Oct. 31, 2007
Senior cross country runner Isley Gonzalez placed eighth at the Pacific-10 Championships Saturday, Oct. 27, earning second team All-Pac-10 honors. She helped the Cougar women to a fifth-place team finish. Gonzalez is from Sunnyside, Wash., and is majoring in education at WSU.
Has this weekend's performance sunk in yet?
"I am still kind of in la-la land. I'm kind of like `what is going on.'"
How do you hope to build off this performance for NCAA Regionals?
"We did really well as a team, and a couple of Pac-10 coaches ranked us above a team that has enough points to go to the NCAA Championships. We just need to beat that team to get in to nationals. We are definitely looking towards that right now."
How do you maintain the intensity as you prepare for regionals?
"We keep doing the same stuff. We are tapering down now. We're just getting down to thinking about resting our legs and focusing on what's important right now, and that's our last race. The women's team is really positive so definitely the intensity stays up."
How does the regional race compare to Pac-10s?
"It will be sort of the same set up, but there will be 100 more women in the race. There will be smaller schools so we are looking towards running up towards the front pack. After the first mile it will definitely even out and you will see the Pac-10 schools up in front and the other schools towards the back."
Do you have any pre-competition rituals?
"Warm up, strides, I pray. I have some socks actually that I have been wearing this season. My best friend drew pictures on them and I have worn them for every race."
What has been the best part of running at WSU?
"Being a Coug actually. We go to all these big meets and these schools have the legacy as being great distance programs. We are still building every season, and we've become better and better. Running for WSU and being a Cougar is so much better than ever running for Stanford that has a great legacy or anything like that. I love just being here with such at tight family at WSU."
How did you get started running?
"I have actually been running since I was like three, but it wasn't competitive. My dad got me into it to stay healthy and I was a basketball player so I would run to stay in shape. Then I tried out for the track team in middle school and I was pretty good. I was never an intense runner until my senior year when I started training a little bit. And in college I've still been building my mileage, but I've never been an intense, lots of mileage type of runner."
