Former Footlocker Champion AJ Acosta, who now runs for the Oregon Ducks, recently ran an 8,000-meter PR of 23:24 at PAC 10s. He and the Ducks are heading into Regional's and the NCAA Championships.

What does "AJ" stand for?

Andrew Joseph.

An article recently came out about your adjustment to college, can you explain that?

It was really just an acclimating process. I was coming in as the top high school guy in the country. I was going into a program where I was running with guys like Shadrack Kiptoo, Galen Rupp, Scott Wall and a bunch of other Footlocker guys. Some people just make the transition a little bit better than others. Going into cross country season I had just come off a long track season. So mentally I wasn't ready for the longer distance in cross county and physically as well. I had come in a little bit overweight and compared to the other guys on the team I wasn't as fit as I could have been, so the decision to redshirt was probably the best decision for me. I'll be a lot stronger my fifth year than I will be when I came in. At the time I really wanted to run around the time of PAC 10s and Regionals. We had this great team and it was the first time we won PAC 10s in a long time. So, it was really hard to be at those meets and watch from the sidelines. But in hindsight it was the best decision to redshirt.

Everything is obviously going well now, you would say your properly adjusted?

Yeah, I think I'm adjusting pretty well. I still have a lot to learn. I haven't raced the 10K yet and I think I'll have a pretty big improvement curve on that. But as far as 8K racing goes I still think that I'm adjusting to the distance. I think I have a lot of potential at the distance. Obviously 12th place at PAC 10s is a great race for me. But I think that there are guys in there I should be running with and it's a matter of me staying focused and getting in a rhythm and if I can do that and get comfortable with where I'm running, I think I have a good shot at surprising some people.

Did you make the top seven on the team? At PAC 10s I was fourth on the team and that's where I thought I could be all season. The way our team is, we're so deep that on any given day the number nine guy could jump up and be our number four guy. So we have a lot of competition on the team. It's really good in workouts; you have two groups of guys who are pretty evenly split. And I think having that is great, you kind of have a double-edged sword. It puts a lot of pressure on you to have to run well in the races. But, for someone like myself, I really need that pressure. Because if I know there are two, three, four guys that could take my spot it really gets in my head that I need to get going, I need to get moving in order to do the best I can. I think I've done well in the past in high pressure situations. So far my track record has been that in high pressure situations I tend to perform.

Why did you choose Oregon in the first place?

You know it was looking at my three big colleges Oregon, Wisconsin and Colorado. I think the very first day Vin was in his office, he gave me a call, and if you know anything about running at all you know who Vin Lananna is and if he's calling you on his first day in the office, it really sticks with you. He could have been lying to me for all I know (laughs), but it really made an impression on me that he really wanted me. That being his first year, and I wasn't really expecting much from the guys on the team and for a lot of them I think it was like a leap of faith to commit to Oregon. Obviously, now it's working out, everyone is pretty much flying on all cylinders, everyone is healthy, with a few exceptions. I really feel like I got along great with all the coaches. I have the utmost respect for Coach Wetmore at Colorado; he has a very intelligent and methodical way of training and going about things. Same goes for Wisco, Jerry Schumacher, he's a great guy, he's really young and he gets along great with the team. He's had a great string of success with that Wisconsin team. But in the end, I felt like Oregon was the best bet. It was a west coast school, in the PAC 10, real close to home. Just guys on the team too; like Galen, Scott Wall, Shadrack we all get along really well. I had a great visit when I came here. It really resonated in me the whole thing with Vin Lananna, Track Town, and the whole philosophy. It's really paid off for me. We just have so many great guys here that are doing great things. It was the right choice and hopefully we can continue that trend.

It must be a hard decision to decide who is in the top seven, do you know who they are?

We really don't have a solid top seven; we have a group of 12 guys that could finish in the top seven. If you look through the results no one has finished in the same spot on the team, with the exception of Galen and Shadrack. We've all been flip flopping. Between our three through 10 guys we are all pretty equal. Our three through six spread at PAC 10s was like four or five seconds. There's not much that separates our three through our six and we had Danny and Diego (Mercado) who had bad races. I think Danny was 25th and that was our fifth guy last year. And this year he was our ninth guy. That's where our fifth runner finished last year. Danny and Diego are definitely going to bounce back for Regionals and Nationals. We have so many guys who could finish in the top seven that I think it would be unfair to say, "these people are the top seven". There are so many guys that are so talented and have been running so well to say that. It will be a tough decision, but I think that at the end of the day, the seven guys that end up running at Nationals will be our seven best guys. For whatever reason, Vin has a way to make sure that the seven best guys are on the line. For all the miles we've run, for all the training we've done, it's not a science, it's an art. That's one of the reasons I picked Oregon. He has a meticulous approach to training and it's very scientific, but at the same time it's also an art form. By that I mean he can see something's wrong and you may not even know it's wrong. He's been in the game long enough to be able to see these things. It's one of the reasons he's such a great coach.

How has your training been going up to this point?

Everything's been going really well, I've been putting in some solid miles, usually 75-85 miles a week. I've been doing a lot of quality work. A long run of maybe 15 miles one week and 12 miles the next, while doing two or three solid workouts. That's something that's definitely something different about the collegiate system as opposed to high school, is that you're doing some much quality. I'm doing stuff now that I never thought I would be able to do. I can't really point to a specific work out. I don't want to give out the playbook. There are just workouts that we do that when I finish I'm like, "I can't believe that I just did that workout. It doesn't make any sense". That's pretty much how it is every week. It's a constant grind. But when you're done, you're that much stronger for surviving. That's the great thing about Vin, he's great at preparing you to run the best when you need to.

What are you individual goals this year?

I think everyone's goal in the NCAA is to be All-American. But at a school like Oregon, everyone is focused to make the team, and if you make the team there's a good chance you will be All-American. I'm trying get consistent with my training, because before PAC 10s I wasn't getting the races I needed to have. Everything is finally clicking for me. My goal is to stay healthy, contribute positively to the team, and make sure we are one cohesive unit. So far everything has been going to plan. As far as I can see in the foreseeable future it's going keep going on that way.

The National Championship is the team goal, can you talk about some way you're going to go about racing that day?

We're going to run it and we're going to run our race. We're going to do what we're going to do. We're not going focus on the Ionas, the Wisconsins, and the Colorados. I think if you get too caught up in the other teams, you lose focus; you lose sight of the real goal. If we do what we are capable of doing, it's going to be a positive result. I'm not going to say what that result is going to be, because I don't know. But if we can keep that our cohesive unit intact, we will have that positive outcome.

What's your major?

I'm an economics major that is going to also going to major in business.

With that, what are you goals for after college?

Ideally, I'd like to keep running. So far I've had a really good progression as far as times go. If everything keeps clicking, I stay healthy, I've got the coaching, I've got the talent to do it, so we will see how it goes. God forbid if it doesn't work out like that, I'd like to something with running, that's one of the reasons I wanted to major in business, so I could do something positive with that degree in terms of giving back to the community and giving back specifically to the running community.

Can you talk about the Duck's team unity?

I don't think I would be going out on a limb by saying that we have the best team unity out there. Obviously there's times when you're going to butt heads with this big of a group. There's going to be conflicting personalities, there's going to be times when people don't agree. But I would say for the most part everyone gets along real well. I hang out with Galen a lot. Scott Wall and all those other guys, we all hang out a lot. We all kick back and have a good time. It's just going back to us being a cohesive unit, whether it's running, academics or social. It's one of the most cohesive groups out there.

What are your hobbies outside of running?

We get together and we have a TV show or two that we watch. Right now, I would say it's "The Office" and come winter season there's "24" and "Entourage". That's really the extent of it. We hang out on the weekends and have a good time. I'm not going to say we're like any other college team out there. We probably don't party as much as most teams do. We have our fun and we keep it safe and we keep it clean.

What is the hardest workout you've ever done?

A really tough workout we do is a whistle workout, which is basically just a non structured Fartlek run. We do 70-75 minutes of running and about two thirds of that will be at slightly faster than race pace and the other third will be at training run pace. So you're getting in about 45-50 minutes of hard effort at 4:45-4:50 pace. It's really hard and you have to focus. That's really our bread and butter workout. We do substantial work with that. That's probably our toughest workout as far as staying mentally focused and tough.

Favorite shoes ever?

I've been partial to Miler spikes. I've had a lot of foot injuries and I don't know if they help that or hurt that. I'm really partial to how they feel, but I'm not a spike enthusiast or a shoe enthusiast. If it feels good, it feels good. As far as training shoes go, I like the Vomeros and the Pegasus.

Would you consider yourself more of track guy or a cross country guy?

I don't like to limit myself, so I'd like to say that I'm versatile. Obviously I ran well in cross country in high school, I've been running track well in college and I have been running pretty well in collegiate cross country. I think I've got potential in country and potential in track. So, we will see how those things go.

What does your diet consist of?

I eat a lot chicken, because it's cheap and you can buy it from Costco. Normally I have some oatmeal or French toast from Trader Joe's in the morning. Then for lunch I usually have...well, lunch I have almost the same thing every day: turkey sandwich, apple, two bars. And dinner is usually some chicken or pasta or some combination of both. I definitely have those days where I have pizza because I'm too lazy to make dinner. That's the extent of my eating. I usually have yogurt before I go to bed. Or ice cream or cookies. Actually right now, I'm looking a nice bag of double stuffed Oreos that I've kind of been eating on an off for the past couple of days. And they're almost gone which may be a bad thing right before Regionals. I definitely let myself go sometimes. I figure I eat what my body feels like eating. As long as I don't kill myself, I think I'm doing pretty well.

AJ Acosta can be a popular subject on internet message boards, can you talk about your critics and your supporters?

You know (laughs), it's always tricky with that because anything you do in the spotlight there's always going to be detractors. The biggest thing is limiting yourself to listening to the detractors. I think at the same time though it's positive to look at that and see what people have to say about you because you do have to be conscious of what you're doing. There's been times where I've been wrong about something and it's took a couple of people saying it for me to really understand it. I don't put too much stock in the internet message boards, but at the same time you have to look at that. With the bad comes the good. You also don't want to get a big head. I think since my high school days I've matured a lot physically and also emotionally. Obviously as having Vin as a mentor and as a coach it’s been good for my personality. He's kind of cooled me off a little bit. I don't think I'm as brash as I used to be. I'm obviously still outspoken because that's the way I am. I feel like if you have an opinion on something you should be able to say it. Having Vin as a coach has opened my eyes. He's coached them all: Stember, Jennings, Sage, he's had all the greats and he's had all the different types of personalities. He really knows what to do with someone like me. He's helped me chill out a bit and I'm thankful for that. I look back at what I was saying and what I was doing in high school and I'm a completely different person from that. You've got to take the internet message boards with a grain of salt. But put a little bit of stock into it. Sometimes what people say on there can make you a better person. Don't put all your eggs in one basket but people have some really good things to say. I'd rather have people saying bad stuff about me and people say good stuff about me rather than everyone praising me. It brings me down to earth a little bit.

Would you consider yourself an active member?

I go on spurts. I still post on Dyestat sometimes. I don't post on Letsrun anymore. I haven't posted on there in I cant even remember how long. I try not to contribute too much on running stuff because I don't think my coaches want me posting on there. I post on what you might call the "potpourri "board. I've curtailed my posting on there. As I've become older I realized that the average age on the board is a lot younger than I am, and so is the humor. But I sympathize that because I was there once. It's still pretty funny to see that's where I used to be. SHOUT OUT TO HQ!