Longwood will race again on Oct. 18 at the Blue Ridge Open hosted by Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina.
Question and Answer Session with Brittany Foote and Ashley Robbins
AR: Talk a little about leading Longwood in the last race and setting a collegiate-best record.
BF: My freshman year, I ran a 24:43, so I wanted to try and hit 24 minutes exactly. That was my ultimate goal going in and I thought I could do it. Coach had a talk with me because usually if I look at my watch and see I’m going too fast I slow way down. I came into the first K at a 3:40 and usually I’d think about slowing down, but I decided I felt pretty good, so I kept that pace and ended up getting less than 24 minutes.
AR: Talk about the Paul Short Invitational in general, as it is such a big race.
BF: I think our race started with over 330 girls. There were so many people and three different collegiate races for girls. But, it was so hot and humid that people kept dropping out. I’ve never seen anything like it.
AR: Do you like running in big races with lots of people or do you find it intimidating?
BF: Yes and no. I feel like with smaller races it’s easier to look up ahead of time and know where you should be. When it’s a big group, you don’t really know. You just try and stay in packs. Also, it’s really hard to start races with lots of runners because you go through a funnel, so you get knocked around. It’s a lot harder with bigger races. I feel like I like smaller races better, but the big ones are pretty fun and crazy.
AR: Did you do anything different than normal to prepare for this season?
BF: Coach changed our training plan this year. Usually, we’re running really high mileage, about 55 miles a week. Over the summer, she dropped it down to 35 miles, but she wanted our workout days to be really hard, quality workouts. I think that for me is a better way to train. I think that really helped over the summer and I think the lower, but quality mileage is helping us all a lot.
AR: Who would you consider to be your role model?
BF: I would definitely say my dad. My dad was a cross country runner in high school. He was really good and his team won States. He kind of started me running when I was little. We would do little training things. I always wanted to aspire to be like him because he won States. He’s definitely the one that got me into running and tried to make me better. He was at the race last weekend and he gave me tips before the race.
AR: What is a good piece of advice that you’ve gotten in your career as a runner?
BF: I got one piece of advice that really helped me for this past race. I never really knew how to run downhill. Usually, you just let yourself go and you relax down the hill, but instead of doing that our assistant coach told us to get on our toes, lean forward and run down the hill really fast. I did that in this past race and passed a bunch of people because I was flying down the hill.
AR: If you could give a piece of advice to a young athlete hoping to compete in college, what would you say?
BF: Cross country is very mental and you can’t let things get to you. During a race, you need to make little goals and stay focused on that because as soon as you say your tired, you’re done. You have to push through if you want to do your best.
AR: Do you have any superstitions?
BF: I always eat pasta the night before a race. In high school, I had to have wagon wheel shaped pasta before every meet.
AR: What do you like about Longwood?
BF: I found Longwood when I was looking in Virginia. When I came to visit, I liked how small it was because I came from a small town. Coach was so fun and I thought she was awesome.
AR: What is your favorite TV show?
BF: Impractical Jokers then Two Broke Girls.
