Interview with Caroline Cretti

By Shannon Martin

Caroline Cretti, 23, trains under Coach Pete Rea’s guidance with the ZAP Fitness Project in Blowing Rock, NC. In her debut marathon at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon on October 7, Cretti placed fifth and qualified for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Women’s Marathon with her race time of 2:43:11.

Cretti’s love for running dates back to her elementary school days in her hometown of Carbondale, CO, where she played every ball sport imaginable, thriving on the running involved in each sport. As a high school student, Cretti gradually began transitioning from a ball-sport athlete to a track and field and cross country competitor. In her last two years of high school, Cretti ended up with four state titles (two in the 1600 meters and two in the 3200 meters).

Cretti went on to run for Williams College, a Division III school in Massachusetts. It was there that Cretti began developing confidence in her distance running abilities and her achievements show this: three Division III national titles (2006 indoor 5000 meters, 2006 outdoor 5000 meters, and 10,000 meters),Williams’s indoor and outdoor 5000 meters, 10,000 meters, and indoor 3000 meters school records, and 15 All-America honors. After graduating from Williams with a degree in English, Cretti decided that a career in distance running would suit her well.

Since her arrival at ZAP in the fall of 2006, Cretti has found much success on the track and the roads. In the spring of 2007, she ran a 10,000-meter PR of 33:58.6 at the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational, which will also allow her to compete at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials –Track & Field (which will take place in Eugene, OR, from June 27 to July 6, 2008).

Right now, Cretti’s primary focus is the marathon. In her interview with Fast-women.com, Cretti explains how she became a successful marathoner within weeks. With an infectiously positive attitude, Cretti conveys her passion for running and reveals how she is preparing for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Women’s Marathon, which will take place in Boston on April 20. To learn more about Cretti (and to become even more familiar with her great sense of humor), read her USA Distance Project journal here.

Fast-women: Why don’t you start off by telling me how you made the decision to try to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials. You qualified for the Trials in your debut marathon just a couple of months ago. How and when did you decide to go for this feat?
Caroline Cretti: Since college, I’ve been a high-mileage runner; I’ve always really, really enjoyed running a lot of miles. I’m what experts would call an aerobic runner. . . [laughing] I don’t really know, I was an English major, not a physiology major. Basically, I thrive on the longer-type tempo runs. Since college, people have been telling me that a marathon is in my future.

FW: Well, it certainly sounds like you are suited for a marathon, as training for the event requires lots of miles.
CC: Exactly. I think the training came naturally to me.

FW: Your build-up for the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon was only eight weeks; that’s quite short. Elaborate some on this training plan.
CC: I really enjoyed the training. I remember reading interviews with girls preparing for the Trials when I was home [in Colorado] in July; they were talking about how they were in the midst of training for Chicago and I was in the second week of not running at all, of taking total down time [laughing]. I thought, “Oh man, we’re cutting this close,” but it actually worked out perfectly for me.

What we did was a fast build-up in mileage, which I usually respond to pretty well. I did one intense long run a week and one or two pretty big workouts a week. And I loved it.

I went into the marathon determined that it was going to go well; I was very confident in my training, knowing that even if I didn’t feel my best in the race, that I could still qualify [for the Trials]. And then if something great happened, then that would be a bonus! I would say that I felt all right; I didn’t have one of those amazing days where I felt like I was flying, but I felt strong. It ended up being a perfect in-between performance.

FW: Did you go into that race with any strategy in mind?
CC: The strategy was to start out a little slower than what we thought I could run the whole marathon in, and then to pick it up at the halfway mark, and then to really pick it up at 19 miles if I could. We weren’t sure about the weather; everybody knew that Chicago was going to be really, really hot, but no one knew what the conditions were going to be like in the Twin Cities. There was a rumor that it was going to be 40 degrees at the finish, and there was another rumor that the race was going to start out at 75 degrees. There was crazy stuff going around [laughing].

So, to be honest, I didn’t really run the strategy that we wanted; I started out a little fast and then found a good pace and basically hit that pace for about 15 miles in a row, and then died a little bit, and then came back with a second . . . or third wind. I did my best with the strategy but it was my first time [laughing] . . . it didn’t quite work out.

FW: I think that’s totally reasonable for your first time.
CC: Yeah [laughing], I’d have to agree.

FW: Let’s rewind back to your childhood growing up in Colorado. How did you catch the running bug?
CC: Okay. My whole life, I was a big ball-sport athlete. In kindergarten, I played soccer, softball, basketball, and volleyball. I realized that I liked the end [pat of practice] that nobody else liked with the suicides, and the laps, and the conditioning, so I started running on my own. I did track on top of soccer in eighth grade and I had a little success, but it was eighth grade, so I didn’t really know what to make of it. And then my freshman year, I ran track after soccer, for the last two meets of the season when my soccer team didn’t make it past the regular season. I did pretty well, and then one thing led to another and a lot of people were telling me that I could have a lot of success in the sport. I then quit soccer, but still did volleyball and basketball. Some coach took me aside after the next year and told me about the value of running more than like 15 miles a week [laughing], so I thought that sounded pretty neat. I started to apply that and then quit volleyball and basketball and then I ran cross country. I had a big breakthrough my senior year; I thought that since I put a lot of energy into it, that I should continue to run for college.

FW: And how did you like your collegiate running experience?
CC: It was amazing. It was the best experience that anybody could ask for. It was absolutely terrific in all ways. My coach, Pete Farwell, was amazing; the team aspect was great, which I didn’t really have in high school because running wasn’t a big team thing where I grew up. For the first time, I had a team of not only good running girls, but also amazing people in general, all four years. From what I’ve heard, not everybody had such a great experience running in college; I’m often nostalgic about my time running at Williams.

FW: So, how was the transition to go from Williams to ZAP?
CC: It was a good transition. It was a move to the South; I had never been south of Pennsylvania [laughing] on the East Coast, so that was a big change. But it’s a beautiful area. It’s much different than college; there are only two other girls at ZAP plus Zika Rea, the founder. So, though it’s a team atmosphere, it’s not like it was in college with a bunch of girls getting pumped up for races. But the boys are nice, so that’s good. It was definitely an overall transition for me, but one that worked out well.

FW: How did you adapt to the humidity?
CC: Well, actually, I got there in the fall and the weather was comparable to the fall in New England. Being in the mountains helps, but man, this summer, it was a whole new thing for me. Being from Colorado, I’m used to dry heat, and this was notdryheat [laughing]; I think the team got really tired of me complaining. Every time you moved the slightest bit, you’d break into a sweat; I would let everybody know how I thought that that was ridiculous [laughing]. But it actually turned out to be fantastic because when I came back to ZAP in August and started my marathon training, the heat and humidity helped prepare me for Twin Cities.

FW: So how does it feel to be able to call yourself a professional runner?
CC: It’s amazing! I’m so grateful for this opportunity because it was really a risk for ZAP to choose me. The theory behind me, I think, is that I was a Division III runner who had been burning the candle at both ends with academics and running and that I had “un-tapped potential.” I think that’s a pretty risky thing; who knew if I really did have un-tapped potential? Who’s to say that I didn’t really enjoy writing papers and training hard simultaneously?

It turned out really well; it’s how I found out that the marathon is really a good fit for me. It’s awesome to be able to say that my job is professional running; it’s pretty great to be able to throw that around [laughing].

FW: It’s a good conversation piece, right?
CC:It’s sort of interesting to see how people react. Some people don’t get it at all!

FW: How does your family feel about your current career choice?
CC: Finally, they’ve come around to the idea and they understand it a lot more. It took a little bit of convincing. For college, it only took a tiny bit of convincing, to explain to them why I’d go somewhere where I wouldn’t get a sports scholarship . . . Division III doesn’t give sports scholarships. But my decision to run after college was a bit bigger of an issue. I signed with ZAP without really . . . what’s the word . . . telling . . . them. Finally, after nationals, one of my friend’s parents congratulated my parents on my decision to run for ZAP, and my parents came up to me after the race asking me to clarify [laughing]. So, I told them about my decision. After that, they became more understanding. They’re very supportive now.

FW: What’s your training going to look like for the Trials? Are you going to do an eight-week build-up again?
CC: Well, right now, I’m in Colorado and I’m going to be here while the rest of the ZAP folks go to Tallahassee in January and February. So, I’m going to stay up at altitude and do base training—a lot of mileage without much concrete speed work. I’ll do that for a month and a half and then head back to North Carolina and do a similar build-up as I did before. It’ll be about eight weeks, maybe a little bit longer. It worked out really well last time, so the saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” applies to this.

FW: At what altitude are you doing most of your runs in Colorado?
CC: Most of my runs are probably between 7000 and 8000 feet.

FW: Do you notice a big difference between running there and running in Blowing Rock, North Carolina where the elevation is around 4000 feet?
CC: Oh, yeah, there’s a big difference! Luckily I was born and raised here, so after a week or two, I start to feel relatively normal. Altitude training, for me at least, feels more tiring, but you recover and then the next day you feel pretty good again until after you run and you feel tired again, so it’s a different type of strength work. It’s a way to strengthen your mentality really; you have to turn off your watch. Luckily I don’t know the mileage of any of my runs; I just run based on time. I’ll go out and run for say an hour and a half. You really just have to have faith in the training even if you don’t feel great a lot of the time.

FW: I know that your coach Pete Rea is big on drills. Do you continue to do those when you’re on your own?
CC: I do a lot of core and strength work on my own. Right now, I’m in sort of a transition out of a break. I think we’ll probably start incorporating a couple of drills here that Pete will give me and as a guess, I’d have to say that I’ll probably do a half an hour to an hour of drills twice a week within the next few weeks and continue them until the marathon. Drills are definitely a huge part of the training process at ZAP. I like them because they make me feel athletic and strong. Instead of feeling like a runner who pounds out the miles, I feel more like an athlete, which is pretty cool.

FW: Do you plan on running any races between now and the Trials?
CC: I think the plan is either a half-marathon or the [U.S.] 15K Championships in Jacksonville. Just one or two races, though; we’ll see. Boston’s coming up soon—it’s pretty exciting.

FW: Best of luck to you! For your last question, how about naming five or so keys to success for you personally as a runner?
CC: I would say . . . volume, as I mentioned before, running a lot of miles . . . tempo runs . . . stress-free running, just letting myself go out there and let come what may. So, if I feel bad that day, I just accept it and allow myself. This is really important to me. Another key is sleep. And finally, confidence and focus are keys. I think it’s important to have confidence in what you’re doing as an ultimate goal and then that’s where focus comes in, being focused on what that goal is.

Interview conducted on December 12, 2007, and posted December 18, 2007.